3/12/08

A visitor flew in the other day from Houston. A male, satellite communications specialist with Lockheed Martin. A long trip. Occupying the other two seats on his row were two college students, working on a school assignment. One was writing a children’s fantasy story, the other was illustrating it. The trip took long enough for him to see a very fine castle take shape: ramparts, blue sky, white puffy clouds, bushy trees, birds flying overhead. Turrets, moat, and all.  

The story was about, and here was what bothered him, the usual maiden and the usual knight on the white horse come to rescue her.  

The visitor is not a fantasy fan. He reads what’s “real.” (In this day and age no one seems to know that high fantasy is concerned with the deepest aspects of reality: the human psyche, and the most vital issues of human existence.)  

But even perceiving fantasy as escapist light entertainment, he wondered aloud to me why in this day and age the story had a medieval thrust.  

It seemed ironic to him that two girls were writing about an age in which members of their sex would not have been expected to attend school, to learn to write or even to think critically and analytically in their ivory towers. Not to manage their own affairs, have independent means, be allowed to go about the world without escort. Sad, he said, and even sadder that they didn’t realize that in creating such a story they were perpetuating attitudes that should be long dead.  

He asked me what I thought.  

Oh, boy. I replied that however far the concept of fantasy has devolved, it still should reflect the mores of the folk for which it is written. In its earliest form, high fantasy held up paradigms of human behavior. First came the oral tradition, tales which later were written down,  the heroic sagas of heroes, of ancient gods from Norway to Greece, Odin and Zeus reflecting and magnifying the strengths and weaknesses of ordinary mortals. Much later, in the streets and market places of Europe, morality plays showed an illiterate populace how it should behave. In the churches, the parables of Jesus held up examples of good spiritual practice for the congregations to follow. And evolving from them into writing, allegories and fables served as secular examples of good social conduct. Bunyan, Aesop and Fontaine bear witness to their lasting value, as their stories are just as valid as when they were written. 

As the first novels continued to develop, (e.g. Pilgrim's Progress) and as other writers followed suit, rules emerged. Today, some scholars love to cite them as a sort of code: the anatomy of high fantasy. While it is good to know those rules, it is not useful to follow them rigidly. Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels as satire. It deviates roundly from the rules. Yet in form it is pure high fantasy in the best tradition even though there is, say, no quest, no one to be rescued, no peril of epic proportions to be overcome. Its picaresque sections are mordant, even prophetic (Laputa). Most people read only the Lilliput story and remember it as a cute tale about giants and little folk. They see only the content, not the form. That big man tied with hundreds of little strings: a great being brought down by small attachments. Bribes, watering down a noble vision? Expectations from a troubled populace? Election campaign compromises? Dealings with K Street? Swift was a political animal. And who sees the irony in the battles between the Big Endians and the Little Endians, people decimating one another over which way up one should eat a boiled egg! This sort of thing is happening still, here and overseas, sometimes on an epic scale. Civilized beings in one place were a race of talking horses called the Houyhnhnms (pronounced as a whinny.) The savage beasts of that country were humanoids called Yahoos. An unfortunate choice of name for a popular web agency, you might say - or am I missing some irony here?

As to form: high fantasy originated as extended metaphor, designed to entertain, not to preach, but to offer wisdom and insight through the actions and personalities of the protagonists. Good fantasy endures, because the human psyche hasn't changed that much. The readers of Beowulf’s age, of Chaucer’s, of Bunyan's, and Swift's are all much of a muchness; events haven't changed much, or how people feel about them. Just check your newspapers. Stuff happens. It always has and always will.  

But the content is changing, has to be - faster and more radically than than at any other time within recorded memory. Today we need different templates for human action. Different standards to which we can refer and by which we can measure ourselves.  

I remember the joy, (after having viewed Princess Leia's standard image - headphone braids and white draped gown in the holograph), of seeing the flesh and blood gal spring into action in Star Wars I. Loud, bold, and strong, chewing out the males come to rescue her. A movie, not a book, but right on time.  

So keep the form. Create a world symbolic of what you’re trying to say. But change the content. No more princesses in turreted castles, please. Grimm's Fairy Tales may reflect human nature but they're a relic of a world that's gone. Like Science Fiction, High Fantasy can point the way ahead. Let’s get out the warrior women, the caring males, the strong, independent people of both sexes living here and now in all kinds of ways. Let’s reflect their endeavors, and celebrate them, and … let’s be simply…relevant, I said, said I to the Lockheed man.

The Lockheed man agreed.