On Fantasy

Fifty years after the publication of the "Lord of the Rings", the great trilogy is being released as three full-length movies directed by New Zealander Peter Jackson. The interest has been phenomenal, with countless articles and multiple websites being devoted to the subject. When the production company released the first "Lord of the Rings" preview trailer on the Internet, millions of people downloaded the short film clip into their computers; the movie itself has broken box-office records and gathered praise from both fans and critics in the aftermath of its long-awaited release in December 2001. Whether the films meet fans’ expectations or not, one thing is for certain - there is a whole new cadre of devotees just waiting out there to be wooed with a good strange new world.

But why does fantasy touch such a deep chord? What is it about the human spirit that responds to the "unseen"? The same reaction has fuelled fans of Tolkien, and of the X-Files; of Guy Gavriel Kay’s rich world of Tigana and of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman; of Frank Herbert’s "Dune" and of George Lucas’s "Star Wars". Weighty tomes of novels and series of novels, TV series, graphic novels and cartoons, motion pictures - the medium is irrelevant. It is the fantasy within that calls.

Tolkien, the Grand Master, wrote an essay on fantasy and on what he called the process of "sub-creation", the invention of an alternate reality in a fantasy world. He scorns the label of "escapism" which is so often slapped on fantasy in all its incarnations, and trenchantly says that the only people who could possibly be so vicious in the application of the term "escapism" are jailors.

This may be part of the key to fantasy’s charm. One way or another we have made our reality an incredibly complicated (as opposed to complex), problem-ridden, frightening and sometimes arbitraily vicious environment. When daily news bombards one with constant images of people dying through various inventive and unpleasant methods, and ways of justifying that dying from the side of one or the other adversary involved in any given conflict where the "raison du guerre" is often murky and rather random in nature, it is not inconceivable that the mind and the spirit recoil and seek another sanctuary.

This is not to say that fantasy is unicorns and fluffy bunnies all the way. Indeed, fantasy literature is often violent - but the salient point is that the violence is defined and justified, and has an end. When the just war has been waged and won, justice prevails. In the real world, things are a lot less reliable. Alliances shift, and we turn on our friends because in the politics of the day they are expendable. We cannot agree on the definition of "terrorism" for the simple reason that those on the receiving end of it call it a crime and those who risk their lives to perform such acts do so for what often seem to be very good reasons from their point of view. When the ANC was fighing to come to power in South Africa, for example, they were terrorists to a man. When they achieved their aim they were reborn as freedom fighters who fought to liberate their country from oppression. And you know what? Both are right. Depends whether you’re holding the gun or staring down its barrel at any given momen t in time.

People are flocking in their thousands, in their millions, to see films like "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" and part one of the "Lord of the Rings" epic. It’s a respite, a cause, a reason to believe in a definition of Good and Evil that does not require dictionaries or encyclopedias or biased history books written by winners of wars and thus telling only one side of the story for all posterity. You do not have to decide. All you have to do is cheer for the Light, and watch the vanquishing of the Darkness, in whatever shape or form these have been presented in the fantasy world you are visiting.