Let me start off by saying that I do not quibble that I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else, and that this is definitely something I am going to keep in mind for all my post-Darkwoods fantasy books.
So, I was musing to myself on the classic comment that all fantasy books post-Tolkien all take some tropes, inspirations, or something similar from Tolkien's work. (To which I say--no kidding. Tolkien defines the fantasy genre. That's what happens when you're the first popular writer of a new genre.) As I was musing about it, though, I realized that there's one very important trope/concept/archetype/whatever that... well, that it seems like no one has picked up.
(Since writing that last sentence, I finished reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and I realized that book did have this trope.)
To illustrate my point, allow me to mention the two main characters in Lord of the Rings, that being Frodo and Aragorn. Both of them are, in different ways, a type of "chosen one" character. Frodo is "chosen" to carry the Ring because of fate, while Aragorn is "chosen" to be the new king because he was born to be the king.
Mostly, though, think about the end result of their choosing: for Frodo, the end result is to get rid of his choosing and go back to normal (at least as much as possible). Aragron, in sharp contrast, ended up keeping his choosing, and staying as king until he died.
These are two different types of heroes, different types of "chosen" heroes, and they have a different purpose for their choosing. Aragorn needs to rise from obscurity to become king, but Frodo is pulled from being normal and just wants to go back to being normal. (He never does go back to being fully normal, but for him, that's part of the tragedy.)
Now, ask yourself this - which one of these "chosen" type of heroes do you see most frequently represented in modern fantasy writing?
I see the Aragorn one represented a lot. But the Frodo one? The one who wants to lay that choosing down, put it aside, and go back to a humble life? The closest I can think of is Mrs. Frisby, arguably Harry Potter, and Redwall heroes.
Contrast that, if you will, with the Chronicles of Prydain (which I have not read, so there might be a Frodo character in there somewhere that I'm oblivious to), that ends with the main character being crowned High King (is that really a spoiler? The last book in the series is The High King). There is also this series about Maerad and her brother, which I found slightly irritating because it's all about how the main characters are so super much more than their fantastical comrades. (It wasn't enough to just leave the meaninglessness of their pre-fantasy life behind and join the fantasy world - oh no, they had to be superior even for the fantasy world. I know Harry Potter kind of did the same thing, but it wasn't nearly as irritating or in-your-face in that series.) At the end of that one, the characters do lose their super special powers, but Maerad "mourns" the loss of those powers. Even the Percy Jackson and the Olympian series, when the first prophecy about Percy ends, the closing immediately finishes with a new prophecy. I know the point of that was to foreshadow the next series, but a side effect was to take away from the "done-ness" of Percy's prophetic role in the story. (And oh look, he was part of the next prophecy, too. I didn't finish that series because of the number of love triangles in it, so I have no idea how that one ended.)
Then there was that 2020 Mulan travesty, where the entire problem (as said by many people I'm not linking to because I don't like linking to articles with swearing in them), was that she was born special with qi, and not that she had to learn and work her way up. I remember seeing all the furious reviews and wondering if I was the only one who wasn't especially surprised by that, because it seemed like a natural culmination of where I thought the fantasy genre had been going. I can't remember anyone else saying this, but thinking about Mulan in a fantasy context makes Mulan yet another "chosen one" character (and this is an example of exactly how bad a "chosen one" hero can be).
There are even more that I can think of for this as one gets into realms of fantasy meant for an older audience.
The point of all this is that the kingly heroism of Aragorn has been kept, but the simple heroism of Frodo has sort of been lost. When you have a glut of Aragorn heroes, fantasy becomes a bit too egotistical. To some extent, it's going to be egotistical because part of the point of fantasy is that it's supposed to make the reader feel more powerful than the circumstances they're trapped in. It's supposed to help your courage and your imagination. It's supposed to help you push on when it feels like things are crushing you down. It's supposed to make you feel stronger. But at the same time, this long list of Aragorn-style heroes and a dearth of Frodo-style heroes is, in my view, having some negative effects for the genre. Aragorn is no good if there is no Frodo. In reality, some heroes are Aragorn and some heroes are Frodo - not everyone can be Aragorn, and that's fine. The fantasy genre needs to revere the Frodo heroes as much as the Aragorn heroes.
Myself included.
I started this post a while ago, but I decided to finish it now because of this bit of news that has me extremely apprehensive: Netflix has bought the rights to Redwall, and they're making a movie and a TV series about it.
What. Could possibly. Go wrong.
Among my many concerns (not least of which my lack of faith in Netflix's ability to tell the difference between ideologies and motifs), I'm not so sure that the Redwall goals of simplicity, peace, and normalcy are going to be adapted well into Netflix's series. That sort of goal just isn't used in modern fantasy these days. Modern fantasy (at least in the last several years) has been a pretty serious ego trip, and that's just not what Redwall was.
Feel free to debate me on this one, because I'm sure I'm being unfair to a lot of fantasy books out there. (Not the Pellinor one, but others.) But it's just something I've noticed and something that has been bothering me. And now with this new Netflix movie and series in the making... I'm nervous.
No comments:
Post a Comment