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Originally Posted by Galadriel
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Originally Posted by davem
So, is it right, or acceptable, to demand that Fantasy shouldn't explore certain ideas - if those ideas challenge, or attack, certain values or beliefs? HDM, apparently, has been removed from the libraries of some schools because of its 'message'.
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I should not think so. After all, George R.R. Martin (why is his name so darn LONG?) has pretty much come up with a fantasy that has more blood, gore, dishonesty, sex, rape, etc. than any other till date (correct me if I am wrong). I believe moral ideas can (and to a certain extent, should) be challenged to the extent that people can stretch their minds a little, but not so much as to actually encourage people to start killing each other
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Originally Posted by davem
And the question is, because Fantasy is the purest use of the human imagination, is it right to set limits on it, & refuse readers/movie-goers access to certain secondary worlds, or should there be no limits on what can be imagined? Isn't that the purpose of Fantasy?
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Fantasy may be the 'purest' use of human imagination, but that is not to say it is completely pure. We base fantasy on reality, mainly because it would take up too much time and effort to make up a billion new rules for the story. Whether it is 'right' to set limits on it is debatable, but it certainly would be very hard to not put limits on it! Also, some people might find the prospect of reading books about talking jam-tarts a little disconcerting. |
You know, I am quite confused here. It seems to me that the one making "demands" and setting "limits" on fantasy has been–
davem himself. Wasn't his main argument in fact that writers
should feel obliged to depict certain topics only in a particular "approved" way? Did he suddenly switch sides, or what?
–I will say this on the subject of fictional violence in general: I don't think any camp gets to take the moral high ground. "All graphic, all the time" is hardly some kind of default "righteous" position. Someone can argue that buckets of gore in a story will teach the audience
just how bad violence is...sure... but then someone else can come along and argue that all it will do is harden them and perhaps give them a taste for it– or is pandering to a taste already there. Not saying I necessarily agree with this point of view, either, but I think it's about as valid as the other. (Which is to say, I'm not sure that either is all that valid.)
Me? Oh, I don't know, I think mostly people just like what they like– and sometimes feel the need to construct elaborate moral and theoretical frameworks to justify it.
