Sounds like a meme, doesn't it?
Actually it's a pretty interesting essay on modern fantasy by Michael Moorcock. Anyway, check it out, it talks about how
Lord of The Rings and
Watership Down are all essentially conservative, infantilized fantasies, and how they glorify and sentimentalize the "moderate" and glorify the "petit bourgeoisie, the honest artisans and peasants, as the bulwark against Chaos" because these people are usually the last to complain about social inequality.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Michael Moorcock
[Tolkien] claimed that his work was primarily linguistic in its original conception, that there were no symbols or allegories to be found in it, but his beliefs permeate the book as thoroughly as they do the books of Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis, who, consciously or unconsciously, promoted their orthodox Toryism in everything they wrote. While there is an argument for the reactionary nature of the books, they are certainly deeply conservative and strongly anti-urban, which is what leads some to associate them with a kind of Wagnerish hitlerism. I don't think these books are 'fascist', but they certainly don't exactly argue with the 18th century enlightened Toryism with which the English comfort themselves so frequently in these upsetting times. They don't ask any questions of white men in grey clothing who somehow have a handle on what's best for us.
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It gets a little British, and a little stodgy, and more than a little TL;DR by the end, but it's a pretty damn interesting read. It also has some nice gems like:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Michael Moorcock
I sometimes think that as Britain declines, dreaming of a sweeter past, entertaining few hopes for a finer future, her middle-classes turn increasingly to the fantasy of rural life and talking animals, the safety of the woods that are the pattern of the paper on the nursery room wall. Old hippies, housewives, civil servants, share in this wistful trance; eating nothing as dangerous or exotic as the lotus, but chewing instead on a form of mildly anaesthetic British cabbage. If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits.
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So check it out.
