Avatar lets us return to Eden
In its short life, the movie Avatar has already become many things to many viewers: science fiction dream, action-adventure epic, visual spectacle, technological triumph, cautionary tale, and morality play.
Box office conquered, Avatar also proves the culture has shifted. Part role-playing game come true and part special effects masterpiece, its hybrid gamer-geek pedigree is as glaring as the blue skin of Na'vi race director James Cameron has brought to life. Cameron's movie --- alongside the rise of Harry Potter, the return of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, and the obsession with online games like World of Warcraft --- shows that fantasy is no longer a shunned or exotic side dish. The genre has become the main dish.
And what is that transformation all about? I think that classic geek dream --- "if I were only not me" --- has leaked now into the general culture. Even the jocks want to be someone else. Fantasies about transcending the self ain't just for 98-pound weaklings anymore.
And there's this twist: we spend so much time in front of our computers, chained there in effect, that we are like much like the paralyzed protagonist of Avatar, Jake Sully, who finds joy and transcendence through his athletic, virtual Na'vi feline body let lose on the jungle planet Pandora, where the movie's action takes place. Sully feels so unleashed, so uninhibited, that his real life pales in comparison. In Sully's words: "Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream."
More than one critic --- and James Cameron himself --- has already compared Avatar to movies like Dances With Wolves and its ilk (Lawrence of Arabia; Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now). It's a classic clash of civilizations or of cultures premise: jaded Western military man crosses to the other side, discovers something untainted and wholesome in a tribal culture, falls for the hot local gal, and thereby completes his "going native" conversion by switching sides and eventually leading the natives to fight their oppressors – his old self.
Sully's journey may be the well-worn hero's journey, but with a new chapter. His journey is not just about saving the day. It's about becoming one with nature, returning to state of Eden, tapping into a wholeness with the world as Mother Nature, God or the deity of your choice meant it to be. To be re-aquainted with our primal selves.
For who doesn't want to be better, faster, stronger (like the Six Million Dollar Man), leaping through the forest and bounding across the jungle canopy, hunting some beasts and conquering others? To be one with mystical forces of healing, the "one-ness" of the living, breathing, interconnected mass of greenness that is the earth? And to be able to do cool stuff like fly dragons and kill the nasties?
The irony here is that it took Cameron a gazillion dollars, 12 years and some very amazing, so-called "cutting-edge" gadgets--- computers, 3D cameras, digital draftsmanship --- to bring us this fantasy tale of how technology threatens the new world, Pandora; how it has wrecked humanity; and how it keeps us from being that lean, mean, agile, fighting machine-nature boy/girl.
Our true selves.
Yep, I'm giving them away for free...
A heartbreaking tale of staggering geekiness
A heartbreaking tale of staggering geekiness
I wrote earlier about my personal relationship to fantasy and gaming, and the reasons for writing my book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. I wanted to expand on those ideas here.
To recap: I was a high school gaming geek. I played Dungeons & Dragons religiously. I was not on the football team. My varsity letters might as well have been "D&D."
Years passed, and I forgot about my gaming days. But I noticed the culture had changed. Suddenly, in the 21st century, all the geeky pursuits of my youth --- video games, science fiction and collecting action figures --- had gone mainstream. So I asked myself one primal question: did our culture's obsession with Harry Potter, Xbox, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Magic: the Gathering and World of Warcraft mean we had become a nation of escapists? Were we all unable to deal with the real world?
As it turns out, no. But to find out, I embarked on a nonlinear, noncontiguous odyssey of self-reflection, cultural analysis, and free mead. The journey became my book.
I crisscrossed the country, the world, and other worlds, from my home in Somerville, Massachusetts, to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; from France to New Zealand; from Planet Earth to the realm of Aggramar. I asked gaming and fantasy geeks how they found balance between their escapist urges and the kingdom of adulthood. I questioned Tolkien scholars and medievalists. I spoke to grown men who built hobbit holes and learned to speak Elvish, and to grown women who played Warcraft and EverQuest. Old, young, male, female, able-bodied and disabled—I wanted to hear, in their own words, what lured them in, and for what reasons, whether healthy, unhealthy, or in between.
