Enchanted Reality

I woke up from another late night of brooding amidst the dark (the sort of thing troubled romantics such as myself do quite well) to the sounds of singing. And this was not youraverage sort of singing, no. This was special indeed. A chorus of ageless, shining voices ringing out in awe-inspired wonderment. Recognition occurred before I was even fully awake. Disney, I thought. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella; yes, Disney. I walked out of the room to find Shannan curled up on the couch, watching the movie she had raved about (and had been threatening to buy) since seeing it at Christmas. Enchanted, the film where Fairy Tale and Reality collide. And she had made good on her threat – she had bought the movie. It was immediately apparent that I must make good on my promise: I sat down to watch it with her.

I was delightfully surprised. It was Disney, through and through. But it was done quite well; it was almost as if the film company were poking a little fun at itself. From the singing animals to the “damsel in distress” Dempsy to the tailor-made curtain dresses, it was entertaining and engaging and quite amusing. Disney has been giving us the Fairy Tales a long time, and perhaps they have not always been faithful (Tolkien, I know, did not like them very much), but they have always given us the Fairy Tales nonetheless. But this might be the first time Disney had something to say about the genre in general.

The principle scene came for me in the pizza parlor, where Dempsy and the Princess are conversing. Truly, it sums up the film, for in speaking about his daughter, Dempsy says, “I just want her to be strong, you know, to be able to face the world for what it is. That’s why I don’t encourage the Fairy Tales. I don’t want to set her up to believe this, ‘Dreams come true’ nonsense.” We have already seen this to be true; earlier in the film, when Dempsy gives his daughter a gift. Instead of giving her the Fairy Tale book she wanted, he gives her a coffee-table book called 100 of the World’s Most Important Women. Of course, our darling Princess disagrees.

Here is the crux of my post: Dempsy represents a father who, believing that exposure to Fairy Tales (with its escapist fantasy) will weaken his daughter’s ability to face the world, intends on bringing his daughter up “to face the world for what it is.” He will not fill her head with nonsense like “dreams come true,” and I’m sure he would add to the list other peccadilloes for which the critics love to condemn the Fairy Tales: beauty does not indicate inner character, nor does ugliness reveal evil, and things often to end up “happily ever after.”

I understand the father. And I do recognize the weaknesses of these apparent statutes. Beauty (or ugliness) is not a test of character, dreams sometimes do not come true, and oftentimes, in reality, there is no happy ending. However, I think that perhaps our dear father is barking up the wrong tree, drawing the wrong conclusion, throwing the baby out with the bath water, etc, etc; and I think he does so at his own peril. For these are not what endure in the Fairy Tale. Something far greater is endowed to us through the enchanted pages. But first, let me say a couple things in defense of these common accusations. Buckle in folks, it’s going to get bumpy.

First of all, I defy anyone to show me a medium or genre of Story which does not make wholesale use of these “statutes.” Sure, we have our stories of tragedy, loss, and grief. But we also have our stories of happily ever after, or dreams coming true, and the like. In fact, I would say the ratio is far greater to stories that do than don’t. The fact is, “happily ever after” is simply a coined phrase for a certain kind of ending, one that is universal in its appeal. And it is not a phenomenon particular to the Fairy Tale, however common it may be to it. And concerning the beauty/character relationship…well, let’s be honest: nearly all Stories, from the popular to the beloved to the critically acclaimed, have beautiful heroines and handsome heroes. It’s the Rachel/Leah device – we always want the pretty ones to win. I could go on, especially to ponder why that is, but there is not time, and this will have to suffice.

Secondly, I would submit that these “principles” are symbolic ways of teaching. Beauty reveals magnificent character and vice versa, because, well, there is truth to that. We have come to a time in history (in our part of the world, leastways) where it is understood on at least a surface level that it is character that counts. That good character makes you beautiful. The old axiom: it’s what’s inside that counts. I think this is what the Fairy Tale, on some level, is conveying. Moreover, the “happily ever after” (and vice versa)[1] is a “moral” (or what have you) in and of itself, meant to instruct that doing the right things lead to rewards. Is this false, or misleading? Well, it certainly depends on your worldview. But it also depends on what you count as reward. The Old Norse, with their ill-fated mythology, believed that the monsters and giants would, at Ragnarök, defeat the gods and plunge existence into chaos.[2] Therefore, the reward of good deed was simply of doing the right thing, of having done the right thing amidst the ease of doing the wrong thing, and of gaining the character, honor, and perhaps respect that comes with such a deed. Do bad things happen to good people? Sure. Do many good deeds go unrewarded? Sure. But I do also think that there is reward for good deeds, and I certainly do not think that this is a bad thing to teach children.

