One of my favorite books of all time is Victor Hugo’s classic Les Misérables. Its storytelling moves me like few books have. That said, however, there is one aspect of Hugo’s storytelling that honestly drives me crazy—his habit of interrupting the story to preach a sermon. It’s as though he casts a spell and then breaks it before the story finishes.
For instance, there’s a moment when the protagonist Jean Valjean discovers someone is on trial for a crime that he committed. The narrator brings us into Valjean’s inner world. We feel his anguish, his torment, his indecision about whether or not to confess to his crime. That was the moment the spell was cast.
And then Hugo broke the spell:
“Eighteen hundred years before this poor wretched man, the mysterious being [Christ] in whom all the holiness and all the suffering of humanity are gathered, had also, while the olive trees were shivering in the wild winds of infinity, long pushed away with his hand the fearsome chalice that appeared to him, streaming shadow and running over with darkness in the star‑filled depths.”
There’s the sermon.
This mixture of formats—art and sermon—gets under my skin. It bothers me not because I’m against sermons, but because I am for art. And when you don’t trust the art to deliver on its magic, you break the spell. The magician has revealed his secrets.
And it’s not just Victor Hugo. This kind of explicit messaging happens all the time. Sometimes it’s faith-based content like Courageous, which is a thinly veiled sermon about fatherhood. But let me suggest a film like Train to Busan, which shows what sacrificial fatherhood looks like without ever announcing it. The message is embedded in the story itself, and it’s deeply moving.
Sermonizing isn’t just confined to the Christian world, though. Take R.F. Kuang’s Babel. For all its rich and imaginative writing, it still occasionally stops to deliver commentary like this: “This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.” Honestly, I feel a little talked down to—not because I disagree, but because it treats me as if I can’t track with what the story is showing me. The book would have been less like a social media post if it trusted the story’s power. Contrast that approach with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. In that book, Achebe lets the tragedy of colonialism speak through story. You feel its weight and sadness without ever being told what to think or feel.
Or take the movie Endgame as another example. Near the end of that film, all the female characters suddenly appear together, fighting the antagonist Thanos. It felt like a banner unfurled that said, “We’re pro feminism.” My question is this: was there no story worth telling about women and their strength? What about something like Hidden Figures, which lets the story of African-American women speak for itself?
Whenever I see preachy art, something dies inside of me. I think to myself: “You broke the spell.” It’s not art anymore. It’s commentary. The winemaker has not fermented the juice in the cellar long enough. There is no wine—just spoiled juice.
Art that preaches is like muddy street water. But art that shows is like a deep spring. One is impure. The other is a source of life. Art that preaches studies butterflies by opening a taxonomy textbook. But art that shows brings the students outside to watch the butterfly swirl in the sunlight overhead. One gives a label. The other leaves you breathless. Art that tells is like erecting a flimsy garage sale sign that says, “Come buy my junk.” Art that shows is like pouring a concrete foundation that can hold up enormous buildings. One will be beaten down by rain. The other will withstand earthquakes.
There’s something beautiful I’m calling artists to embrace: art as art. Instead of drinking stagnant pond water, I’m inviting you: go find the deep springs that will nourish those who drink it. Instead of opening taxonomy books, I’m insisting: go watch the butterflies swirl. Instead of writing something flimsy on a cardboard box: pour a concrete foundation. That’s the difference between telling and showing.
One is shallow. The other is deep.
One is forgettable. The other lingers.
One is a soundbite. The other is beautiful.
And beauty lasts.
So artists:
Don’t break the spell.
Trust the magic.