Okay, since Rebecca posted such an interesting article on Harry Potter and his detractors, my urge to pontificate is piqued.
A Few Notes on the Philosophy of the Fantastic from a Historical Perspective: Or, You Want Me to Do What Upon a Star?
From Rebecca's post:
I might not agree with those parents who are so frightened of the word or the idea of "magic", so convinced that the word "magic" always does and always must refer to the occult, that they refuse to let their children read ANY fairy tales or fantasies -- but at least they are consistent.
And it is a very interesting consistency too. Not at all times has the idea of the fantastic aroused such a tempest in Christians' consciences, and it is curious to me that in this modern age we should think that Christianity is more embattled than it has ever been, both from within and without. It is curious to me that the fantastic, one of the things in our culture that is least redolent of this era of industrial-strength destruction, should now be the scapegoat for the perennial difficulties that Christians experience. (And ought to experience, I may add. Jesus promised us pretty much exactly the opposite of a rose garden; it seems silly to me for so many Christians to act like they have a right for it to be easy -- read: convenient -- to practice their faith in this world.)
Before I say anything else, I have to acknowledge that I am largely dependent for my information on C.S. Lewis's introductory essay in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama. As well, this little mini-essay would be much more complete if I could say something from the straight religio-philosophic standpoint, or if I knew anything about the early church other than what I can gather from the Acts and the Epistles. So my scope is literary, and a bit limited.
In Middle English story and fable, and even in Middle English religious writing, there is a much more seamless relationship between the fantastic and the religious outlook. From our perspective, it looks like straight gullibility: people tell stories about saints who made miracles occur -- grisly monsters who did horrifying things to children -- kings who were kidnapped into Faerie -- royal houses who can trace their lineage back to supernatural beings. All of it told without winking at the audience. Perhaps, however, it wasn't straight gullibility -- more like a freedom from the modern "dissociation of consciousness" that we labor under every day, Christian or not. A Middle Ager did not have subhuman intelligence; he or she could figure out what was or was not possible under normal conditions. But he did not have the distaste for the supranormal that we have; nor did she get overexcited at the prospect of experiencing a supranormal situation herself -- the stories themselves were satisfying mythos enough. And of course, politically, the social order was pretty much fixed, so it didn't enter in greatly as either a cause or an effect of this mindset, and whenever it did, it was seen to be an anomaly -- unlike our constant and painful awareness of the political implications, both as causes and effects, of our storytelling.
In the Renaissance, however, things began to change. The Reformation, the political upheavals, the rise of technology, the threat of Islam, the renewed and vigorous witch-hunting -- these things made the fantastic different to people's minds. Now the great question was that of fate or agency: you could be an astrologer, or a Calvinist, and declare determinism the true philosophy; or you could be a magician, or a Roman Catholic (or a less strenuous variety of Protestant), and kick dust on determinism. A fantastic story, about Faerie or anything else really a-natural, was really less fantastic than the things that were going on outside in the street. Certainly they were less dangerous on the whole. Depending on your (either secular or religious) belief in either determinism or agency, you either hunted witches (those damned believers in agency), or you looked askance at them and went about your own business.
It wasn't till the Revolutionary Age that any of this was carried to its natural political conclusion. At this point, the fairytales became nice little stories -- moving symbols of that revolutionary spirit that we all needed more of. Being -- perfection -- was death; becoming -- revolting -- was life. And the fantastic -- always contiguous and evolving, and like the rainbow's end, never quite attainable -- was valuable really only insofar as it was useful to the spirit of that age.
After the Romantics, the Victorians took hold of the fairytale as a man clings to a life preserver. Here was a way to duck the dreadful implications of the New Science -- and a safehouse for those cramped by the reactionary social mores that sprang up in response to the great revolutions. The fantastic had room for moral ambiguities, for warpings of time and space, for both the beautiful and the terrible. And since we don't touch things without changing them, the Victorians left a sweetness on the fantastic that is sometimes cloying. And they drew an association between the occult and the relatively innocuous practice of contacting loved ones in the Beyond -- Arthur Conan Doyle being the poster child for that movement. W.B. Yeats, who took a literal view of fairies and the occult that went beyond even Doyle's shenanigans, made the circle complete.
We're still spinning out the implications of everything that happened in the Victorian age. Anyone who's watched The Matrix will understand what I mean by the terrifying determinism of our machines; Foucault perfected the observant philosophy of social surveillance; Joseph Campbell with an air of detachment assembled the thousand faces of the hero; and Hitler ensured that we will never use the words "final" and "solution" together in a sentence without cringing. So why -- oh, why -- is the uber-conservative branch of Christianity so down on the fantastic, when it seems so much less dangerous to the individual soul than the forces we come into contact with every day? Pascal says: "God instituted prayer so that humans might have the dignity of causality." And reading the Bible, I can't imagine that God wants humans to feel guilty for having any agency; the Fall tainted our agency, not the other way around. And if the fantastic is married in our collective consciousness to an idea of agency, of alternative ways of thinking about our own universe -- and if agency in itself is not sin, then why the witch hunt?
(Shorthanded reasoning here, but this is a blog, not an academic journal. So sue me.)
It's a very interesting consistency, I must say, to take a broom to every hint of fantasy in human life and sweep it out of doors. And it's not as if children won't figure out how to make their own anyway. And very interesting that we should have somehow preserved the most faulty aspects of every age regarding the fantastic: The Middle Age credulity, the Renaissance gossipmongering, the Revolutionary tendency to look through the wrong end of the telescope, and the Victorian escapism -- together with our own capabilities for mass destruction.
