IS FANTASY LITERATURE NOTHING MORE THAN HOCUS-POCUS?
Recently one of my students asked me to comment on the tsunami of fantasy literature that has flooded the world. From authors such as C.S. Lewis’ s Narnia, J.R. Tolkien’s hobbits, J.K. Rowling’s witches and wizards, and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight vampires.
To begin with I really don’t have a lot of thoughts about Narnia, Hobbits, witches, wizards and vampires. My initial thought is that it is all silliness and foolishness. It seems ridiculous to have a dialogue with Lewis’s talking animals.
Fantasy is folly to me. Of all the things that could be learned in the world that are helpful, fantasy doesn’t fit into that category. I am not even much of a devotee of people like C.S. Lewis and the “Chronicles of Narnia,” and Tolkien and others that have some kind of remote Christian overturns. Just give me a good dose of reality.
You can forget the fantasy. I really can’t build my life on a fantasy. I have to build my life on reality. People have asked me through the years if I want to write novels. You know, why do I want to write fiction? Who needs fiction? I don’t want to write fiction. I don’t even like to juxtapose fiction with fact, or reality with non-reality because I think that’s confusing. So from that standpoint, just a common sense standpoint, it’s silly, it’s Superman at best.
Fantasy is anything that’s not real. Where you have certain elements of miracles and then you add the more serious matter, then you’re not dealing with a world of spirit, but you’re now in the fringe of the demonic realm. And I think that’s a very serious thing. I don’t think that’s helpful. I don’t think that that’s necessary.
You know, you could sit back and say that these fantasy authors are good writers, and very, very clever. You don’t sell millions and millions of books unless people like reading them. These authors are very talented writers and you could sit back in a critical way…I could read those things and appreciate art for art’s sake.
But I think for young children to be exposed to that kind of fantasy world, and to get lost in all of that, is really in a way to check out of reality. And the more and more people that check out of reality, the less and less likely we are to have an influence on their lives with the reality of the scriptures. And I don’t think people need to get caught up in it. Whether it’s Star Wars or any of that hocus-pocus stuff that deals with fantasy, I don’t think it’s helpful to people.
And I think particularly children and young people don’t need to think that there’s some mystical spirits moving around in the world. Even if Harry Potter in the end is a good guy. I think there is spiritual reality in the world and they ought to know what the spiritual reality is, forget the fantasy!
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