Fantasy

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Fantasy
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Fantasy Two meanings

• Fantasy can be seen as a psychological phenomenon
• Fantasy can be seen as a form of literature

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Fantasy literature

• Fantasy literature (and film, TV, etc.) presents
  the audience with a world, characters, events or
  circumstances that are either impossible or so
  unlikely that any reasonable person would not
  believe that they either had previously happened
  or are likely to happen in the historical world

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Influences on fantasy

• Fairy stories are sources of much of the content
  found in contemporary fantasy
• Elves, dwarves, dragons, witches, etc.
• Classic myths have often inspired the plotlines
  as well as contributing characters to the fantasy
  genre
• Heros, quests, fairy stories, Greek myths,
  conflicts between good and evil

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Related genres or subgenres

• Dark fantasy--------Horror
• Science fantasy--------Science fiction
• Superhero fantasy

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Why do we like them?

• One argument is that we enjoy pure escapism
• Simply being immersed in a fantasy land with
  mystical or nonhuman characters is said to be
  enjoyable in and of itself
• Questionable
• Another argument is that by taking control over
  the environment the author can simplify the
  conflicts, provide clear characterization that is
  not muddied by experience, etc.

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What attracts us to fantasy?

• Pure escapism
• Simplification, clarity of exposition
• Basic, primal themes and characters
• Invokes a sense of wonder

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• A third explanation is that these timeless
  stories are that way because they touch something
  basic and primal in the human psyche
• Freuds views on the conflicts involved in
  maturation, the id, the ego, the superego
• Jungs archetypes as collective unconscious

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• A fourth explanation is that they invoke in us a
  sense of wonder
• The sense that has declined in the face of
  secularization, science
• The same need for a sense of wonder that sparked
  the religious revival of the 1970s and 1980s

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Common features

• Magic/mysticism
• Monsters
• Non-human characters
• Often taken from Nordic mythology
• Classic sexist stereotyping
• Recent moves toward less stereotyped portrayals
• Human heroes
• Knights, kings, common men pressed into service

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Common features

• Stereotypic character roles
• Hero, helper, princess, witch, evil knight, etc.
• Quests
• The Holy Grail, the Golden Fleece, Destruction of
  the Ring, Recovery of the Lost Ark, The getting
  of wisdom, Destruction of the Minotaur
• Cataclysmic confrontation between good and evil
• Battle for Middle Earth, War for Narnia, etc.

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Development of fantasy

• The folk (fairy) stories of Germany, etc. were
  handed down through the ages
• The Brothers Grimm
• Hans Christian Anderson
• Childrens fantasy stories
• Developed and became popular during the 1800s
• A few fantasy stories aimed at adults, but the
  genre considered to be lower quality than
  traditional drama writing
• Alice in Wonderland

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• Science fiction became a significant subgenre in
  late 1800s with H.G. Wells and Jules Verne
• At the beginning of the 20th Century, lost
  world fantasies were developed and became
  popular, making adult fantasy a recognized genre
• Horror films became popular in the 1930s and
  beyond
• The high fantasy works of C.S. Lewis and J. R.
  R. Tolkien raised fantasy to a high literary
  standard and increased its popularity

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• 1950s science fiction films and TV shows enhanced
  the popularity of fantasy with wide audiences
• Continuing but rather cult-status interest in
  fantasy until Star Trek franchise and then Star
  Wars film series
• Expanded interest in fantasy, especially with
  J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter series

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• Fantasy video games among the most popular,
  especially in the role-playing genre
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Final Fantasy

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Adaptive functions of fantasy and imagination

• May enhance self-knowledge and self-understanding
  by helping individuals to clarify their thoughts
  and to stay in touch with their needs and
  feelings
• Promote decision making by allowing one to spell
  out anticipated consequences of ones choices
• Regulate moods and emotions, and relieve
  tensionfor example, by allowing individuals to
  relive the positive or negative emotions
  associated with previous experiences

