A Meandering Analysis of Fantasy
First, a workout tip: if you want to make the most of your time on an elliptical machine, and you happen to have a TV and DVD player in the room, I suggest putting on LOTR. You can join Frodo in his mad dash to Buckleberry Ferry, or race like Asfaloth at Arwen's desperate urging to get across the river before the Nazgul catch up. Your heart will pump in a quite convincingly rapid manner.
Whilst attempting to keep up your flagging pace during the rather placid Rivendell scenes, you might begin to notice the several contrasts between Aragorn and Frodo.
The pre-Tolkien fantasy hero in works such as Beowulf, The Faerie Queene, or any number of Arthurian legends is much closer to Aragorn than to Frodo. Nobly born, a great warrior, a leader, a wise and morally upright man. Someone, you know, heroic.
Of course, Aragorn is a conflicted hero. He's quite old but still hasn't taken on the responsibility of leading his people, nor has he been able to consummate his relationship with Arwen. He avoids his life and his responsibilities. But when he finally does step up to the plate, his story is classically heroic. He goes on a quest, he passes great moral tests like not taking the ring from Frodo, he proves his worth as a warrior, and he goes on to marry Arwen and become King Elessar of Gondor.
Frodo's story is quite different. He's a hero that the masses can relate to. Of course, everybody knows Frodo is an Everyman. I'm not saying anything new here.
But it's interesting how Tolkien managed to create a story featuring only upper-class and middle-class characters in a world that probably doesn't have a human middle class. The majority of the humans you meet in LOTR are high-born people and/or great warriors. You don't really see the poor at all. Instead you get the hobbits, which are a decent approximation of the modern middle class.
And Frodo's struggle is, indeed, very middle class. His quest is a wonderful approximation of the daily grind. His main task is to trudge forward through a grim and desolate landscape with no rest and no pleasure until he dies, which he assumes he will, whether from one of the various attacks perpetrated against him by assorted unpleasant characters, or from simply reaching the end of his quest. He's fighting to preserve the things in life that he loves, like good food and music and so on, but he can't indulge in these things himself because he's too busy plodding towards, literally, Doom. Meanwhile, he simply has to hope that the powerful and supposedly wise upper-class people won't void his long, dull, soul-crushing struggle by giving in to their own lust for power or through sheer incompetence.
No wonder middle-class Americans can relate.
Notice how lust for power, as represented by the ring, turns upper-class characters into powerful and despotic rulers or at least kickass wraiths, but it turns proto-hobbits into shriveled, obnoxious vermin. Perhaps that's the reason why only hobbits can carry the ring. They have no hope of ever being Great, so what would they do with the power anyway?
And then there's the gender aspect. Women have no hope of being Great either. The most remarkable among them can do great deeds, perhaps, but the desire to do so is pathological, and in the end a decent woman will forget about glory because glory is antithetical to womanhood.
It's interesting to me to think about what fiction reveals about its audience. Presumably the audience for Beowulf was quite different than Tolkien's audience. Beowulf seems to have been written about and for the upper class, whereas, as we've established, Tolkien appeals to today's middle class. According to these stories, the upper class is heroic in strength, intellect, and values. Its enemies are huge, existential threats. The middle class is somewhat less heroic, but still has a very important part to play.
Now let's turn to slightly more modern fantasy. One of my favorite fantasy series is the Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander, the main character of which is Taran, a distinctly un-heroic Assistant Pig-Keeper. As a blacksmith in training, he makes buckets and buckets of nails, and isn't allowed to make swords. He tries to sneak a look at the Book of Three, which contains great knowledge, and burns his fingers in the attempt. But, and here's the important part, he aspires to greatness even though he is not Great. Lloyd Alexander gets away with this because Taran is young, and his faults can therefore be excused on the grounds that he is not Great yet. Taran doesn't accept his mundane and silly life the way Frodo does, and he doesn't have to, because he can grow into greatness. Which he does.
I suppose fantasy is very much concerned with greatness, as a genre. So far we've seen how greatness is achieved by an upper-class man, sort of achieved by a middle-class man, and lusted after and eventually grasped by a humble young male nobody. How does one achieve greatness as a woman of any sort?
Well, there's obviously the Bella model - make all the boys want you even though you're a whiny brat, and then become a mother while somehow staying young and beautiful forever. Fortunately, there is a plethora of better examples, like Buffy, anything by Tamora Pierce, the Abhorsen series, and the Mistborn series. In all of these stories, women achieve greatness as warriors fighting to save the world from the forces of evil, very much in the style of your classic upper-class male hero. This, incidentally, is my favorite kind of story.