I needed to put myself face-to-face with these escapist pursuits. Before, as a kid, my Dungeons & Dragons obsession was a haphazard consequence, a symptom of being lost and a solution to my familytrauma. But I had adopted D&D and fantasy accidentally. This time, I would get lost on purpose. I wouldn’t be escaping again; I would be excavating. Examining the unexamined in an effort to find out what fantasy meant to me, to all of us.
I hung out with Harry Potter tribute bands, attended fan conventions and gaming tournaments, camped with 12,000 medieval reenactors for a week, learned to sword fight, and battled online goblins and trolls. I went on pilgrimages to Tolkien's hometown of Oxford, England, and I trekked across New Zealand in search of the filming locations for the Lord of the Rings movies. At a live action role-playing game, I dressed as a pacifist monk for a weekend. I became Ethor, Ethorian, and Ethor-An3. I sewed my own tunic. I even played Dungeons & Dragons again for the first time in 25 years.
I met hundreds of gamers and geeks on my quest and listened to their stories. Their reasons for embracing fantasy and gaming were diverse, surprising and in many cases, touching. It wasn't mindless escapism that lured them to swords-and-scorcery realms. Games taught social skills,leadership, and strategy; they inspired creativity and storytelling. They provided rites of passage, accomplishment and belonging, even belief systems. They let people safely try out aspects of their personalities --- often dark, evil sides, or extroverted or flirtatious --- they could not or would not flex in "real life." The games connected folks to magical thinking, to nature, to a primal, pick-up-your-battle-ax and kill mentalities long suppressed by so-called society. For the disabled who ventured online into realms liek World of Warcraft, games and fantasy provided transcendence from pain and prejudice, and a venue where they'd be judged not based on their appearance, but how they played the game. As one woman told me, bound to her walker and crutches, “I can’t run through the grass barefoot anymore. It’s something I cannot do. But my avatar can.”
In short, all the stories helped debunk the stereotypes that gamers and geeks were simply anti-social escapists who lived in their parents' basements and had no "real" lives. And, by meeting all these articulate, tolerant and confident folks who still gamed after all these years, I was finally able to face my inner geek.
That's the happy ending of my story. Because, after all, we're a storytelling people. And if nothing else, fantasy and gaming lets us be the hero of a story -- not to simply absorb and consume but to participate, to tell and be part of our own heroic narrative.
That thread to our heroic lives has been largely lost. The minutiae of our modern, mundane troubles --- politics, race, jobs, communication, relationships, family --- are a bore and a chore and wear us down. Dissatisfied with ATMs and speed limits, mediated experiences and the suburban blah-scape, who wouldn’t prefer trying his or her luck with a broad- sword against a horde of orcs rather than paying the Visa bill or looking for parking?
Which explains why people read Tolkien and J.K. Rowling and play role-playing games. Why? The books and games give us hope in hopeless times. Fantasy is a genre people can read and retreat to and gather strength to face the real world. Fantasy keeps the spirit alive and kicking --- and inspires us to confront our real-world problems.
Indeed, when you read heroic stories like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, or watch the movies (and even play the games), you sense that if a mere hobbit can withstand evil, why not you? If the little guy can enter Mordor and destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, then perhaps we can take on our own problems, no matter how real or imaginary they may seem.
As for me, my problem was that I was 40 and still in love with fantasy. But I've changed. I finally embraced my inner geek.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms
Magic Moments and Imaginary Friends
Given the themes of my book, namely fantasy and gaming, the subject of imaginary worlds is often on my mind. Indeed, for much of my childhood and even adulthood, when I wasn't playing a game, drawing a picture or reading a book, I was and am often seeking those fleeting "magic moments" when I could feel like I had shaken off the weight of the present day to travel to another era in history. Or to another world entirely. Just last week, on walk in the woods, I pretended to see hobbits, dwarves and elves.
In my book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, I talk about how the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) helped an adolescent me escape the trauma of my mother's debilitating brain injury. To cope, my siblings and I called her "the Momster." Turning her into a creature, in my mind, saved me from having to deal with emotional pain.
