Some things to consider when talking about children's fantasy stories... · 8:00pm May 13th, 2014
Let’s say there’s a fantasy world. In this fantasy world, our hero lives in a kingdom ruled by a king and queen. It’s a totalitarian kingdom; the king and queen assigned him a job, he doesn’t really have a say in it, and he doesn’t get paid-- if they say he has to do his job, he has to do it. They also provide him with a home, free of charge, but they have the final say over what he can put in it, and they can tell him when it needs to be cleaned and how clean it needs to be. He also gets food free of charge, though once again they have final say over what food and when he can eat it.
A lot of other things are provided for him, but usually he has to get them through the king or queen, and often that means either doing extra work to earn them or waiting for certain days when they’re more likely to grant his wishes. There are also seemingly arbitrary rules, and often he doesn’t understand what they are or how they work. There are potions around the kingdom that can poison him, and potions that can cure him when he’s sick or hurt, and potions that could do either depending on when and how and how much he takes. The potion names and what they’re for are rarely simple; they’re marked with complex magic words and the rules of when to take them are difficult to remember. This is true of many aspects of the kingdom-- there are places he can only go accompanied by the king or queen, people that he’s not supposed to speak to unless they’re there, clothing that he’s only supposed to wear certain times, and even when the king and queen try to explain the reasons he often doesn’t really get it.
Sometimes the king and queen are harsh, and he’s been placed under house arrest or denied his own belongings because he failed to follow the orders of the king and queen. He feels that this is unfair, but there’s no place he can appeal. Unless the king and queen are truly monstrous, no one will intervene, and in his heart he knows that's not the case. If he followed the rules he wouldn’t be punished.
There are only two things that really make this kingdom bearable. One is that the king and queen love the hero, and among their first thoughts are how they can keep him happy and healthy. The relationship they have with the hero is literally the purest, most altruistic relationship that people can have-- the king and queen would lay down their lives for the hero’s well being. They are human, they do get things wrong sometimes, even if they would never knowingly put the hero in danger. The hero has to learn to deal with that, but also understand that the king and queen do their very best, and want him to succeed.
There are times when they try to stand back, to let him make his own choices, and let bad things happen if he makes the wrong ones. This is to prepare him for the second thing that makes the kingdom bearable-- the hero has a destiny. It’s unalterable, there’s no way around it except death: someday he will have to leave the kingdom, and set up his own kingdom. He will have to understand the rules that seem mysterious to him now, he’ll have to manage his own money and make wise decisions about what food and housing and goods he gets. He’ll have freedom, but that freedom is scary because he might make the wrong choices. And it doesn’t matter if he wants it or not, or if the king and queen want it or not, the day will come when he has to meet his destiny, and they all just hope that he’ll be ready.
I’m sure to some of you, that’s sounds like a dystopia waiting to happen. Rulers with almost absolute power that control every aspect of the hero’s life? Unalterable destiny? What about questioning authority? What about freedom? What about forging your own path in life?
Childhood is a time when none of that really matters. You have a destiny: You will be an adult. Sure, you can do whatever you want with your future… except stay in the life you’ve always known. That’s pretty much set in stone-- you have to grow up, and your entire life for the first 16 years or so is preparing you for that.
Of course, most people are okay with their destiny, because of that other stuff. Because parents are pretty much the dictators of your life, they’re expected to be. And there’s a good reason for that of course, kids don’t know how to run their lives yet. Depending on the age they might not be capable of understanding, they might have not got around to learning everything that's important yet, or they might be mostly ready but still a little too short-sighted and rash to really take the reins. Whatever the case, they do not live in the real world, they do not live in a democracy, they do not have real freedom, and they never have in their entire lives so far.
I’m pointing all of this out to try to show some of the tropes of children’s fantasy (like, for example, My Little Pony) in a new light. We feel that fantasy stories, even if they’re obviously not real, should reflect the real world. The characters should feel like people to us, the plot should make sense in terms of the characters and the setting, and if something would cause bad things to happen in the real world, it should cause equally bad or worse things in a fantasy world.
