RoR: Forum

Post 0

Wednesday, July 16 - 1:45pm

Link

Edit

that's crap - anything that doesn't exist can be beaten, because it doesn't exist..... but it is in dealing with reality, not fantasy, showing that real problems can be solved, real metaphoric dragons can be beaten, that worth of knowing, of succeeding, comes.....

this is just a flimsy excuse for pandering to the nonreal, as if - somehow- it is 'more real' than reality, and that one can 'learn' from fantasy in preference to reality......

Post 1

Wednesday, July 16 - 2:01pm

Link

Edit

Not "'more real' than reality," but "more than true," Robert, "more than [just] true." The quote is an expression of the power of art to express a positive sense of life. All fiction is "false." All art is "artificial." If you want to pick nits. Some people would rather slay dragons.

Post 2

Wednesday, July 16 - 6:11pm

Link

Edit

What about when the witch eats little children? Would that make it less than true. :)

Post 3

Wednesday, July 16 - 7:36pm

Link

Edit

Doesn't the witch get cooked in her own oven?
I suppose Rand's liking Dinesen writing about unicorns
(Art of Fiction, p125)
was just another one of her common excursions into madness?

Madness!
Madness!

Post 4

Wednesday, July 16 - 7:43pm

Link

Edit

And what, Michael, does

This

Mean?

Post 5

Wednesday, July 16 - 7:58pm

Link

Edit

Not crap, if you understand metaphors. The point is not that the dragon is real, but that things that FEEL like dragons can be defeated. The value is in seeing good conquer evil. Not Buck Rogers, who never gets a cold in the head, but in the sense of achievement.

Post 6

Wednesday, July 16 - 8:44pm

Link

Edit

Ah, Ted.

I agreed with Robert.

Romantic realism is an interesting concept. The realism part, is about the metaphysically real. Things like dragons, unicorns, ect do inspire imagination, but they also inspire imagination not connected to reality. A lot of romantic works, Icarus with wings, or those little hobit thingys, don't really connect our imagination to real life...or to seriously inspire our dreams on earth. ;) Indeed I think they inspire our dreams in spite of earth. :)

Michael

Post 7

Wednesday, July 16 - 8:55pm

Link

Edit

"Doesn't the witch get cooked in her own oven?"

It's been awhile but doesn't Hansel and Gretel get eaten, same with Little Red Riding Hood? Beware of strange adults is what I recall the moral. Of course, Thousand and One Nights has all kinds of evil success stories, the moral warning kids and others to keep their wits about them. But then the moral could also be that the innocent die.

They all seem true to me, but then I see truth as something important, but that does not mean the outcome is good.

Post 8

Wednesday, July 16 - 9:08pm

Link

Edit

The unreal is unreal. There is no way to differentiate between levitation versus winged human flight as more or less real. Indeed, there are things with wings that fly, but no animals that levitate. One could complain (I would not) that levitation is even further removed from reality than winged flight. The metaphysical and aesthetic distinction between my imaginary and your unreal is subjective and personal. The inability to grasp the underlying meaning in an artistic context is not a virtue. The positive sense of life is what matters here, and with Rand. (Again, see Rand's Art of Fiction, p125-127.)

Post 9

Wednesday, July 16 - 9:39pm

Link

Edit

Hey Ted,

When people leap, dive, or jump they are not levitating, though they are in mid air--does that help?

Michael

Post 10

Wednesday, July 16 - 10:02pm

Link

Edit

All art is equally "unreal." The sense of life is what matters in this circumstance. (I'm really surprised that this is such a difficult concept.) Just substitute "bad guy" for dragon in the quote, if dragons are so psycho-epistemologically scary. It works as well, just not as poetically.

Post 11

Wednesday, July 16 - 10:39pm

Link

Edit

"All art is equally "unreal.""

Is it?

Post 12

Thursday, July 17 - 12:21am

Link

Edit

I quote Rand from The Art of Fiction, p 169, (emphasis added):

"All of these forms [science fiction, fantasy, futurism, supernatural, ghost, horror and afterlife stories] are rational when they serve some abstract purpose applicable to reality....

"The same principle applies to fairy tales. Stories like the magic carpet and Cinderella are justified even though the events are metaphysically impossible, because those events are used to project some idea which is rationally applicable to human beings. The author indulges in a metaphysical exaggeration but the meaning of the story is applicable to human life."

