In the Shadow of the Status Quo--Fantasy literature and conservativism

[TrackerNeil]

Hi there. My co-author and I published an essay, entitled, "In the Shadow of the Status Quo" on conservative assumptions in fantasy fiction. Given that we use A Song of Ice and Fire as a big part of our analysis, we thought some here might be interested in reading, and we are certainly interested in hearing feedback. 

You can learn more about the book here, but don't think I'm trying to entice you to buy; we don't make a dime from sales. (Like all textbooks, it's pretty pricey.) You can read our chapter in the free sample, though.

[sologdin]

kickass.  thanks for posting.

you are familiar with mieville's critique of tolkien, i assume? it shares some concerns.

[C.T. Phipps]

Tolkien's worldview was resolutely rural, petty bourgeois, conservative, anti-modernist, misanthropically Christian and anti-intellectual. That comes across very strongly in his fiction and his non-fiction. Michael Moorcock has written brilliantly on this in his book Wizardry and Wild Romance (1987)

It's interesting how so many people gnash their teeth at Tolkien's anti-industrial views as they seemingly feel the need to take sides with modernization as a whole versus pointing out there's both positive and negative effects to it. Tolkien in the Sixties was embraced by back to the Earth hippies and ecologically friendly groups because of its appreciation of nature which industrialization is directly opposed to. For all the people who take a shit on Tolkien for conservative capitalism, Tolkien's attitude toward capitalism and greed is distinctly unimpressed.

The anti-intellectual thing also is direct framing of the author's prejudices on him, IMHO.

[Altherion]

The points are mostly valid, but you do not go into the reasons why the fictional societies are portrayed as they are and why it would be really difficult to write a good story with a substantially different society (note that this is distinct from following an exceptional protagonist). Modern Western views on diversity, gender, etc. are inextricably linked to the structure of our society which is itself a determined to a considerable extent by modern technology. I suppose it is not impossible to write a fantasy story along the lines of the two paragraphs, but it would need a very specific system of magic or something of the sort. Extensions of modern Western values make a lot more sense in science fiction than they do in fantasy (see the works of, say, D. Abraham and L.M. Bujold).

The question regarding the positive portrayal of the return to the status quo is a more interesting one. I suspect part of the reason is that between the romanticized agrarian past and the world of today lies the 19th century and the industrial revolution. The working condition of that era may, in reality, be about as bad as the agrarian ones, but they're a lot more difficult to romanticize. Also, the transition took a really long time (at least a century, perhaps as much as two depending on how you count) and it is not something that can be significantly accelerated by a protagonist or even a group of them.

[TrackerNeil]

2 hours ago, sologdin said:

kickass.  thanks for posting.

you are familiar with mieville's critique of tolkien, i assume? it shares some concerns.

In this, Mieville makes us look like a couple of status-quo apologizers! 

[C.T. Phipps]

Honestly, I also feel like the strike against Tolkien is one which is attempting to shave a triangle into a round hole. You can't state "the problem is a bad king vs. a good king versus kings" without pointing out they're both illustrating the issue of the problem with kings. Is Ned Stark apologia for the concept of feudalism? No, by contrast, Ned Stark illustrates the problems of the feudal system by showing just how particular a person you need to be in order to be a "good" King.

Also, presentation is not defense.

 

[Zorral]

In my humble opinion, no one did this -- quote from the essay -- 

 

Quote

Many seminal works of fantasy are suffused with a romantic vision of earlier ages, a melancholy longing for better days, and the certain knowledge that the current generation is but a pale shadow of greater forefathers.

than T.H. White in the books of The Once and Future King.  The books are infused with a longing for something different that's long gone. So much so that the great magician, Merlin, who initiates the action, lives backwards in time.

while simultaneously providing wonder and magic, political discussion of this very matter of a variety of political systems and showing the power and glory of romance-love as well as its terrors.  What White doesn't talk about much in this work is religion.  Various of the Christian traditions out of the Arthurian courtly love canons are threaded throughout White's tale of Arthur, but its without indication whether or not these are anything more in spiritual terms than the depictions in Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Then there's the deeply buried subtext that comes from White's own struggles with his homosexuality and s/m.  One thinks here particularly of the sons of Morgause growing up as they do in Scotland with such a mother (the beating of the donkey and grisly killing of the unicorn), and the ordeal of Wart in the mews with the madness of Cully.  This section is also yet another examination of the military, including the unquestioning following of orders.