Sigh. I'm off to go dig out my copy of At the Back of the North Wind.
A Few Notes on the Philosophy of the Fantastic from a Historical Perspective: Or, You Want Me to Do What Upon a Star?
From Rebecca's post:
I might not agree with those parents who are so frightened of the word or the idea of "magic", so convinced that the word "magic" always does and always must refer to the occult, that they refuse to let their children read ANY fairy tales or fantasies -- but at least they are consistent.
And it is a very interesting consistency too. Not at all times has the idea of the fantastic aroused such a tempest in Christians' consciences, and it is curious to me that in this modern age we should think that Christianity is more embattled than it has ever been, both from within and without. It is curious to me that the fantastic, one of the things in our culture that is least redolent of this era of industrial-strength destruction, should now be the scapegoat for the perennial difficulties that Christians experience. (And ought to experience, I may add. Jesus promised us pretty much exactly the opposite of a rose garden; it seems silly to me for so many Christians to act like they have a right for it to be easy -- read: convenient -- to practice their faith in this world.)
Before I say anything else, I have to acknowledge that I am largely dependent for my information on C.S. Lewis's introductory essay in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama. As well, this little mini-essay would be much more complete if I could say something from the straight religio-philosophic standpoint, or if I knew anything about the early church other than what I can gather from the Acts and the Epistles. So my scope is literary, and a bit limited.
In Middle English story and fable, and even in Middle English religious writing, there is a much more seamless relationship between the fantastic and the religious outlook. From our perspective, it looks like straight gullibility: people tell stories about saints who made miracles occur -- grisly monsters who did horrifying things to children -- kings who were kidnapped into Faerie -- royal houses who can trace their lineage back to supernatural beings. All of it told without winking at the audience. Perhaps, however, it wasn't straight gullibility -- more like a freedom from the modern "dissociation of consciousness" that we labor under every day, Christian or not. A Middle Ager did not have subhuman intelligence; he or she could figure out what was or was not possible under normal conditions. But he did not have the distaste for the supranormal that we have; nor did she get overexcited at the prospect of experiencing a supranormal situation herself -- the stories themselves were satisfying mythos enough. And of course, politically, the social order was pretty much fixed, so it didn't enter in greatly as either a cause or an effect of this mindset, and whenever it did, it was seen to be an anomaly -- unlike our constant and painful awareness of the political implications, both as causes and effects, of our storytelling.
In the Renaissance, however, things began to change. The Reformation, the political upheavals, the rise of technology, the threat of Islam, the renewed and vigorous witch-hunting -- these things made the fantastic different to people's minds. Now the great question was that of fate or agency: you could be an astrologer, or a Calvinist, and declare determinism the true philosophy; or you could be a magician, or a Roman Catholic (or a less strenuous variety of Protestant), and kick dust on determinism. A fantastic story, about Faerie or anything else really a-natural, was really less fantastic than the things that were going on outside in the street. Certainly they were less dangerous on the whole. Depending on your (either secular or religious) belief in either determinism or agency, you either hunted witches (those damned believers in agency), or you looked askance at them and went about your own business.
It wasn't till the Revolutionary Age that any of this was carried to its natural political conclusion. At this point, the fairytales became nice little stories -- moving symbols of that revolutionary spirit that we all needed more of. Being -- perfection -- was death; becoming -- revolting -- was life. And the fantastic -- always contiguous and evolving, and like the rainbow's end, never quite attainable -- was valuable really only insofar as it was useful to the spirit of that age.
After the Romantics, the Victorians took hold of the fairytale as a man clings to a life preserver. Here was a way to duck the dreadful implications of the New Science -- and a safehouse for those cramped by the reactionary social mores that sprang up in response to the great revolutions. The fantastic had room for moral ambiguities, for warpings of time and space, for both the beautiful and the terrible. And since we don't touch things without changing them, the Victorians left a sweetness on the fantastic that is sometimes cloying. And they drew an association between the occult and the relatively innocuous practice of contacting loved ones in the Beyond -- Arthur Conan Doyle being the poster child for that movement. W.B. Yeats, who took a literal view of fairies and the occult that went beyond even Doyle's shenanigans, made the circle complete.
We're still spinning out the implications of everything that happened in the Victorian age. Anyone who's watched The Matrix will understand what I mean by the terrifying determinism of our machines; Foucault perfected the observant philosophy of social surveillance; Joseph Campbell with an air of detachment assembled the thousand faces of the hero; and Hitler ensured that we will never use the words "final" and "solution" together in a sentence without cringing. So why -- oh, why -- is the uber-conservative branch of Christianity so down on the fantastic, when it seems so much less dangerous to the individual soul than the forces we come into contact with every day? Pascal says: "God instituted prayer so that humans might have the dignity of causality." And reading the Bible, I can't imagine that God wants humans to feel guilty for having any agency; the Fall tainted our agency, not the other way around. And if the fantastic is married in our collective consciousness to an idea of agency, of alternative ways of thinking about our own universe -- and if agency in itself is not sin, then why the witch hunt?
(Shorthanded reasoning here, but this is a blog, not an academic journal. So sue me.)
It's a very interesting consistency, I must say, to take a broom to every hint of fantasy in human life and sweep it out of doors. And it's not as if children won't figure out how to make their own anyway. And very interesting that we should have somehow preserved the most faulty aspects of every age regarding the fantastic: The Middle Age credulity, the Renaissance gossipmongering, the Revolutionary tendency to look through the wrong end of the telescope, and the Victorian escapism -- together with our own capabilities for mass destruction.
Sigh. I'm off to go dig out my copy of At the Back of the North Wind.
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