Live Law (as explained by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is from George MacDonald's essay "The Fantastic Imagination," and it is meant as a postscript to yesterday's post:

A man's inventions may be stupid or clever, but if he does not hold by the laws of them, or if he makes one law jar with another, he contradicts himself as an inventor; he is no artist. He does not rightly consort his instruments, or he tunes them in different keys. The mind of man is the product of live Law: it thinks by law, it dwells in the midst of law, it gathers from law its growth; with law, therefore, can it alone work to any result. Inharmonious, unconsorting ideas will come to a man, but if he tries to use one of [them], his work will grow dull, and he will drop it from mere lack if interest. Law is the soil in which alone beauty will grow. Beauty is the only stuff in which Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imagination the tailor that cuts her garments to fit her....

In Defense of Damsels and Bumpkins (as explained by an orthodox storyteller)

The two most important and vital elements to any good fairy-tale (indeed, to any good story) is the damsel and the bumpkin, and yet never have two things been more derided in our time. There is something offensive in the former and silly in the latter.

The damsel is offensive because we live in an enlightened age of unquestioned feminism, wherein women have been set free from the chains of home and hearth to cheerfully wear the chains of 9-to-5 corporate life. The bumpkin is silly because that's what a bumpkin is: a laughable and occasionally lovable oaf who deserves no more attention and serious praise than a newborn child. In the end, we worship amazonian bravado and scorn the loveliness of the princess; we condescendingly pat the good-natured fool on the head and laud the antics of the antihero. It is exactly these modern notions that good fairy-tales turn upside-down.

Such a turning is very much needed today. In fact, it should be called a returning, for I am not saying anything new, just everything that people have forgotten. For example, nobody appreciates a "damsel in distress" anymore. They assume that there is something demeaning in the whole affair, that women are somehow reduced to impersonal narrative furniture to be forcibly passed about like a brain-dead hot potato amongst men of varying moral aptitudes. The underlying assumption is that a damsel is always "distressed" because they have nothing better to do, i.e., because they are utterly useless, a mere plot foil and no more.

Such is the cynicism of our age, but even a moment's consideration on the issue will reveal its logic to be complete nonsense. If a damsel is "utterly useless," then why is she distressed? If she has no qualities of worth or value, then why would anyone bother their heads about her at all? Why is so much energy and time and military expense wasted by the villain on her capture, and why is so much toil and sorrow willfully suffered by the hero on her rescue? If she had no other purpose and point than to be moved from the Castle of Syrupy Light to the Dungeons of Stygian Slime and then back again, if her only purpose is fundamentally logistical, then why all the fuss? Surely dark lords and wandering knights (and enraptured readers) have better uses of their time.

The simple answer is that the damsel is not "useless". It is her very "use" that makes her the focus of the whole affair. What people seem to forget (and rabid feminists are loath to remember) is that the princess is the point of the fairy-tale. True, the bulk of the narrative is spent on her rescuer (a much maligned individual whom we will address in a moment), but that is because his energies (or even her energies, as in the tale of Britomart) are solely pointed towards her. Look at any great tale that involves "damsels in distress" and you will see that the princess is the most vital person on the planet. It is she who will stop the lords of shadow from enacting the great woe. It is she that will guarantee the downfall of the Abyssal King. It is she who will bring the return of the dawn and the dancing of the daffodils, and the puppies and kittens will dance together again. In short, it is she who will bring about some great thing in the larger picture of the world, and it is for that very reason that the darkness seeks to ensnare her. She is always the true threat. She is always the real hero.

This should not be surprising to any of us. The "hero" who rides to the rescue is not the ultimate hero. The princess is, and whatever heroics the "hero" has are derivative from and dependent upon her. The truth is that the "hero" (whoever he/she may be) is trying to rescue the princess because there is some greater feat to be done that only the princess can do and which, consequently, the "hero" cannot do, which is why she must be rescued. She is the vital piece. That is why so much energy is expended on her. That is why chivalric codes have been inspired by her. That is why a certain popular video game franchise is called The Legend of Zelda and not The Legend of Link. The princess is everything, the central force to the narrative centrifuge.

