The Fantasy Generation
Door Jam: July 20, 2024
The Door Jam is a place to squeeze in relevant articles written about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, their work, adaptations of their fantasy worlds, and other potentially interesting news, information, and articles. I’m not necessarily endorsing (or criticizing) any of these, merely sharing them with you.
Tolkien continues to dominate the cultural conversation, so our top story is more Tolkien-focused, though Lewis does make an appearance. We do have a couple of Lewis-centric articles, several on the upcoming Rings of Power, and some nerd news on mutants in the MCU and Doctor Who.
Top story
While Karen Swallow Prior is admittedly not a fantasy fan, she is an insightful literary professor and cultural analyzer. She writes in a piece at Religion News Service:
Now we are seeing the rise of the Fantasy Generation. This is the generation that came of age in the early 2000s amid the “Lord of the Rings” film franchise based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien. As a result of the fan culture made possible by the parallel rise of the internet, Tolkien’s epic story in all its forms and deliveries — print, e-book, audio book, cable, streaming and endless memes — is omnipresent. Tolkien is now considered the “father of fantasy,” and his imitators — good, poor and in between — are infinite.
In critiquing vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s take on Tolkien, Prior invokes Lewis and An Experiment in Criticism, which we just finished a series on.
Tolkien’s good friend C.S. Lewis famously cautioned against manipulative readings like those used to advance partisan politics. In “An Experiment in Criticism,” Lewis says that “unliterary” approaches to reading tend toward “using” rather than “receiving” literary texts. To use literature rather than receive it is to read it badly.
There is a worse outcome than misunderstanding Tolkien’s work and his attitude toward power, however. You can disagree, as some Christian Nationalists have, essentially advocating to use the ring instead of destroying it.
