Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 9:03:01 GMT
|
|
|
Post by tory on Aug 5, 2022 10:13:23 GMT
Although I am a big fan of Dungeons & Dragons, I do agree to a certain extent. There's very little of what one might term "human experience" in these things apart from soaring character arcs. I always feel that fantasy stories are like seeing a car running but with everything showing; you can see the engine pumping as the symbolic outer has been removed. And the people who are interested in them are the cultural equivalent of mechanics; they are interested in how things work rather than why they work. Game of Thrones was like that; it was all about these various threads running side-by-side with each other, but there was little of any symbolic value to them.
However, having read Lord of the Rings to my son over the last six months or so, I am now a fully fledged Tolkien fan in terms of the novels. In my youth I had never managed to get past The Two Towers. Just as Moby Dick's brilliance comes from your immersion in the world of whaling, so Tolkien creates a vibrant, believable world that has powerful symbolism. For me anyway, the detailed descriptions of the Shire are evocative because they bring to life the world of the Malverns, Worcestershire and Hereford. There's something about "England" in them that is now irrevocably lost.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 10:18:37 GMT
Although I am a big fan of Dungeons & Dragons, I do agree to a certain extent. There's very little of what one might term "human experience" in these things apart from soaring character arcs. I always feel that fantasy stories are like seeing a car running but with everything showing; you can see the engine pumping as the symbolic outer has been removed. And the people who are interested in them are the cultural equivalent of mechanics; they are interested in how things work rather than why they work. Game of Thrones was like that; it was all about these various threads running side-by-side with each other, but there was little of any symbolic value to them. However, having read Lord of the Rings to my son over the last six months or so, I am now a fully fledged Tolkien fan in terms of the novels. In my youth I had never managed to get past The Two Towers. Just as Moby Dick's brilliance comes from your immersion in the world of whaling, so Tolkien creates a vibrant, believable world that has powerful symbolism. For me anyway, the detailed descriptions of the Shire are evocative because they bring to life the world of the Malverns, Worcestershire and Hereford. There's something about "England" in them that is now irrevocably lost. Wasn't much of it Tolkien's response to the industrial revolution and his desire to return to an imagined agrarian idyll?
|
|
|
Post by Markus on Aug 5, 2022 10:25:02 GMT
THe sandman had be interested until i read a very short summary plot on the bbc website.z
I love weird, you need to really watch and think about it, shows but.............
|
|
|
Post by tory on Aug 5, 2022 10:26:52 GMT
Not so sure on "idyll" but "voluntary simplicity" was symbolised by the Hobbits overthrowing Saruman at the end of the Return to the King.
|
|
|
Post by Reactionary Rage on Aug 5, 2022 12:08:19 GMT
Have they read a Camus novel? Is that not part of the problem?
It is a cultural malaise, a sign of decline, a culture retreating from the emotional complexities of the adult world and pretending otherwise and expecting everyone else not to notice.
It does seem like our culture has become too dominated by middle aged men who refuse to grow up but instead take permanent Peter Pan refuge in the fantasy world of their adolescence...comic books, Terry Pratchett novels, dungeons and dragons, Star Wars, whatever. 35 year old men with beards who collect Marvel figures and pretend that some comic book story is somehow equivalent to *insert name of famous old book here*. "This new Marvel Avengers movie is almost Shakespearian in scope and tragedy" declares Guardian reviewer...5 stars. Meanwhile something is very obviously wrong. It's not 5 stars really is it love? Something is missing and a lot of us can see and feel it if not necessarily articulate it. Cultural relativism obviously has something to do with it but it goes so much deeper....a lack of proper education and exposure to great art by a certain age (the downside of a non-classical education); a lack of real world experience and especially hardship that informs storytelling and character building; the post-modern emphasis on a lack of meaning and purpose in life seems to create these spiritually vacuous stories that don't really deal with the Big Themes in any kind of mature, adult way. The other night I was watching Roads to Freedom on BBC4 (unfortunately I fell asleep so I missed the last two episodes) and it was like watching something from another world. The script, the intelligence, the maturity of it. You can tell the people who created it were born in a very different time.
