PS: This post turned out as long and drawn out as the title and for that I am sorry. I kind of shifted direction over time and shifted more towards asking the critical question "whether we should encourage or suppress fantasy by making a common observation." because I was trying to construct a well reasoned dialogical argument for fantasy and it's value in daily life.
Our first challenger against fantasy is none other than Plato and he argues that the beginning of children's education must come in the form of stories, and so "our first business will be to supervise the making of fables and legends, rejecting all which are unsatisfactory; and we will ask nurses and mothers to tell their children only those which we have approved, and to think more of molding children's souls with these stories than they now do of rubbing their limbs to make them strong and shapely" (Republic, II). Plato believed that the stories children hear early in their lives will have a profound influence on them, and so he wanted to get rid of any that created, to put it in his terms, a false view of reality in children's souls. And he wanted less effort expended on therapeutic massage of the body than on stories' therapeutic massage of the mind. Looking at the role of stories with such serious intent, it was no wonder he concludes: "Most of the stories now in use must be discarded" (Republic, II).
We must recognize, he says, that a "child cannot distinguish the allegorical sense [of a story] from the literal sense" (Republic, II). So, he insists, mothers and nurses are not to "scare children with mischievous stories of spirits that go about by night in all sorts of outlandish shapes. They would only be blaspheming the gods and at the same time making cowards of their children" (Republic, II). His negative caution is that we must avoid those stories that can create "the presence of falsehood in the soul concerning reality. To be deceived about the truth of things and so to be in ignorance and error and to harbour untruth in the soul is a thing no-one would consent to" (Republic, II). The positive use of stories is to stimulate courage, to teach that death is not to be feared, to inculcate nobility of heart and adherence to truth. Ignorance or error about reality is among the worst disasters that can befall us, according to Plato, and from these so many other pains and disasters follow; and fantasy is a contributor to that worst disaster.
Two thousand years later Jean-Jacques Rousseau took up the same theme. He used the example of a fantasy story commonly told to children in the eighteenth-century: La Fontaine's "The fox and the crow." You will no doubt know a version of it. The crow sits on a branch with a fine chunk of cheese in its beak. The fox sees it and begins to flatter the crow, saying that the crow is so wonderful in every way that it must also have a most beautiful singing voice. The foolish crow is so delighted with the flattery that it opens its mouth to sing. The cheese falls. The fox grabs the cheese and lopes off. Rousseau analyses the story in detail, showing how confusing it is for young children unfamiliar with all the conventions which it assumes. But his main criticism is that the moral lesson it conveys to children is entirely unlike what is intended. Children do not take the role of the crow and learn that they should not be deceived by flattery. Rather they associate with the witty fox and learn to take advantage of the shortcomings of others. The fable exposes a world in which people flatter and lie for profit, and does so in a manner that invites the child to admire the vices the story describes. His brief analyses of other La Fontaine stories similarly show that they hold up deceit, injustice, immoderation, cruelty, acquisitiveness, and a range of other vices, to the child's admiration. Much the same could be said of many of the Grimm fairly tales which are so widely available for children today. Rousseau concluded that fantasy was all right for adults, but children should deal only with reality. In light of this, it is worth remembering, as J.R.R. Tolkien (1947) pointed out, that what we consider classic children's fantasy stories, such as La Fontaine's and the Grimms' collection, were not originally written for children. He likened their descent to the nursery when they went out of fashion among adults as like the descent, among his class and time, of old-fashioned furniture from the adults' living room to the children's play room.
One of the better known, and more assertive, arguments for the value of fantasy stories has been made by Bruno Bettelheim (1976). He drew heavily on Freud in arguing that fantasy stories are vitally important for young children's psychological health. Real-life stories, in his view, are much more likely to cause psychological problems, or create falsehood about reality in the soul, than are fantasies. Real-life heroes can be oppressive to young children's developing sense of themselves, emphasizing the child's insignificance in contrast to the confidence, goodness, or power of the hero. How can one be as good as Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela? One value of fantasy characters is that children do not see them in comparison to themselves; and so they do not feel oppressed by Superman or Snow White a result. Also stories which stay close to the child's everyday real world, Bettelheim argues against Plato and Rousseau, are more likely to confuse the child as to what is real and what is not, because children lack the experience to sort what may be real but unusual from what is false but plausible--say, monks from star-warriors or telephone hygenists from vampires. The value of fantasy is that children recognize very early that it is different from their everyday world.
