There are many things I love in life. I love my parents. I love my friends. I love playing online Tetris for free. I love a tall, ice-cold pint of beer. I love that the space bar will pause Youtube, Hulu, and Netflix Instant viewing.
I love all of these things and never have to defend that. But one thing I occasionally do find myself defending is my love of fantasy.
In a way, I get it. Fantasy is, on its surface, a genre packed to the gills with elves, dragons, and wizards — not exactly grown-up fair. How can a story with magic spells and dashing princes compare to the very realistic plays of Tennessee Williams, the written works of Jack Kerouac, or the films of Gus Van Sant? What makes fantasy so great?
In a word: metaphor.
For those not too proud to explore a work of fantasy and not too dense to look beneath its surface, the fantasy genre is a rich addition to the literary, film, and television canon because it explores very real human problems and desires by creating allegories through which to explore them.
Name any fantasy work that has withstood the test of time, and you will find in it a fable full of lessons of all too real applicability.
Michael Ende’s landmark novel, The Neverending Story, which was turned into a decent movie in the ’80s, is about a young boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux, who is neglected by his father and bullied by his schoolmates. He finds a book that transports him into another world called Fantasia, a world that is the embodiment of all the dreams and fantasies of the real world, which is being destroyed by an enemy called the Nothing.
The story is moving and absorbing not due to its host of magical creatures, but because it taps in all of us that longing to be a child again, to be able to lose yourself in worlds of your own creation, before the dark, unimaginative specter of adulthood falls upon us.
This theme of the wonder of a child’s imagination is explored many times over in fantasy, from The Wizard of Oz to The Chronicles of Narnia to Labyrinth.
While passionate, romantic love is a theme explored in virtually every genre imaginable, has there ever been a better representation of the honest, pure love between friends as there was in The Lord of the Rings? The entire sprawling epic that is Tolkien’s masterpiece essentially hangs on a single conceit: that we as an audience accept that Sam will do anything for Frodo.
This is a hard sell for some, because the notion of the power and beauty of platonic love is not a prevalent idea in our culture. Their relationship isn’t romantic so there’s no promise of sex. Frodo is hardly royalty so there’s no allure of vast treasures. Sam is committed to Frodo, with no reward expected, because that’s just the kind of person he is, and who wouldn’t want a friend like Sam? Who wouldn’t want to be a friend like Sam?
Toss in the fact that it’s two lowly hobbits, humble and small in stature, who succeed in saving the world, and you have a classic for the ages. It takes a story about hobbits to make us see the wonder in our fellow man.
This past year, the high fantasy television show Legend of the Seeker came into its own when episodes began appearing that were not necessarily part of the larger plot, but instead focused on characters by throwing them into fantastical situations that mirrored real life problems.
Kahlan, a young woman who was torn between her sense of duty and her love for her companion, Richard, was in one episode magically split into two people, and through this spell we came to learn much about her and how difficult her burden really was.
Another episode featured Cara, a woman who was abducted and brainwashed and turned into a killer. As she attempted to regain her humanity, she was turned into a Baneling (basically a sentient zombie), thus making her metaphorical fight to be a regular person quite literal.
The point is that we could have simply watched biopics of Margaret Thatcher or Patty Hearst, and I’m sure some would be content to do just that, but those projects are limited to the real and mundane. By steeping a story in allegory, you have a much larger canvas on which to paint.
I suppose the fantasy genre will always be overlooked by those who wish to appear highbrow. After all, magic and flights of fancy are a hard sell to the academic.
But for those of us in the know, fantasy has a way of engaging our suspension of disbelief by accessing the emotional truths in stories about hobbits and goblins, and reflecting the realities of our world through a supernatural lens. Like opera and musical theater, which engage our emotions through music rather than realism, fantasy will forever be a step removed from reality, but never so far that we can’t recognize it. And it’s because of that very distance from reality that the genre is able to remark on it so keenly.
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I studied fairytales as part of my graduate courses in education. Actually, for the people who told the original fairytales, the castles, the tyrants, the deep dark woods filled with danger, and the violence were all very much a part of everyday life. The punishments for disobeying the king were swift and harsh, and could include being drawn and quartered and having one’s entrails fed to dogs. Rivals for the throne were beheaded and their heads left to rot on bridges as a warning to rebels. Suspected witches were burned at the stake. Even the evil stepmother has her historical reality as many women died in childbirth during Medieval times due to lack of proper medical care. Actually reading these stories is by no means a waste of time but offers insight into the mind of man during the Middle Ages. A good teacher would recognize this. Personally, I always harbor suspicions about those who don’t like fairytales and fantasy. I feel rather sorry for them as I would for someone born blind or missing an arm or leg. How dull their lives must be!
For some of us, as kids, the metaphor was much more personal. Only fantasy could capture and reflect and validate the terror we felt, the powerlessness, the being adrift in a world with no rules, or with insane rules. Only fantasy offered a shining hope that there was something in us fierce and true and powerful to counter the corrosive danger around us, something that would help us survive and overcome. For those of us who further discovered as young adults that our sexual orientation was yet another way we didn’t fit in, fantasy was again a balm. Wasn’t magic often portrayed as something special, gifted, powerful, thrilling, and sometimes dangerous to let others know about? Holden Caulfield and Scout Finch could not begin to address our emotional landscape. The best fantasy celebrates the oddballs. The not-quite ordinary hobbit who impossibly has a touch of the elvish about him. The neglected, rejected boy at first ignorant of his talent who learned the best lessons of his humanity independent of that power. The lonely, wild, proud child who faced his darkest nature and learned humility. (Earthsea)
Well put, Robert!
I’ll never forget being in a college level class focused on short stories. The final assignment was to write a short story, and the professor told us she wanted us to write about “real people, not dragons.” How I wish I could have printed out this article and handed it to her. I could not find the proper words to explain my thoughts at all, and you have.
I do love the metaphor! As Brent said, the devil’s bargain is a great one. Think about the wonderful folk tales with the same theme.
It’s the folktales and legends that are told and retold throughout the ages. Kids grow up listening to fantasy stories, not the angst of Williams or the brilliance of Faulkner. I’d totally rather be riding dragonback than drowning in southern discomfort!
My favorite fantasy metaphor, which I find myself returning to again and again (because it’s so relevant in this day and age), is the wizard risking his soul in exchange for great power — like, say, summoning a demon. Inevitably, the bargain with the devil goes bad, and the demon gets free and the soul is lost. And yet, however many times we’ve all read this story, I see people doing this exact same action, over and over again — whether it’s using meth to deal with your problems, or choosing Sarah Palin as your running mate.