We make exceptions, of course, stories are allowed to be rational or moral in a way that the real world often isn’t. We tend to complain the loudest when the story is less rational than the real world, when it translates to the real world in ways that real people in those positions wouldn’t or shouldn’t act, or people accept things that they shouldn’t just sit down and accept.
However, there’s a bit of a disconnect when it comes to children’s fantasy, because children do not live in the same world we do. Some examples that come up in MLP:FIM and fairy tales/Disney movies in general:
Children’s fantasy is going to have some characters who are always good: wise kings and queens and princesses and mentors, fairy godmothers, etc, because children live in a world where they have to trust that their parents are always wise and good. If a seven-year-old doesn’t think his mother is telling the truth that he has to take his medicine, he has no way of understanding what the medicine is or how it works. He has to trust his parents that if he takes this, no matter how bad it tastes, he’ll get better. So it’s perfectly natural to him that fantasy characters would have people like that who they can always trust. Parents (and these characters) might sometimes be wrong, but it will never be out of malice or purposeful betrayal. That part belongs to the bad guys.
The bad guys are the flip side of those wise king and queens, equally or more powerful than the trusted mentors (but not as powerful as the protagonist)-- and they don’t really need any reason for being evil. This is because they’re also the child’s parents. They’re the outlet for how the child feels when he has a brand new video game, and he’s not allowed to play it until he cleans his room. This evil being who has unplugged the television, whose power can not be appealed, seems to exist only to make him suffer. Sure, this monster might say some stuff about reasons, but those are pointless compared to the pain and suffering they’re obviously inflicting with no regard for the poor, innocent child.
The wise kings and queens and mentors will never directly help the hero against the bad guy, because in reality they’re the same person. They might come in after the hero has demonstrated his virtue (cleaned his room) with presents and celebration, but they’re clearly different people who have no power to resist the malevolent forces that sometimes take their place.
Finally, destiny isn’t problematic to children, it’s real. There’s a future that a child knows will happen to them, everyone knows that one day they’ll be an adult. This is super-important. It’s the best thing ever, because it means they’ll be in charge of everything! But it’s also something everyone wants them to work really hard for, so they don’t mess up. Their lives right now are pretty much just waiting around and preparing for this destiny, so finding out that the hero of the story has a destiny where they’ll be in charge and beat the bad guy who wants to boss them around is totally natural.
So, I feel like these things might answer a lot of questions/problems that some people have with MLP and Equestria:
Why do the ponies all live in a honestly-benevolent dictatorship? Why does nopony rebel against Celestia? Because children live in an honestly-benevolent dictatorship, where rebellion is impossible (at least until they're teenagers).
Why doesn’t Princess Celestia ever use all that godly power to fight the bad guys? Because they’re actually reflections of her role in the world. She can’t/won’t defeat herself, it's up to the child to restore the good parents to their throne.
Why do they get away with bad guys who are evil for evil's sake? Because sometimes really mean parents will make their kids do things that are no fun for absolutely no reason!!! *doorslam*... but by doing the good things that they learned from their real parents, they can defeat the evil ones and the real parents will be proud.
Why was no one creeped out that Celestia seems to know that Twilight is supposed to become an alicorn and has been training her for it the whole time? Kids spend their lives training for the mysterious day when they’ll become an adult, and of course it’s their parents who really understand it and are supposed to be molding them into that shape.
Now, I’m not saying that this is allegory, or that kids see these connections for what they are. Rather, these are things that will just make sense to a kid, this is how the world works-- they don’t seem weird or out of nowhere or unfamiliar, like they do if we tried to apply them to our lives. Applying these ideas to the real adult world is anywhere from silly to dangerous, and people are right to raise eyebrows and deconstruct the tropes in fanfiction aimed at adults. But on a kids show, using them doesn’t make the world bad or over-simplified, it makes it recognizable to the target audience.
I honestly never considered it like that before.
I like this way of looking at it, it makes a heck of a lot of sense.
Oh, bravo. Bravo. I saw what you were doing halfway through the second paragraph — but when it clicked, it was like a hammer to the brain. This is one of those rare pieces I'll have to bookmark and refer back to later.
