Why Do People Keep Saying We Need More Escapism?

[Carabas]

Your funny.so every sci-fi and fantasy movie and tv show that is "good" has had some kind of commentary or exploration that you speak of?

Can you give some examples of good sci-fi and fantasy films and shows that have no commentary whatsoever?

[Carabas]

The difference is that none of these are explicit in the issues they represent.

Looks at old school Star Trek, Avatar, Transmet...

Rereads comment.

Are you kidding? Those things are full of n your face social commentary and politics. Your first example had an actual Nazi planet and an episode about how a civil war between a group called Yankees and a group called Commies reduced a civilisation back to the stone age, and an interracial kiss!

[numberthirty]

Good or bad, it’s a cornerstone of science fiction.

Star Trek, Frankenstein, Blade Runner, 2001, 1984, Brave New World, The Left Hand of Darkness, Childhood’s End, Cat’s Cradle, X-Men, The Matrix, Ender’s Game, Gravity’s Rainbow, The Road, Cloud Atlas, Avatar, Dhalgren, Transmetropolitan, Westworld etc. — I could go on forever.

All of these touch on social/political issues like class disparity, gender roles, oppressive governments, religious/partisan extremism, racism, war, climate change, conservation and blah blah blah

The difference is that none of these are explicit in the issues they represent. The allegories and metaphors are broad enough that anybody can imagine whatever they want as a stand-in for what they feel it would be. Or not at all if they just want to enjoy it as pure escapism.

Going to have to politely disagree there.

Magneto's past has never not been absolutely central to who his character is. I cannot see any way that you could set it aside in an attempt to create a purely escapist work.

[Red Robe Jaldari]

Because we don’t read comic books for things we see outside or read about in the news.

If we count indies you don't feel everyone has more than enough product to read in both the escapist and not escapist niches?

[Starter Set]

I guess some people want fiction without any form of realism, satire, social/political commentary, or philosophical exploration

Actually lot of people enjoy that simple form of entertainment.

Hollywood has made billions and billions out of it.

And personally i sure as hell doesn't watch movies like Avengers for how realist they are or because they propose such a deep analysis of the human psyche.

[Agent Z]

Actually lot of people enjoy that simple form of entertainment.

Hollywood has made billions and billions out of it.

And personally i sure as hell doesn't watch movies like Avengers for how realist they are or because they propose such a deep analysis of the human psyche.

There's no such thing as apolitical fiction and Avengers is no exception.

[Starter Set]

There's no such thing as apolitical fiction and Avengers is no exception.

We were more talking about what people are looking for in some movies than what were the intentions of the writers actually.

But i do agree with you yes, there is always an angle, it's inevitable. You can't write a completely neutral story.

Now, what the people are going to take from that is a very different story.

[Duskman]

I frequently see this phrase or variations of it popping up online. " We need more escapism in our fiction " and stuff like that. I often find myself rather confused by this statement as it seems to me we aren't lacking escapism at all. Disney alone provides enough escapism to last us til the end of the human race. So what is this lack of escapism people are complaining about?

Because life is a sad, fucking, painful, agonizing grind from the womb to the grave. All these people want is something to lift their spirits so they don't kill themselves today. Being reminded of horrible things like entire populations dying of starvation, people being thrown off buildings for their sexual preferences, people getting butchered in war, broken marriages, being one missed paycheck away from homelessness, chronic health problems, child abuse, elderly abuse, slavery still existing, bad politicians, climate change leading to civilization-wide suffering, markets collapsing or screwing people, drug crime, gang violence, etc.

Some people would prefer their fiction not shove in their face every terrible thing they have to hear about all day, every day, from the news and co-workers and family members talking about it.

Joe Schmoe works ten hours a day at the number factory, overqualified and underpaid. He comes home, back aching, has a fight with his wife, and the damn kids won't stop running around the house screaming, and after spending almost all of his off time between work and sleep dealing with home problems, he gets about ten minutes of free time on the toilet to play some Angry Birds. So he opens the app, but before he can actually play the game, he has to watch a video add about how there are starving children in Africa, and won't you give some of the money you have to help the needy? And as he watches the bone-thin dying children images scroll across the screen and he thinks about how he's so far in debt just keeping a roof over his family's head and his car just barely functional enough to go to work, he wonders what its all for.

