Aargh!

[pegkerr]

Yes, of course I might have been delighted that the Two Towers movie has gotten the cover story in this week's Time Magazine. But the condescension of this article makes me want to scream:

Fantasy is "a nostalgic, sentimental, magical vision of a medieval age."

"The clarity and simplicity of Middle-earth are comforting, [Middle-earth? Simple?], but there's also something worryingly childish, even infantile about it."

and

"Are we running away from reality when we indulge in fantasy? Or are we escaping reality just to find it again and wrestle with it in disguise?"

The authors conclude by comparing America bearing its burden [is it supposed to be manifest destiny or something?] to Frodo's bearing the ring. They do seem to concede, at least, at the end, that LOTR is a "grown up" story. Apparently that point was in doubt, because it's a fantasy?

I want to send the authors a copy of Emma Bull's "Why I Write Fantasy." Key sentences I'd underline:

I know why I write fantasy--I know it somewhere down below and behind my lungs. But I can explain it somewhat less well than I can explain why breathing puts oxygen in my blood. I know I don't write [fantasy] so that someday teenagers will grow up and stop liking my books. No, there's something I want to get across--to both adults and kids--that just won't take root and grow in the otherwise fertile ground of realism.

I know that other writers have felt the same way. The tradition of fantasy is as old as literature; Western literature begins with fantasy, with Gilgamesh and the Illiad and the Odyssey. Beowulf pits a mortal man against ghastly supernatural foes . . . and if you respond that this is literature from the "childhood" of civilization, I'll warn you that you're badly underestimating your ancestors.

From Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine Issue Six (Winter 1990).

I do get so tired of this attitude, that Americans like the Lord of the Rings because we long to retreat to simplistic comforting pap in the wake of 9-11.

Muck, I say.

(Ahem.) Just had to get that off my chest.

Peg

Comments

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

I think a letter to the editor needs to be written.

I just picked up the issue today, and haven't read it yet, but now am not looking forward to reading the article quite as much.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Well, at least the pictures are pretty.

[aome.livejournal.com]

There are probably *some* people who like fantasy as a glorified Medieval Age, and whatever else that article claimed, but I despise with a passion the way that everything gets turned into a 9-11 issue. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

[sound of applause] Nice post!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Peg: 1
Condescending article: 0

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, there are so many things wrong with even those few snippets that you posted that it's almost tricky to reply to this. (Of course most people reading your journal already know how fantasy can be set in any time period, and how it doesn't necesserily have anything to do with escapism.) Definitely write some sort of a letter to the editor; you know this situation calls for it.

~Mark356 (http://www.mark356.net)

[redbird]

Can we mail them a copy of Le Guin's essay "Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?"

[splagxna.livejournal.com]

i am reminded of an editorial 'blurb' on the back of one my favorite charles de lint collections, which says something about his writing as an example of the fact that rather than being escapism, fantasy can be 'the deep mythic literature of our time.' it was one that i always waved in my parents' faces when they made comments about finding something significant/non-fluffy to read. if fantasy does function as escapism, it's not simplicity we're looking to escape into, but rather complexity, significance, meaning - i think a large part of what draws people to fantasy is the idea of a quest, some deeper purpose which many of us are lacking here in 'reality.'

[pameladean]

I've noticed that nobody who castigates LoTr for being comforting actually finds it comforting personally. They find it profoundly irritating. They just know, how I cannot tell and perhaps do not wish to, that other people find it comforting, and this irritates them too. I do not in fact find Tolkien comforting. There are parts of THE TWO TOWERS that are so dark that I cannot reread them at all. I used to reread LoTR three times a year, then twice, finally once, and would reliably fall apart at certain points of the story.

If these people (who include Edmund Wilson and Michael Moorcock; it's an old accusation) don't like LoTR, fine. But they can damn well quit telling me what I think and how I feel. Their problem is not that they are all noble and realistic and adult. It's that they simply Don't Get It and it makes them cranky, rather in the manner of a two-year-old.

A plague on all their houses.

P.