It's such a rich series of books, so much of it out of White's own life and character.  Nothing is more purely out of his life than the business of capturing and training a bird of prey -- and the madness.

This is a book filled with questions that people today no less than in White's lifetime, need to keep asking themselves.

IOW, there's a great deal to discuss about many of the great works of fantasy still.

 

[polishgenius]

I hit a problem with the very first sentence when you said:
 

Quote

High fantasy is an

inherently conservative genre.

(emphasis mine)


I don't think it is. Now, it's true that because of both the conservative slant of Tolkien himself and the feudal nature of the traditional setting, it tends to bias that way, but there's plenty of progression if you're looking for it, even in unexpected places. While I appreciate that you couldn't do a dissection of the entire genre in a relatively short essay, I think by focusing so entirely on just those two works you've made it difficult to extrapolate much of what you've said to the rest of the genre and had to ignore some of the progressions other works have made or attempted.

Couple of examples:

Malazan is a series where even divinity is a meritocracy and women are in positions of influence and power everywhere. It's also a series where many characters are not white. Neither of these things are treated as remarkable or unusual, they just are.
It's also a series that holds no truck with the notion that the old days must be better. In fact, out of the elf-like races, one holds a general tendency to wistful, detached nostalgia and another to aggressive shutting out of change entirely, and both of these things are treated as decidedly negative.

Daniel Abraham is a little constrained by the aforementioned feudality but uses it to examine the notion of stable structures of power like that. He also has a running theme of women refusing to accept their 'place' as caregivers and romantic prizes.

Even something as hoary as Feist's Midkemia, while it starts fitting into the tropes you describe precisely, evolves: the inherent fitness of the current ruling classes to continue ruling is played seemingly straight in the first book, but the sequels flip it, revealing the seeming antagonist in that arena of the first book to be basically a decent man whose concerns over whether the 'noble blood' should be ruling at all were perfectly justifiable. Yeah, in the end they turn out to be fine and stay in power, but it's a surprising note at that point so early in the genre's history if we are to accept the notion that it's not seriously evolved since Tolkien's time.
Similarly with the women, it starts off playing the 'princesses as prizes' trope completely, uncomfortably straight, but the Empire trilogy is entirely about social reform, driven by a woman, and later on in the series, although most of the protagonists from what I have read are still men, there are women in more driving roles.

 

Now, none of those works are without their problems; but what is? Point is that in the right hands even the seemingly restricting tropes of the genre can instead be used to examine or challenge those notions that in the original version were as you lay them out. There are other examples. Hell, even Eddings has a go; I'm not saying his portrayal of women is without flaw but for example the women tend to very much choose the men they end up with, and are very pro-active in the progression of the story.


Eta: That came off as more negative about the overall piece than I intended: there's plenty of good points well made, especially in regards to the two series specifically. Just felt like offering a few counters.

[Altherion]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Malazan is a series where even divinity is a meritocracy and women are in positions of influence and power everywhere. It's also a series where many characters are not white. Neither of these things are treated as remarkable or unusual, they just are.

The same is true of Dungeons and Dragons as well as lesser-known RPGs (not surprising given that Malazan started out as one of these) and all of the associated literature. However, nearly all of these worlds are much less like ours than those of Tolkien and Martin and require greater suspension of disbelief.

[Larry of the Lawn]

7 minutes ago, Altherion said:

The same is true of Dungeons and Dragons as well as lesser-known RPGs (not surprising given that Malazan started out as one of these) and all of the associated literature. However, nearly all of these worlds are much less like ours than those of Tolkien and Martin and require greater suspension of disbelief.

How is an alleged greater threshold for suspension of belief relevant?

[C.T. Phipps]

I'm genuinely also confused at the idea anyone wants to live in the past because of Medieval fantasy. No one I know wants to give up running water, flush toilets, electricity, and more to live under the rulership of a hereditary monarch. What they want is to experience the danger and excitement of almost being killed by evil cults and dragons as well as buxom babes/dashing heroes from the comfort of their apartment.

Which applies to all genres.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

How is an alleged greater threshold for suspension of belief relevant?

It makes it harder to take a story seriously. It is easy to write a story which takes the advice of the essay's final paragraphs and creates a fantasy world featuring diversity and equality. It's much harder to write one which makes sense under even the most cursory examination. How did the diversity come about in the absence of global transportation networks? What is about the world that prevents the establishment of inequalities seen in the various societies of our world during similar time periods? It's not impossible to write a plausible story, but it is not easy. Dungeons and Dragons and the like rarely even bother to try; they simply present the world as a given and hope that the audience isn't interested in probing.

