Americans like clear delineation between good and bad. Hero must be likable. Ending must punish the bad and reward the good. If something bad happens to character, it is punishment.
It's also very visible in games. For example in Dungeons and Dragons each character has 2-axis "alignement" - you can be any combination of lawful/neutral/chaotic and good/neutral/evil. And it has gameplay consequences - there are spells that detect if somebody is evil, weapons that can't be used by a good person, etc.
In many western computer RPGs like Bethesda or Bioware games they have big decisions with assigned "good" and "evil" choices, and the game counts how many times you have choosen each and gives you good or bad ending.
And it's even visible at the level of single quests - it's a trope that when you save someone in a game and (s)he offers you a prize you should decline and you'll almost guaranteed to get a better prize.
Compared to that Polish games (for example the Witcher series, but also This War of Mine and to a lesser degree Dying Light and Call of Juarez) have no "good" and "evil" decisions - instead you have decisions where each option is good for some reason and bad for another reason. And often there's a choice that ends bad either way (this is especially the Witcher trademark - there's like 100 different quests where you have to choose between 2 parties that are in conflict, both have reasons for their position, and both hate each other and no matter what you chose someone will suffer).
I find this much more realistic than the American good-vs-evil default.
I think it's mostly caused by recent history where Poland was saved from Nazi occupation by Soviet occupation and both murdered thousands of people - we are very aware culturally that being the enemy of one evil doesn't mean you're good. The whole Witcher franchise is exploration of lesser evil and price of neutrality.
> It's also very visible in games. For example in Dungeons and Dragons each character has 2-axis "alignement" - you can be any combination of lawful/neutral/chaotic and good/neutral/evil.
Note that D&D got this from Michael Moorcock [1], who is a British sword and sorcery author, and in whose works being Chaotic or Lawful is much less clear-cut, morally speaking. So I m not sure that D&D is a good example of "American thinking".
Well USA and UK is basically the same culture when you look from outside anglosphere.
Traditional western fantasy is all about Good vs Evil and Tolkien was technically British as well.
Compare that to the Witcher book series where the evil slavery empire fights the evil racist kingdoms who are racist towards elves (who have their own racist empire on another plane where they genocided humans). And the only good guy is a hired mutant hunter who strives to be neutral (and through the books learns that he can't).
Yes, maybe I was unclear: it's both that Moorcock is British and anti-Tolkien (seriously: read his essay "Epic Pooh" [1] about Tolkien: Moorcock hates his guts). Moorcock's writings are pretty much a subversion of the usual Evil vs Good tropes, the Hero's Journey, etc.
I agree with you Tolkien is indeed a good exponent of the Good vs Evil mentality.
I've read his Runestaff cycle and it felt pretty Good vs Evil to me. Maybe because I was like 13 then so I mostly read for cool fights etc :)
I've also read a few books about Elric and they felt a lot like Conan which I guess is another example of non Good-vs-Evil fantasy in English, so that's 2.
Elric is pretty much the opposite of Good-vs-Evil. Or rather, it's Gray-vs-Trying-To-Be-Good-But-Destroying-Everything-You-Hold-Dear ;)
In a pretty good subversion of the hero's journey, Elric starts a powerful ruler and wizard (though a sickly, drug-addicted one), and doesn't set off on adventures to gain power. And his patron gods are the gods of Chaos, not the gods of Law. Elric is an anti-hero in contrast to Tolkien's more clear-cut heroes.
Even the game Dungeons & Dragons explores the implications of having interesting True Neutral or morally gray characters, or situations where being classically "good" is not possible or desirable.
I've read a few books from middle of the cycle (because that's what my countryside library had in 90s). So it's possible I missed the point. But I remember not being impressed.
As for D&D the alignment mechanic feels very artificial and is often houseruled out altogether here. Fun fact - in Poland the most popular ttrpg was (and probably still is) Warhammer FRPG, not D&D. And it's considerably more shades of gray and pessimistic than D&D :) D&D was often considered backward and "for kids" compared to the "real" RPGs, it changes a little with 5e because of Critical Role and all the hype.
But that success of Warhammer was mostly caused by being the first AAA quality RPG to be published in Poland and making a big marketing campaign in 90s, so that's not an argument for or against the cultural differences.
Well, Warhammer's Chaos gods are also inspired by Moorcock ;)
Warhammer is definitely more shades of gray than D&D, but I think D&D has some of that too, especially with its less common (and less heroic) settings such as Planescape, Dark Sun, etc.
PS: in case you're a Pole, how did you like Netflix's Witcher? Years ago I read the English translation of The Last Wish and it felt very fresh to me -- I really liked that the monsters are non-standard, it resembled Jack Vance's fiction in that way -- but stopped short of the novels, because what I've been told about them didn't impress me. I really, really liked the short stories though.
I liked it, but it's not as good as I imagined it would be. They skipped a lot of the nuances and philosophy and just made Geralt grunt and curse, especially the talking in the short story with elves and the goat-man was great and they cut it beyond recognition. Sapkowski's main strength is dialogs so that was sad.
But it's still much better than Polish movie about Witcher from 2000. It was the biggest disappointment of my youth :)
Geralt come across as asshole, but in the books he is not. He has banter with friend in the books, in the series he is just dick. In the books witchers are said to not have emotions, but he has them right and left.
I think he's talking generic. Most(not all) of the USA movies are good/bad clearly defined, even physically the good guy is handsome while the bad guy is not, is a "trope". It's more clearly defined than in movies from other parts of the world.Not always and not in every movie, not every character but most of them. If you prefer you can tell is a Hollywood thing.
