Big Hollywood on Fantasy

[Ran]

So, I've had this tab open all day, considering responding to it, and I've never really had the time. So, here is Leo Grin's critique on what he sees as nihilistic fantasists ruining the minds of readers and the greater culture they live in.

He goes through the whole thing without mentioning GRRM, until the comments, when he largely disagrees with anyone who thinks he's got the wrong end of the stick, whether it's GRRM, Erikson, or anyone else. James Hudnall, who writes occasionally for Big Hollywood, takes a stab at offering an alternative point of view in comments, but doesn't seem to be getting much traction.

Werthead even gets mentioned, in connection to his review of Abercrombie, a writer that Grin takes particular umbrage with.

Here's a short excerpt:

Soiling the building blocks and well-known tropes of our treasured modern myths is no different than other artists taking a crucifix and dipping it in urine, covering it in ants, or smearing it with feces. In the end, it’s just another small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing. It’s a well-worn road: bored middle-class creatives (almost all of them college-educated liberals) living lives devoid of any greater purpose inevitably reach out for anything deemed sacred by the conservatives populating any artistic field. They co-opt the language, the plots, the characters, the cliches, the marketing, and proceed to deconstruct it all like a mad doctor performing an autopsy. Then, using cynicism, profanity, scatology, dark humor, and nihilism, they put it back together into a Frankenstein’s monster designed to shock, outrage, offend, and dishearten.

In the case of the fantasy genre, the result is a mockery and defilement of the mythopoeic splendor that true artists like Tolkien and Howard willed into being with their life’s blood. Honor is replaced with debasement, romance with filth, glory with defeat, and hope with despair. Edgy? Nah, just punk kids farting in class and getting some giggles from the other mouth-breathers.

[Shryke]

Sounds like a guy who only likes his fantasy as mythic and black and white and unrealistic as possible.

All he seems to complain about is how fantasy these days isn't enough like a Fairy Tale.

EDIT: I'm also finding a hilarious undercurrent of Right Wing Religiosity in many of these comments. Quite amusing.

[Ran]

Well, I failed to note that Big Hollywood is a site that follows the entertainment media (including, it seems, literature) from a conservative political perspective. It's part of Andrew Breitbart's mini-media empire.

[Foreverlad]

Well, I failed to note that Big Hollywood is a site that follows the entertainment media (including, it seems, literature) from a conservative political perspective. It's part of Andrew Breitbart's mini-media empire.

Yeah, after looking over some of Leo Grin's other articles, I have a difficult time being angry at him or defensive about the fantasy genre. I mean, Modern Hollywood's Love Affair With Satanism (with Twilight photo)? Suffice to say, I've got very little in common with him, the website, or the specific standards by which he judges value.

[Shryke]

Well, I failed to note that Big Hollywood is a site that follows the entertainment media (including, it seems, literature) from a conservative political perspective. It's part of Andrew Breitbart's mini-media empire.

Ahh, that cunt. This explains much.

And yeah, there's definitely a very socially conservative bent to the whole thing. The blogger and most of the comments are railing against a depiction of the world that isn't stark black vs white where the heroes are all virtuous and never conflicted and the bad guys are are either super bad or redeemable. Where no conflict can be complex or have multiple right or wrong sides.

Which is kinda hilarious since the 2 authors he continually praises (Howard and Tolkien) are ones I would describe as exhibiting many of the qualities he complains about. Howard I always found fairly amoral(although maybe that's a matter of generational differences?). He's not really a good guy. And Tolkien, while being black vs white in alot of ways, is much more complex then that in his portrayal.

It's all very ... escapist. Fantasy, apparently, should reflect a simplistic world nothing like our own.

[Cantabile]

Sounds to me like the simple solution is for him to stick to D&D novels and stop whining.

[Ran]

Grin, pulled from the comments:

"Why do you think HBO chose [Martin's] series?"

Because his story is a dirty soap opera with no redeeming value, and those are what HBO specializes in.

[Galactus]

Sounds to me like the simple solution is for him to stick to D&D novels and stop whining.