Even the exception proves the rule, i.e., the case of dragons kidnapping the princess. She may not have been "distressed" because of some great "thing" that she can "do", but remember what a dragon is. They represent horrible, voracious greed, a living void of endless consumption. They are hoarders, gluttons; their lairs are full of precious things, including the most precious of all: the princess. Those stories strike us the hardest, because now the damsel is rescued, not for her use, but for herself, which is the point all along. She is the most valuable one, and when that which is most valuable is imperiled, someone must take up the sword.

Of course, the one who takes up the sword is never who we expect, and that is yet another point of the fairy-tale. When the most valuable and precious one is imperiled, it is not the brawniest of knights who ultimately wins her back. Rather, it is the bumpkin who gets called kicking and screaming into the fray. In the end, it is Samwise, and not Gaston, who gets called to the rescue. This is the other vital element, viz., the hero is a bumpkin. The hero is a bumbling, lovable fool who would much rather stay at home and yet has enough good-heartedness to not leave a friend in the lurch. In short, the hero is "normal," and yet is called to the extraordinary.

This is a tale as old as time. It was not the warrior sons of Jesse who slew Goliath. It was his youngest, a shepherd boy, who had no sword to call his own. It was not a great and legendary fighter who brought an end to the wrath of Grendel and his mother. It was Beowulf, who was considered "the least amongst his brethren". It was not Eric the golden knight who slew Bavmorda and saved the baby Elora. It was Willow Ufgood, the farmer, father, and dwarf. It is the "least" who rescues the highest. It is the poor lost poet in the woods who descends through hell so that he may ascend to heaven. It is the last who becomes the first. The bumpkin is our hero. The least of these are our champions, and their trophies are innumerable, from dragons and demons to even death itself, for when God raised his glittering sword against our last enemy, he did not come riding on the white horse of the apocalypse, but on the red cross of the Romans, dying in ignominy and infamy, raising all to newness of life, and hallowing the fool forever. For God has chosen the foolish things to confound the wise, and the weak to overcome the strong.

Herein are the two vital elements of the fairy-tale: the damsel and the bumpkin. And herein lies their vital lessons. In the damsel we see this, that the most valuable and precious thing in the world is a woman. In the bumpkin we see this, that even the smallest of persons can change the course of history. Such things get lost on the majority of us today. All of our modern day "heroes" are pathetic, paltry things: sneering antiheroes with the likability of a dead toad, and sarcastic amazons whose entire femininity has been disemboweled. We waste our time on things not worth a sneeze, and yet at our fingertips are the two great inspirations of the world: the beauty and power of the princess, and the stout, fear-soaked courage of the bumbling fool. If our stories could only learn to bask in the splendor of that double-edged humility, perhaps we could find ourselves wanting more than the barren wastes of our modern mythologies.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

On Villainy (thoughts on characters and evil by an orthodox rebel)

A good villain must be powerful. Limpwristed villainy does not make for a good story. If they are not a sizable enough threat, then the hero becomes meaningless. The villain's villainy must be a true challenge so that the hero's heroism will count for something (both for the hero and those that he rescues). In short, pathetic villains make pathetic heroes, and both make pathetic stories.

Having said all that, we must not make the mistake of misunderstanding the nature of evil. A villain may be powerful, but that does not mean that evil is a source of energy and vitality. In fact, whatever energy that a villain has comes from those parts of them that can still be called (by themselves) "good": his natural-born strength or cunning, or his accumulated wealth, or his basic desires. This is because only what is good can produce energy. Only the good can produce life. And only the good can become evil. Evil cannot create. It only corrupts. It preys upon desires and talents, twisting them into what may seem energetic at first. Twisted desires conceive (a very vital activity) and bring forth sin; but when sin finishes, it brings forth death, not life.

