A Few Perspectives On Fantasy and Imagination Through Literature

It is now a new year, 2019.   This is my first pontification of the new year, and there are many things to cover.  I wanted to first recap a couple of things before moving forward though.

Christmas in the Thrower house went nicely this year - it wasn't an elaborate holiday, but it was a good one, with the possible exception of catching flu a couple of days after the holiday.   I am still getting over that as I write this, but we're coming along.  Flu season is not a pleasant experience, although honestly, I am a bit iffy as to vaccines.  On one hand, it seems to benefit having a vaccination done, but on the other, it is also risky in other areas - we have all heard the horror stories about vaccines and such, and my personal verdict is still out on that yet.  One day, I may actually tackle that very subject on here, as it is something important that needs to be discussed.

2019 brings with it many new challenges - as I am writing this now, I am about nine months out from starting my Ph.D. program at Catholic University of America, and I am also at this point waiting for my next work project to start soon.  As we are only a couple of days into the new year, it remains to be seen yet how it will come together, but so far it looks like a good year starting at least.

Over the past couple of weeks, Barbara and I have been watching a series that aired on ABC over the past several years called Once Upon a Time, and I wanted to talk about some things watching it has inspired.  A combination of watching this as well as strong cold medication has led to some pretty bizarre dreams at nights over the past week, but that is beside the point.  In this day and age, I have noted a few observations in regard to how kids foster literacy today, and this series sort of inspired me to reflect on it some.  When I was growing up, you learned to cultivate literacy at a very young age - nursery rhymes in your toddler to pre-school years, followed by a curriculum of fairy and folk tales, fables, mythology, and Bible stories in your early elementary years.  By the time one gets to fourth grade, then stories such as Dickens' David Copperfield or Thackeray's The Rose and the Ring get introduced, and then by middle school years you begin reading more ambitious material into high school - in my case, that meant classics such as Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, Huxley's Brave New World, and Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea.  In between Dickens and Dumas were some lighter reading, such as the works of William Saroyan, Robert Newton Peck, Beverly Cleary, and other authors who cater to the late elementary/pre-teen reading levels.  And, as one crosses into adulthood, then you begin to take on the real heavyweights - Shakespeare, Tolkien, etc.  The popular term for a reading regimen like this today is "classical education," and that is perfectly fine, as it does follow a classical path as far as literature goes.  However, this is nothing new, as an educator named Olive Beaupre Miller was pioneering this as far back as the 1920s.   Much of my own exposure to classic literature is due in part to Miller's seminal multi-volume work My Book House, which my mother got for me when I was still in the womb and which I started reading when I began to learn to read actually.  It is in this context I now want to discuss a few insights I have had in recent years as I have seen classic fairy tales recast because there are positives and negatives to what I have seen.

Olive Beaupre Miller (1883-1968)

In recent years, I have noticed a certain new perspective on classic tales as portrayed on the big screen.  In many cases, classic villains are often recast as "unsung heroes," as is the case with the recent movies in the Shrek franchise as well as with the film Maleficent.  Concerning the latter, you will remember that Maleficent was the antagonist from the Sleeping Beauty story, and her signature two-horned black headdress, as well as her abilities to change into a nasty fire-breathing dragon, were integral to the plot of the story.  In the recent movie, Angelina Jolie (who is a cad as a person, and not a favorite of mine) to her credit did bring the character of Maleficent alive, and in the movie, Maleficent was the victim of a king's betrayal that transformed her from a beautiful fairy queen to an evil monster.  There are a couple of observations about this I wanted to bring up though, for better or for worse.  In the original Sleeping Beauty story, as in all classic fairy tales, a lesson was always communicated that the ultimate good triumphs over the worst evil, and in that aspect thankfully the fairy tale became a moral lesson that harmonized with a classic Catholic understanding of the true, the good, and the beautiful always prevailing over the false, the ugly, and the bad.  In such tales, one also sees the struggles of life too - we battle things on a daily basis, as of course the Apostle St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6.  Life has challenges in other words, but to overcome the challenges we have to look beyond them and see the bigger picture.  This was a great encouragement, especially during some dark times in human history when plague, constant barbarian incursions, and other calamities bombarded many of our forebears.  It was one reason many civilizations that generated such stories were able to possess a degree of resiliency in the face of tremendous adversity.  And, we need that frankly.  In the newer interpretations of these tales though, a new virtue is introduced that is more reflexive of more "advanced" societies - the bad guy has the potential for redemption, and there is a story behind why the villain became bad.   Such is the case with Maleficent in the newest movie.  Is this a good thing?  It's certainly not bad and doesn't really conflict with a Judeo-Christian view of sin and redemption.  Also, Maleficent was actually not a bad movie either.   However, there could be potential problems with this idea, and let's talk about one of those now.