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Two types of thinking

• Paradigmatic and narrative thinking are
  complementary
• Paradigmatic thinking involves logical and
  verbal thinking and its object is to test for
  empirical truth
• Good argument, tight analysis, falsifiable
  empirical discovery
• Narrative thinking entails storylike, imagistic
  thinking, and its object is not truth but
  verisimilitude or lifelikeness

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• Narrative thinking seeks good stories, gripping
  drama, and believable (though not necessarily
  true) historical accounts
• Fantasy and imagination play an essential role
  in narrative thinking

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Escapism

• Overproduction of unpleasant fantasies
• Boredom-avoidance

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Thematic Correspondence Hypothesis

• People choose content based on their fantasies
• Those with violent fantasies tend to watch
  violent content
• However, reverse causation is indicated
• May be reciprocal

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Thematic Compensation Hypothesis

• people select entertainment themes that reflect
  those types of fantasies that they cannot produce
  themselves
• Erotica
• Freudian argument that fantasies reflect
  unsatisfied wishes
• Evidence to date does not supportpeople watch
  content they tend to fantasize about

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Role of fantasy and imagination during media
exposure

• Very little research carried out on this
• Must draw from related disciplines
• Emotional involvement in fantasy worlds runs
  counter to prior emotion theory
• Emotions were thought to be tied to a feeling
  that what one was witnessing was realthe more
  real, the more powerful the emotional response

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Aesthetic emotion

• According to Frijda (1989), viewers experience
  aesthetic emotions because they regard the events
  in films as true events in an imaginary world.
  Viewers do not perceive the occurrence of these
  events as unreal they just discount any proof in
  the film that point to it being unreal.

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Harris

• Two ways of watching a movie (TV show, etc.)
• In default mode, the viewers do not employ
  their knowledge of the reality status of the
  movie to suppress their emotions
• They are aware the movie is unreal, they just
  dont take it into account
• In the second way in which viewers consume
  fictional entertainment, they do use their
  knowledge of the reality status of the movie.
• They do so either because the movie challenges
  their suspension of disbelief or because of the
  shocking character of what they seethey protect
  themselves by remembering the fictional nature of
  the events, etc.

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• When viewers consume fiction in the default
  mode, that is, escorted by emotions, they rely on
  their experiential system of information
  processing. The experiential system involves
  rapid, automatic processing, is
  pleasure-oriented, emotionally driven, and
  characterized by a primacy of affective
  reactions.

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Immersion

• Transportation
• Diegetic effect
• Presence
• The viewer/consumers mental system becomes
  focused on the events occurring in an imaginary
  world while the real-world events are suppressed,
  the viewer witnesses the imaginary events and
  these drive the viewers emotional system, and
  the force of the effect is derived from our
  capacity for imagination

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Responses to drama (Polichak and Gerrig)

• Inferences
• As if responses
• Problem-solving responses
• Replotting responses
• Evaluatory responses

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Social Responses

• Empathy
• Parasocial interaction

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Role of fantasy and imagination after exposure

• Stimulation
• It appears that media content can stimulate
  certain forms of fantasy
• The evidence does not seem to demonstrate that
  imagination is enhanced by audiovisual
  stimulation
• Scholars appear to assume that books, etc.
  stimulate imagination

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Reduction hypotheses

• Visualization hypothesis
• By providing ready-made video and audio, the
  stimulation of imagination (among kids) is
  reduced
• The evidence is mixed
• Rapid-pacing hypothesis
• Little time to evaluate, think over content
• Evidence is inconclusive

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• Passivity hypothesis
• Television generates a passive, let you
  entertain me attitude that suppresses
  imagination
• Again, evidence lacking and other
  let-you-entertain-me situations are not
  included (plays, listening to books being read,
  etc.)
• Arousal hypothesis
• Arousal leads to hyperactivity, impulsive
  behavior
• Some evidence in the case of violent programming,
  but limited understanding of the mechanism