But be all that as it may, I should proceed to my main point (and how frustrated you must be that I have not gotten here sooner, fair reader!). Our dear father wishes to “protect” his daughter by keeping from her these Fairy Tales, so that she may be strong, and face the world as it truly is, without the false pretensions that allegedly come with exposure to said Tales, which may then lead to disabling disillusionment. But I would like to suggest that this may, in fact, lead to the opposite.

We are born into a cruel world; a world of disease and death and betrayal and loss and uncertainty. We are brought into this world with few answers, with limited guidance, with no assurances. We are brought into a world of deceit, theft, rape, and murder. Of starvation, exposure, and cataclysmic natural disasters. We are now brought into a world where the shape of the Land is known, where there are devices that can annihilate entire cities in the matter of moments, where the whims of one man can be responsible for six million or even thirty million human lives. We live in a world filled with emptiness, hollowness, brokenness.

And so the search for meaning, for answers, leads us to retreat. Not in the sense of fleeing, not exactly, but very nearly into the sense of exploration. We are lead to Story. We read books, we watch movies, we have conversations; we engross ourselves in learning about the circumstances of another, fictitious or real, and comparing them to our own. We watch for deeds both terrible and wonderful, because these give us something beyond ourselves, even if it is only the hope that there is something beyond ourselves.

This could be (and has been) called escapist. And in some cases, it may be true, both for the reader (or watcher) and for the story itself. Some stories are escapist nonsense, it is true. But I submit to you that oftentimes these take a form quite different from Fantasy, often spinning tales of wealth, power, sexual encounters, beaches and irresistible beauties. They are grounded in what is around us, what we would like to have, what we think we should have. And they often but don’t always take the form of “media,” as we might traditionally conceive of it. You see, this “fantasy” [3] is much more deeply engrained. It is written in pornography, in webcam sites and pictures of young men and women unclad; it is captured in game shows and the sales paper and lottery tickets and footage of well-dressed business men climbing stories upon stories to their corporate thrones. It is sublimely and subliminally hidden in chance conversations and small glances. It is the fantasy not to have things around us different, but to have our circumstances different in what’s around us. It is the fantasy to have what we think we want, what we think will satisfy, what we think will drown out the pain and silence of this oft-seemingly empty world.[4]

And there is the escapist reader. I should not have to look far to find an example, for I, myself, will do quite nicely. All over I see the fantasy. The want to escape from my plight and be found in different circumstances, with different people, different prospects, and of course, a lot more money. Every ad calls to me, whether it be for a new car, or a new DVD player, or a new partner, if only for a little while. And why shouldn’t it? The “happily ever after” failed me, right? The reality of the world caught up with me and I realized there are seasons of romance, but only seasons; seasons of fulfillment, but only seasons, and the rest of the time is a feeling that I am reaching for something I cannot have. This is the escapism; it’s part of the same emptiness of the world.

But to say that any media which allows us to “escape” from the world is escapist is really rather silly. And the Fairy Tale, I think, gives us the glimpses of the opposite. The Fairy Tale does not deny the terror of the world; in fact, it personifies it in some of the most terrifying images we have known, from Lord Voldemort to Beowulf’s Dragon to Tolkien’s great “Eye” (perhaps the scariest of all because this evil never actually takes a bodily shape). And it does not deny the evil that can be perpetrated. But the answer is always found in facing the evil, taking a stand against it, doing the right thing, and accepting the hope of triumph amidst even the near-certainty of failure. Escapism comforts only as long as the escape is made; the return from the escape always means the return of despair. But the Fairy Tale empowers us and encourages us to face the oft-seemingly emptiness of the world with hope and courage. The challenges of life may seem perhaps less terrible if I can dwell on money, or sex, or whatever. But they seem surmountable when I think about the courage of Frodo, or Harry Potter, or fill-in-your-own-inspired-blank. The Fairy Tale, in keeping with Story itself, terrifies us, pacifies us, makes us dream, and then sends us back out in the world with a desire for enchantment, but also the belief that there may actually be enchantment around us, and that things like courage, honor, and love actually might exist.

