Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes: How Myth and Religion Shape Fantasy Culture

Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Ahmanson Foundation Endowment Fund in Humanities.

Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes

How Myth and Religion Shape Fantasy Culture

Douglas E. Cowan

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2019 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cowan, Douglas E., author.

Title: Magic, monsters, and make-believe heroes : how myth and imagination shape fantasy culture / Douglas E. Cowan.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2018031120 (print) | LCCN 2018032825 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520967274 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520293984 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520293991 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Fantasy films. | Fantasy games. | Fantasy.

Classification: LCC PN1995.9.F36 (ebook) | LCC PN1995.9.F36 C69 2019 (print) | DDC 791.436/15—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031120

Manufactured in the United States of America

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For Joie, as always,

princess and warrior-heroine . . .

Fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

Contents

Preface

1. Here Be Dragons

2. Once Upon a Time . . .

3. Imagining Magic

4. Between Puer Aeternus and Vitam Aeternam

5. The Mythic Hero: East

6. The Mythic Hero: West

7. Imagining the Warrior-Heroine

8. The Stuff of Legends

9. . . . Happily Ever After?

Mediography

Bibliography

Index

Preface

When I was growing up, my parents often accused me of living more in my imagination than in the real world. And I’m not sure they were wrong. My nose always stuck in a book, my head in the clouds, as it were, I fought monsters, cast magic spells, flew spaceships, and saved the day in every story. Well, almost every story. Take, for example, my first attempt at being a superhero. It was—as it was, I imagine, for many others—short-lived. I was about five years old, and my growing comic book collection had convinced me that I understood exactly how Superman could fly. I knew that it wasn’t a feat of strength. Sure, in the early 1960s, Superman was lean and toned, but at that time he lacked the hyperbolic, indeed, comic musculature that came to mark so many other entries into the superhero genre. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Batfleck.) And even then I knew it wasn’t what would be described decades later as the energy storage capacity of Kryptonian skin cells. I’m with Leonard Hofstadter on that one. I mean, really, are you even listening to yourself? No, it wasn’t Earth’s lower gravity compared to Krypton, or its yellow sun, or any of the other theories that have been proposed to account for this extraordinary ability.

It was his cape.

At that age, I wasn’t about to let the fact that other superheroes had capes but didn’t fly spoil my fun. I didn’t think that the color made a difference, but fortunately I had a red beach towel, so color was a moot point. There was a large rock in our front yard that, though not as tall as a building, would do for a proof-of-concept test. It was just slightly bigger than me, and initial attempts to leap it had been unsuccessful. Satisfied with my plan, I tied my red beach towel around my neck, scrambled up the rock, and looked down from what appeared to my five-year-old self its towering height. Preparing for flight, already imagining myself soaring through the air, I repeated the mantra that introduced the Man of Steel every week on Adventures of Superman: It’s a bird . . . It’s a plane . . . It’s Super—

"Douglas Edward Cowan, you get down from there RIGHT NOW!"

Alas.

My wings may have been clipped that day, my cape confiscated, but I can’t imagine my life, then or since, without stories of people who fly, who command dragons and fight monsters, who pilot spaceships, or who do any of the innumerable things our mythic imagination sets before them. I still remember, just barely into my teens, reading John Norman’s sword-and-sorcery science fantasy Assassin of Gor (1970) and weeping as the heroic racing tarn, Green Ubar, died in the arms of his rider, the mysterious Melipolus of Cos. At university, years later, when I should have been studying for tests or writing papers, I went, night after night, to the Odeon Twin and watched Star Wars again and again. To this day, when the Imperial star destroyer first drops into the frame, accompanied by John Williams’s magnificent score, the same thrill I felt so many years ago runs up my spine, and I just . . . smile. Stories have always been a part of my life. Indeed, as Stephen King says in On Writing, Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around (2000, 101). In many ways, this book is something of a love letter to the stories with which I grew up—or, if you prefer, on which I was raised—the stories that were, and continue to be, a significant part of my life-support system.

