Don't Be Embarrassed

            Like some of you, I have a tiny blurb at the end of my resume dedicated to my interests in the hope that it will spark conversation with potential interviewers. Recently, and with a truly copious amount of convincing, I added “The Lord of the Rings and related works” to that interest line. While it’s true that The Lord of the Rings has long been a love of mine, it has only recently become a public interest of mine and I’m pretty sure that I had the same thought that many of you would probably have when adding this or a similar line to your resume: “Isn’t this just a little too nerdy and weird?” I asked my friend the same question, and while ironically she often ridicules my love of Tolkien, she also responded with something that left me at a loss for words: “If you love Tolkien, own it.” Coupled with our discussion on Monday, I really started to think about why people are embarrassed to admit that they enjoy fantasy. Even calling it an admission I think is wrong because that connotes a wrongness to it. I think a better question is this. Why don’t we shout from the rooftops that we love fantasy? The short answer is of course we should.

            I think a strange but entirely appropriate analogy applies: fantasy lovers are the timeless equivalent of bronies. I’m not disparaging the My Little Pony franchise, but I do think that people in each camp are treated similarly. Ridicule almost inevitably follows the divulgence of the interest, and I think for many it’s a go-to jab when they truly have nothing else to insult you with.  It’s a box that you can never reseal, but honestly why would you ever want to? Frankly I think it’s silly to be ashamed of enjoying a story that quite literally has an enormous golden dragon that is being attended to by demons wreathed in fire and shadow, all of whom are followed by an enormous host of orcs. One can always make the argument that dragons and demons and orcs are all fictional, but this isn’t really that different than glorifying tanks and attack helicopters and fighter jets in games like Call of Duty or Battlefield. Both sets of things the usual person has never seen in real life and I doubt that actual warfare is conducted in the way the games portray it to be (especially coming back to life after dying but I could be totally wrong). What I’m saying is this: if the characters and villains aren’t realistic but the encounters and the substance of the encounters are, there is nothing substantial to ridicule.

One fatal flaw of many fantasy novels is a predictable plot and monsters that lack seriousness, or even the simple ability to win against the hero. I’ve found that often when I’m reading fantasy, I can predict how the plot of the novel will progress and I frequently guess correctly that although it may seem like the hero has trouble defeating the villain, there was no actual chance the hero would lose. To put it concisely, either unwittingly or by design, much of fantasy is Faerie adapted for children, and Tolkien put it best saying “the common opinion seems to be that there is a natural connexion between the minds of children and fairy stories, of the same order as the connexion between children's bodies and milk. I think this is an error” (“On Fairy Stories”). In my opinion, it’s these stories that give fantasy the social stigma that it has. How could we call a story where the hero has no hope of losing anything but childish? Realism comes from the actual struggle a character can go through. 

The easiest example is Frodo and his journey to Mordor with Sam. While his task was to unmake the One Ring, he ultimately couldn’t do it. He claimed it as his own, and a reader with no prior experience or knowledge of The Lord of the Rings I think would be hit with instant dread. Bathed in the light of the volcano, with Frodo exclaiming “The Ring is mine!” (Return of the King 239), surely there is no hope of finally destroying The Ring. In The Fellowship of the Ring no one writing a children’s fairy story would have Gandalf defeated by the Balrog. Rather, they would have Gandalf defeat the Balrog, but of course after the obligatory struggle that makes it seem like Gandalf won’t win but makes a heroic comeback. Even in Beowulf, written possibly more than 1000 years ago, contains this realistic struggle between hero and monster. Called to fight so many years after the struggle with Grendel and Grendel’s mother, a naïve reader would think that Beowulf would surely defeat the dragon. That’s how a common fairy story for children would go. Thankfully, Beowulf is no common children’s story. While trying (and failing I think we can agree) to criticize Tolkien, I think Edmund Wilson best described what is wrong with a lot of fantasy within a statement about orcs: “There are ogreish disgusting Orcs, who, however, rarely get to the point of committing any overt acts” (“Oo, Those Awful Orcs”). We talked a lot about monsters needing to be actually scary, but I think what also makes monsters monsters is that they have a entirely real ability to completely destroy the hero’s journey. Wilson’s point is exactly what makes The Lord of the Rings worth being proud of enjoying because the ability to stand up to orcs, demons, a giant spider, and a fallen angel captures Truth, even if the player’s are “realistic,” the scenarios they’re put through sure are. So scream your love of Tolkien from the window, or don’t because while fantasy isn’t weird screaming randomly definitely is.  
-NP