He thinks of the gun in his bedside table drawer. He thinks about how the clip is in the second drawer, but how he's not actually sure if he emptied the chamber. There might still be a live round in the gun. Maybe he'll check by picking it up and putting it to his temple and pulling the trigger.

As his poo hits the toilet water, the timeline splits into two possibilities:

1) He plays Angry Birds, and has a few minutes of catharsis murdering digital pigs by using birds as projectiles. This calms his nerves, so he wipes his ass, goes to bed, and starts over the next day.

2) He plays Angry Birds, but now the pigs are dressed up to look like Trump. This reminds him of the ten thousand news reports and all his co-workers prophesying the end of the world, now that Trump is in office. He gets off the toilet, grabs the gun, and sees his wife sleeping. He decides to test his theory on her. Turns out, the gun was empty, because he's not completely a failure at everything, believe it or not, and he was smart enough to empty the chamber.

By this point, his butt feels itchy, so he wipes himself with the pillowcase and throws it at his wife. Before she fully wakes up and registers what has happened, he's already out the door and driving to the bar to drink himself to death, or drive off a cliff. He then remembers he has no money for beer, and he lives in Kansas, where there are no cliffs. He sighs, turns back around, and catches more hell form his wife, whose kicked him out. He sleeps in his car in the driveway because he has no friends, and his wife didn't even give him the pillow to go with the poo-streaked pillowcase, so new he's going to wake up with neck cramps in a car that smells like poo.

...

I forgot where I was going with this.

I think the point is that life sucks, and people use fiction to escape that, and are getting increasingly hypersensitive to seeing things they don't like.

The lesson here is don't play Angry Birds, it promotes speciesism and Star Wars, and Star Wars apparently sucks now because of diversity. Always wipe thoroughly after watching Star Wars and don't forget the calmoseptine.

[Duskman]

In all honesty, though, there is so much fiction in existence now that if the politics are bothering you, go back and watch the backlog of stuff you missed. You've got fifty years of Marvel Comics to read prior to the "SJW"-ization of their titles. You're bound to find a few dozen runs that blow the current stuff out of the water, and should whet the appetite until the current trend passes.

[JasonTodd428]

There must be a very limited amount of media that some of you can enjoy then if your wishing to completely avoid anything that even touches on social commentary and the like because you don't want those things in your escapist media of choice. (And I'm using the general you and not calling out anyone in particular here. Just to clarify.) That stuff is in everything in some manner or another. Even if it's inserted there by way of allegory or some other literary device it's still present even if it's in a more benign manner so in all honesty there's really no escape from it. Just because something is labeled as "fantasy or science fiction" doesn't mean there's no social commentary going on in them. At least that's my opinion anyway.

[Duskman]

Most drama is tied into social interactions, and those form the basis of societal standards and problems, so by extension, most fiction has some reflection of the societal issues inherent at the time. Ergo, social commentary is really hard to avoid, especially in "simpler" stories that presume things about the viewer's standards.

[williamtheday]

Same reason Grandpa didn't want to see The Killer Werewolf and Vampires Of Blood Alley; who needs to see everyday people doing everyday things? (The Munsters--Lily the model)

[Powerboy]

Because life is a sad, fucking, painful, agonizing grind from the womb to the grave. All these people want is something to lift their spirits so they don't kill themselves today. Being reminded of horrible things like entire populations dying of starvation, people being thrown off buildings for their sexual preferences, people getting butchered in war, broken marriages, being one missed paycheck away from homelessness, chronic health problems, child abuse, elderly abuse, slavery still existing, bad politicians, climate change leading to civilization-wide suffering, markets collapsing or screwing people, drug crime, gang violence, etc.

Some people would prefer their fiction not shove in their face every terrible thing they have to hear about all day, every day, from the news and co-workers and family members talking about it.

Joe Schmoe works ten hours a day at the number factory, overqualified and underpaid. He comes home, back aching, has a fight with his wife, and the damn kids won't stop running around the house screaming, and after spending almost all of his off time between work and sleep dealing with home problems, he gets about ten minutes of free time on the toilet to play some Angry Birds. So he opens the app, but before he can actually play the game, he has to watch a video add about how there are starving children in Africa, and won't you give some of the money you have to help the needy? And as he watches the bone-thin dying children images scroll across the screen and he thinks about how he's so far in debt just keeping a roof over his family's head and his car just barely functional enough to go to work, he wonders what its all for.