This is equally important from another angle: it illustrates perfectly how fantasy can be "childish" in a way that's important, that reflects fundamental truths we've all experienced and forgotten, rather than being idealized wish-fulfillment.
And it's not until we're adults that we finally have to tools to analyse and understand bad parenting.
How fans perceive Celestia's authority appears to me like a Rorschach ink blot; I feel it's probably a bit of a projection from your own childhood and inherent level of trust of unconditional authority figures.
Woah, did I just get all Freudian? Christ I... I'm so sorry, I'm going to go get a towel and clean this mess up.
This is glorious.
Magnificent.
This is brilliant. Finally, someone manages to explain why children's shows being the way they are isn't a bad thing.
You are awesome, you know?
Celestia is basically the Mom of all of Equestria. Perhaps it's a reflection of my still-existent youth that I've never personally taken issue with the fact that she rules Equestria unquestioningly. But I still like to see her in that role, a role of near-parenthood, more than anything else--at least in the context of the show. Outside of the show, I buy whatever the author is selling.
Why can't I favorite a blog post?
I like the allegory you made - but there's obviously OTHER reasons for Celestia not to solve the problem with the bad guys.
There are other shows, not aimed at kids, and sometimes they have god-tier or nearly god-tier characters...who rarely solve the problem. It just makes no thematic or storybuilding sense for the main character(s) not to play the main role in solving the problem. Regardless of the audience.
The interesting thing is that Equestria's like that on the surface, but much more complex in detail. Like the difference between the simplified-storybook flashbacks they used for the first season opener and the fourth season closer, and the episodes themselves.
Equestria is at the highest level a benevolent despotism. But it's actually run on the routine level as a combination of democracy and meritocratic bureaucracy, and the economy is free-market rather than totalitarian.
Of course, the reason for it in my verse is that Princess Celestia isn't really a Pony in the normal sense of the word at all, and they are facing threats the Ponies would probably not be able to survive without her leadership and protection. Which fits your model just fine, as the same thing is true of a mother compared to her children in a family.
Interestingly, Equestria is a single-parent family. Momlestia's the only "adult" in sight, and Luna and other other Princesses are more like either Mom's sisters or the eldest children, who've ascended to a degree of responsbility.
I have to say, I remember enough about my childhood to say that I as a child didn't "get" the idea of pure evil characters. Purely good ones made sense to me. Even now I find incorruptibly pure characters to be more coherent and believable than irredeemable evil ones.
This is a very pretty post, and it is very insightful.
That being said, it also kind of runs into the is-ought problem - that is to say, simply because many children inhabit this world, does not mean that this is necessarily a good thing to be reinforcing.
And I also think there's another factor at work here - many children don't inhabit this world.
I never did. My world was quite different from this one; I have no recollection of ever seeing the world in even close to this way. I always saw my parents as my guardians and helpers rather than as my masters, because that was the role they took on. Yes, there were decisions which were made which I had no say in, but they were explained to me and I understood why they were being made, even if I didn't like them; I understood that mine were not the only needs, and that there were other things going on. I never had my possessions taken from me, nor was I ever grounded, and I was given an allowance from a fairly early age for entertainment stuff.
Magical thinking is very alien to me in many ways; I was always raised with the idea that you could answer questions by learning and experimenting, that nothing was magic. I always had a scientific world view around me. I read zoobooks and understood where life came from, evolution, there was never any God to me, no great mystery, no greater power.
And I've been this way as long as I can remember, and I was exposed to the idea that the world works this way from a very early age. That's not to say that my mom didn't fess up to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny right off the bat, and my mom DID try sending me to Sunday School for a while, but I think because I had been exposed to other ideas long before then, the idea that they could stick ideas in my mind there was simply dead on arrival. I suppose most kids don't show up to Sunday School asking what day blue-green algae was made.
But they should be.
And I am hardly the only one who has a very alien view of the world relative to this. Many cultures have the idea of filial obligation, that children are obligated to their parents, to look after them, to take care of them, a very different idea from the West, where we are expected to be individuals, to stand on our own feet, and that an adult who has to depend on anyone else is a weakling.