In her new memoir, Jessica Handler covers similar territory. Handler is an Atlanta-based writer and author of Invisible Sisters: A Memoir , her chronicle of growing up as the oldest of three sisters and being the "well sibling," learning to redefine herself after her sisters' deaths. I asked her to contribute to Geek Pride her take on "escaping," role-playing and the power of the imagination. Here are her thoughts:
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I've been thinking a lot lately about imaginary friends, maybe because I've recently started Twittering. I've never met most of the people who are my social media "friends" and "followers." They're real people, but the intensity of our interactions and the presumed the 24/7 nature of their interest in me (and mine in them) makes them a little like imaginary friends.
I had a constant relationship with imaginary friends when I was a kid. My sister Susie, eight years old to my ten, had just died of leukemia. Our little sister Sarah, four, was terminally ill with a rare blood disorder. Our parents kept our lives as normal as possible, but we were rigid with terror, captive to hospitals and medical bills, and frantic with love. No one spoke about the death that came and the death that was coming. Our parents' marriagedissolved, as they often do with the loss of a child. Sarah died in her twenties.
When I was a child, my imaginary friends were imaginary selves --- my alternate lives. Like D&D for Ethan coping with his "Momster," they were ways to escape my actual life.
Kids are generally pretty powerless. A serious illness renders everyone involved powerless. Parents, whom kids presume all-powerful, become tragically fallible. A kid seeing her parents' frailty for the first time turns away. Unable to help, kids are ashamed of their lack of power.
And so we turn to a safe place inside ourselves.
Imaginary friends allow a kid to take control of her life. With imaginary friends and imaginary selves, a child recreates herself as visible and vital in a world of her making.
Every good-weather afternoon, all I wanted to do was get home from school and get outside. There, I walked in a circle for hours, silently telling myself stories in which I was the heroine; someone who wasn't me. Thinking back now, I'm amazed at how unselfconsciously I tamped down a ring of grass in our front yard, in clear view of the neighbors, and disappeared wholly into a story - and an imaginary self.
My grandmother once remarked that she saw me in the yard, "pretending to be a horse." I wouldn't dream of correcting my beloved grandmother, but no way was I pretending to be a horse. I was pretending to be Elaine, a girl who looked like Katherine Ross in The Graduate, the new movie with ads everywhere. Or I was a popular, athletic, blonde pre-teen who climbed trees and slugged boys and was surrounded by friends. Sometimes I was a girl who survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. All of these characters were survivors.
Escapism and fantasy helped me survive a traumatic childhood. I had real friends and real responsibilities in my household. My sisters and I loved each other, and our parents loved us. My imaginary selves killed our lawn, but they also took me to a world I owned. In its way, this is similar to gaming, so I guess I can claim bona fide Geek Pride.
Does it explain my fascination with social media? Maybe a little.
Jessica Handler is the author of Invisible Sisters: A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2009). You can learn more about her book here:http://www.jessicahandler.com.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
The Holiday Role You Play
The Holiday Role You Play
Perhaps no other time of year is as highly anticipated, and secretly dreaded, as that festive family time known collectively as "the holidays." The clash of fake gaiety and togetherness around Thanksgiving time plus Christmas's unrealistic expectations of "perfection" can lead to a train wreck of emotions.
We cope the best we can. Both poles of our Jekyll-Hyde personalities can be released. Sometimes we slip behind familiar masks. We might play comforting, non-confrontational roles, or perhaps hide out in the kitchen behind a tower of dirty dishes. For example, I noticed how in recent years around family gatherings I had become "the entertainer." My job: make 'em laugh.
To see if this holiday ailment afflicted more than just myself, recently I polled my friends and select family members. I had them write descriptions of their annual performances, each titled "The Holiday Role I Play." (I'd also like to hear from you: what role do you play?).
Reported anonymously, here are some of the responses (edited for length) that I received:
• I am considered the queen of Christmas.
• When I go home for the holidays I am "The Good Sport." No matter what game I am asked to play, song I am asked to sing, I never complain. There is time to get even later.
• I am "The Pretender" and enter into all they're doing and willingly going along. At some level, I know they know this.
• Characterize me as "The Bartender." Everyone's glass is full -- which permits me to fill my own glass in the doing.
• At mom's house I am "The Organizer." Everything must run on schedule, all the dishes at the proper temperature, the gifts opened in descending order of seniority. My husband is "The Clean-up Guy." When all the gals are sipping their Bailey's, he is quietly at the sink washing and drying.