It is not surprising to me that C. S. Lewis has said it much better than I ever could:

A far more serious attack on the fairy tale as children’s literature comes from those who do not wish children to be frightened…that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil…[This] would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the Ogpu and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker…I think it is possible that by confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing at all alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones…[5]

Escapism is not finding solace in another world; it is to deny accepting the world you are escaping from. Fantasy, as among other noble arts and genres, does not deny the world, but inspires us to face it, and to long for something powerful within it. For who would call a prisoner of war who remembers childhood stories to stay sane and endure the terrible tortures of war an escapist? Perhaps he is remembering them because they help him endure. To escape would be to give up hope, to commit suicide, or in some other way deny the life that is in him. But to hold on to ideals that he knows, by their sheer power, to be real – peace, love, honor, beauty, desire – and so find strength to continue amidst his adverse circumstance can hardly be called escapist at all.

In fact, it could be said that they are a way into the real truth of things. As I’ve said before, I view Story as a sort of epistemology, and I believe Fantasy to be one of the more potent forms therein. The Fairy Tale instructs, amidst the adversity of the world which may persuade us that all things are empty, vanities, that there is something deep and powerful in the world. It trains us in the “stock responses,” as Lewis puts it. The Fairy Tales can teach us of bravery, of shrewdness, of faithfulness, of fighting for what is good and right, that fighting for such things is even worth it in the first place. Sure, the world is not always “happily ever after.” But that’s not all the Fairy Tales offer. They have show a way of honor and courage, of love and respect. They whisper that there is more beyond us. They have helped me to be a better friend, husband, brother, person. That is their power; and I believe that power is efficacious to help us to live and live well.

Enchanted, I believe, holds within it this message. The father is, of course, converted, and to his betterment. But more than that, the Princess remains in our world. Fantasy is not at odds with reality; it complements it. And so, I shall not deprive my children of such lessons.

_______________

[1] Which is always quite terrible in the traditional Fairy Tales. A good example is “The Twelve Brothers” from Grimm’s, in which the evil mother-in-law is cast into a barrel filled with boiling oil and poisonous snakes.

[2] At least, according some traditions. Others included a remaking of the world through which a lone couple would repopulate the earth.

[3] I should caution the reader of how casually I am throwing around the term “fantasy.” For clarity, let the reader understand that when capitalized, Fantasy refers to the genre of Story; otherwise, it is used in the general sense of the term.

[4] The movie High Fidelity, I think, perfectly illustrates this point.

[5] C. S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” (On Stories, Orlando: Harcourt, 1966), 39-40.

The Listeners and Other Whispers of Fantasy

Last November, I checked out a book from our school library. It was an old book, beaten, but not precisely worn, jet black but for the small white sheet that held Dewey’s dear print. The publication was Japanese, of all things, with an introduction in Japanese characters (which is sad; I would pay dearly to know what it says). But the subject of the book was a today little-known English poet/writer. His name was Walter de la Mare.

Walter de la Mare, of French Huguenot descent, worked as a statistician for an English company called Standard Oil. He was a family man, and an avid writer from the start. He wrote several books of poems and stories, both for children and adults, and had very interesting theories about imagination.

If I understand his theory right (and I only just started to study up on him), de la Mare believed that there were two types of imagination: the childlike and the boylike. Most often, we all start with the childlike, which is accepting of things fantastic, such as Dragons and magic swords, but as we grow, we develop the boylike imagination, which takes us away from those things, being more analytical. This progression, de la Mare believed, was a response to the terrors of the world (which one might conceive of as “unnatural,” if one were so inclined) that, as it were, frighten the childlike imagination away. However, de la Mare believed that it was the childlike imagination that was more natural and fitting, and this is the part which he sought to awaken in his work.

I would like to give you a sampling of his work. The first is his most famous work, the poem called “The Listeners,” which is what I first read that enthralled me so with his most powerful pen:

"Is anybody there?" said the Traveler,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence chomped the grasses

Of the forest's ferny floor.

