![]() ![]() “Escapism” in the sense of Andy Dufresne listening to The Marriage of Figaro to remind himself a world outside Shawshank Prison exists.īy contrast, revolutionary socialists like Moorcock and Miéville live in the here and now and regard abandoning the ugly political realities of the world we live in as irresponsibility. Tolkien writes of a better world, an imaginary past when Earth was closer to Heaven, where good shone more brightly in contrast to obvious, supernatural evil–a world where we can escape from the ugly, murky political controversies of daily life, where the idea of fighting honorably for a just cause seems believable and true. The argument over “escapism” circles back to the fundamental argument over the purpose of fantasy writing and of the arts in general. ![]() Michael Moorcock, who helped found the movement known as the “New Wave” in science fiction and fantasy in the 1960s, ripped into Tolkien’s brand of escapism in his essay “ Epic Pooh,” which his literary descendant China Miéville–founder of the 1990s “New Weird” movement summed up as: “ Jailers love escapism. Lewis that the only people who hate escapism are jailers. Tolkien famously defended escapism, saying that a soldier captured by the enemy had a “ duty to escape” as a Catholic he saw his own fiction as an escape from a fallen, sinful world, and told his friend C.S. One of the most divisive terms that’s been used to tar the fantasy genre is the term “escapism” the controversy over whether fantasy is fundamentally “escapist” and, if so, whether it ought to be, goes back a long way.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |