'At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it.' (C. S. Lewis)
'The heart of a lyric for me has always been anchored in an experienced reality, whether it be Avedon's photo of Warhol's bullet-scarred chest or the sociopathic attitudes recorded in "Kicks" or "Street Hassle." So in answer to the question I am most often asked, "Are these incidents real?" Yes, he said, Yes Yes Yes' (Lou Reed)
I've been reflecting on the differences between so-called 'fantasy' and so-called 'reality' having watched The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug yesterday and while looking forward to the BBC4 tribute to Lou Reed tonight. Lou Reed, at his best, was trying to write the Great American Novel through music and, in line with above quote, might well have agreed with John Wain that the "writer's task ... was to lay bare the human heart." Reed achieved this end supremely with his desolatingly emotional song cycle Berlin.
Richard Purtill has an excellent discussion of this issue in the Introduction to his Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien:
'In his [Tolkien's] view, fantasy has three purposes: Recovery, Escape, and Consolation. By Recovery, he means a "regaining of a clear view . . . 'seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them'". Familiarity has dulled our sense of the wonder and mystery of things; fantasy restores it ...
By Escape, Tolkien means nothing especially original. We must define Escape as the turning of our thoughts and affections away from what is around us to something else--the past, the future, a secondary world. Tolkien's originality lies in defending Escape when so many have deprecated it. His reasons are several. First, the modern world is preeminently something desirable to escape from ...
A deeper reason for Escape, however, is the human longing to flee from our limitations. First is the hardness of life even at its best; but beyond this is our isolation from each other and from the living world around us. Finally, the great limit, Death, is something that men have tried to escape from in many fashions.
Here Tolkien's discussion of Escape merges into a discussion of the third use of fantasy. Consolation is secondarily the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires, such as the desire really to communicate with species other than our own. But primarily it centers on the happy ending, the "eucata-strophe", the "sudden joyous 'turn'". This Consolation arises from the denial of "universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of joy, joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief".'
Does The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug enable us to experience these three purposes of fantasy? Probably not. Its focus is mainly on escape. Peter Bradshaw, in his Guardian review, describes the film as 'a cheerfully exhilarating adventure tale, a supercharged Saturday morning picture ... something to set alongside the Indiana Jones films.' That it works in this way is, in part, because Peter Jackson focuses primarily on telling the story of The Hobbit rather than, as was the case with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, also giving equal time to telling the story of The Hobbit as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings. It is in the whole arc of the story (and in the story's significance as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings), however, that we come closest to Tolkien's understanding of the purposes of fantasy. As an enjoyable and gripping film in its own right, though, The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug works because it sticks with the 'huge propulsive energy' of its humorous and exciting source story and whooshes 'the heroes onwards towards their great goal' rather than engaging more widely in the significance of fantasy and the setting of The Hobbit in Tolkien's wider canon.
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Lou Reed - Berlin.
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