Escapism and Pleasure

One of the criticisms of genre fiction that amuses me most is that it's escapism, as if that's a bad thing. I think just the opposite. Nobody, except the unbelievably incompetent, escapes to jail. (I'm not talking about the chronically incarcerated who, unable to function in normal society, deliberately choose actions that will return them to imprisonment, although that's an interesting image when it comes to preferred reading material.) No, the direction of escape is toward freedom, imagination, innovation, pleasure. In other words, we move toward becoming bigger, richer lives. So what is “escapism” an accusation of? Why is it bad to want something better?

What do we mean by “escape”? Escape from what? The critics mean, of course, escape from "real" life: responsibility, order, duty, piety. Underlying this notion is the assumption that life should be serious (serious = grim, humorless, unpleasant, joyless). You should work hard and deny yourself pleasure "for your own good." You should accept the way things are ("be realistic"). If you find reality oppressive and intolerable, it's because there's something wrong with you. You're weak-willed, inadequate, ineffectual, immature, lazy, stupid . . . you've heard the litany. I've exaggerated a bit here to make a point, which is that this attitude ("life sucks, get used to it") arises from a pernicious blend of Puritanical abhorrence of pleasure and the need for conformity in an industrialized society. Under such a system, the two greatest sins are to seek delight and to follow one's own preferences. In other words, to not only be open to change but to create it, to challenge the established order, to question and to dream.  To value joy above productive capacity and meaningfulness above popularity. To be an individual, not a cog in an assembly line, to sometimes be productive but other times contemplative -- in other words, to be unpredictable and unique.

When we speak of pleasure, we cannot avoid the issue of sensory pleasure and sexual ecstasy. Sexuality is a powerful, primal source of energy. No wonder industrialists are afraid of it, except when they can use it to sell things. They want us to be consumers, not originators. This brings me to a second way in which escapism is considered bad, and that is as a force of appeasement, of sedation, a means to drain off rebellious energy and maintain the status quo. I think genre literature, especially fantasy and science fiction, works exactly in the opposite way. The dichotomy and mutual exclusivity between body and mind or spirit is not a universal belief, nor is the insistence on negating or minimizing the importance of the full range of physical sensations. They are, however, tools of a hierarchical society. People are, after all, easier to control when they can be convinced to invalidate their direct experiences of themselves and the world, to distrust themselves and instead trust an external authority. Pleasure must be sinful when it seduces people from abject obedience. And yet, in every age and circumstance, people consistently seek it out, whether through sex or music or drugs or listening to a whopping good tale.

What Goes Around Comes Back With Roses

Last night, I returned from a potluck and worship sharing with our local Quaker meeting to find an email waiting for me with the news that I had been accepted to attend Launch Pad astronomy workshop at the University of Wyoming. It's a NASA-funded workshop for established writers, a sort of “crash course” in modern astronomy science through guest lectures and observation through the University of Wyoming’s professional telescopes. I'd sent off my application some time ago and more or less forgotten about it, except for the occasional wistful thought that although I didn't stand much of a chance, it sure would be wonderful.