The Magic Stigma

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A few days ago I was helping out a customer at work. She said her 14 year old son had a Wii and no real games for it so immediately I recommended Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, boasting what a good and fun game it was. And she said no. Why? She didn’t want her kids exposed to anything with magic in it.

My stomach sank, not only because I knew I’d have to be dealing with someone annoyingly uncooperative but because I knew if I took anywhere near a combative attitude with her I’d risk causing a scene in a crowded store. Even after I lightly quipped "well how do you feel about Sci-Fi?" and reached for Metroid Prime 3 she repeated her feelings about magic in the content of entertainment, proceeding to tell me her life story about how she allowed Lord of the Rings because her husband liked it (and just sorta ignored me when I interjected that Zelda TP was alot like LoTR) but she personally believed in her "personal beliefs" that "whatever you put in is what you put out."

Now of course I knew that was one of those stupid phrases people tend to parrot from preachers of some kind, but I just nodded with what had to be a rather glazed expression on my face and changed the subject. I don’t know why she expected me to be impressed with her conviction, but she certainly seemed impressed with herself and liked repeating it. A few times I couldn’t help defending the LoZ series or fantasy in general, and then luckily I just left her to look at the Gamecube games a little before I clocked out.

Now already people like that annoy me, mainly because I don’t understand their logic at all. I mean if you make a big deal about magic and fantasy and how you think it will corrupt your children isn’t that the same as teaching your children that these things are real? Is that better than teaching them that these things are just made up and make believe? Personally I wouldn’t think so, I mean what do you think will happen if you tell a child "You can’t read Harry Potter because you’ll start practicing witchcraft!" Everyone wishes they could snap their fingers and make things happen instantly. Imagine a magic spell to cook meals. A magic spell to clean your room. Give a child even the inkling that these things can be done and they’ll seek to learn more.

But on my drive home I began to seriously think about the role of fantasy, about Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and Zelda and Final Fantasy and other such things that I feel would fall under the label of "High Fantasy." These stories not only have sweeping epics, but vast worlds that are similar but at the same time entirely different from our own. The whole idea behind it is to think, what if it were real? What if magic were real, and elves, and fairies, and large terrifying creatures and powerful supernatural entities? What sort of societies would be formed in a world like that? What sort of history would they have, or culture for that matter? How would they use such a power? The possibilities are endless, and it takes a great deal of creativity to form entire cultures or countries or worlds around this concept. I think the people adverse to fantasy don’t understand that that is the intention, and just have a knee-jerk and unjustifiable reaction to the presense of anything resembling "magic".