• I think I am "The Son Who Needs To Be Spoiled." Whenever I come home for the holidays, my mom wants to spoil her "lost son" as much as possible.
• I play three roles. With the immediate family, I am "The Reminder of The Love Before." Mom sees my father in my face and usually loses her mind. The second role I play is "The Project" -- everyone is eager to see me 50 and relatively finished. Finally, I am "The Outsider." My family is a bunch of heartening, Midwestern hicks, barely anyone finishing college, lots of alcoholics, teenage drug addicts and runaways who try to commit suicide. To have become the quiet one who got out of Fort Wayne, Ind., without babies or a husband, is always unsettling.
• I can tell you right off my role would be "The Moderator." Such choice therapeutic phrases such as "what I hear you saying is ..." and "what I think she is trying to express is ..." are commonly uttered by me. I try to avoid using language like "shame spiral" and "co-dependent." (Note: variations on this theme were the most common roles cited -- "The Referee," "The Sounding Board," "The Therapist," "The Link Repairer," "The Peacemaker.")
• I play "The Honored Guest," graciously bestowing my presence and allowing myself to be treated as such.
• I know the pitfalls of family gatherings (a dirge-like, morose collection of individuals, shoveling down holiday food to the strains of Johnny Mathis and searching for an appropriate escape) and do my best to avoid/dilute them.
• My role: "I Am My Sister's Keeper." We share thousands of tiny glances throughout one holiday evening that speak volumes in the moment, and signify volumes to be spoken much later. Separately, we can hardly win any battles, but together, on Christmas, we are an unstoppable army of two.
• I am the one trying to shed a little factual light on my family's highly distorted, historically rewritten views. I used to be the family clown. I don't think the two are that different -- just components of the same role.
• In my house I take the role of "The Conversationalist." Frequently this involves many different conversations, held in a constant blur of moving from living room to kitchen and back again, trying to not alight on the couch and be sucked into the brain numbing drone of TV. The talk goes a little like this: Cooking, a little politics and sports with Dad; sports with younger brother; current events and education with step-mom. Don't alienate anyone, make sure you include all the guests, remember to include significant others. Above all else avoid the deadly seven-minute dead air. Silence isn't golden. Perhaps we will find out how far we have traveled from each other over the year.
• As a child I was "The Anointed Christmas Infant," responsible for displays of wonder. As a young adult my role shifted to being the one responsible for the continuation of our handed-down traditions of perfection -- "Mid-Winter Monarch" and "Kitchen Queen" -- she who secures the boundaries, mediates the squabbles and is provider of plenty. Now, in exile and older, I have become "The Contented Ghost of Christmas Past."
• My son is unable to type so I will attempt to respond for him. His role is to experience and share pure unadulterated joy during the holidays. He jumps with excitement when putting out a plate of cookies, eight carrots and a glass of milk for Santa. He brings meaning to the holidays. Ask him this question in another five years and I am sure you'll get an answer more like what you were expecting.
• I have no idea what my role is. I think maybe I'm the guy who makes screaming faces in the bathroom mirror and then comes out all smiley.
And you probably could add to these your own cast of characters you find yourself playing. Feel free to comment below and let us know what roles you slip into around the holidays.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
Ethan Gilsdorf on TheOneRing.net Radio Show: Sunday Dec 6th
The next radio show for TheOneRing.net is set for this Sunday, December 6th at 2PM Eastern. Our guests include author Ethan Gilsdorf (‘Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks’) and professional blogger Jenna Busch (JoBlo, Huffington Post, SCI FI Wire, AOL’s Popeater, Newsarama, IGN, UGO, Forces of Geek). We will also be talking about all the latest Hobbit news and other items featured on TheOneRing.net.
We’ll be taking questions from listeners via chat, email, text and the old fashioned phone! Visit our BlogTalk Radio page to listen in!
TheOneRing.net brings fans the latest news on the beloved figures involved in the making of the wildly popular Lord of the Rings movies as well as the newest information available on upcoming productions, Tolkien-centered events, new publications, and fan gatherings.
Could fantasy have prevented the Fort Hood slayings?
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan should have been a gamer.
Is it possible that fantasy or gaming could have prevented the brutal slayings at Fort Hood? Perhaps.