But the idea of parents as guardians versus parents as dictators is actually a pretty major divide in American society. In a world where parents are guardians, Twilight could always rely on Celestia to be there by her side facing adversity. Indeed, many people find the idea of children as possessions, which is a fairly common view in practice, to be utterly abhorrent.
I always found things like The Lion King and Aladdin much more satisfying than Beauty and the Beast. In Beauty and the Beast, they failed, but they won anyway because we can't have the beast die at the end, the hero gets their reward. In Aladdin and The Lion King, the hero earns what he gets at the end via his heroism; Aladdin wins against overwhelming odds via determination and trickery, and Simba wins because Scar cannot be trusted, even by his allies, and the lions would rather be lead by someone with good intentions than bad ones. Scar himself is weak, and his chronic backstabbing syndrome eventually means he only has himself to rely on - which isn't enough.
I can't defend this worldview at all as something which is good to present - indeed, I think in many ways it is a bad thing. Telling people that they cannot ever rely on authority figures leads to distrust of the government, judges, the police, and supervisors, and this is a very bad thing; such hierarchies exist for a reason, and many of these folks do what they do in order to help people.
And many adults retain these infantile views of the world. Sure, some of them end up in jail, but others? When you hear people talking about "the Man", who are they talking about? How many adults really understand why some magic potions work and others don't? How about the people who see the president as an absolute dictator and/or someone who is capable of doing absolutely anything? And how many people feel like, when they do something, they are entitled to a reward? Indeed, studies seem to indicate that extrinsic rewards, rather than intrinsic rewards, have a tendency to backfire - in other words, teaching children that you should do your chores or learn because it is a good thing to do, rather than because they'll get some reward from their parents from it, teaches them to do it better and makes them more likely to keep it up once they no longer gain extrinsic rewards from doing so.
All that being said, I'm not really sure that the world as presented here IS the world you're talking about. It does have some aspects of it - Celestia can't really be relied upon to do anything - but on the other hand, it diverges in many ways, and many stories teach much more "realistic" lessons (the Best Night Ever being a great example of NOT engaging in a fantasy world view, and having the hoity-toity built-up party suck - just like real parties
).
I'm ambivalent about this.
I have no problems with kids' fiction glossing over issues that kids won't worry about, and I think little of the geek squad who do get in a tizz about such things. Anyone who wants an episode to clarify the political economy of Equestria is missing the point in a big (you can, of course, make a headcanon for such things, but that's different).
In the same vein, FIM has a consistency problem built into from the beginning: On the one hand, it has protagonists who are serial saviours of the world. On the other, it's mostly a slice-of-life show for didactic purposes. So you get oddities like Princess Twilight being unable to flag a cab in Manehatten and the like. I'm perfectly happy with that. It's probably a better solution than having the writers faff around trying to make the two sides engage with one another.
But that's a long way from saying that Equestria is structured -- intentionally or not -- in a way that mimics a child's home life. I don't think that's the case. Princesses and destiny pop up because of cultural romanticism, not because they have anything to do with parents and growing up. (Well, sort of -- to plays devil's advocate to myself, it seems reasonable to suppose kids are happier to accept infallible authority figures because they live with one).
I think kids are more sophisticated that we think when it comes to stories. Back when I was a brat, The Animals of Farthing Wood was my favourite programme. It looked nothing like a child's home life, even in metaphor -- really, it has more in common with the gritty serials that are popular nowadays than it does with FIM. Heavy continuity, longform storylines, main characters dying -- and killing, for that matter. I never had the slightest problem with any of that, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't unusual in that regard.
EDIT: Of course, there's also the film of Watership Down. Bloody hell, that was an amazing film.
The portal to Equestria I keep above my desk just spat out a note. I'm going to transcribe it here:
In other words, you can make as much sense as you like. I'll still explain it all while pretending Equestria is a proper country. With something called "The Chamber of Federal Deputies." Because, yeah, that's going to be in a kid's cartoon.
Hunger Games anyone?