In other words, The dragon slayer, such as Tolkien's Hobbit, shows in a metaphysically exaggerated way the abstract notion that one can overcome a malevolent enemy at almost impossible odds by using one's wits and the enemy's vices against him. To object to a story about outwitting a dragon is to judge an abstract moral story because one is stuck on the concrete fact that dragons don't exist. But people obsessed with power, politics and position, and possessed of petty little minds do.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 7/17, 1:29am)

Post 13

Thursday, July 17 - 12:56am

Link

Edit

Context is king. Here the context is "purpose".

How well does a given fairy tale promote a valued virtue? So much as to inspire that virtue being brought into reality?

Like the question of how much daydreaming should a person do? It depends, does a person daydream in context with being creative, expanding their horizon, exploring a new direction; is it such that the net expenditure of time serves their well-being - or are they using it to escape reality and squandering life? What's the purpose and how effectively does it server that purpose.

For children their development requires things hard for us to understand since we are now on the other side of that development - children love horror stories - whether realistic or fantasy-based - as if they were watching and vicariously practicing dealing with the experience of fear as such. A mixture of reality and fantasy is often a good thing. They grasp that a dragon might not be real, or at least it doesn't exist in their house or school, and it makes it easier to confront the danger vicariously. My niece loved watching the Wizard of Oz, but it really scared her. She would keep nagging her mom or dad to watch with her.

Showing a child a reality-based or fantasy-based fearful story that was dark or ended badly is a different thing - it's child abuse in my book.

When I see a movie like The Matrix I'm disgusted with what they chose to make real and what unreal - some of the superhero movies or kung-foo type flics also seem to serve the 'daydream as escape' purpose - to the n'th degree. But it is worse! To break the bond with reality in a seamless fashion, rather than to bring the edges into sharper focus is awful. When the superhero has unearned powers and can without effort or price magically dodge bullets or whatever, and never feels the tiniest fear, and the villians are shallow cartoonish creatures and the only lesson seems to be that nothing is really real - except maybe looking cool. The purpose seems to be in comforting any secret fears that one might somehow always be inadequate or unworthy. They don't comfort by saying that isn't so, but by giving up on reality and saying that in real life, there are no heros - that's why we, as clever writers and directors, camp it up and pay no attention to the laws of reality - go ahead and jump into mindless escape with no values... that purpose is fucked!

Children are learning to identify reality and distinguish it from the unreal (and remember that we have a subconcious that doesn't know of any such distinction). This process of identification is complex because we can imagine unreal things and hold them in our minds - like unicorns. This identification has to be learned and done in the consciousness. Does the content or style of a piece of fiction help a child in practicing this judgement or not? (listen to their question after they see something to imagine what their development is working on. And look at the happy glow on their faces when they feel like they are now a master of "That's not real!").

Peek-a-boo with a baby is about learning that Mommy is an entity who doesn't go out of existence when she isn't visible and the baby's laughter when she reappears relates to conquering the fear of a still helpless infant not being abandoned.

Post 14

Thursday, July 17 - 1:32am

Link

Edit

"Showing a child a reality-based or fantasy-based fearful story that was dark or ended badly is a different thing - it's child abuse in my book."

"To break the bond with reality in a seamless fashion, rather than to bring the edges into sharper focus is awful. "

Hear, hear!

Post 15

Thursday, July 17 - 8:12am

Link

Edit

This is an idea which has been in disputes for a long time - the issue of fantasy in dealing with reality [consider, for instance, the book Uses of Enchantment]..... in the old days, when reality was not, to most, anything like a bed of roses, fantasy played a part [for better or worse] in subduing the folk to keep on living with some sense of hope, even if it was only 'beyond the grave'..... but in this day and age, especially among those who understand the nature of reality, of the difference between existence and not, that ONLY existence matters in terms of knowing and acting, then posturing fantasy is an act of sabotaging the mind in the same manner as allowing using of faith here and there, as if just a bit will not hurt - when yes it does, because it disrupts the integration of the mind in the same way Kant claimed in his Critique.....

