Fantasy
Fantasy: Two meanings
• Fantasy can be seen as a psychological
phenomenon
• Fantasy can be seen as a form of literature
Fantasy literature
• Fantasy literature (and film, TV, etc.) presents
the audience with a world, characters, events
or circumstances that are either ‘impossible’
or so unlikely that any reasonable person
would not believe that they either had
previously happened or are likely to happen in
the ‘historical world’
Influences on fantasy
• Fairy stories are sources of much of the
content found in contemporary fantasy
– Elves, dwarves, dragons, witches, etc.
• Classic myths have often inspired the plotlines
as well as contributing characters to the
fantasy genre
– Heros, quests, fairy stories, Greek myths, conflicts
between good and evil
Related genres or subgenres
• Dark fantasy--------Horror
• Science fantasy--------Science fiction
• Superhero fantasy
Why do we like them?
• One argument is that we enjoy pure escapism
– Simply being immersed in a fantasy land with
mystical or nonhuman characters is said to be
enjoyable in and of itself
• Questionable
• Another argument is that by taking control
over the environment the author can simplify
the conflicts, provide clear characterization
that is not muddied by experience, etc.
What attracts us to fantasy?
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Pure escapism
Simplification, clarity of exposition
Basic, primal themes and characters
Invokes a sense of wonder
• A third explanation is that these timeless
stories are that way because they touch
something basic and primal in the human
psyche
– Freud’s views on the conflicts involved in
maturation, the id, the ego, the superego
– Jung’s archetypes as collective unconscious
• A fourth explanation is that they invoke in us a
sense of wonder
– The sense that has declined in the face of
secularization, science
• The same need for a sense of wonder that sparked the
religious revival of the 1970s and 1980s
Common features
• Magic/mysticism
• Monsters
• Non-human characters
– Often taken from Nordic mythology
• Classic sexist stereotyping
– Recent moves toward less stereotyped portrayals
• Human heroes
– Knights, kings, common men pressed into service
Common features
• Stereotypic character roles
– Hero, helper, princess, witch, evil knight, etc.
• Quests
– The Holy Grail, the Golden Fleece, Destruction of
the Ring, Recovery of the Lost Ark, The getting of
wisdom, Destruction of the Minotaur
• Cataclysmic confrontation between good and
evil
– Battle for Middle Earth, War for Narnia, etc.
Development of fantasy
• The folk (fairy) stories of Germany, etc. were
handed down through the ages
– The Brothers Grimm
– Hans Christian Anderson
• Children’s fantasy stories
– Developed and became popular during the 1800s
• A few fantasy stories aimed at adults, but the genre
considered to be lower quality than traditional drama
writing
• Alice in Wonderland
• Science fiction became a significant subgenre in
late 1800s with H.G. Wells and Jules Verne
• At the beginning of the 20th Century, “lost world”
fantasies were developed and became popular,
making adult fantasy a recognized genre
• Horror films became popular in the 1930s and
beyond
• The ‘high fantasy’ works of C.S. Lewis and J. R. R.
Tolkien raised fantasy to a high literary standard
and increased its popularity
• 1950s science fiction films and TV shows
enhanced the popularity of fantasy with wide
audiences
• Continuing but rather cult-status interest in
fantasy until Star Trek franchise and then Star
Wars film series
• Expanded interest in fantasy, especially with
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
• Fantasy video games among the most popular,
especially in the role-playing genre
– Dungeons and Dragons
– Final Fantasy
Adaptive functions of fantasy and
imagination
• May enhance self-knowledge and selfunderstanding by helping individuals to clarify
their thoughts and to stay in touch with their
needs and feelings
• Promote decision making by allowing one to spell
out anticipated consequences of one’s choices
• Regulate moods and emotions, and relieve
tension—for example, by allowing individuals to
relive the positive or negative emotions
associated with previous experiences
Two types of thinking
• Paradigmatic and narrative thinking are
complementary
• Paradigmatic thinking ‘involves logical and verbal
thinking and its object is to test for empirical
truth’
– Good argument, tight analysis, falsifiable empirical
discovery
• Narrative thinking “entails storylike, imagistic
thinking, and its object is not truth but
‘verisimilitude’ or ‘lifelikeness’”
• “Narrative thinking seeks ‘good stories,
gripping drama, and believable (though not
necessarily true) historical accounts”
• “Fantasy and imagination play an essential
role in narrative thinking”
Escapism
• Overproduction of unpleasant fantasies
• Boredom-avoidance
Thematic Correspondence Hypothesis
• People choose content based on their
fantasies
– Those with violent fantasies tend to watch violent
content
• However, reverse causation is indicated
• May be reciprocal
Thematic Compensation Hypothesis
• “people select entertainment themes that
reflect those types of fantasies that they
cannot produce themselves”
– Erotica
• Freudian argument that fantasies reflect unsatisfied
wishes
– Evidence to date does not support—people watch
content they tend to fantasize about
Role of fantasy and imagination during
media exposure
• Very little research carried out on this
– Must draw from related disciplines
• Emotional involvement in fantasy worlds runs
counter to prior emotion theory
– Emotions were thought to be tied to a feeling that
what one was witnessing was real—the more real,
the more powerful the emotional response
Aesthetic emotion
• “According to Frijda (1989), viewers
experience aesthetic emotions because they
regard the events in films as true events in an
imaginary world. Viewers do not perceive the
occurrence of these events as unreal; they just
discount any proof in the film that point to it
being unreal.”
Harris
• Two ways of watching a movie (TV show, etc.)
• In ‘default mode’, the viewers “do not employ their
knowledge of the reality status of the movie to
suppress their emotions”
– They are aware the movie is unreal, they just don’t take it
into account
• In the second way in which viewers consume fictional
entertainment, they do use their knowledge of the
reality status of the movie.
– They do so either because the movie challenges their
suspension of disbelief or because of the shocking
character of what they see—they protect themselves by
remembering the fictional nature of the events, etc.
• “When viewers consume fiction in the default
mode, that is, escorted by emotions, they rely
on their experiential system of information
processing. The experiential system involves
rapid, automatic processing, is pleasureoriented, emotionally driven, and
characterized by a primacy of affective
reactions.”
Immersion
• Transportation
• Diegetic effect
• Presence
– The viewer/consumer’s mental system becomes
focused on the events occurring in an imaginary
world while the real-world events are suppressed,
the viewer witnesses the imaginary events and
these drive the viewer’s emotional system, and
the force of the effect is derived from our capacity
for imagination
Responses to drama
(Polichak and Gerrig)
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Inferences
‘As if’ responses
Problem-solving responses
Replotting responses
Evaluatory responses
Social Responses
• Empathy
• Parasocial interaction
Role of fantasy and imagination after
exposure
• Stimulation
– It appears that media content can stimulate
certain forms of fantasy
– The evidence does not seem to demonstrate that
imagination is enhanced by audiovisual
stimulation
• Scholars appear to assume that books, etc. stimulate
imagination
Reduction hypotheses
• Visualization hypothesis
– By providing ready-made video and audio, the
stimulation of imagination (among kids) is
reduced
• The evidence is mixed
• Rapid-pacing hypothesis
– Little time to evaluate, think over content
– Evidence is inconclusive
• Passivity hypothesis
– Television generates a passive, “let you entertain me”
attitude that suppresses imagination
– Again, evidence lacking and other ‘let-you-entertainme’ situations are not included (plays, listening to
books being read, etc.)
• Arousal hypothesis
– Arousal leads to hyperactivity, impulsive behavior
– Some evidence in the case of violent programming,
but limited understanding of the mechanism
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