Uh, I think you actually have a fairly naive view of D&D novels...

[The Evil Hat]

Absolutely pathetic. I kept waiting to at least get some argument, some rationale no matter how pathetic, but it never came. Just whining from beginning to end, not a single shred of even attempted persuasion. I'm impressed that, evidently, the only possible reason to utilize darkness in one's writing is to mock positive writing, to smear the cross with feces. It could not, most certainly not, be that the author is trying to communicate just as much with their work as the aforementioned positive authors, they're just trying to communicate something different. Nope, that's absurd. The entire genre is composed of kids farting in class. Brilliant.

I'll dive into the comments now, though I doubt my opinion will be raised much if that is the standard of debate.

[Cantabile]

It's been a long time since I've read any D&D novels, admittedly.

[Galactus]

It's been a long time since I've read any D&D novels, admittedly.

My point was mainly that D&D novels has a tradition of villain protagonists. (as well as more generally neutral ones) and that's disregarding the entire "sociopathic adventurer" stereotype...

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

deleted because this post made no sense.

[The Evil Hat]

Well, the comment thread failed to be much more enlightening. It's always nice to see bold statements backed up by whining. Of course, a few went handily further than just saying modern fantasy's bad. One guy's figured out the answer. It's women. They ruin everything.

The word you are looking for is ... women. I say that sadly.

Unfortunately, women readers today demand either "chick-lit" stuff in fantasy form: Twilight, "Lonely Werewolf Girl" (yes there is such a book, she's a "fashionista" and werewolf, and apparently lonely too!) and so forth, or debasement for the sake of ugly debasement. Women readers tend to dominate the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres, because they have both numbers (women form a greater proportion of readers) and PC/Diversity/Feminism as their weapons. Male skewing stuff has a much harder time getting published.

[...]

These writers however are very, very male. Their appeal to a female audience which currently wants stuff like Laurel K. Hamilton (icky vampire/werewolf sex stuff) and so on is pretty low. To change all this the female audience needs leveraging out of its preference for either teen romance or icky degradation, something I don't have an answer for, frankly.

And then there's the amusing fellow who listed Lovecraft as one of the good ol' writers. Because, you know, Lovecraft's stories are bastions of good v. evil morality, heroism, and Christian values. Totally. :thumbsup:

[Werthead]

Christ, another person talking about Tolkien who hasn't actually read The Silmarillion, thus Tolkien's writing flies about 50 miles over their heads. Utter fail. And amongst fantasy writers, few are more nihilistic than Robert E. 'Civilization must always fail and revert to barbarism' Howard.

[Grack21]

Yeah, really. Robert E Howard? Do they even know what he wrote? I'd say I'm shocked but, well, Breitbart.

And there are some twisted D&D novels out there, but you really have to search through the pile to find them admittedly.

[Errant Bard]

our treasured modern myths

crucifix

slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing

college-educated liberals living lives devoid of any greater purpose [destroying] anything deemed sacred by the conservatives

Wow, talk about having a large chip on one's shoulder. It's so cartoonish.

[SkynJay]

Well, the comment thread failed to be much more enlightening. It's always nice to see bold statements backed up by whining. Of course, a few went handily further than just saying modern fantasy's bad. One guy's figured out the answer. It's women. They ruin everything.

And then there's the amusing fellow who listed Lovecraft as one of the good ol' writers. Because, you know, Lovecraft's stories are bastions of good v. evil morality, heroism, and Christian values. Totally. :thumbsup:

There is a reason my new years resolution was to never read comments below news articles again. There is no discussion, just a ton of this is what i think and then leaving the thread for the next one.

And man, i hate people who judge books without reading it. Lonely Werewolf Girl was about alot of things, but the fashion aspect was hardly the point.

[Mjolnir]

Thing is, you don't even have to read the fucking Silmarillion do you? [though granted it'd help]. One wonders if he's read The Hobbit recently? You know, the book in which the setup for the Battle of the Five Armies has a bunch of good people reverting to type over a pile of shiny things and this close to killing each other? [i grant that they don't actually do it, whereas in the Sil they probably would.]