I'm sorry. I had to do that.
...whoa
So many stories suddenly just clicked in retrospect for me.
Another thing to consider:
If we are to assume that the 'children' that the show is aimed at, and that you're talking about, are around 9 or 10, then... Quite frankly, it's way more complicated than you seem to think it is.
I knew, when I was that age, just as many kids who saw destiny as a bad thing and wanted to rebel against this supposed 'mystic all-knowing rightness', as kids who wanted to know their destinies, who wanted life to be utterly easy for them. I knew kids who grew less rebellious when they became teens.
I, personally, grew more accepting of concepts like 'destiny' or 'karma' as I grew older. When I was a kid, I always had that thought lingering in the forefront of my mind, "What if my destiny sucks?", "What if karma is wrong?", and I rejected them out of fear. But, when I grew older, even though I still doubt such concepts, I don't fear them or outright reject them, I just don't believe them. If there is such a thing as destiny, I have faith that it would always ultimately lead to the right thing. If there is such a thing as karma, I believe that it would punish evil and reward good.
As a culture, we seem to have this idea, even if we don't recognize it, of children as all being one way or another, when really, that's not right at all. Hot-headed kids can become calm, collected, and wise adults, or vice versa.
Or, maybe I'm reading too much into this blog post and seeing problems or viewpoints that aren't there. It's probably that, actually.
I just wanted to come back to this because as I was thinking about it more and more, I came to the conclusion that FiM is to children what Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire is to adults. Namely in that they are fantasy series based on the perceptions of the age group. For GoT/ASoIaF, the brave and noble king turns out to be a drunkard and wife abuser, the beautiful and just queen is vain, spiteful, and incestuous, the brave and noble knight lets honor cloud his judgement, the plucky and outnumbered rebels are crushed and slaughtered, and the woman fighting for freedom pretty much destroys those around her. So, in a way, it's almost like a metaphor for how one sees the world when they emerge from childhood and see all the perceptions they had a child die in front of their eyes and feel betrayed just because of it.
Heh, sorry for the bs rant, just wanted to comment on that. Really, this was a brilliant post.
I agree with the disagreements in the comments here, (not exactly disagreements, but the sentence sounds clever,) but I have to say that reading this has made me re-examine many of the stories I've read. It's a perspective I've never seen from before. Like 2109005, it's almost alien to me. (Similar to the British with the American colonies, my parents gave me just enough freedom of thought that I decided to think for myself always.) It's good to see this connection between so many stories, and it's also good to see the basis of so many recurring elements that never sat right with me. After all, slaying a dragon doesn't teach one how to rule a kingdom, it only teaches you how to slay dragons.
Thank you for writing this, Bookplayer.
2109022 I agree with this. Kids shows nowadays are way to watered down, and wishy-washy. It's why I'm very picky about the cartoons I watch.
We call this second thing science fiction.
2109005
I always find so many people ready to bash Beauty and the Beast. I look then to what you're comparing it to, and you're talking Aladdin and The Lion King. While you're right about what is good about Aladdin and The Lion King, you're missing the point of Beauty and the Beast, much like the people who claim that the Beauty and the Beast story has the lesson "Love ugly people, because really they'll become handsome."
That is at best a half-truth, and I think we all know that something that's still half a lie is still a lie.
The issue Beauty and the Beast ran into was how to convey to children "Victory Achieved" on a far more complex lesson. As to what that lesson is, I'll paraphrase one of my professors, that "Men are wild and violent, but they can be tamed". What we see this in both of the major men in the story, Beast and Gaston (Crazy Old Maurice doesn't count because as a father he was tamed before the film
).
Beast and Gaston are both wild and violent. Beast lives in the middle of the forest surrounded by talking furniture that does nothing but bow to his whim as lord, Gaston lives in the pub surrounded by talking sycophants that do nothing but bow to his whim as a 'manly man'. Beast has no table manners, and we see that neither does Gaston.
Over time however we see the critical difference between Beast and Gaston, while Gaston doesn't listen to, or is incapable of realized he is distressing Belle with forcing himself on her, Beast does. After time Beast's castle is slowly restored, and together he and Belle grow increasingly capable of holding maintaining a home together.
