On Modernity in Literature and the Fantasy Novel

Obviously this post pertains to a highly specified genre, one that has been progressively trivialized by both canon and the modern bookish critique. When we the readers think of fantasy, we regard a campy tapestry of somewhat tired chivalry interspersed with time period references, idiomatic language/vocabulary, and highly linear character profiles. In short, we view the unabridged transcript of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

(insert the sound of 5-10 people clicking the x button on their browser)

And that’s just the point! There is a stigma in place that needs to be addressed. In generalizing Fantasy like this, I do not wish to denegrate the D&D-cum-novel model as something unusable or “low brow”. In fact, I wish to do just the opposite. Literature has undergone modernization in a manner that mimics the (much shorter, mind you) genesis of television broadcasting– beginning with material destined for the annals of history, brimming with talent, intimate authorship, yet quickly devolving into something more of a backward glancing movement, something that was a part of the eternal dialogue of media. The problem of original content is something left for another day, but the symptom of retrograde comparison that pervades literature is that which denies it authority in our era. It makes the post-modernist valiant and brave where the fantasy writer is trite and mawkish. Through my analysis, you will come to see that the privileged few Fantasy writers of renowned become as such due to a creedence to the past, that very backward glance that is rewarded by the accolades of the wildly pedantic readers of the 21st century.

I begin by presenting the concept of the monomyth as established by the now (of household-name status) Joseph Campbell. For all of you who have read any of his work, which is probably all of you since the rest of this post will only be viewed by those who could make it beyond the title of the post, you understand that there is a patternesque quality to the titular hero’s adventure, something timeless and internal to the structure of a successful and compelling plot. There is intrigue, mystery, the “call to adventure”– all of the trappings of a story that allows the reader to feel (humanly) inserted into the story as an accompanying party. Insisting that the monomyth is the be-all-end-all story structure is not my goal; what I do wish to point out, though, is that the monomyth has existed in literature since…well…it’s very inception (or at least known inception.) From Beowulf to the Epic of Gilgamesh, we see each and every step of the story comfortably compartmentalized into digestable and identifiable brackets of the monomyth. Even in Victorian romance, each character is undergirded by a sense of American monomythology, something that dictates what should happen, what the audience expects of the novel. We must then pursue the line of enquiry: is it the mystery of uncovering the stories hidden motives that drives us onward (plot twist-driven interest)or is it the actual bildungsroman of the story, the coming of age–that is, the bare motions that the story makes (“storyweaving” or “theory-driven”.) One would be tempted to say that the theory-driven story is more significant in that it asserts an actual idea, something more than a climactic story arc or a “man behind the curtain” reveal. One author that exemplifies this is Thomas Pynchon. He writes in a Joycean fashion, encrypting meaning and story progression in fleshy layers of world language, geography, wartime nomenclature, etc. Is this style valuable? Absolutely. It is, however, highly experiential. The reader either feels a complete sense of connectivity with the writer because they share similar memories and can thus be “transported”. If, however, you do not know where exactly Mumbai, India is, nor the common cultural etiquettes and mannerisms, you will feel both alienated, diminished, and possibly pissed off. Pynchon is regarded as one of the most important writers of our time, by the NYT, Atlantic, and many other establishments of high repute. I agree that he is important, and I agree that his style is inimitable and beautiful in it’s own right. But what of the simplistic monomyth, what of the journey and the high adventure? When did our generations literature become a pangeneticism of cultures that blend into a muddy swirl of languages and dialogues, creating an abstraction that demands some precedent of knowledge. Modern literature has become much like a Physics book– symbols and meaningless jargon to the naked eye, beauty and elegance to the educated mind.