In movies such as Maleficent, as well as in the series Once Upon a Time (in which the villain, in this case Snow White's nemesis the Wicked Queen is reformed into a "good guy"), there is a good message in that even the worst of villains deserve a happy ending, and I don't think anyone would argue that no one is beyond redemption - after all, the big part of the Christian message is that Jesus died for all, even the vilest, right?   However, there is a fundamental flaw in these new renditions, and oftentimes it paints the traditional "good guys" as being the real villains.  In Maleficent, for instance, Aurora's dad King Stephan is painted as a psychotic, paranoid nut, while in Once Upon a Time traditional "good guys" such as Peter Pan are painted as nasty cads.  There is a danger in this, in that, a postmodern agenda is at work which seeks to essentially engage in a sort of revisionism that does exactly what Scripture warns against - calling evil "good" and good "evil."  While on one hand, it is good to see horrid villains such as Queen Regina and Maleficent reformed, my question is why does it have to come at the expense of making the "good guys" into nasty people?   In other words, why not let Maleficent find redemption, but also let King Stephan find it in his heart to forgive her instead of turning him into a deranged lunatic?   And, maybe the protagonists can have a human side, but let's not turn them into villains - instead, a better way to do this is by showing that both the good and the bad guys in the story have their own struggles, but in the end they both find resolution and reconciliation without one having to vanquish or destroy the other, right?  Of course, vanquishing the evil is a part of the original story, and its message is that the good triumphs over the nastiest of evils, hence the lesson in the stories themselves.  But, if we are going to reform that, why don't we do it another way rather than flipping around the heroes and villains?   For instance, what about this - may be the protagonist and the antagonist are both victims of the same evil, and the plot of the story shows how each overcomes that evil.   If the recent Maleficent movie would have done that, I think it would have been perhaps a more balanced perspective.  That way, the plot would have been true to the original story, thus communicating the same virtue the original tale intended.  That is just a thought on my part.  

Despite the technological age, and the growing "enlightened" mentality we often see with the nonsense of agenda-driven entertainment and "political correctness" (which is a curse in itself), the fact is those old fairy tales, legends, and fables of years past speak to something that modern (and post-modern) gibberish-speak cannot shake us away from.  The role of the imagination, as well as the core properties of being as embodied in the True, the Good, and the Beautiful still drive us.  It is one reason why the resurgence in popularity of Tolkien's works to a wider audience, as well as even science fiction such as Star Wars, somehow leads back to those core things.  Children, in particular, need a rich imagination, as often the values learned from classic literature and folklore lead to a more cohesive worldview later as the child grows into a functioning adult.  It is also one reason why at times technology tends to rob kids of that, and why despite the wide availability of more convenient forms of technology (for example, the smart-phone) that desire to engage the imagination is still there.  Imagination, honestly, is often the genesis of creativity, as the imagination can drive the hungry mind to research and explore.  So, reading Snow White to your 7-year-old should then lead them at age 10 to start exploring Western civilization and its history, and it also should lead to other outlets of expression - the Pinnochio story, for instance, can foster a musical passion when the kid who read Pinnochio at age 7 then discovers Stravinsky's Petroushka at age 13.  There is, therefore, a coalescing within the young mind of all these things, and thus it births a drive to explore other areas.  I know, because that is how practically every interest I have now started, and I am now moving towards 50.  It, therefore, shapes the person you become when one is exposed to different stimuli at a young age, so that is why we choose carefully what we allow children to be exposed to.

I say all of this today to summarize in this way - Maleficent was a good movie, and as far as TV series are concerned Once Upon a Time is one of the best in decades.  But, if you watch them with your kids, do this first - encourage them to read the original stories.  If they do that, then they will have a better appreciation for what they are watching while also having the ability to sort out the original story from new interpretations, be the latter good or bad.  

That will, therefore, conclude my first insights for 2019 and hope all of you who take the time to read this have a good year ahead with many blessings.