not politics but morality

[calimac]

Brief discussion by Kate Elliott of class politics and fantasy and science fiction, via sartorias.

She quotes Lois Bujold as commenting that writers and readers of SF often use it to validate their political opinions.

They do that, and there's also a perception of the inverse of this: that to praise authors is to endorse the political views in their books.

And while that's not always true - there's plenty of liberals who like Heinlein, for instance - there's some truth in it. Readers gravitate towards authors whose aesthetics and world-view they find congenial, and since much of the intellectual content of SF is political, political views will be an important part of this.

What's a mistake is to extend that specific equation to fantasy. Most fantasy is not political in the narrow sense that a lot of SF is. But apparently a belief that it is so drives the continuing spleen of China Mieville against genre fantasy. He believes that enthusiastic reading of these stories is some kind of endorsement of feudalism and hereditary monarchy, and sputters with indignation over this.

But if SF writers are asking you to vote for their political systems, fantasy writers aren't. What I'm endorsing when I read Tolkien is not his politics, but his morality. The key statements in The Lord of the Rings are not assumptions of Aragorn's inevitable kingship - which are in any case undercut by the fact that it's not inevitable, he has to earn it - but by declarations of moral principle, primarily that right and wrong are constant values, and may be used to decide on courses of action even in unprecedented or fluctuating circumstances. That outweighs any question of whether you're in a feudal, monarchial, or democratic society when you face those decisions.

Comments

[ellen-denham.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree with you, however, I think China Mieville has a point when you look at some popular fantasy series that have tried to imitate Tolkien without really understanding what he was doing. But where I see some of the worst pulp fantasy fail ideologically, among other things, isn't so much because of political systems but because of treatment of race.

My sister, on the left end of the political spectrum like myself, resisted reading Tolkien for years. I think this was because things she assumed would be there, like a cartoonish notion of absolute good and evil, elves are all good and orcs are all bad, etc. offended her. Once she read LotR, she actually liked it. Tolkien is so much more complex, subtle, and nuanced than many lesser fantasists.

One way I judge both fantasy and science fiction is how the authors handle the creation of new races and cultures. I feel that if you're going to bother to create a new race of intelligent beings, whether this be dwarves, three-armed aliens, or whatever, you as the author should treat them with the same respect and dignity you would treat other human races. It's cheating to create a race just as comic relief or just to be the stereotypical "bad guys." I don't like racism in "real life" and I don't care for it in my reading material.

My views on this are probably more progressive than Tolkien's. However, he passes the test for me. Tolkien's orcs are sometimes funny, and not terribly nice, but they're very human. His elves may look pretty perfect on the surface but you've only got to dig a little bit to see their flaws.

One of the many failures of Peter Jackson's films was to reduce Gimli to mostly a comic relief role. On behalf of dwarves everywhere, a noble people with a rich history, I was offended.

One of the many successes of Tolkien's books is that they can be enjoyed by people at opposite ends of political and religious spectra.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Mieville's point appears to be that lovers of these trash fantasies are really longing for monarchy and feudalism, etc., the way that a lot of SF readers advocate the political systems in their favorite books. But that's absurd, so he doesn't have that point at all.

Were his point that trash fantasy is lousy, I'd agree with him; but that's a trivial observation (Sturgeon's Law applies), and diagnosis of its ills has been made much more subtly and meaningfully by fantasy critics who, unlike Mieville, neither blame Tolkien for the sins of his imitators, nor lump him in with them.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree with you about the complexity of Tolkien's creation. I liked the variety we see in the orcs -- the Mordor orc are more grubby-minded, whilst the Uruk-hai of Isengard ... well, they're like the nobility of orc. Wouldn't want to meet them or be them, but they are different

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what Tolkien's real-life politics actually were (although I could easily imagine him consistently voting Tory, at least from the '40s onward), but I do greatly admire his reply to a politically-charged question from a prospective German publisher.

(I'm certain that you're well aware of this matter; but I enjoy having the opportunity to cite it.)

[ellen-denham.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a great quote from Tolkien!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a good one.

As you guess, Tolkien was a Tory, who considered that the acquisition of democratic rights only brought about universal bigheadedness and pride. A little humility before God, he thought, would do us all some good; consequently he was no fascist.

But here his politics merges with his morality, and his reflexive anti-racism is, I think, a moral response rather than a political one, if they can be separated.