Bad faith fiction
Nov. 4th, 2005 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kate_schaeferI just read a fantasy story -- not a bad story, at that -- that depends on a standard betrayal of reason for its emotional and fictional payoff. We've all read this story: a group of people (and it can be as large as an entire society or as small as one member of a family) has rejected the magical faith of the ancestors that caused X to occur. Someone has faith against all odds that the magical faith can work after all, if only the Protagonist carries out the magic task. The magic task can be anything: a quest, a ritual, a belief, anything. Fictional tension is increased by other people making fun of the Protagonist, torturing the Protagonist, throwing the Protagonist in jail, or gently clucking their tongues and saying they don't know if the Protagonist can do it. In the dramatic payoff, the Protagonist tries the magical task, and it works.
I rather enjoy this kind of story, because of its little guy against the world theme, but it's a dishonest kind of story nevertheless. It says that magic exists, that reason, logic, and science are mistaken, and that a return to the ways of the ancestors will save us all.
I know this isn't a new critical insight into the nature of fantasy, and I know that not all fantasy does this, and I know that there is a twin story in science fiction in which one brave Protagonist uses reason and science when everyone else depends on the traditional magic of the society. That twin SF story usually isn't as satisfying a story on an emotional level, even though it's much more honest on the level of what the universe is actually like. Why is that? Why do we like the story that retrieves the golden past better than the story that calls for progress?
And when I say "we" here, am I actually just talking about myself, or do other readers have similar experiences?
I rather enjoy this kind of story, because of its little guy against the world theme, but it's a dishonest kind of story nevertheless. It says that magic exists, that reason, logic, and science are mistaken, and that a return to the ways of the ancestors will save us all.
I know this isn't a new critical insight into the nature of fantasy, and I know that not all fantasy does this, and I know that there is a twin story in science fiction in which one brave Protagonist uses reason and science when everyone else depends on the traditional magic of the society. That twin SF story usually isn't as satisfying a story on an emotional level, even though it's much more honest on the level of what the universe is actually like. Why is that? Why do we like the story that retrieves the golden past better than the story that calls for progress?
And when I say "we" here, am I actually just talking about myself, or do other readers have similar experiences?
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Date: 2005-11-04 02:44 pm (UTC)There's a slight variant on the type of fantasy story you describe: the story, set in the putatively real world, in which characters who declare that magic doesn't work just gets egg all over their faces. Poor souls, nobody told them they were living in a secondary world.
The irritating SF equivalent is the story in which it isn't that reason and science work, it's that a particular interpretation of reason and science works in a particular loaded context. This, I think, is what annoys people so about "The Cold Equations."