Now the victory condition (if you'll allow me to call it that) for Beast is to get Belle to love him, but love is reciprocal.
So naturally, at the finale Beast dies in defense of Belle from Gaston, the untameable man, who was ready to take Belle into his home where she would be the only party who seriously put the effort into making a home work (notice earlier in the film when Gaston invited himself into Belle's home that all he did was make more work for her?)
Now, I'm going to walk to a few other popular things in order to make the next point: there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for a friend. Remember that movie Frozen? Where the act of true love isn't a kiss, but sacrificing oneself so that another might live? Exactly, Beast gives his life to protect Belle (from a life of unappreciated servitude), thereby showing his love which is then reciprocated by Belle.
Here is where we then reach a problem where the audience must be concerned, for a child a 'bittersweet ending' isn't going to work, because they are just going to think it's a bad ending. So, like Beauty and the Beast and Frozen, the character that gave their lives to ensure their friend could survive, ends up living as well.
Returning now to BookPlayer's initial blog, I'll conclude with another thing that one of my professors said that will forever stick with me: a children's fairy tale is meant to teach them that evil exists and will try to harm them.
Oh shit.
And this truth underpins my entire view of Celestia and it seems no one ever gets this. This is why I hate the Tyrantlestia trope. Oh my god it all makes sense now thank you bookplayer
I feel this is why the over analysis of the so can get outright excessive sometimes. No, that isn't an excuse to let the show get away with bad writing, or OOC moments and the like, but sometimes you just have to accept that things in the show will be the way they are because it's written for the little people with a different view of the world.
2109871
Well, let's face reality here - the reason that Beauty and the Beast is not near-universally acknowledged to be the best Disney movie is because it was followed immediately thereafter by Aladdin and The Lion King. Beauty and the Beast is a really great movie, but so are Aladdin and The Lion King (and The Little Mermaid). The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast are more fairy tale like, while Aladdin and The Lion King are less so.
To be fair, there are reasons that people dislike this trope, and Shrek was pretty funny for turning it on its head (as goodness was rewarded with ugliness... but it didn't matter).
However, the real "problem" is:
Which is, uh, a really terrible lesson to teach people, quite honestly. If someone is being abusive towards you, the best solution is not to try and change them, but to exit the situation, because it is dangerous to you.
2110886 And I'll kindly point out that Belle did make an attempt at that, and then the taming came into effect. So, we and the story are in agreement, but then there isn't much of a story if the resolution is always "leave". And that's where I'm just willing to sit down and accept the anthropic principle.
Imagine how boring Star Wars would be if Obi Wan told Luke "Walk away".
Holy deep-seated philisohical introspection, Batman!
This makes a great deal of sense.
I've always liked seeing people pull insight from the mire and always will.
~OvO
Despite the criticisms, I largely agree. I'll only address one though:
2109005
I don't think this actually disagrees with the theme in the original post: Just because you had freedoms does not mean it was not a dictatorship: a dictator is a guardian. I think the difference here is you either never did bring out the "dragon" side of them, or just remember in a way that doesn't separate the two. I'm not saying the metaphor should ring true for you (because that's you're emotional reaction, which cannot be 'wrong' in any sense of that term) but that even your benevolent experience falls within what the trope is trying to say.
But to me, the follow-up question is the more interesting one: it's been noted in a few places I've seen that the show is "growing up" with the audience (a normal enough occurrence, cf Harry Potter), how will the show change?
Well, the Princess finally has a castle, so she'll have to keep that clean.
Actually, what I'd really like to see is for her to start doing a better job of taking care of Spike, and helping him grow up.
This is a truly beautiful blog post, it reflects many things I have always felt, and expresses them in much more elegant language than I usually do. I just wanted to add something, a GK Chesterton paraphrase that would fit in here somewhere.
"Fantasy stories are not about teaching children that dragons exist; they know this already. Fantasy stories are about teaching children that dragons can be killed."
Wow...