Toby's point about symbolism is an interesting one. Fantasy is fine if it manages to use symbolism and allegory to root the story in our own world but then use that fantasy milieu to add interesting elements to it. As simple as it was Star Wars tapped into myths and legends that we could easily recognise and be moved by and Dune definitely has that (religious) quality (Paul as Messiah etc). But I don't think there are many writers today in popular culture who are really versed in that kind of storytelling because it's something that has largely died out in our culture at large. Why that is I'm not so sure but you'd have to think living in post-religious world has something to do with it but there are other factors too.
|
|
|
Post by Markus on Aug 5, 2022 12:25:09 GMT
In terms of films, i think it's just down to money in a monkey see, monkey do. If one production company made a shit load of money then we MUST!!! and so on. Hollywood will milk it until the next big genre comes a long.
|
|
rayge
Administrator
Invisible
Posts: 8,790
|
Post by rayge on Aug 5, 2022 14:53:57 GMT
Lord of the Rings is prolix right-wing dogshit. As, admittedly, is a lot of the genre - right-wing, that is, not prolix) Gaiman is a genius, as was Terry Pratchett. Camus is unreadable and certainly unfilmable drivel. People who like fantasy are 'mechanics': patronise much? People who sneer at fantasy do so because they have no imagination and are singuarly lacking as human beings.
All IMO, of course
|
|
Sneelock
god
you're gonna break another heart
Posts: 8,546
|
Post by Sneelock on Aug 5, 2022 15:01:29 GMT
I love all that stuff! well, not ALL of it. I grew up with Hans Christian Anderson and the MGM Wizard of Oz movie so I've always gravitated to fantasy stuff.
I also grew up liking comics and "Sandman" was a comic I read and enjoyed LONG after I read and enjoyed most comics. As most drugs lead to other things so comics led to fantasy & S/F. Talking dragons, time travel, I just ate that stuff up.
I think anything that can be done can be done well. by the same token - anything that can be done can be overdone. I won't deny this stuff has overstayed it's welcome for a while now.
I understand Geek Culture and I won't begrudge them their time in the sun. I just hope more good comes of it because I think it's gotten pretty stale on the whole.
|
|
|
Fantasy
Aug 5, 2022 20:43:31 GMT
via mobile
Post by DarknessFish on Aug 5, 2022 20:43:31 GMT
Christ, what a joyless opening post. A deluge? Pratchett died 7 years ago, The Sandman series finished in 1996. Superb books they were too. Variety is the spice of life, there is room for art to do more than one thing.
|
|
|
Fantasy
Aug 5, 2022 20:47:51 GMT
via mobile
Post by Markus on Aug 5, 2022 20:47:51 GMT
Watch the first 20 of the sandman and it's just rushed from the start. I had to turn it off, plus the lead character had a 90's spikey pretty boy emo rock band haircut. Charlie dance was good though.
|
|
Sneelock
god
you're gonna break another heart
Posts: 8,546
|
Post by Sneelock on Aug 5, 2022 20:51:46 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Markus on Aug 8, 2022 18:08:57 GMT
Watch the first 20 of the sandman and it's just rushed from the start. I had to turn it off, plus the lead character had a 90's spikey pretty boy emo rock band haircut. Charlie dance was good though. I'm giving this another go, it's more watchable than i thought, even though the actor playing the lead is fucking terrible.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2022 19:09:25 GMT
Christ, what a joyless opening post. A deluge? Pratchett died 7 years ago, The Sandman series finished in 1996. Superb books they were too. Variety is the spice of life, there is room for art to do more than one thing. They remind me of a load of bald middle aged blokes at boot fairs looking at toys. Its dispiriting. Anyway it's less a complaint about a particular writer than a complaint about the current cultural dominance of the genre. Variety seems to be the last thing we're getting.
|
|
|
Post by Reactionary Rage on Aug 9, 2022 12:18:23 GMT
We seem to want to escape the real world more and more and retreat into a fantasy one. Be it online or through movies etc
Maybe it's related to some undercurrent in society of fear, tension and general unease, I dunno.
Part of the reason why I think comic book stories are so popular is because of a desire for simple good versus bad narratives where superheroes defeat the bad guys. There is something comforting and reassuring about them. Maybe the superheroes themselves with their super powers are somehow a substitute for people who feel a lack of control and power in their lives on some level.
|
|