[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien does ask us to question our own claims to power. He also offers 'answers', solutions, responses, which, while they may work well in his world, may not work in ours - may in fact have the opposite effect. A fantasy writer can indeed show us "things in front of our own noses if they are coloured to appear different" but his offered solutions may make things worse rather than better if put into practice in our world. The Shire may be a bucolic idyll wherein we may all secretly wish to dwell but no Hobbit ever died of lung cancer or cirrhosis - we can have the Shire as our solution to the Primary World evils of the desire for power & environmental destruction....but not exactly Tolkien's Shire, which is a Fantasy. In fact, there was a housing development in Bend, Oregon, called The Shire, with houses 'inspired' by Tolkien's creation - its just gone bankrupt due to the credit crunch (don't think they had those in Middle-earth....). There's no lung cancer, cirrhosis or credit crunch in M-e for the same reason there's no animal butchery like Towton in its wars (or homosexuality for that matter) because its Tolkien's fantasy & he controls what exists in that world. Tolkien is the gatekeeper. Certainly some of the horrors of the Primary World have echoes in the Secondary - but by no means all of them. And when they find place there it is in the form Tolkien wishes them to have & the solution of them is Tolkien's own & works in his world not so much for logical reasons but because he says it does.

But that's because its a Fantasy & so anything can happen. Yet smoking does cause cancer, excessive drinking does result in alcoholism & death, & if you go to war & arm yourselves with swords, maces, daggers, spears & arrows you get ugly bloody butchery not noble death rounded out with beautiful speaches a la Boromir & Theoden,

Perhaps the best response to the question I posed is that a writer of fantasy should be free to create any kind of world, include in ot anything he or she wishes, explore any kind of idea, however 'offensive' to some - but that the onus is on the reader to be able to separate fact from fantasy & realise that the fantasy world may tell them little or nothing, may even (while it is not a 'lie' in itself) lie about the reader's own world.

Or at least that the best one I can come up with at the moment....

Essentially, your complaint that fantasy isn't realistic is a complaint that has been lodged against all forms of literature, particularly by those with an ideological axe to grint. Remember Plato's complaint about poets and how he dealt with them? Think of the Vatican's list of proscribed books. Or think of how political correctness has developed out of quite legitimate complaints (in themselves, when addressed to conditions in the Primary World).

Rather than bowlderizing literature or censoring it or calling down fatwahs upon authors who violate ideas of the Primary Realm, perhaps it is well to remember that literature, as with all art, exists to delight and to instruct. If people choose, as Lal has said, to be more delighted than instructed, that is the freedom allowed in a democratic Primary World. As is the freedom allowed to complain about the sub-created world. It all just works to develope human communication.

by the by, just in the interests of clarity, I notice that the quotation you attribute to me in your post, davem, is not a completely correct transcription. My original sentence read:

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

There's enough evidence in our Primary world, from environmental abuse to domestic abuse to technological abuse of knowledge to suggest that a world view which asks us to question our own claims to power/divinity is not writing fantasy as wish fulfilment. Sometimes, it is easier to see things in front of our own noses if they are coloured to appear different. That then puts the 'onus' as it were, on the reader to interpret.

Must have been an incomplete c&p.