[Wōdnes-dæg] Fantastic Fantasy and the Grit of Popularity

Introduction
The Article Summed Up
Fantasy and Cynicism...Hand in Hand?
The More Names, the More Things
Closing

{Who is the knight standing over, and will he or she hang as well? Image found on the blog A Fantasy Reader.}

Back To Top
Introduction

The subject of today's editorial comes from the website Fantasy Faction - a site that hosts articles, interviews, reviews, forums, and a podcast that are all about the fantasy genre.

This article by Douglas Smith caught my eye because it attempts to explain the current trend away from "classic" tales of black-and-white good versus evil in modern popular fantasy. The article also grabbed my attention because it speaks to the variety that can be found in the fantasy genre.

These elements aren't just interesting, but are also quite relevant to me since I'm in the midst of writing my own fantasy universe into existence.

Back To Top
The Article Summed Up

In his article Douglas Smith notes the growing popularity and presence of gritty, realistic fantasy and tries to explain it.

Quite deftly Smith looks at the trends in entertainment more generally, and concludes that what we watch and read to relax as a whole has become grittier as the world around us has changed into something a bit grittier, too.

Gone are the days of massively popular soap operas and police procedurals, and now things are more about characters so real we might bump into them on the street and involve plots so intricate that it's as easy to become entangled as it is to become immersed.

Smith concludes with the statements that writers of gritty fantasy are reinvigorating the genre, that it's cool to read fantasy again, and that this might just be "a second 'Golden Age' for fantasy."

Back To Top
Fantasy and Cynicism...Hand in Hand?

As far as its explanation of why gritty fantasy is now popular goes, this is a great article.

The world certainly has changed, and, as those of older generations have said from time immemorial, it may actually be worse off (in some ways). Technological advances aside, events like "9/11" have made people more readily dubious of others and paranoid enough that fear could now be considered a small animal living in most people's heads as much as a human emotion.

Older stories that follow a straightforward plot and shimmering, clean-cut characters are definitely no longer enough to put this animal to sleep for a time so that the human host can truly enjoy an escape.

Instead, worlds and characters need more depth. In fact, this might be an analogue to the extra cynicism in a lot of people's worldviews. Just as more scrutiny and attention is paid to the real world and goings-on therein, so too in entertainment are characters and plots under more and more scrutiny.

The best way to meet that scrutiny, so far, has been to present things that are more layered and more like the world that can be seen all around. Instead of escaping into worlds that contrast the real one, the increasing popularity of gritty fantasy suggests that people are more willing to escape into worlds that are like their own.

Back To Top
The More Names, the More Things

Another factor to consider when looking the rise in gritty fantasy is the ever-increasing drive to categorize literature and entertainment. Particularly, the urge to separate the "adult" literature from the "children's" literature.

Both fantasy and science fiction have always been perceived as children's literature.

They aren't set in the real, contemporary world.

They aren't written by those who aspire to write capital-L literature.

But at the same time, there have always been adults who enjoy fantasy and science fiction more than other forms of not-true stories. These adults would read Frank L. Baum, they would flip through Asimov, they would delve into the world of the Harry Potter series.

At times these stories, labelled as being for "children," would be adapted into re-tellings or versions that were more "grown-up," and at other times they would be distributed with darker, more "adult" covers. Anything to appeal more directly to those who were outside of the original key age demographic but nonetheless liked what they read for whatever reason.

Enter gritty, realistic fantasy.

Just like that, there's now a fantasy sub-genre for adults, those who'd been generally perceived as "too old" for stories about magic, heroes and villains, Good and Evil. And where there is a supply to fill a hitherto unfulfilled demand that supply will soon prove insufficient.

After all, give something a new, more specific name, and those previously too shy to admit to liking that something under it's old, general name (let's say fantasy) will come out and help push demand even further.

Back To Top
Closing

Don't miss tomorrow's Annotated Links (#13), and keep an eye out on Friday for the first part of All-Request August, featuring a search for the superb in Plan 9 From Outer Space!

Back To Top