C. S. Lewis, author of the Narnia books, makes a similar observation: "I think what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to deceive them [than are fantasy stories]. I never expected the real world to be like the fairy tales. I think that I did expect school to be like school stories. The fantasies did not deceive me: the school stories did" (1982)
A further value of fantasy stories, according to Bettelheim, is that they allow the child to play with ideas. They can provide comfort and consolation with regard to pressing real-life problems: "Like all great art, fairy tales both delight and instruct; their special genius is that they do so in terms which speak directly to children" (Bettelheim, 1976). In dealing with life's problems, fantasy stories have the additional value that they are richly suggestive of solutions: "Fairy tales leave the [children] fantasizing whether and how to apply to [themselves] what the story reveals about life and human nature". So "whatever the content of the fairy tale, it is but fanciful elaborations and exaggerations of the tasks [children have] to meet, and of [their] hopes and fears"
Fantasy, then, allows us to create an imaginary world in which children can rehearse and begin to deal with many of the most fundamental psychological problems that come with the territory of being human. "In all the forms of fantasy, whether dreams, daydreams, private musings or make-believe play, we give expression to perfectly real preoccupations, fears and desires, however bizarre or impossible the imagined events embodying them" (Harding). Jealousy, fear, hate, cruelty, selfishness, as well as love, compassion, courage, security, patience are variously present in fantasy. To provide children with stories that show only the latter set, with the expectation that they will then internalize these, is to leave them with the guilty suspicion that they are the only ones who harbor wicked impulses. This suspicion leads to shame, secretiveness, deception, and profound psychological insecurity. That, anyway is the claim of modern psychoanalytic writers about the value of fantasy.
As the fantasist Tamora Pierce has eloquently stated, "Fantasy is also important for a group that I deeply hope is small: those whose lives are so grim that they cling to everything that takes them completely away for any length of time. I speak of readers like I was, from families that are now called dysfunctional. While the act of reading transported me out of reality for the time it took me to read, nothing carried over into my thoughts and dreams until I discovered fantasy. I visited Tolkien's Mordor often for years, not because I liked what went on there, but because on that dead horizon, and then throughout the sky overhead, I could see the interplay and the lasting power of light and hope. It got me through" (1993)
So what are we to conclude? That fantasy stories do subtle but profound harm by confusing our minds about reality or that they are vital to our psychological health? Or both? Or neither? Or perhaps both are partially true? Some kinds of fantasy stories might do harm and some good and the same story might do harm or good to different children in different circumstances? Well, that all helps to confuse us even further.
But I think we can answer one part of the general question about whether we should encourage or suppress fantasy by making a common observation. That is that fantasy is a cultural universal; it is energetically active in all cultures; and it seems irrepressible.
That came out a lot longer than I intended and I doubt I'll run that long very often in the future but hopefully it's worth the read. I could write a lot more but this is turning into a research paper and this is a blog so I'm going to stop now while I can ;)
Thank you for that quote by Tamora Pierce, I can relate, though her words seem sad. Also, if you paired them with some of Plato's and other arguments, you could get the idea that fantasy is only good for adults disaffected with life, which is surprisingly what I imagine people similar to your friend would make of fantasy-philes in the first place, Comic-con people that would rather live in fairy lands.
ReplyDeleteWhether this is true or not, I won't tackle; however, I would argue that suspension of belief is almost a virtue now. Billions of dollars are spent by gamers to travel to unreal worlds where they can carry out martial law on imaginary victims and just about as much was spent for people to get lost in the surreal landscapes of Avatar.
I think a better question is: what constitutes fantasy these days? It's not like movies on the intricacies of architecture are becoming blockbuster. We're addicted to the unlikely and impossible
I believe these people, who are addicted to the unlikely and impossible, would have something else to be addicted to and something to be lost in regardless. Margaret Paul, Ph D says "Sometimes it works to manifest what you want in life, and other times it keeps you stuck in your life." When we are consciously imagining something that we want or 'dreaming up' an ideal situation we are actively participating in fantasy and fantasizing. I think that, we as people with active imaginations, are the most basic form of fantasy authors who are just going largely unrecorded and are usually fairly inconsequential. However sometimes people engage in this far too deeply. Catherine, for example, has a boyfriend and she fantasizes about how he could become a better person for her instead of investing time in him to get to actually know him and this results in their break up. Reading fantasy literature, watching pornography, and even seeing a fantastical movie can make our life worse only when the intent of the daydream is to avoid being present and taking responsibility for ourselves. One other thing I say is that it's harsh to say that there are no movies based on valuable topics and to use the example of the "intricacies of architecture" is a hyperbole against modern culture. People lost in the lives of realist writers are just as bound as those lost at Comic-Con. People who can't deal with reality will always find escape in something and I think the choice of escape method is a more definite sign of maturity than many common indicators such as how we dress or speak.
DeleteI totally agree that fantasy can be seen as a "rehearsal" of different life situations and outcomes for those of a younger age, but when does it become too much? If and when is it possible for an individual to have a skewed view of reality because of the time spent in fantasy literature?
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