I had a look at the blog’s visitor statistics, and noticed that I’d got a slight bump in hits from one particular site. Investigating further, I found that someone had linked to my post on Fantasy and Imagination from The Comics Journal Message Board, where a very interesting and articulate discussion on Making Superheroes “Mature” is taking place. Fancy that – intelligent discussion on the Internet! Will wonders never cease?
The opening post by Mike Hunter poses the question of how do you “expand the limitations of genre work (even striving to push it in the direction of Art) without violating those factors which make the formula work”?
This widens out into other points of discussion, including whether “Part of maturation entails learning that there are no true ‘heroes’, and certainly not ‘super’-ones”, as poster D Grim argues. And if so, does this mean that the superhero genre is inherently escapist?
You could easily transpose this discussion to be about Doctor Who, and the extent to which it can be “mature” within its generic conventions. Indeed, the Doctor is a superhero, at least in his 21st century guise.
My view is that it’s possible for all literature, including genre fiction, to function in one of two ways: as Fantasy, an escape away from the world, or as Imagination, giving new ways of looking at the real world (see my post on Fantasy vs Imagination.)
Genre fiction is fiction that has acquired conventions and expectations and clichés over time. Having a form and framework can be useful, like working within the rules of a sonnet. But genre can easily become a substitute for creativity, rather than an aid for it: for example, all the indistinguishable Tolkien rip-offs in the fantasy genre.
The driving force behind this is pandering to what the readers want. Rather than giving them something new that might challenge and enlarge them, you just repeat the same old thing. I argue in part one of my review of series 4 of Doctor Who that you can see this process at work.
This plays to the modern narcissistic outlook, where we’re concerned with gratifying our existing desires rather than seeking to be touched by and to grow towards something greater than ourselves, outside of ourselves, qualities like Goodness, Beauty and Truth.
But popular culture such as Doctor Who and superhero stories, and other tales of the fantastic, including heroes and monsters, magic and spaceships, has the potential to give us new perspectives and insights with greater clarity and interest than so-called realistic fiction, when written with imagination and originality, and written to point beyond itself to greater realities.
It is possible, though sometimes difficult, to write popular fiction that is both entertaining and meaningful. Writers should aim for no less, and audiences should expect no less, than this.