There are only two plots in all of literature, novelist and critic John Gardner is reputed to have said. A person goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. No primary source exists for the quote, and various iterations of it have appeared in the decades since Gardner’s tragic death in 1982, but, in many ways, he’s not wrong. Neither is British journalist Christopher Booker, who insisted a generation later that seven basic plots box the compass of human storytelling: overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth (2004). Some critics complain that Booker’s massive tome reveals not so much why we tell stories as what stories we tend to tell, but he too makes his point. Whether the answer is two or seven or something else—and no matter what the genre or medium—the point is that the boundless constellation of stories we tell are held together by the gravity of similar concerns. Like the four simple nucleobases that combine to form DNA and yield the wondrous kaleidoscope of sameness that is us, however many basic plots and themes there are generate the vast multiverse of human storyworld creation.

This book is the fourth in a series I have written dealing with religion and various aspects of popular culture, though there is less that is explicitly about religion, per se, in this volume than in the others. With all the truly terrifying things in the world, for example, Sacred Terror (2008) asks why so many horror movies rely on religion to tell a scary story, while Sacred Space (2010) uses science fiction film and television to explore our conceptions of transcendent hope, our longing for a future bright with possibility and which is often framed in religious terms. America’s Dark Theologian (2018), on the other hand, takes an auteur approach and considers the religious imaginings of horror-meister Stephen King.

Following almost naturally from these, Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes takes the broad spectrum of fantasy film, television, and participative culture as evidence of our ongoing need for a mythic vision, that is, for larger frames of meaning into which we continually write ourselves and through which we often give our lives direction and purpose. Over time, of course, we elevate some of these storyworlds to the status of religion, often taking them out of the realm of fantasy—a man living in a great fish for three days or another flying from Mecca to Jerusalem on a winged horse—and relocating them uncomfortably in the realm of reality. The vast majority of the few simple plots we tell over and over, however, remain as they are: stories told because we love stories and cannot get enough of them. Although it’s easy to dismiss them as merely didactic, for example, fairy tales offer us much more than simplistic warnings about stranger danger and why we shouldn’t go into the forest at night. If this is all there was to them, there would be little need for gingerbread houses, wicked witches, and elaborate stories about princesses and poisoned apples. The statement don’t go into the woods, or bad things will happen ought to be enough. But it isn’t. It never is.

Why is fantasy important, then? Unlike literary novels or hard science fiction, why are we so eager to invest in storyworlds that, on the surface, can’t possibly be true? More than that, why do we continue to tell the same stories, over and over? To say, Well, Hollywood has run out of good ideas, so they just recycle old ones is no answer at all. It doesn’t explain why people crowd theaters to see impossibly long versions of The Hobbit or stand in line at bookstores for the latest Harry Potter novel. It doesn’t tell us why gamers—whether tabletop, video, or live action role-players—continually recreate essentially the same stories. And it doesn’t begin to explain why fantasy culture so closely resembles the stories much of humanity holds most sacred. That is, it doesn’t explain the mythic imagination, the principal means by which humans continually reconstruct and reinforce our place in the universe. Put simply, facts do not tell us who we are. Stories do. And we tend to tell the same stories not because popular culture has run out of good ideas but precisely because these stories are, in a word, fantastic.

Before we begin, I’d like to offer an important caveat about the examples I’ve chosen and the works I discuss. That is, they are invitational, not exhaustive; exemplary perhaps, but hardly comprehensive. They are meant to encourage readers to explore those aspects of fantasy culture that excite them—Pathfinder instead of Dungeons & Dragons, or the Marvel cinematic universe (about which an entire book could easily be written) as opposed to Asian martial arts films—rather than consider that my choices bound out other explorations. A common criticism of books about film and television is that authors fail to discuss the favorite pop-culture products of different readers. Why choose the Arthur cycle of films, for example, instead of exploring the same issues through, say, the sword-and-sandal series of Italian Hercules movies, of which nearly twenty were made between 1957 and 1965? Why not consider Westerns as a fantasy genre, or spy thrillers? Surely such storyworlds as the Jason Bourne series or Salt or The Long Kiss Goodnight or the gold standard, James Bond, are as much fantasy as The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones? The answer is simple: no single book can consider every tale ever told and every movie ever made, and readers are well advised to mistrust anyone who claims to have written the complete guide to anything.

