Title: Fantasy
1Fantasy
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3Fantasy Two meanings
- Fantasy can be seen as a psychological phenomenon
- Fantasy can be seen as a form of literature
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5Fantasy 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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7Influences 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
8Related genres or subgenres
- Dark fantasy--------Horror
- Science fantasy--------Science fiction
- Superhero fantasy
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11Why 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.
12What attracts us to fantasy?
- Pure escapism
- Simplification, clarity of exposition
- Basic, primal themes and characters
- Invokes a sense of wonder
13- 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
14- 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
15Common 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
16Common 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.
17Development 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
18- 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
19- 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
20- Fantasy video games among the most popular,
especially in the role-playing genre - Dungeons and Dragons
- Final Fantasy
21Adaptive 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
22Two 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
23- 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
24Escapism
- Overproduction of unpleasant fantasies
- Boredom-avoidance
25Thematic 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
26Thematic 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
27Role 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
28Aesthetic 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.
29Harris
- 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.
30- 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.
31Immersion
- 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
32Responses to drama (Polichak and Gerrig)
- Inferences
- As if responses
- Problem-solving responses
- Replotting responses
- Evaluatory responses
33Social Responses
- Empathy
- Parasocial interaction
34Role 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
35Reduction 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
36- 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