[sologdin]

2 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

What they want is to experience the danger and excitement of almost being killed by evil cults and dragons as well as buxom babes/dashing heroes from the comfort of their apartment

i refer to this as nietzschean ennui.  it's proto-fascistic.

[C.T. Phipps]

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

i refer to this as nietzschean ennui.  it's proto-fascistic.

While I understand the argument, I think there's a significant amount of yardage between lionization of autocracy and militarism in general versus danger escapism.

Also, I'm from the school of thought Nieztsche said people should be MORE moral and not less because of reality's meaninglessness.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I'm actually tempted to start a series of blog posts, rebutting the article in detail, but I might leave that for later in the month, when I am less busy. For the present I will just note that the article misses lots of the nuance in Tolkien (and gets its facts wrong in several cases - Sauron did have physical form during the War of the Ring - else how can Gollum recall his nine fingers?).

Everyone associates Sauron with transformative change. The problem is, Sauron isn't offering change beyond "submit yourself to me, and I will bring order out of chaos" (Sauron wants to bring order to the world, and believes he is the only one who can do it). Tolkien is actually less concerned with old ways vs new ways, and more concerned with studying the enforced imposition of individual will on others (and the environment). Saruman's technological advances may be "modern", but their true sin in Tolkien's eyes is to act as chains of control: making others, and the outside world, subject to someone else.

Nor is sticking to the old ways inherently a good thing in Tolkien. The true reactionary in The Lord of the Rings is Denethor, who explicitly wants things as they were in the days of his fathers, and falls victim to a "Better Dead than Red [and Black]" ethic. Meanwhile, Faramir describes the waning years of Gondor as "childless lords sitting in high towers, musing on heraldry"; Tolkien in his letters sees analogies between Gondor and tomb-obsessed Ancient Egypt. None of this is a positive view of social mummification.

In fact, the very existence of the Three Rings seeks to preserve the status quo - but Sauron was able to exploit Elvish conservatism for his own ends.

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Oh, and as for social systems...

The Shire has an elected mayor (who presides at banquets and does little else). The Master of Laketown is elected too, and the two that are referenced include a corrupt moneybags figure, and his more positive replacement. Bree has harmony between hobbits and humans, without any discernible government. The Ents seem to be pure anarchists, who periodically get together at a moot and discuss things. Galadriel and Elrond may rule their own little Elvish realms, but neither are monarchs, and neither inherit (or pass on) their position on a hereditary basis.

Some of the stuff Aragorn does as King? Forbid humans from entering The Shire - the hobbits can look after themselves. The Ents get to look after Orthanc. Et cetera. In other words, Aragorn (for all his much-vaunted birth) decentralises. 

[C.T. Phipps]

I think Tolkien had a bit of fun at himself actually as while he's constantly depicted as the Godfather of Nostalgia, the simple fact is the Silmarillon depicts the Ages of Feanor and Numenor to be ones with every bit as much (if not more so) trouble as the modern era. They're an epic and grandiose time but also a hopelessly corrupt one.

Which fits as a theme from Rome to the Middle Ages.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Numenor explicitly becomes a brutal colonial Empire towards the end (remind you of anything?), subjugating the people of Middle-earth, and stealing their riches. They took on Sauron, not because he was an evil bastard, but because he was a political threat.

Much later, Gondorians fight a vicious civil war over the blood purity of the royal house. The blood purists (we can't possibly interbreed with non-Numenoreans!) are explicitly the bad guys. 

[Darth Richard II]

6 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I'm genuinely also confused at the idea anyone wants to live in the past because of Medieval fantasy. No one I know wants to give up running water, flush toilets, electricity, and more to live under the rulership of a hereditary monarch. What they want is to experience the danger and excitement of almost being killed by evil cults and dragons as well as buxom babes/dashing heroes from the comfort of their apartment.

Which applies to all genres.

Well, I think some of them want to BE the ruling monarch.

also yay moorcock and Tolkien AGAIN. 

[Darth Richard II]

Oh and considering how much Tolkuen disliked allegory I do find a lot of these conversations unintentionally hilarious.

edit: acker. I'm reminded why I don't like mieville that much.