That readers, viewers, and players respond differently to the diversity of popular culture available should be axiomatic. For tens of millions of people, James Cameron’s Titanic remains the apex of their cinema experience, their favorite movie ever. For me, it will never be anything more than three hours and fourteen minutes of my life that I’m never getting back, much of that time spent waiting for the damned boat to sink. Sorry, but that’s how I feel. It never spoke me in any way; its story never hooked me; its characters never engaged me. Certainly not in the way Ridley Scott’s Alien did when I saw it first in 1979, or Blade Runner three years later. When students ask if I have a favorite film, the choice is inevitably between those two. Like Sacred Terror, Sacred Space, and America’s Dark Theologian, my intent here is to invite more than to inventory, to suggest by example rather than insist on foreclosure. I hope that by following film critic Ado Kyrou’s sage advice that we learn to look at ‘bad’ films because they are often sublime (1963, 276), we come just a little closer to understanding why we tell the stories we do, and why we tell them over and over again.

The fact remains, though, that some readers will be disappointed not to see their favorite novels, movies, television series, or fantasy games represented (or mentioned only in passing). If that’s the case, I would like to point out a simple fact and make a simple offer. First, fantasy culture is so amazingly diverse and so popular (in recent years it has surpassed both science fiction and horror in literary sales and feature film production), that merely listing the titles of all the books, movies, and games available would likely exceed the length of this book. That said, I hope you take what you find here not as the end of the discussion, but the beginning. Certainly, I could have considered the ways in which The Wizard of Oz has been (re)imagined, rather than Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Not least in that wise would be John Boorman’s science fiction fantasy Zardoz (which is worth seeing if for nothing more than a ponytailed Sean Connery running around in a red Speedo). Second, instead of lamenting the exclusion of their favorites from this book, I encourage readers to apply such insights as they find to their own favorite aspects of fantasy culture, to see for themselves how they write their own ongoing story, and how those stories make their lives fantastic.

And, with that, let’s roll for initiative!

CHAPTER 1

Here Be Dragons

Tell me a story . . .

Myths and legends, heroic quests and epic sagas, fables, fairy tales, and bedtime tuck-ins—all start from these four simple words. Indeed, writes Frank McConnell, all the great narrative works of [humankind] begin with the demand from one primitive troglodyte to another, ‘Tell me a story’ (1975, 90). From our first attempts at narrative, which may have begun as early as a million years ago (Kearney 2002, 4), to the epic storytelling at the historical horizon and on to the most sophisticated forms of high fantasy television and modern shared-world fiction—that is, from Gilgamesh to Game of Thrones, from the cave paintings at Lascaux to live-action role-playing—we have been Homo narrans. The ones who tell stories. The ones who give texture and shape to our lives through the storyworlds we create and who, through story, order the scattered shards of our world into meaningful wholes. For decades, therapists have helped people resolve painful events and traumatic experiences through storytelling. Marketing companies and branding specialists work with clients to craft a compelling story for potential customers. Religious leaders begin weekly homilies with a story, engaging parishioners and connecting them with the day’s lessons. Storytelling affects our ability to recall things, often biasing our understanding with each retelling. And, perhaps most importantly, the more we tell a particular story, the more we come to believe the story we’re telling.

People think that stories are shaped by people, writes Terry Pratchett in Witches Abroad, the twelfth in his celebrated Discworld series. In fact, it’s the other way around (1991, 8).

Once upon a time . . .

It was a dark and stormy night . . .

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit . . .

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .

This is the Discworld . . .

All these are variations on a theme: the ubiquitous invitation to hear a story.

For many, it’s that singular moment in a movie theater when the last of the house lights go out. The ads are over, the trailers unreeled, and a second or two of almost total darkness engulfs the audience, an instant of silence in which anything can happen. Pupils dilate; hearing becomes more acute. Almost unconsciously, we settle back. Our seats become the log by the campfire for the evening’s round of ghost stories, the gathering of the clan to hear Granny Meg tell her tales o’ the auld country. In that moment, it is as though the entire theater closes in and whispers, Let me tell you a story.

