[Rimbaud]

Littlemanpoet - can anything be done about this situation?

That depends on what you consider the situation to be. A mere glance at the scene will show you: Fantasy books are big sellers. Kalessin mentioned this in the original post. Clearly, from this thread, and indeed from the remainder of the site, a large number of people who read fantasy, or at least the better examples within the genre, are highly intelligent and articulate. This does not seem like a terrible situation.

Yet look a little deeper and you will see that those same intelligent and articulate individuals bemoan the lack of quality within the genre. It has been mentioned several times here that there are only a few authors in the field worth the time of day (White, Lewis, Tolkien and a few more). In the original post Kalessin compared fantasy/sci-fi with Crime and Horror. I would argue that both those genres suffer from the same basic formulaic weaknesses. Romance, Tragedy, Theatre - when you get past the best proponents of the field, there is normally dross. As has been said a few times also - the better works supercede such classification and exist outside of 'genre'. In fact, I said this myself in an earlier post but I am considering revising my position. Well, with regard to LoTR, anyway.

IMHO, LoTR is the finest book to exist within the fantasy genre. If you like to judge books by sales then it hasn't done to badly there either [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] . The film that many of us have seen was a huge box-office hit and was nominated for a joint record number of Oscars. As has been mentioned previously (I can't remember who), the film's lack of success in the 'important' awards has more to do with Hollywood politics than the quality of the film or even the perceived quality of the film. Yet I, and I am sure others here, know people and of people who didn not and will not see the film because of the attached notions of fantasy. In their mouths the words 'wizard' and 'hobbit' are derisive. Again IMHO, Littlemanpoet - this is the situation. Not the inherent problems of the genre's quality control; all modern mediums have this problem. Not even the health of the literary establishment generally (althoigh I could write on that all day). Rather the opinion of a large number of people who cannot see past superficial elements to see the character and struggle portrayed in the work beneath.

Again this argument is not restricted to the fanatsy genre. There are whole rafts of Television, film and prose that people avoid or 'switch over' from simply because of 'superficial elements'. People might avoid 'anything with guns', or 'anything that's misogynist' (which has already ruled out Hollywood films...). Some people avoid older books because they cannot see past a more archaic form of the language.

The problem is not with the genre or even with art itself. The 'situation' is a situation of poorly educated individuals with short-attention spans and a need for instant gratification making up the majority of the population, both in my home country England and my current abode, the US. The people I see writing here on thr Barrow Downs are a minority and that is a sadness.

I cannot see this changing soon but until that time, revel in the underground nature of good art! Yes, you have to go out and find it, it's not going to be thrown at you but in examplem, half the joy of buying an obscure but great record is browsing through the shelves of dusty second-hand record stores...