The motive for the shooting wasn't clear. But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused shooter, was said to have expressed some anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too bad he did not find the proper venue to express that anger.
The power of simulations and make-believe have been proven. By play-acting scenarios --- be it Civil War re-enactment, a model UN, the classic role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) or an online game like World of Warcraft (WoW) --- we can imagine different outcomes. We can pretend to be good and chivalrous, or evil or villainous, all within the safe realm of a play. And by role-playing, which is a kind of inhabiting other sides of ourselves, and other possible personalities, we imagine how others live.
Gaming and fantasy play give us the chance to take risks in controlled ways. They let us sort out complex feelings of fear and anger. They let us blow off steam. Contrary to the fears of a post-Columbine High School world, gamers don't mix up reality with fantasy. But some people, and perhaps Nidal Malik Hasan was one of them, let reality become too burdensome. Obsessed with their own emotions, they lose their sense of what is right and wrong. And then they make a huge mistake.
In a book like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, we are reminded again by what is good and what is evil. These narratives ground us. They recalibrate our internal moral barometers. A swords-and-sorcery or futuristic realm has conflict, and when there's a conflict being acted out, just like in all great literature, we learn useful stuff about the human condition. In a way, D&D is a huge exercise in empathy.
I'm not saying that had Hasan played D&D or WoW, these shootings would not have happened. But they might not have happened. Perhaps by finding some venue to express these dark thoughts, he would have found catharsis. And not, as it turned out, gut-wrenching tragedy and pain for countless others.
Perhaps, had Nidal Malik Hasan played a first-person shooter game in an imaginary realm, he would not have felt compelled to create his own first-person shooter game in the real world.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
It's OK for kids to dress up evil for Halloween
Prohibiting scary costumes at Halloween? Ridiculous.
A recent article in the New York Times ("Drop the Halloween Mask! It Might Scare Someone") reported how, "in some classrooms across the country, the interpretation of what is too scary - or offensive, gross or saddening - is now also leading to an abundance of caution and some prohibitions" on what kids can "be" at Halloween.
The story reproduced a memo from a principal at a Los Angeles school that outlined what was OK for kids to dress up as:
>They should not depict gangs or horror characters, or be scary.
>Masks are allowed only during the parade.
>Costumes may not demean any race, religion, nationality, handicapped condition or gender.
>No fake fingernails.
>No weapons, even fake ones.
>Shoes must be worn.
Weapons, gang depictions, and costumes making fun of race or ethnicity, et al, I get. Even shoes, I understand. But prohibiting fingernails, horror characters or anything scary? This is ridiculous.
The truth is that we need to tap into our scary sides. To be both scared and to frighten others. We need to know what it is to be freaked out, even to risk death (in a safe way), so we can understand what it is to be alive. We need to be confronted with evil and nastiness --- even if it is "play" --- so we can recalibrate what is means to be good. We need to play the villain --- be it Sauron, the Wicked Witch of the West or Snidley Whiplash. Halloween is one of the few opportunities we have to encounter and inhabit these archetypal characters. We get to be "the baddie," if only for one night.
Sociologist Norbert Elias, author of The Civilizing Process, suggested that in our increasingly structured society, we must exert proper control over our emotions. In the "civilizing process" described by Elias, people don't get to flex our primal emotional muscles. So we have created acceptable arenas to blow off primal steam and experience adrenaline and danger --- even if real death has been removed. Elias called it "controlled decontrolling" of emotions. It's acceptable to bellow battle cries at football games, or hoot during rock concerts, or get drunk and crazy at Mardi Gras. Otherwise, we don't get to act out and act up.
Hence, the importance of Halloween, a holiday that not only lets us role-play, but connect us to the spirit world and the supernatural. The celebration has its roots in a festival of the dead: a time when a family honored its ancestors and invited them home but also were careful not the welcome the harmful spirits. Supposedly, by wearing of costumes and masks, and disguising oneself as a "bad" spirit, the evil forces were warded off.
But some adults (i.e. the ones protecting kids from scary masks at Halloween parties) think Freddy Krueger costumes and rotting zombie make-up will somehow harm kids. It's a fallacy. Gerard Jones, author of Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Superheroes and Make-Believe Violence, reminds us that fantasy violence and playground role-playing of scary stuff helps kids process anger and violent emotions in a controlled and safe fashion. Violent and scary entertainment can be good for kids --- and to demonize it can damage their emotional development. He also argues that children clearly get the difference between make-believe and reality.
