The most common accusation made about fantasy literature, which includes science fiction, superheroes, anything that�s just plain impossible, is that it�s a way to escape reality, and that anyone who seeks it out must not have the will or strength or ability to cope with reality. That just can�t be true for the simple reason that in fantasy literature, we don�t leave reality, we take it with us, often in very thinly-disguised forms. Fantasy is not an escape from the real world; it�s a replication of the real world but with details changed.
Tolkien called fantasy writing �sub-creating� in his essay �On Fairy Stories� (one of his very few works of literary criticism; he as too busy writing Lord of the Rings). To him, creating a fantasy world was an act of creation that was under God�s creation (hence the �sub-� part), so building fantastic worlds was an homage to God. If we alter that to a secular version, we find a whole different way of looking at fantasy. Creating a fantasy world requires a creativity and an imagination that is not to be dismissed, but when all�s said and done, that imagination is the product of exposure to mundane ideas here on Earth.
Tolkien�s Middle-Earth is, as anyone familiar with European mythology knows, the result of a lifetime of reading Medieval literature of Northern Europe, but also observing the world around him as it changed over the course of the early 20th century, being aware of international politics, and (though he denied it in his lifetime), the violent interruption of his life that was the Great War, and then the Second World War, as well. All of that stuff was allowed to mulch, percolate, and take on a life of its own inside his head. The same is true of almost any writer of fantasy. They take all the things they�ve seen in the real world, including a lot of other literature, of course, and they recombine and reformulate it into a narrative.
It would seem to be nearly impossible for a fantasy story to not be about the �real world.� I don�t mean to claim that all stories have equal amounts of narrative density or depth. Some of them are downright devoid of meaning (ever watch old Lost In Space episodes? the mind wobbles), and some of them are so rich you feel slightly drunk after reading them (and we�re back to Tolkien!), but they can�t help but be reflections of the world and the artist, who is a product of that world. Lost In Space, for example, brought the cultural values of 1960s America into the distant future and alien worlds, including the fact that Mrs. Robinson did the laundry by hauling a washing machine out of the ship and did the folding out in the open! I don�t mean to dismiss genius or vision, but even geniuses and visionaries live in the same world we do.
The interesting part about these fantastic creations, which are rearranged and re-emphasised reflections of the real world, is that because they�ve been rendered into fantasy, it�s very easy for a reader to overlay them onto reality. That sounds crazy, I know, but I do have a point. When we render reality into fantasy, certain social or personal situations for example, we are effectively re-writing reality, and usually to solve some kind of problem. This practise can take the form of a thought experiment, puzzling out how people might react to a situation that has never happened. It can be a pleasure fantasy, imaging a world that is better than ours, imagining characters that we�d like to emulate or know.
It can also take a situation in the real world that is unsatisfying for some reason, and render it satisfying. It can take a political situation that is untenable or morally irresolvable, and resolve it by altering the situation, or even just ignoring the kinds of logistics that keep us from solving our problems in the real world. Thus, a fantastic story that seems an awful lot like the terrorist attacks on New York, but in which the surrogate Americans react swiftly, reduce the loss of life, and not only catch but make peace with their attackers (season four of Enterprise), creates an alternative version of events that the viewer can substitute, not on a literal level, but on an emotional one, for the reality. James Burke, whose �new rhetoric� I find otherwise fairly boring, calls this �symbolic action,� and it�s an extremely useful concept. We read literature and feel as if we�ve experienced the events that have taken place, which can feel like action even when there is none.
This effect can be used in positive ways, allowing a reader to feel someone else�s point of view, or experience an emotional epiphany vicariously. In the previous example, however, Enterprise didn�t offer a way to understand world politics, or to resolve the problem after watching the show. It just offered a version of events that were palatable, that nudged the viewer to see the events from a particular point of view: �we� (Americans) were the victims, unethical acts (torture, theft, murder) were necessary to protect ourselves, and in the end, our survival proves that we did the right thing. This, I want to stress, is not an escape. An escape would be to deny the events took place. This is something else. It is way to rewrite reality, much as a convenient version of history might do.
Posted by orion at May 11, 2006 12:29 AM