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the traveler's head:

And he smote upon the door a second time;

"Is there anybody there?" he said.

But no one descended to the Traveler;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his gray eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men;

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveler's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:

"Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word," he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.


Oh! It calls to the heart and imagination in the very way a poem should. It tells a story, indeed, it does. But it is a fragmented story. It is an echo of a story, of which we only have pieces that are confusing and hard to put together. Who is this man? How does he represent the “World of Men?” Who is he seeking to contact, and what was the promise that brought him? What is this place, who once lived here, and why have they retreated so, only listening now, and doing naught else? We have no answers. Only are own imagination can fill in the gaps.

But it is a powerful story. We can feel the power, the ancientness of the place, a place that once had great meaning. It is written in heavy language; like cumbersome acrylic oils upon blank, white canvas, it whispers of subtleties barely known and just out of reach.

Or here’s another, a bit more furtive, called “The Familiar”:

“Are you far away?”
“yes, I am far – far;
Where the green wave shelves to the sand,
And the rainbows are;
And an ageless sun beats fierce
From an empty sky:
There, O thou Shadow forlorn;
Is the wraith of thee, I.”

“Are you happy, most Lone?”
“Happy, forsooth!
Who am eyes of the air; voice of the foam;
Ah, happy in truth/.
My hair is astream, this cheek
Glistens like silver, and see,
As the gold to the dross, the ghost in the mirk,
I am calling to thee.”

“Nay, I am bound,
And your cry faints out in my mind,
Peace not on earth have I found,
Yet to earth I am resigned,
Cease thy shrill mockery, Voice,
Nor answer again.”
“O Master, thick cloud shuts thee out
And cold tempests of rain.”


Again, the questions. Who is speaking to whom? What are they talking about? There is no doubt; the sense of story lingers thick because of the very questions themselves. We want the answers to fill in the gaps. We want the Story.

I submit that in these poems, and many others of his, there is the crucial element of story, and more often than not, fantasy is his vehicle of communication. Something about the realm of fantasy lends itself to mystery and inspiration, explanation and wonderment, and that is why I think it will continue to be a call to people, especially as we become more modern and more lost in the “boylike imagination” that rejects, or at least ignores, these deep things. And that is why poems like Walter de la Mare’s must be read, and cherished. Because they whisper to us stories of great importance, and they whisper to that part of us that needs to hear them the most.

***

I read the book again and again and finally, I found, I could not part with it. I could not give it up to the library. So I went in and said, “I would like to buy this book from you.”

The guy looked at me curiously, then said, “Well, let’s see how many times it’s been checked out.” He took the book from my tense hands and looked at it with a cocked eyebrow. “Walter de la Mare,” he read slowly. “Never heard of him.” He ran the cold, white barcode through his computer and then straightened. “Well, looks like this has never been checked out!”

“Really?” I asked, honestly flabbergasted.

“Well, not since we have gone electronic, nope. Sure, we’ll sell it to ya.”

I was frozen a moment. Shall I really rob this already lopsided, lacking library of this prize? And yet, no one even knew of it. No one had checked out this lonely book. None here knew of its secrets. Then I grabbed the book greedily, and reached in my pocket. “I’ll take it.” He ripped off the barcode then, I gave him my money, and I walked out.

As I came to the doors, I saw that it was cold and rainy out. I smiled. I got the feeling that this was the kind of day ole Walter would have liked.

The Fantasy of Pirates

Well, I finally got to see the last Pirates of the Caribbean film, and honestly, I did not have high hopes. Nearly everybody I talked to was disappointed with the movie, and I heard some valid critiques. However, after seeing the movie for myself, I was actually pretty impressed. It was much better, in my opinion, than I had heard from people. In fact, I thought more than either of the other two, it was the most epic in its mythic dimension, and offered the most fully-textured story.

Now, I think I understand why several didn’t like it. It was long. It was confusing (I couldn’t figure what sides there even were at times, much less who was on which one). It was perhaps too much story to pack into the last installment (but that’s usually the case – writers are not always good at quick, simple wrap-ups). It was certainly very strange at certain points. The ending is hardly happy. And perhaps most importantly, it was the last in a trilogy that began with “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” which was so incredibly good, I can’t believe the filmmakers had the audacity to try to follow it up.