Two craveats - there is, as I've said before, a difference between fantasy and imaginating.... to project possibles is, while not an actual in reality, still dealing with reality [ that is imaginating] - whereas projecting the impossible is an assault on dealing with reality [that is fantasy], and it is hard to really see moral justification of it....

second craveat - I have sympathy for those who like fantasy, finding many tales of interest despite the obvious unreality of them.... yet - to be blunt, isn't clinging to the comfort of fantasy not the same as clinging to faith in dealing with problem solving? could not those same tales been done without the fantasy involved? to pose this in another way, a thought experiment, what if one were on a world wherein all were reality oriented in their manner of living, where all did imaginating, and the notion of accepting in any manner the non-real was considered an assault.... what kind of world would it be like - and would it be a less interesting one? or a more interesting one, for its adherence to the real?
(Edited by robert malcom on 7/17, 8:14am)

Post 16

Thursday, July 17 - 12:38pm

Link

Edit

Robert, my focus in my post but also in past thinking has mostly been on themes, messages and that sort of thing and never really thought much about fantasy as such in art (my post mentioned it briefly as a mental state and that's different.)

I've wondered at times about a possible benefit of doing away with it altogether in children's art - as you suggest, and wouldn't that be better. I too am a little uncomfortable with feeding kids so much that is unreal. I don't want to lie to a kid and say, sure, Santa Clause is real. I do like kidding kids where I make statement that are just short of unbelievable and let them 'catch' me making stuff up. They get a kick out of discovering the truth and becoming the authority in that little game (and they know its a game and not real lies). On the other hand, kids seem to love different fictional animals and quickly build a relationship to them. I'd be loath to take away that fiction, say with dragons, as long as I can see good themes, because there seems such a natural affinity going on between kids and something symbolic in the creatures. And I'm not confident that we know as much as we need to in this area of child development.

My work in psychology with kids (apart from the usual child development classes and some work with kids with LA county children's protective service) was very limited - I can't say much from a professional context on kids (except for self-esteem issues).

I do believe that in our personal mental processes there is an evolving process to any ambition that starts with a tiny bit of fantasy (the safest way to imagine some desire that seems unreal for us - it might go from very symbolic to not so symbolic - but stay kind of magical as to how it happened), but it progresses from fantasy to daydream (it becomes more the real person we are, but somehow almost magically having achieved, or achieving some ambition as if that were normal), and then it becomes an idea where it becomes an explicit and we examine it as a possibility, then we declare it a goal and we make a commitment, then to become an achievable goal we set dates to milestones, and then it becomes action. Some of the early parts might happen quickly and hardly be noticible. Some period of time might go by where the process is on hold. But I suspect that this is the process where we grow ourselves to be able to achieve more than we know we currently capable of.

And "thinking outside of the box" I suspect involves letting the mind play with unrealistic answers as it stumbles into new territories till we acquire a new perspective. Leading a group in "brain-storming" involves setting the working rules and context as to avoid any judgemental behavior at the start - so as to encourage ideas, even if they sound fantasy-like - and chew on them later in a critical fashion.

Another random tidbit: I've always suspected that devotees of fantasy in book form or movie - that is those who spend a lot of time reading in that genre - have given up in some sense on experiencing what they want in this world (even though they may be very bright and successful) - as if somewhere inside there is a child's yearning that is being lived in the fantasy world because something in the real world feels to harsh or ugly or dangerous for "real good" - obviously this a generalization and pure speculation. I've also seen some of very bright people, who also happen to be fairly linear thinkers, engineer/scientist types, that spend a great deal of time in science-fiction. I see that too as a kind of escape and suggests a person who is keeping alive, in their world of science-fiction, a kind of purity and rationality and magnificent achievement that seems to be absent or impossible in this messy and often dark world we actually live in. I don't mean these to be negative observations - they only apply (in my mind) to people that are basically good people, refusing to give up this part that feels like a misfit in the real world and this other world is in some fashion a way of staying connected to their goodness - seeing it expressed safely in the case of fantasy, seeing it expressed cleanly in the case of science fiction. Both often make boldness and courage major themes.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 7/17, 12:47pm)

Post 17

Thursday, July 17 - 1:01pm

Link

Edit

The word is caveat. It comes from the same root as the word caution - cavtio. Rember, a cravate (from the French for Croatian) is a necktie.