A villain may be powerful, and in stories they must be powerful; but we must not leave off showing where their evil leads them: to the cold, wasted halls of death. Living death, if you will. Evil is vampiric. It drains away all life, even what it has corrupted to its purposes; and every villain, no matter how powerful, will be sucked dry, until even their very lusts wither away into nothingness.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Creative Fantasy vs. the "Morbid Delusion" of Post-modernism (as explained by an orthodox rebel and an Original Orthodox Rebel)

Post-modernism, in its denial of any ability to know truth, likes to languish in the ironic, absurd, and downright ludicrous. This can sometimes produce fun things (e.g., some absurdist plays can be quite humorous, and post-modern architecture is cool to look at), but more often it produces vacuous, insane, and perverse creations that leave the mind and soul empty and reeling (e.g., David Lynch's Eraserhead is exactly as he described it: "a dream of dark and terrible things"). Regardless of the result, the premise is always the same: art cannot take us to truth.

In general, post-modernists insist that art is to have no relation to truth of any kind, except for the "truth" of the artist. It is their perspective that is on display, and they may represent it however they choose (even if it is in a manner that completely destroys any real communication of that perspective). They claim that this is the true freedom inherent in art, i.e., the freedom to transgress beyond all limitations and boundaries, from absolute truths to even the canvas itself.

A counter-position to the post-modern notion of "art unlimited by truth" is here articulated by J.R.R. Tolkien in his famous essay "On Fairy-Stories". In one section (quoted below), Tolkien counters the claim (held by the modernists of his day as well as the post-modernists of ours) that the genre of "Fantasy" necessarily implies a lack of or even antagonism towards "Reason". Instead, he postulates a radical alternative: when reason fails, fantasy perishes; for fantasy is based upon a certain kind of deviation from the truth, but that deviation is not possible unless you first know what the truth is. 

An example is needed. A pilot cannot "deviate" from his "flightpath" without (1) there being a flightpath (2) that he can reference and (3) is fixed. If the flightpath is inaccessible knowledge for the pilot (either by accident or ignorance), or if it is not fixed but is changing to a different direction every second, then the concept of "deviation" disappears. Any direction chosen could as well as be a flightpath as well as a deviation. Thus, a fixed referent is necessary even for defying it, for sin is dead without the law (Rom. 7:8). Unknown and unknowable truths produce no rebellions, for the rebels could never know what they were rebelling against.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

(The following excerpt can be found on pp. 144-45 of The Monsters and The Critics: And Other Essays.)

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.

For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.

Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true? Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshiped them, even worshiped those most deformed by their authors' own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their science and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice. Abusus non tollit usum [Latin: "Abuse does not take away use."]. Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made; and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.

Philosophy of Stories: Characters (as explained by an orthodox rebel)

A common point of instruction in most modern creative writing classes is "Write people, not ideas." There is a truth here as well as a lie. The truth is that your story needs to be populated with believable people, not cardboard cut-out allegorical mouthpieces. The lie, however, is that there is no way to write "people" without also writing "ideas," because people are ideas; or better yet, people have ideas, and those ideas are what move them forward in any story.

Many people (especially in secular circles) are apt to forget that we are all philosophers. We are all believers. Even if we have no immediate idea what we believe in because we haven't thought about it enough to adequately put it into words, we all have a particular view of our world and our circumstances. That view (whatever it may be) creates desires, which in turn create actions. And action (of any sort) is the kindling for drama.

All this is the meaning behind other (absentmindedly wise) instructions from modern creative writing classes: "Follow the pain" or "Give them a want." A person without even implicit beliefs feels no pain, because they hold nothing dear or precious. A person without even a subconscious philosophy has no wants, because they hold nothing to be desirous or worthy of effort. Treat a person like a blank slate of random activity, and you will create doldrum. Treat a person like a believer, and you will create bedlam. And bedlam is always dramatic.

Do not fool yourself into thinking that a person's philosophy needs to be complicated. It could be as simple as believing that water is good and thus wanting a glass very, very badly. It would still prove the point. Drama springs forth from human activity, and no human activity was ever done for nothing. Even those strange few who claim to base their actions on "nothing" still see that "nothing" as a something upon which (if they've thought about it enough) they could elucidate.

The point is that when your are writing your stories, remember that no human exists in a vacuum. Even if they're alone, they're not alone. They always have their self. The wishing, wanting, hoping, fearing, failing self, our very heart. And out of the heart a man speaketh. Out of the heart are the issues of life.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011