“gritty” fantasy

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The hobbit’s home turf

Why do we watch fantasy movies, or read fantasy novels? I mean, who wants to see the good guys win and the villains lose, problems get solved, dragons slain, bad guys run out of town, etc.?

Escape!

Wouldn’t you rather watch nooze? Or at least some Gritty Realistic Drama in which everybody dies?

Yes, we read fantasy for escape. We can’t really tunnel out of this POW camp of the 21st century, but at least we can imagine doing so. True, the imagination is a big box with a lot of bad items in it: all the trouble starts there. But every now and then we can imagine something better, by God’s grace.

And if nothing else, a well-done fantasy is a sanity break!

(I admit that there are few things as bad as a bad fantasy.)

Where can I buy a ticket for the Narnia Local?

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I understand readers who shun fantasy fiction because they think it’s full of cliches, unwholesome thoughts and attitudes, and really awful writing–because a lot of it fits that description.

And just to be even more sophomoric, a movement sprang up in fantasy, a few years ago, to make everything “gritty.”

‘Gritty is Good?’ (Nah)

I mean, really–the Bad Guys already have this world for their playground: why hand them our fantasy worlds, too?

We started watching a New Zealand TV series once, but stopped very quickly because it was all filmed in a city that looked just like the seamier parts of urban New Jersey. We weren’t going to look at that. As for the characters–well, we already have villains galore in real life, and precious few heroes.

Reading “grimdark” fantasy is like tunneling into a prison camp.