Final answer:
Authors include taboo and repulsive concepts in literature and other forms of media to challenge audiences and provoke critical thinking regarding societal issues. These shock factors encourage the re-examination of preconceived notions and personal growth by exploring critical issues like gender, race, and class. Engaging with these concepts ensures that texts embrace complexity and resist perpetuating stereotypes, resulting in more profound and impactful works.
Step-by-step explanation:
Theatre and literature often engage with taboo and repulsive concepts such as sexual assault, graphic violence, and intense philosophical debates to challenge audiences and encourage them to consider perspectives outside the dominant narrative. By confronting these issues directly, authors can create a discomfort that provokes critical thinking and societal reflection. This might be true also in more abstract fields, such as Philosophy, where the engagement with challenging and unsettling ideas can lead to a fundamental shift in one's pattern of thought or belief system. Similarly, in the field of Physics, concepts like the general theory of relativity can radically change one's perception of the universe.
When presenting these topics, it's crucial for the author or presenter to acknowledge their potential impact on the audience and to handle them in such a way as to encourage, rather than alienate, the audience's engagement with the material. It's the shock factor essay that forces the audience to confront uncomfortable truths and encourages them to re-examine their preconceived notions about critical societal issues such as gender, race, or class. This re-examination leads not just to broader cultural understanding but often contributes to the personal growth of individuals as they challenge their own worldviews.
Involving the reader or the audience in a personal manner means grappling with basic questions and issues that shake the common ground between authors and audience. Works of literature and other forms of cultural production intentionally aim to meet or challenge conventional expectations in rhetorically effective ways, which may be both enlightening and disorienting for those experiencing it.