Is Fantasy a dream or an escape?

[Lalwendë]

I've been reading this article about Harry Potter. I'm not ashamed to say I'm eagerly awaiting Saturday so I can get hold of the latest installment. I laughed when the author of the piece described HP as "diet-Lord of the Rings", but his article is overall quite dismissive of the idea of fantasy and the need to escape.

The series paints an unrealistic picture of Britain in 2005.

My Harry Potter would certainly not be a part of this world. He'd be more of an urban Harry for 2005.

He might hang round bus-stops late at night wearing a baseball cap and drinking cider.

He might harass the neighbours with his magic powers and end up with an Asbo.

My Harry Potter would probably sell about three copies, though.

What I wanted to ask here is why do people somehow value the gritty, the realistic, over fantasy? As we know, LotR includes many incredibly 'gritty' moments; just because Theoden rides into battle on horseback does not make his death any less 'gritty'. And why would a Harry Potter with an ASBO be more realistic? Despite what the Daily Mail would have us thinking, 99.9% of kids are decent people. And I have to say that for me, a novel about drug users and criminals would be as much 'fantasy' (in it's literal sense) as would a novel about dragons and wizards.

As the writer acknowledges, people want to read fantasy (in the generic sense ). I am disappointed to read AS Byatt's comments (disappointed because I admire her writing) - in my experience people who are obsessed with soaps and so forth are generally not into fantasy at all. These people would probably much rather watch a crime drama than read fantasy fiction; she is just making another cheap dig at the intellectual capabilities of fantasy fans, sadly.

Anyway, anyway, to the point....

As it says in this article, are we all just trying to reclaim our inner child? And if we are, is there anything necessarily wrong with that? Does it demean our intellect?