This leads to the point of this article. I feel strongly that modern fantasy has been disowned by the readership as something both inferior in quality and frivolous in nature to the Modern novel. The only writers that manage to pervade this veritable reckoning are those who resort to classical allegory/reference or historical pertinence (Stephen King, George RR Martin, Tolkien, Lovecraft, CS Lewis). Obviously, there are plenty of Authors to name who have succeeded in Fantasy. But the myriad ranks of writers left behind are whom I speak out for right now. The Terry Pratchet/JK Rowling of today are the false prophets who cater to linked in publishing companies. They are writers in their own regard, but they are driven by certain demands. They are what I like to call commercial fantasy writers, people who enjoy limitless attention because they appeal to so many and because they do not transgress the limitations of what is “too fantasy.” That is, they do not become absolutely adult in content; instead, they skirt the fringe of “young adult”, thus making the fantasy genre digestable for the young, the teen-aged, and the “young hearted” adult. Why can only one variety of Fantasy be given the stamp of approval? Why must the disembowlment, the heroism and the incest, the vile politicking and religious usurpery stay within the confines of the degenerate “low brow” fantasy genre? The Mabinogion, King Arthur and His Knights, Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to name just a few, delved this content in ways that was poetic and meaningful. They established the Arthurian legend, contributed to the monomyth, espoused the idea of construction over mystery.

Now, to bring it all together, I must say that much of the ignored Fantasy of our time has resorted to the instantized-mystery-novel schema. Fantasy does not depend on philosophy or gender role, it does not approach  issues of xenophobia, the “trusthworthy narrator”, amanuensis, apotheosis, anagnorisis, denouement…it does not need to. For the Fantasy reader of today is either unashamed and digests greedily (and happily) whatever surviving works exist out there, or they resign themselves to the masses, where it’s normatively acceptable to boast a wardrobe bedecked with Ravenclaw scarves and Prince Caspian shirts. We need to support Fantasy and tell authors out there that they do not need to be afraid of writing adventure-style books, that they can incorporate both the monomyth AND theory. There can be a synthesis. Robert Zelazny has proved this to be absolutely true, without becoming engirded by senseless fans who demand more-for-more’s-sake, those types who never want the adventure to end, (Read:holy shit Robert Jordan/Terry Brooks.) We as readers need to read on and support fantasy for what it is: a descendant of the most noble literature to grace this earth. It is not to be decried for it’s exploits, nor discluded because of it’s racy content. It is not a ren faire nor a caricature, not dragon-slaying simplicity nor senseless salacious romance. It is a classic genre bracket that has been smeared by the vast majority of readers as something inferior. I simply ask that we all take a step back from our Palahniuks, our Sedaris’, our Cormac McCarthies and our Haruki Murakamis and realize that value is not assigned simply by the human condition. Value is experiential and personal. One can read beyond the modern fiction of “what it’s like to live”, moving beyond into what it could be like in the “what if” of fantasy. Release yourself.

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

This will be my first entry into a new blog, one that doesn’t maintain a strict tone of poetic puritanism. I can see myself running the gamut from computer gaming diatribe to world politics polemic. Open the floodgates I say!

I cannot deny myself the obvious indulgence of reviewing a movie of hot contention, one defended by the deafening cries of die hard childrens book advocates and threatened by the deconstructionism of present day movie analysts and reviewers. Where the Wild Things Are refuses the quaint categorizations that pervade tinseltown movie go’ers and, accordingly, reviewers. Let’s begin with a brief biography and subsequent qualification of Spike Jonze as a young, aspiring director.

No, I did not write “Right in Der Fuehrer’s Face!”

Spike Jonze (Adam Spiegel) began as an innovator as a director of short skateboarding mash-ups, (eventually leading into a greater collaboration with the Jack-ass crew,) music videos, (to name a few of the big ones: beastie boys, sonic youth, Dinosaur Jr. (GREAT video), and various political documentaries. In short, he was a 90’s hero waiting to be stowed away in the annals of other awesome things that just didn’t get a huge payout. Enter: Being John Malkovitch (1999). Collaborating with writer Charlie Kaufman, Jonze thus endeavored to begin the first of his “meta” movies.In Malkovitch,  Craig Schwartz, down on his luck, out of the job, and lost in a corporate-induced coma, hazards upon a rift that somehow inserts a single person into the mind of John Malkovitch. This movie, rapidly beloved by all that self-relegate into the “thinkers” crowd, initiated Jonze into mainstream hollywood. Accompanying this initiation was his marriage to Sophia Coppola and consequent affiliation with the hollywood hegemon that is the Coppola clan. Adaptation (2002) would follow as his next big breakout, winning Nicholas Cage some actual respect from consumers and coworkers alike. It was yet another installment in Jonze’s “meta” project– a Matryoshka doll fitting into itself, divesting layer upon layer until the hard core is exposed for scrutiny, (but what composes the core?) Also, I must note Jonze’s involvement with what I consider to be a perrenial piece of cult humor as well as a renewal of the serialized rock epic– Tenacious D: The Complete Masterworks (2003). Greatness abounds. Though this history is obviously abridged and leaves out a lot of critical notes on his personal life, it is enough to get where we’re going with this. Present Day.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Heralded by what ultimately became a glutted ad campaign, this movie was guaranteed box office priority. It’s broad appeal, mischevious thematics, and heart rending musical accompaniment made it the perfect storm for a consumer base that is both backward glancing in cultural hungers and deeply wounded in sociopolitics. Something that does not preach nor pander, but instead invites and evokes. Ah yes, that’s the rub. A resounding “yes” issued across the face of the world– we could finally feel vulnerable concerning something sensitive such as is childhood in the common space of the theater! As it stands, WTWTA is the current box office leader, and I’m guessing the querulous 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, which both lauds and laments, will keep the money rolling in.

