Is the Fantasy genre mainstream?

[Umbran]

Another way to put it is, it's easy to listen to a 70s Rock radio station and think, "Man, they really made good music back then. Everything is awesome!" if you don't think about the fact that they're not playing all the crap that was made back then.

Yes, that is a good way of putting it. The crap of the past has been somewhat filtered out by economics. If nobody buys it ('cause it's crap), then it goes out of print.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Before there was "fantasy literature", there were Jack tales. Lots and lots of tales about Jack, and the fantastical things he got into. Jack and the Beanstalk barely scrapes the surface. Not to long ago, an elderly man died in Kentucky, the last of a long line of story tellers that goes well back into "the old country". I think this tradition even got referenced by one of the characters in "American Gods".

I remember reading a collection of those tales in grade school, put down more or less as it was told by the story tellers. Story telling is always coming into style or going out of style. The fantastical has always been a big part of story telling.

Tell me how mainstream story telling is right now, and I'll tell you how mainstream fantasy is.

 

[WizarDru]

And, apparently, a lot of money.

I don't think so. Lord of the Rings has gone through three cycles of popularity, at least. The movies made so much money not because of geeks, but because of mainstream acceptance. If catering to nerds resulted in profits, we'd all be enjoying the sequel to Serenity right now. But we're not, because nerd love didn't bring the numbers to that, to Scott Pilgrim or to a host of other movies, books and TV shows. They can help create a tipping point, but Iron Man didn't make huge numbers on comics fans...it made huge numbers with everyone.

Fantasy has always been mainstream, more or less. D&D-inspired heroic swords & sorcery fantasy, less so. I mean, 'Red Riding Hood' was a fantasy film and it bombed. But I'd wager most folks here would agree it failed because it was a not that well made Twilight knock-off that got poor reviews, regardless of its medieval village and werewolf trappings. And many here might not classify it as 'fantasy', even though on paper that's what it was.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think so. Lord of the Rings has gone through three cycles of popularity, at least. The movies made so much money not because of geeks, but because of mainstream acceptance.

Agreed. This was part of why I made the point about genre needing to be connected to an art form. One genre art may be mainstream, while another is not: Fantasy movies are pretty much mainstream. Fantasy literature is less so. Fantasy RPGs are not really mainstream at all.

 

[Ariosto]

I don't think it has to do with the passage of time. It isn't as if fantasy was magically all good when it was young.

It isn't as if "good" is the only alternative to "hackneyed".

It most definitely is not the case that what a critic calls "hackneyed" is necessarily what the public calls "not good" -- which is, as a matter of fact, the point actually at hand.

Putting it even more bluntly, the hackneyed is what the mainstream prefers.

Something so stereotyped as to be effectively parodied is ripe for mass consumption. A field neatly boxed in and reduced to a checklist of standard ingredients is much easier to digest by marketing departments, retailers, and customers alike.

Genres effectively are the mainstream of novels today. The "literary" books that some people still like to think of as "mainstream fiction" are a small fraction of the output. The "romance" and "thriller" genres are huge -- and busily assimilating immediately recognized bits from "horror", "sci fi", and other genres.

 

[Umbran]

It isn't as if "good" is the only alternative to "hackneyed".

It most definitely is not the case that what a critic calls "hackneyed" is necessarily what the public calls "not good" -- which is, as a matter of fact, the point actually at hand.

Yeah, but Pawsplay isn't a literature critic, is he? He said, "To the extent I don't hardly read it any more,", which I think would put any literary critic into a fatal paroxysm of irony.

And Pawsplay seemed to contrast hackneyed with good. Being hackneyed may not be the only way of being not good, but it sure seems like a not-good the way he used it.

So, I was not using your definitions here.

Putting it even more bluntly, the hackneyed is what the mainstream prefers.

I think that really depends on who you think "the mainstream" is. We didn't really define that at the start of this. I think, if we did that, we might find that "the mainstream" doesn't regularly read for pleasure, so that the folks who like those hackneyed romance novels are not in the mainstream themselves!

 

[TerraDave]

Has D&D changed the "fantasy genre"? Yes. yes it has.

Is the "fantasy genre" bigger then in the 60 or 70s? This is harder to "prove".

 

[pawsplay]

It isn't as if "good" is the only alternative to "hackneyed".

Something can be hackeneyed and still be, in many respects, good. Case in point: the Harry Potter books are the work of a superb writer, but I was less in love with them in most. Probably that has a lot to do with my vast consumption of young adult fantasy; Harry Potter had less to offer and surprise me. However, they are damned good books, and I expect that as time goes by, lesser works will fall away, and Harry Potter will be remembered as one of the classics of the genre. Fifteen years from now, someone will pick up a copy of Harry Potter and read it for the first time, and at the tender of 8, are likely to experience it as a revelation. I haven't even made it through the fourth book or movie. I definitely intend to, I just haven't yet. And by the way, if you love Harry Potter, may I recommend Roal Dahl (almost anything he wrote, but especially Witches), Diane Duane's Young Wizards, Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time, and Tamora Pierce (again, quite a breadth of work)?

It simply harder to motivate this old cat to devote 400 pages of his life that seems like something he's read before. I'll do it for Rowling... for Goodkind, or Salvatore? Not so much. Terry Brooks pretty much exemplifies this breed; even Sword of Shannara, which I fairly enjoyed as a young teenager, just hasn't held up. Brooks is damned fine at what they do, but as a more sophisticated reader, I find the wordsmithing weak, and the story elements hackneyed.

 

[pawsplay]

Yeah, but Pawsplay isn't a literature critic, is he? He said, "To the extent I don't hardly read it any more,", which I think would put any literary critic into a fatal paroxysm of irony.

Not one lately, anyway. Certainly, such a statement indicates, at the least, unemployment as a critic.

But I think it is natural that as one becomes more discerning, one becomes more selective in reading for pleasure.

And Pawsplay seemed to contrast hackneyed with good. Being hackneyed may not be the only way of being not good, but it sure seems like a not-good the way he used it.

I would classify it as a detriment, yes.