Stories matter and matter deeply, McConnell continues, arguing that make-believe stories, whether literary, cinematic, or participatory, are still the best version of ‘self-help’ our civilization has invented (1979, 3; see also Boyd 2009; Gottschall 2012; Pinker 2009). That is, stories have always been far more than simply entertainment, and to dismiss them as such willfully ignores their deeper dimensions, their extraordinary power to shape human experience. Writing in the late 1970s, at the height of the first wave of human potential movements, McConnell beckons us back to the well of narrative from which humankind has drawn for millennia. Even at the most unredeemed level of ‘escapist’ entertainment, cheap novels or trash films, he concludes, the didactic force of storytelling is still present (McConnell 1979, 4).

Stories, however, are not simply didactic, not intended merely to impart a moral or a lesson. They are also participatory and transformative. We resonate with stories because we so often write ourselves into them, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. Commenting on the counterterrorism drama 24, which, for all its gritty realism, is as much a fantasy as anything else, philosopher Tom Morris points out, my wife comes into the room and laughs when she sees me standing five feet in front of the TV, poised on the balls of my feet, ready to spring into action and help Jack if he ever needs it (2008, xi). Full disclosure: when I was binge-watching all eight days of 24, I would often tell my wife, I have to go. Jack needs my help.

Whether through online fan fiction, elaborate cosplay, or dedicated accumulation of action figures, models, games, toys, and shared-world art and literature, millions of Trekkies around the world regularly write themselves into the science fiction franchise they love (Nygard 1999). Any number of Ringers, the Tolkien version of Star Trek fans, role-play their favorite characters and scenes from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (Cordova 2005). Begun in 1970 by a group of San Diego comic book enthusiasts, Comic-Con is now a bona fide cultural phenomenon, bringing together myriad aspects of science fiction and fantasy culture. Each year well over one hundred thousand people crowd the long, cavernous space of the San Diego convention center, many hundreds arriving in character as their favorite science fiction and fantasy heroes. Thousands of smaller conventions around the world attract fans equally devoted to the storyworlds they love and the stories in which their own lives find meaning.

Whether it’s a blockbuster movie watched through 3-D glasses or a YouTube clip on a mobile device; a network television show or amateur online video; a role-playing game: tabletop (RPG), live action (LARP), or massively multiplayer online (MMORPG); or a graphic novel, a multivolume epic, or a trading-card strategy game—and whether it’s the profound amusement of the Discworld or a fairy tale’s dark make-believe—fantasy culture invites us into storyworlds often manifestly different from our own, yet reflecting remarkably similar concerns and experiences. Fantasy culture draws us into realms and planes populated by imaginary creatures, bizarre settings, and story arcs that whisk us away from our normal lives in the most astonishing, improbable, and entertaining ways. Whether we enter through the back of a wardrobe, a hole in the ground, an unseen train platform, or the simple act of reading aloud, fantasies book us passage into what Tolkien calls the secondary world (1966, 33–99), the world of Faërie (not fairies), the worlds of mythic imagination that are separate but not distinct from the primary world of traffic jams, utility bills, and dental appointments.

From our species’ earliest mythic imaginings, these secondary worlds bring together three basic narrative elements. First, we glimpse some manner of what William James calls an unseen order ([1902] 1999, 61), a hidden realm lodged above, behind, or in between the ordinary spaces of the storyworld. Often, though not exclusively, the domain of supernatural forces, this is primarily the realm of mystery and magic. For the most part, these varied unseen orders remain the sole province of the storyworld, though, occasionally, their power evolves into religious belief and spiritual practice in the real world (see, for example, Cowan 2012; Possamai 2012). Next, we meet the cast of characters who brave these fantastic realms, both seen and unseen. Sometimes eager for the journey, other times setting out only reluctantly, intrepid heroes invite us to join them on their quest. Finally, alongside our heroes, we encounter various supernatural creatures, forces, and powers. Some try to be helpful (a White Rabbit to lead the way) while others are evil and treacherous (a Stoor Hobbit enchanted by a magic ring). Many are disturbingly ambiguous—a small boy appearing in flash of fairy dust—and some, simply put, are monsters. All of these elements, though, are essential to the evocative power of the fantasy storyworld, and if one is missing or drawn less vibrantly than the others, the entire narrative suffers for it. It loses some of its ability to conjure the world in our imaginations. For believable characters to exist, writes Mark Darrah, executive producer of the Dragon Age fantasy franchise, they need a believable world. This goes beyond the ground they stand on (in Gelinas and Thornborrow 2015, 9).