Now, not all of them are warriors in the physical sense. In fact, you could argue that most of them aren't. Sabriel and Lirael from the Abhorsen series wield swords, but mostly rely on magic to get what they want. Pierce's protagonists are usually mages even though they often have impressive fighting skills as well. Vin from the Mistborn series is a warrior only because her magic enhances her physical prowess. Buffy's main job is to fight physically with vampires and demons and so on, but this is only possible for her because of her superhuman strength, which she acquired through magic. Only Mel, one of Pierce's protagonists, is a non-mage whose physical skill and strength carry the day, and she, unfortunately, is a bit boring because she has to spend all her time running around wearing weighted vests and doing glaive drills.
Strangely, real-world stories handle female physical prowess more realistically than fantasy stories, for a couple of reasons. One reason is that guns are a great equalizer. The other is that the public generally accepts the principle that skill in Asian-style martial arts enables physically unimpressive people to prevail over brawnier opponents. This allows for marginally believable female characters who can out-fight male opponents. Alias, Kill Bill, and Chocolate are all good examples. In fantasy, on the other hand, one has to deal with the reality that it takes a certain amount of brawn to shear through muscle and bone using a 3-foot piece of steel.
Female protagonists have been getting stronger, but male ones have been getting weaker. I remember first noticing this while watching The Librarian: Quest for the Spear, a TV movie about a nerdy guy who mainly uses his brain, who's teamed up with a gorgeous, ass-kicking sidekick who mainly uses her muscles. In How To Train Your Dragon, the main character is a slender, nerdy boy who prevails using open-mindedness and ingenuity, whereas the female lead is a classic sword-wielding warrior. Or take Kickass - the male main character is a nerd who isn't that bright and gets his own ass kicked most of the time. It's the 11-year-old girl who gets to be the foul-mouthed killing machine.
It seems that the heroes of today are realistic people to whom real live men could conceivably relate, whereas the heroines are mainly aspirational. What can we conclude about the audience, from this? Honestly, I'm not quite sure. It is pretty interesting, however, that Harry Potter is so popular. He's about as realistic as can be. He's not terribly remarkable in his abilities, intellect, or moral qualities. His story and his past are remarkable, and by Muggle standards I suppose his being a wizard is fairly remarkable. But he's not that great of a wizard, and as a person, Harry is completely and utterly normal.
The only female protagonists I've described so far that have that same quality of being completely normal but having an amazing life are Bella and Buffy, both of which are very popular.
I have nothing satisfyingly conclusive to say at this point. If you've read this to the end, I salute you.
Whilst attempting to keep up your flagging pace during the rather placid Rivendell scenes, you might begin to notice the several contrasts between Aragorn and Frodo.
The pre-Tolkien fantasy hero in works such as Beowulf, The Faerie Queene, or any number of Arthurian legends is much closer to Aragorn than to Frodo. Nobly born, a great warrior, a leader, a wise and morally upright man. Someone, you know, heroic.
Of course, Aragorn is a conflicted hero. He's quite old but still hasn't taken on the responsibility of leading his people, nor has he been able to consummate his relationship with Arwen. He avoids his life and his responsibilities. But when he finally does step up to the plate, his story is classically heroic. He goes on a quest, he passes great moral tests like not taking the ring from Frodo, he proves his worth as a warrior, and he goes on to marry Arwen and become King Elessar of Gondor.
Frodo's story is quite different. He's a hero that the masses can relate to. Of course, everybody knows Frodo is an Everyman. I'm not saying anything new here.
But it's interesting how Tolkien managed to create a story featuring only upper-class and middle-class characters in a world that probably doesn't have a human middle class. The majority of the humans you meet in LOTR are high-born people and/or great warriors. You don't really see the poor at all. Instead you get the hobbits, which are a decent approximation of the modern middle class.
And Frodo's struggle is, indeed, very middle class. His quest is a wonderful approximation of the daily grind. His main task is to trudge forward through a grim and desolate landscape with no rest and no pleasure until he dies, which he assumes he will, whether from one of the various attacks perpetrated against him by assorted unpleasant characters, or from simply reaching the end of his quest. He's fighting to preserve the things in life that he loves, like good food and music and so on, but he can't indulge in these things himself because he's too busy plodding towards, literally, Doom. Meanwhile, he simply has to hope that the powerful and supposedly wise upper-class people won't void his long, dull, soul-crushing struggle by giving in to their own lust for power or through sheer incompetence.
No wonder middle-class Americans can relate.
Notice how lust for power, as represented by the ring, turns upper-class characters into powerful and despotic rulers or at least kickass wraiths, but it turns proto-hobbits into shriveled, obnoxious vermin. Perhaps that's the reason why only hobbits can carry the ring. They have no hope of ever being Great, so what would they do with the power anyway?