However, I would like to offer a brief, humble defense of the movie, because I think the makers were reaching for something quite lofty, and in some ways I believe they succeeded, and that it made for a fantastic (keyword) story of mythic proportions. That is, I think that “At World’s End” is pure fantasy, and that when looked through this lens, yields some good thematic qualities that should at least earn the movie a bit more respect.

First off, and most simply, it has common elements of fantasy, most of which have carried over from the first two. We have monsters, abominable and terrible creatures, and mythic “beasties.” There is magic, and although its rules are not necessarily defined, it is certainly there. There is Calypso, who is certainly able to perform magic. We have a broken but certainly magical compass. And we have curses, rituals, and other supernatural, efficacious rites.

Secondly, like any good fantasy, it attains (though a bit late) a mythology. We have a “goddess,” who was bound in human form by a special council in some near-distant past. We have the singing of a most sacred song/lyric which awakens and draws this council (a lyric with the telling last line, “Ne’er shall we die…”). The council members themselves are bound by sacred oath and this oath is signified by relics of a sort (although it was a cute twist when it became “whatever happens to be in our pockets”). But moreover, we have speculation about the question of death, a mythology which gives a tentative, nebulous answer (but an answer, nonetheless), and it appears in the form of a “soul ferry.” The characters even travel into the realm of the dead.

Thirdly, there comes to us a bit of philosophy and even (a weak) moral vision (again, a bit late). Barbossa remarks to Sparrow that the world has gotten smaller. Sparrow responds, “The world has gotten smaller; there’s just less in it.” Now we have not time nor inclination to examine this as a philosophical statement here, but it at least is an attempt at one. And (following in the vain of the former statement) our link to the modern world, Lord Beckett, who surely embodies in some way the ever-progressing, always-shrinking, increasingly-faithless (I’m using the term faith rather generically here) world we are and are becoming, dies in the face of the powers of the mythic world (from the ancient past) with only the telling statement “It’s not personal, it’s just good business” on his lips. And at the climax of the story, we have a speech about choosing the hard way. Not running, but giving fight, taken a stand against evil, not going quietly into the night. “Dying is the only day worth living for,” one of our heroes quips, and fantasy is one of the great realms where we are truly inclined to believe this could be true.

We have a Happy Ending, one of Tolkien’s four requirements (see “On Fairy Stories”), but it is bittersweet, no doubt. And this, I would add, is another key element of fantasy. The Happy Ending is always bittersweet, because while all has been set to rights, it always comes at a great cost, and sorrow thus remains. As brave Will Turner – who throughout the three installments remains our moral compass, always doing what is good, brave, and right (or at least, trying to) – leaves Elizabeth to take his 10 year tour, I could not help but feel the same gnawing, aching sorrow akin to that which I felt when Frodo sails to Aman, leaving Sam behind, or when Amberle fulfills her destiny, leaving a broken Will Ohmsford behind.

And we have a “wardrobe” (something I intend to postulate in later posts), a link into the stories that we can identify with and thus experience the story through them. Tolkien had his Hobbits (19th century, Victorian Englishmen), Lewis his magical wardrobe, transporting children from our world to Narnia, or even the simply farmboy not having yet experienced the wide world, such as Jordan (among others) uses. Will and Elizabeth are our links, our heroes who face the wide world as wide-eyed as us, and yet triumph. It is through them that we live the story; they are our link into the wide world, the world that we can only dream of. Normal people, like us, able to brave the world unknown, giving us hope that we could (and might) too.

I can’t and won’t say that Pirates III is great fantasy, nor that its message is always worthy (one of the last lines is the atrocious pirate axiom “Take what you can, give nothing back”). However, I do think that it attempts something epic, something mythic, and largely succeeds, and therefore can and should bear the mantle of Fantasy. And when judged within that realm (and not simply the realm of action-adventure comedy with a twist), it does yield some perhaps wonderful qualities.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. Perhaps most telling of all that Pirates is Fantasy is the most important aspect of the whole story. They travel to World’s End, and somehow leave the realm of the living. They find a path to the worlds beyond our own. In short, they find one of the Lost Straight Roads. And is that not the quest of Fantasy? Is that not all of our quests?