Let’s get into the movie, shall we? Damn near everyone has read, or had read to them, WTWTA. It is a beautifully vacuous novel, replete with chiaroscuro coloration, chimeric monstrosities that bite, beguile, and endear at once. The eponymous Max is a boy, destructive and imaginative, who is adventurous enough to fill each heart up with longing to return to the tabula rasa of youth, the unpreposessed worldview that allows a plane to be a fighter jet in an interstellar war or a mound of dirt the home for a dozen sedulous dwarven metal workers. The movie does not, for a single moment, defy or cross its source text. Many people would say to this, “well, how hard could faithfulness to a text be when it is 8 sentences long?” I would argue that it is much greater a challenge to represent the extraneous spaces, the unspoken parts, lilting and haunting sentiments, vagueries of the novel than it would be to, say, translate Alice Sebolds Lovely Bones into film format.

The movie casts Catherine Keener as Max’s mother, Max Records as…well…Max, and James Gandolfini as Carol. For all extensive purposes, these are the most important roles, (though I found Lauren Ambrose’s (of Six Feet Under) voice acting for KG both lachrymose and relatable. Max is a hellchild. He has all the time in the world and no one to join him in conquering it. So Jonzes machine begins to churn, and the longing/yearning for catharsis pours out. We want Max to have a vehicle for the tenor of his mind, a place to feel completely accepted for his behavior. We want him to have this (if you have a heart, for all of those cold bastard tinmans out there) because it idealizes our own experiences, reducing them into a concentrate so potent that to drink it would cause the brain to explode with the fantastic, whimsical, and other-worldly. I believe that Jonze must have had a very good relationship with Sendak during the filming of this movie, for it fuses all of the ambivalence of the source text with visually stunning effects, none of which ever transgress the ever-important boundaries of suspension of disbelief. Credit must be given to both Sendak and Jonze for ascribing personalities, names, and real dimensions to characters that, simply put, did not limn more than their faces, expressions, and postures could in the animated book. Max’s world is in suspension, constantly striking notes of excitement, despair, rollicking freedom, insularity and suffocation, estrangement, togetherness. There is never a unity to these disparate feelings, causing the audience to feel a constant unease. The movie itself is an exercise in mood changes. It is no more bipolar or finnicky than the child that we’ve all “grown out of”, the same-seeming persona that compells us towards emotional extremes.

Conclusions

Without delving the actual story and perhaps causing readers to think that I am completely in favor of this movie, I must say that I left feeling like I’d broken my wrist playing catch with a parent– in deep pain at the immediacy of the event, but comforted by the aftermath of the trauma and the coming together that pain invariably causes. I would say that Jonze pushes the entire “manifestations of Max” thing too much, if anything, and those tropes that are embodied by the monsters risk becoming cliche. But right when I felt that, they developed interrelationships. They weren’t just furies, muses, or ephemera, but instead were real.

I loved this movie, obviously. I feel that everyone should give it a chance, not only for the experience of the movie itself, but for the memories it will reawaken within you. If you are unwilling to risk the outcome of feeling inextricably lost and reassuringly found, I would skip the movie and watch something with a digestable plot. It is, after all, prime time for linear horror movies. I guarantee that the quickly medicated ”fear” that you feel during those flicks will be much more pallatable than the self-enquiry that WTWTA insists you perform.