He thinks of the gun in his bedside table drawer. He thinks about how the clip is in the second drawer, but how he's not actually sure if he emptied the chamber. There might still be a live round in the gun. Maybe he'll check by picking it up and putting it to his temple and pulling the trigger.

As his poo hits the toilet water, the timeline splits into two possibilities:

1) He plays Angry Birds, and has a few minutes of catharsis murdering digital pigs by using birds as projectiles. This calms his nerves, so he wipes his ass, goes to bed, and starts over the next day.

2) He plays Angry Birds, but now the pigs are dressed up to look like Trump. This reminds him of the ten thousand news reports and all his co-workers prophesying the end of the world, now that Trump is in office. He gets off the toilet, grabs the gun, and sees his wife sleeping. He decides to test his theory on her. Turns out, the gun was empty, because he's not completely a failure at everything, believe it or not, and he was smart enough to empty the chamber.

By this point, his butt feels itchy, so he wipes himself with the pillowcase and throws it at his wife. Before she fully wakes up and registers what has happened, he's already out the door and driving to the bar to drink himself to death, or drive off a cliff. He then remembers he has no money for beer, and he lives in Kansas, where there are no cliffs. He sighs, turns back around, and catches more hell form his wife, whose kicked him out. He sleeps in his car in the driveway because he has no friends, and his wife didn't even give him the pillow to go with the poo-streaked pillowcase, so new he's going to wake up with neck cramps in a car that smells like poo.

...

I forgot where I was going with this.

I think the point is that life sucks, and people use fiction to escape that, and are getting increasingly hypersensitive to seeing things they don't like.

The lesson here is don't play Angry Birds, it promotes speciesism and Star Wars, and Star Wars apparently sucks now because of diversity. Always wipe thoroughly after watching Star Wars and don't forget the calmoseptine.

There was something Joss Whedon once said to explain why he did the last two seasons of Buffy the way he did and why the ratings failed so badly: "I don't give people what they want but what they need."

The late Harlan Ellison said something similar about how people are wasting their time watching Star Wars and similar things when thjey could be watching Shakespeare.

But in both cases, I think the irony is that most people know how bad real life can get. Even if everything seems okay, you could suddenly find out you have some horrible terminal disease or what have you. They already know these things and most people's definition of fun and entertainment is NOT dwelling on them. I gave the example once of "Million Dollar Baby", a fantastic movie I saw because it was advertised as a female Rocky but turned out to involve horrible human suffering. I can almost guarantee you I will never watch it again and would never have watched it to begin with had I known what it was going to be. As I said, great movie but I have no desire to watch someone, even within the context of fiction, suffer like that and call it entertainment.

Right now, in addition to current superhero shows, the shows I'm watching are DVDs of the Six Million Dollar Man, the Bionic Woman, the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman and Bewitched. Why? Among other reasons, they are from an era when shows had a touch of drama but they were mostly just striving to be entertaining. And yes, I've read tons of Shakespeare and other works that people have mentioned but that's not what I want every single day.

[Powerboy]

Most drama is tied into social interactions, and those form the basis of societal standards and problems, so by extension, most fiction has some reflection of the societal issues inherent at the time. Ergo, social commentary is really hard to avoid, especially in "simpler" stories that presume things about the viewer's standards.

There are also stories that include social commentary because it's impossible to not have a point of view. Even striving to not present a point of view is a point of view. But some do it only if it emerges naturally from the story while, with other stories, the social commentary is first and the whole point of the story. Neither is bad. I loved "All in the Family" growing up as it made me aware of so many things. I loved the original Star Trek with it's heavy-handed commentaries which ironically I knew many people who were oblivious that there even was a social commentary there.

Anyway, most people I've heard talk about it, it has little if anything to do with socio-political commentary. It has more to do with not considering stories about horrible things happening to people in a highly realistic way to be entertaining. That's the evening news, not entertainment shows for a lot of people. Bad things happening in a highly unrealistic way or very unrealistic setting [Arrow, the Flash, Supergirl, Agents of Shield, even the Netflix MCU] is a very different situation than a totally realistic story about the Holocaust or "The Burning Bed", etc.

[Starter Set]

There was something Joss Whedon once said to explain why he did the last two seasons of Buffy the way he did and why the ratings failed so badly: "I don't give people what they want but what they need."

That sounds so pretentious.

And a really poor way to justify two pretty bad seasons.