philosophical pondering of escapism

[marycatelli]

Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? — J. R. R. Tolkien


I never fully understood [the label of 'escapist'] till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, 'What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?' and gave the obvious answer: jailers. — C. S. Lewis

Escapism gets a bad rap when talking about fiction.  Thin, fluffy, etc.  The famous quotes by Tolkien and Lewis underscore the problem.

Then, I was pondering the matter one day -- bad habit there, hard to break -- and considered what you would put in instead of escapism.  The complaint is often made that it does not go into Relevant Issues, or other Deep and Meaty Matters.

That means, it doesn't contain enough of the author's thinking.  This leads to the same problem as sagacity:  it is a lot easier to create a diverting story than to create a profound one.  To be sure, keeping it out of the lecture mode does mean that it's not infringing on the story structure as such -- if you manage to get profound without lectures.  The problem is that it is very, very, very difficult to be profound.  It is an easy oppurtunity to show off the depths of your shallowness, and do so by twisting the plot, flattening the characters, and draining interest from the setting to fit the theme.

Comments

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

In my experience those who insist on a continuous engagement with the world are most often the ones with serious psychological problems.

[marycatelli]

What I've noticed is they tend to have a neat list of the Issues, a solution for all of them, and a complete obliviousness to the notion that people may disagree with them.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

/agree

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Do people call all second-world fantasy escapist? If so, I think they're mistaking the scenery for the content. You could have a story set in a second world that dealt with extremely difficult problems in a nuanced way and that didn't flinch from the difficulties choosing a good path, or that showed the hard reality of goodness not always rewarded and badness not always punished--so, not light or fluffy fare, but if second-world = escapist, then it would earn that label (but wrongly, I think).

Conversely, you can have stories that are set completely in our present, mundane world, but which have all moral problems smoothed over, or that provide complete wish fulfillment (in terms of Girl Gets Boy, or vice versa, or Protagonist Achieves Fame, etc.). Those are also a kind of escape.

... But anyway, not everything should need to be profound! A limerick should be allowed to enterain as a limerick, and a joke as a joke, etc. People need laughter and silliness--and wish fulfillment. Things should be allowed to have different purposes without us having to establish a hierarchy of worth. And sometimes we even *can* establish a hierarchy, or at least, we can say, yes, this is more valuable than that... but having said that, it doesn't mean that the second thing isn't valuable. Being less valuable doesn't mean not valuable.

[marycatelli]

Yes.

To be sure, most of them seem to think it can escape if it's really a metaphor for something in modern life.

I have in fact read someone saying that if a given story was not about modern life, it could be escapist fluff but not Serious. Yes, folks, Seriousness can be safely measured by how close something is to him. The further it goes, the more escapist it must be.

Then, that is one of the things we try to escape.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

The complaint is often made that it does not go into Relevant Issues, or other Deep and Meaty Matters.

Rather utterly oblivious, isn't it? There's huge swaths of scifi and fantasy that are nothing but Relevant Issues. This thing called "the X-Men," for example, which was kinda big during a time of high race tension.... (just to pick something really obvious)

[marycatelli]

well, actually, those are not the real problem. Those, these sorts can claim are really allegory and so, really, at heart, mundane. It's when they can only make the claim by torturing the work, or not at all, that things get hairy. When the themes are such minor things as love and death and treachery and honor.

Like the crit who tried to psychoanalyze Hal Clement without realizing that everything he described was really possible.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

When the themes are such minor things as love and death and treachery and honor.

What trees?!? I see no trees-- I'm in the middle of this forest, how can I see a tree?

[marycatelli]

Like fairies, they often reveal themselves only to fools.