I studied myths and legends in college, and yet no one EVER explained children's stories like this before. Thank you for this ^_^
(Plus, now I'm not quite so upset at how useless Celestia seems to be...)
This blog post, taken in isolation, makes some good points. I don't believe explaining away evil characters as representing the parents makes sense, because the villains must be defeated, not obeyed until their demands make sense. And that also makes the explanation for why Celestia never acts against the villains fall apart.
And it also doesn't recognize that those stories with motiveless villains (a) teach children a terrible lesson that turns many of them into evil people later in life, and (b) suck.
Taken in the context of the kinds of posts that this responds to, such as a certain recent post by somepony, it's not very fair to respond to the claim that certain types of stories teach particular bad lessons by ignoring the particulars, not citing who you are responding to, and justifying everything by saying it's all part of one great narrative about childhood.
2111258
Most of my friends in high school grew up under "parents as guardians" models. I've met people who did not; their childhood was a vastly different experience than my own. It is probably true that it isn't black and white; there are likely many parents who fall in between, who vary between "parents as dictators" and "parents as guardians". But you're just outright wrong when you're claiming it is the same experience; it isn't. It is very different, and it sets up very different expectations in the minds of children.
2111800
Hey now, I wasn't responding to anyone, actually. Your blogpost was about ethics, and I said what was relevant to your blog post in the comments there. That might be why you didn't feel this presented any valid points towards your blog post: it was never intended to. After my last comment to you, it had me considering the ways that children see stories differently, and remembering some other conversations I'd had with a few people on skype about it. So I wrote it up in a general way.
One thing that a few people have gotten confused about is that they seem to think that I'm arguing that simply because a story has these elements that it's A) good for children or B) a good story. All I said is that children recognize these things while adults do not, so while adults might find these things unrealistic (what is the point of having a God-Princess around who never protects her kingdom?) they are perfectly realistic to children (mom never protects me from mom being mean to me.)
Stories can feel realistic without being good, or good for you, and they can be "good" for children without being good stories in an adults eyes. They can also feel realistic while being both. None of these aspects make the story better or worse by themselves, they just aren't a problem to kids, not because kids are dumb, but because they have a totally different reference point.
So, having a motiveless villain doesn't teach a kid anything. To kids, the world is filled with motiveless villains (or, at least, evil that their minds can't understand the reasons for.) And it might suck to you, because it feels less realistic, but to a child it feels perfectly realistic.
The other side of this is that giving the villains a motive will rarely hurt the story for a child-- if they're old enough to understand it they will, and if they're not the explanation will go in one ear and out the other. But the child will not be bothered either way.
In terms of the defeating the villains point... well, that depends on the villain, the moral of the story, and how much of it is wish fulfillment. An angry or "injured" child does want to defeat their parents-- one of my younger brothers would throw temper tantrums and yell about how much he hated them (I'm lead to understand that I was similar.) My younger sister, on the other hand, dedicated herself to manipulation and circumventing my parents orders (her trick for room cleaning was to hide piles of clean clothes that were supposed to be put away by putting them back in the dirty clothes.) Some stories are direct (Cinderella defeats her stepmother by doing what she's supposed to do until the fairy godmother and Prince step in to help her escape (which she's only worthy of because she's been doing what she was supposed to.)) Some are more subtle (Simba defeats Scar by showing the other animals that he's a good person, and Scar "defeats" himself.) Some are blatant power fantasies for kids, where they are able, though their special--ness, to get the power to wipe the bad guy off the face of the earth.
Another thing that keeps coming up is whether this is good for kids, and while I have many thoughts on this (and this is the only thing that I would have considered adding to the comments on your blog) there are two that keep coming to mind, and they are related: 1) It depends on the kid. Some kids need stories like this to deal with their lives, some are just fine on their own. Some like these stories and some would rather read books about kids solving mysteries, or watch TV shows about ninjas. Each kid is different, but since these themes run through a lot of children's entertainment and have for hundreds of years it seems likely that they're something a lot of kids can use in some way. Which leads me to 2) It... doesn't really matter. We're talking about themes in entertainment. Most people consume entertainment that's not educational. Should these stories take the place of other ethical or logical training? No. But if viewed in addition to that training, they give the kids something they can enjoy for a few hours and characters and ideas to play with when they're playing pretend or playing with their pony toys or whatever.