And then there's the gender aspect. Women have no hope of being Great either. The most remarkable among them can do great deeds, perhaps, but the desire to do so is pathological, and in the end a decent woman will forget about glory because glory is antithetical to womanhood.
It's interesting to me to think about what fiction reveals about its audience. Presumably the audience for Beowulf was quite different than Tolkien's audience. Beowulf seems to have been written about and for the upper class, whereas, as we've established, Tolkien appeals to today's middle class. According to these stories, the upper class is heroic in strength, intellect, and values. Its enemies are huge, existential threats. The middle class is somewhat less heroic, but still has a very important part to play.
Now let's turn to slightly more modern fantasy. One of my favorite fantasy series is the Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander, the main character of which is Taran, a distinctly un-heroic Assistant Pig-Keeper. As a blacksmith in training, he makes buckets and buckets of nails, and isn't allowed to make swords. He tries to sneak a look at the Book of Three, which contains great knowledge, and burns his fingers in the attempt. But, and here's the important part, he aspires to greatness even though he is not Great. Lloyd Alexander gets away with this because Taran is young, and his faults can therefore be excused on the grounds that he is not Great yet. Taran doesn't accept his mundane and silly life the way Frodo does, and he doesn't have to, because he can grow into greatness. Which he does.
I suppose fantasy is very much concerned with greatness, as a genre. So far we've seen how greatness is achieved by an upper-class man, sort of achieved by a middle-class man, and lusted after and eventually grasped by a humble young male nobody. How does one achieve greatness as a woman of any sort?
Well, there's obviously the Bella model - make all the boys want you even though you're a whiny brat, and then become a mother while somehow staying young and beautiful forever. Fortunately, there is a plethora of better examples, like Buffy, anything by Tamora Pierce, the Abhorsen series, and the Mistborn series. In all of these stories, women achieve greatness as warriors fighting to save the world from the forces of evil, very much in the style of your classic upper-class male hero. This, incidentally, is my favorite kind of story.
Now, not all of them are warriors in the physical sense. In fact, you could argue that most of them aren't. Sabriel and Lirael from the Abhorsen series wield swords, but mostly rely on magic to get what they want. Pierce's protagonists are usually mages even though they often have impressive fighting skills as well. Vin from the Mistborn series is a warrior only because her magic enhances her physical prowess. Buffy's main job is to fight physically with vampires and demons and so on, but this is only possible for her because of her superhuman strength, which she acquired through magic. Only Mel, one of Pierce's protagonists, is a non-mage whose physical skill and strength carry the day, and she, unfortunately, is a bit boring because she has to spend all her time running around wearing weighted vests and doing glaive drills.
Strangely, real-world stories handle female physical prowess more realistically than fantasy stories, for a couple of reasons. One reason is that guns are a great equalizer. The other is that the public generally accepts the principle that skill in Asian-style martial arts enables physically unimpressive people to prevail over brawnier opponents. This allows for marginally believable female characters who can out-fight male opponents. Alias, Kill Bill, and Chocolate are all good examples. In fantasy, on the other hand, one has to deal with the reality that it takes a certain amount of brawn to shear through muscle and bone using a 3-foot piece of steel.
Female protagonists have been getting stronger, but male ones have been getting weaker. I remember first noticing this while watching The Librarian: Quest for the Spear, a TV movie about a nerdy guy who mainly uses his brain, who's teamed up with a gorgeous, ass-kicking sidekick who mainly uses her muscles. In How To Train Your Dragon, the main character is a slender, nerdy boy who prevails using open-mindedness and ingenuity, whereas the female lead is a classic sword-wielding warrior. Or take Kickass - the male main character is a nerd who isn't that bright and gets his own ass kicked most of the time. It's the 11-year-old girl who gets to be the foul-mouthed killing machine.
It seems that the heroes of today are realistic people to whom real live men could conceivably relate, whereas the heroines are mainly aspirational. What can we conclude about the audience, from this? Honestly, I'm not quite sure. It is pretty interesting, however, that Harry Potter is so popular. He's about as realistic as can be. He's not terribly remarkable in his abilities, intellect, or moral qualities. His story and his past are remarkable, and by Muggle standards I suppose his being a wizard is fairly remarkable. But he's not that great of a wizard, and as a person, Harry is completely and utterly normal.
The only female protagonists I've described so far that have that same quality of being completely normal but having an amazing life are Bella and Buffy, both of which are very popular.
I have nothing satisfyingly conclusive to say at this point. If you've read this to the end, I salute you.