Fantasy:
A case for re-enchantment
Once upon a time
There is an image of an old man sitting on a cot and children gathered around on the floor. The old man sets aside a glass of evening tea. The warmth of the tea and children’s toothy grin has filled him with energy. And then come the words “once upon a time,” and things are never the same.
There is a feeling that the old man was there when the myths were told for the first time around a bonfire when a mother, I suspect, looked at the surrounding dark and the images of monsters rising in the shadows, sleep eluding her children; she placed knights on horses, wound their keys, and set them chasing dragons.
Fantasy today
The genre of fantasy has become so prevalent in our times with its cape-flapping heroes, pointy-eared elves, and dungeons full of whammy things. We know that the most ill-treated and good-looking character is the lost heir to the throne; that if a sword is found at the bottom of a pond, then it is of vital importance; and that a character stares in the middle distance and claims that he is not a hero. He absolutely is. And the good guys win in the end. Mostly.
Our times are made tough by the inflow of constant information. We know of every tragedy that befalls mankind before even the victim has time to bleed out. Before we have time to deal with one stabbing, another bomb drops on a school filling our days with a sense of helplessness.
We are everywhere all at once, like gods with no control and all the worries.
In answer, the stories of today sell an escape into power by any means necessary, even one that celebrates violence. This euphoria for power has taken precedence over the spiritual themes of yesteryear, and our heroes have started resembling the shadows against whom we armed ourselves with righteous swords.
You don’t have to go far for examples of these, not further than the protagonist stabbing a dozen men with pencils or hacking a group without asking what was up. And so the knight is taken off his steed and told to step aside from the dragon because the latter looks cooler when it’s breathing fire and burning cities.
We have effectively gone from “Here be dragons” to “Let’s be dragons.”
A view from around the corner
It’s just entertainment, you say. We know the Hitlers of yesterday; we were promised their demise, and yet they are here today. And I say, are we doomed then to drive down the highway at a thousand miles an hour seeking cheap thrills? You shrug and mutter, if it gets too dark, we’ll turn on the streetlamp.
But darkness can be more than the one of a physical kind, and even with all the lights of the screens, something inside us has gone dim.
What can be done? You ask. The game is fixed. Let’s at least have our cheap thrills. And why are you still standing on the corner where there used to be an enchanted street?
I am looking at the urchin tearing a piece of meager bread and sharing it with a stray dog, and at an old teacher leaning on the school’s gate with a warm smile and tea for his colleagues, and at the granny unwrapping her handkerchief, unrolling the few coins she has saved, and purchasing a treat for her little ones.
I’m looking for the helpers, and I glimpse the one wanted by you and me: his face is different; his features are those of the ordinary person. Gone are his suave ways; he stumbles on his way to a serene sentence and laughs at his peculiarities.
In these everyday heroics I see a way for reforging the proverbial sword, waving it around and re-enchanting the world. And I hear whispers of a new song. The words go something like this: the cape is tattered, but the knight yet lives.