I'd like to get all upset here and practice my invective-heavy-while-remaining-critically-sound writing skills, which need polishing, but dude is obviously a little crazy and not really looking for a conversation.

Later: That being said I appear to have written quite a lot, in a disjointed sort of a way. Futile of course, but dude pissed me off. Keep in mind this is coming from someone who, though a huge fan of moral complexity in fantasy and of Abercrombie and The Abercrombiad specifically, has found Abercrombie's cynicism-fests wearying and even emotionally dishonest on some occasions. I'm not attached to deconstructive epic fantasy as the one and only way, but I see it as a very valid tool and I think the lack of recognition that fantasy can be used effectively in more than one way is not cool.

"Because his story is a dirty soap opera with no redeeming value, and those are what HBO specializes in."

Because Martin's story has nothing to say about how war crushes the small and is used as a cynical tool by the great. Because the "King Bread" bit from A Clash of Kings is all about the dirty sexy soap-operaticness, oh yes, and has nothing to say about mob mentality. Because Cersei's character arc isn't a deeply complex look at the role of women in a society in which they are politically and socially disadvantaged, and a mature look at a case in which the reader must decide for themselves how to map sympathy for a person's social situation onto the fact that the individual in question is actually fairly vile. Because there's no point at all in ... oh, you know what, never mind. At risk of sounding elitist and douchy, I don't think we can help this dude.

He seems fairly committed to the idea that fantasy is only meant for one thing, which seems very limiting to me. And the idea that anyone who wants to deconstruct something and try using it to make a different point, or highlight a different element of story, or whatever cool thing, is just farting in class is just horribly close-minded and ... does not compute.

And all his peeps in the comments seem to be having some difficulty keeping their theories straight. [This is because their theories suck, but we shall leave this aside for a moment.] They need to get in their hate-on for writers like Abercrombie who shit on their conservative imagined memories of Tolkien and Howard -- having not, it seems, read the works of those gentlemen in some time [though myself I do think Tolkien, inevitably, has his shortsighted moments at least in LotR; Howard I've not read]. But they also need to get in some misogynism, which means their trying to hate on Twilightification -- having not read anything by Parker, or Monette, or Valente, or Bear, or Elliott, or Downum, or McGuire, or Swainston, or Le Guin, or ... or ... or -- and generally having no respect for this evil female readership they've imagined has come onto their playground to fuck everything all to hell and kick romance coodies everywhere. So they want epic fantasy to stop shitting on their nostalgia which would mean less of the sort of thing Abercrombie does, but they also want fewer romance coodies and for female writers to stop drowning out those poor, poor male writers who're starved for sales -- I'm weeping over here, I really am; poor Brent Weeks, no one buys his books; they don't buy them so hard his last badass book about badass dudes was on the NYT list. Which would, well, mean more of the very masculine writing Abercrombie does. Except without any of the problematization, presumably. So I apologize, I was in error: Their arguments are not crossed, [though they do still suck, and will suck in perpetuity.] What this all adds up to, clearly, is they want male wish fulfillment set in secondary worlds. And they don't want to think.

And those myths he's so down on Martin and Abercrombie and their friends for shitting on? Yeah, you go right on crying about that, dude. Because those myths didn't have any naughty bits themselves. Nope. Not a one.

Edit: I am innocent and unsoiled in this matter. Who is this Breitbart individual? Based on the links above I am surmising that he and the dark forces he commands are fairly insane?

[David Selig]

Christ, another person talking about Tolkien who hasn't actually read The Silmarillion, thus Tolkien's writing flies about 50 miles over their heads. Utter fail. And amongst fantasy writers, few are more nihilistic than Robert E. 'Civilization must always fail and revert to barbarism' Howard.

So true.

I haven't read Howard in a long time, but Conan didn't care all that much about honour IIRC, wasn't he a thief in many of the stories? He cared mostly about gold, battles and beautiful women.

[Renasko]

He cared mostly about gold, battles and beautiful women.

What is good in life?