2111975 I didn't know if you were responding to me, but you did say,
which tells me you were responding to somebody. And those questions/problems are usually raised for reasons that you didn't respond to.
You gave us another way of looking at the issue, and that's good, so I'm sorry I came across as negative.
2111969
I can't say for sure, because I only had one set of parents, but I would put mine as guardians... my mother's rule was that if I could explain it in a way that made sense, I was allowed to do it.
This never stopped me from throwing a fit or "hating" her whenever my cunning 6-year-old logic was unconvincing to her (edit: I might have actually been more mad at her, because I was convinced I had reasons, and she would eventually have to put her foot down to end the argument. I can be a little stubborn, in case you hadn't noticed.) I honestly think that, while there can be extremes in parents, it also has a lot to do with individual children. I know my siblings and I see our parents in very different ways, and I know the same is true of my husband and his siblings. Since I'm the oldest, I know in my case my parents weren't the ones who were acting drastically differently between children, I have to think that our temperaments played a big part.
2111999
I'm sorry for the confusion. I was purposely vague because I've seen the questions I was responding to put forward by a number of different people, and in many cases I couldn't remember exactly who I had been talking to about what (or if I even responded to them when they raised the questions.)
I probably should have credited you for "inspiring" the post, because I wouldn't have been thinking about it if not for your blog, but I thought it was tangential enough to not want to muddy the discussion on this post by bringing ethical education into it.
2108906
So...... Discord's the deadbeat dad who comes home raving drunk?
2141302
That actually makes a lot of sense. And puts a much darker spin on the whole Fluttercord thing.
Also, even when a real-world villain has a motive, the motive may only make sense in terms of his own assumptions, which may be very divorced from reality -- and may be mixed between rational and correct ones, rational but mistaken ones, irrational and correct ones, and irrational and mistaken ones. These show that there are two axes -- correct vs. mistaken, and rational vs. irrational. Usually, the rational is correct and the irrational mistaken, but not always, because decision makers are imperfect.
Take Hitler as a real-life villainous example. His policies included "build German strength to ensure German survival in a potentially-dangerous world" (rational and correct, given the existence of the Soviet Union), "drive out or kill the Jews to stop their evil plan to undermine Germany" (rational but mistaken -- had the Jews been engaged in such an evil plan, it would have made sense, but since they weren't, all it did was to harm innocents while weakening his own position), "build lots of tanks and planes because they are dramatic weapons" (irratlional but correct: tanks and planes were the essential requirements of the new mobile warfare) and "defy the Allies to show that I'm strong because if I don't Daddy will beat me but if I do World Destiny will ensure my victory" (irrational, Daddy was dead and he was no longer a child, and mistaken, because all he accomplished was to unite most of the world against him).
This analysis could be applied to any actor, heroic, villainous or otherwise. And,of course, every villain is a hero in his own mind: it's just that his concept of "heroism" may be very horrible from the point of view of others -- and "the hero is whoever wins" is, after all, one point of view.
2141351
Ah very well said. I've encountered the gist of this "villain motivation" device before, but placing it on axes is a new way of looking at it. Saved for ref.
I use it for my post-EG Sunset interpretation. Everybody writes Sunset as a redemption tale; I do the "redemption" without ditching her villain card, and the above is how I did it. Nice Sunset loses what makes her fun.
Bookplayer. Have you been reading Bettleheim? this whole blog post reds like it came from The Uses of Enchantment, which I love.
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I also love The Uses of Enchantment, and yes, this is based a lot on ideas from Bettleheim.
You might enjoy the archives of the (now sadly defunct) Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts. I'm pretty sure it was through their articles there that I first became aware of The Uses of Enchantment, and there's a lot of interesting stuff from some very good fantasy writers (like Terri Windling, Charles De Lint, and Gregory Frost.)
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I like Charles De-Lint.