As the house lights dim, then, as the television warms up or the video game loads, as the first page is turned, consider just a few of the ways in which we create magic, monsters, and make-believe heroes, the sine qua nons of fantasy culture and the mythic imagination.

THIS IS NO GAME . . .: DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

NARRATOR

The empire of Izmir has long been a divided land. Ruled by the Mages, an elite group of magic-users, lowly commoners, those without magic, are little more than slaves. Izmir’s young empress, Savina, wishes equality and prosperity for all. But the evil Mage, Profion, has other intentions.

The opening narration ends, and, as we must, we find ourselves in a dungeon, with a dragon. Wooden capstans creak and grind, pulling heavy chains taut, as leather bellows huff and chuff in the background. Skeletal remains litter the floor. A bleached skull rests atop a sluice box, while the rush of water powers a complicated array of gears and arcane machinery. Dominating the center of the room, turning relentlessly on its axes, stands a large, bronze armillary sphere, its triple rings orbiting an ornate staff with a dark green stone cradled at one end.

Enter Profion, the evil Mage, his scarlet cloak billowing as he sweeps down the worn stone stairs like an eldritch diva. He speaks, and a spell not heard in a thousand generations echoes through the chamber. Once empty, the armillary void is suddenly filled . . . with dragons. Yes! At last! Profion hisses exultantly, gazing upward and clutching the staff, its gem now glowing with malevolent power.

Release him, the Mage commands.

Cringing minions struggle to raise a heavy portcullis. Hideous roars echo from the darkness, and all but Profion shrink in fear. The green dragon emerges, fierce and proud, enraged by captivity. It immolates the closest servants as they scatter in panic, but Profion does not waver. Come to me, the Mage orders, raising the staff high above his head. The huge beast takes two lumbering steps, its massive claws furrowing the granite flagstones. Bellowing in frustration, the dragon tries in vain to stretch its wings, unable to seek the freedom of the Feywild, yet powerless to kill the one who holds it in thrall. You have the power of the immortals, whispers Profion’s awestruck lieutenant. You can control dragons.

He can’t, of course, for dragons of any color only offer themselves in service willingly and for the moment, preferring death to enslavement at the hands of mere mortals.

Courtney Solomon’s 2000 film, Dungeons & Dragons, follows the basic gameplay of its source material, arguably the most popular fantasy role-playing game in the world. The opening narration is the Dungeon Master’s introduction to the adventure, setting the backstory and establishing the challenges the heroes must face. Here, they seek the near-legendary Rod of Savrille, an ancient artifact said to control red dragons, the most dangerous in the D&D storyworld (Mearls, Schubert, and Wyatt 2008, 74–85). It is this film’s version of the Death Star, its Ark of the Covenant, its One Ring, its Iron Throne, its Dark Crystal. And, at all costs, Profion must not gain the Rod, for with it he will entrench the power of the Mages and reinforce the apartheid of Izmiri society.

Like D&D players rolling up characters, a motley band of adventurers sets out to save the day. Indeed, anyone familiar with fantasy role-playing games will recognize the different races (human, dwarf, and elf) and character classes (rogue, wizard, and fighter). The tavern where the rag-tag company plans its mission could easily be the Inn of the Prancing Pony (The Lord of the Rings), the Mos Eisley cantina (Star Wars), or Ankh-Morpork’s pub, The Mended Drum (Discworld). Sundry guardsmen, villagers, thieves, and dungeon dwellers serve as non-player characters (NPCs)—story fodder for such story as there is. And, though the dragons are monstrous, Profion is the boss-monster, the final challenge, the hardest to kill, and faced only at the end of the journey. Indeed, this is a classic D&D campaign: rooms must be escaped and NPCs defeated; traps must be avoided or passed; lesser monsters vanquished; locks picked, puzzles solved, and treasure