So, educators and parents, let's not unduly limit what or who kids can be at Halloween. Yes, leave the AK-47s at home. But scary costumes are as old as Grimms Fairy Tales and haunted forests and evil step-mothers. Scary is good. And to be undead is to be alive.
Let me know what you think.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
Online gaming creates another self
It's human nature to demonize what we don't understand.
It is easy to assume that fantasy gaming is "bad" or "harmful." Rumors of Dungeons & Dragons luring susceptible kids to the dark side added to its geek creep factor back in the 1980s, forever linking the game to deviant and antisocial behavior. Indeed, it's human nature to demonize what we don't understand.
Such has been the case with MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) like World of Warcraft. Society still considers gamers to be as introverted, inarticulate, and emotionless as their armored avatars. News stories tell of how virtual relationships wreck real-life ones. Spouses are ignored or cheated on. Or even more heinous behavior occurs: virtual muggings, harassment, racial incidents.
A hierarchy emerges. It seems to many that even so-called "healthy" fantasy like reading Harry Potter books or sketching dungeons with pencils has to be better than fantasy like WoW, which numbs minds, sucks the imagination, and has no redeeming value.
But negative stereotyping of online gaming isn't fair. And if you delve into these games, you soon realize that MMOs and other computer games can offer something more powerful than escapism. They even change lives.
In my book, a woman named Phyllis Priestly talks about her relationship to online fantasy role-playing games like WoW. "You're in this world where it's life and death," she says. "Adrenaline rush. You kill. I'm really happy. It's changed the way I interact with people in the real world. I am less patient. I am more forthright. I blurt out what I think. It’s about [expletive] time. It’s like breathing for the first time."
She find in gaming a way to express a part of her personality that once lay hidden. Her gaming personality -- huntress, fighter, doer, killer -- leaks into her real world. All that rapid-fire picking off of wolves, quilboars, and troggs (the various monsters in the game) sharpens her reflexes, quickens her reaction time, and heightens her senses. She claims that gaming made her a better driver: The windshield became a rectangular viewfinder into a world of obstacles and foes. "I keep expecting something to jump out and kill me," she told me. "It's freed me up to say what I want to say." In her mind, she had become more confident, more daring, more connected.
Assertiveness training came through her experience with MMOs, not some corporate team building exercise. And through a "game," people can try out new attitudes, new personalities, new selves. And maybe, just maybe, find a way to export their fantasy experiences into their real lives, and become more like the ideal selves they want to be.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
Do. Or do not! There is no try: Part 2
LUKE: I don't...I don't believe it. YODA: That is why you fail.
In part 1 of this post, I proposed the idea that we seek moral guidance and spiritual example in unexpected places these days, even from movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Here's another twist on this intersection (or collision) between pop culture and behavior.
Fantasy games like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) link and role-playing groups like the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) link aren't just fun ways to socialize and feel the rush of battle (whether we swing foam and PVC swords in our mind or on a real-world play battlefield). These experiences actually teach us useful things, and for some players, provide guidance. In my book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, I talk about how D&D not only gave me, a nerdy and shy kid, something to do each Friday with friends who didn't judge his lack of prowess on the athletic field. It also helped give shape and order to a chaotic world of adolescence and my own troubled home life. I had learned that in the adult world, fate was chaotic and uncertain. Guidelines for success were arbitrary. But in the world of D&D, at least there was a rule book. My character gradually becoming more powerful, I could gradually risk more daring feats. D&D was a safe place to act out, be bold, be a chamption. The game's subterranean realms and heroic quests welcomed me; high school dances and locker rooms did not.
In my book we also meet a schoolteacher named David Randrup, who was raised as an atheist. Visiting churches as an adult left him disappointed. He got no sense of wonderment or higher purpose-until he found the SCA. In this group devoted to recreating the best parts of the Middle Ages, Randrup became Sir Gareth, a knight who found in the Society's chivalric ideals what he called his "moral compass" and transferred those ideals to the real world. When faced with a thorny problem, like a conflict at his school, Randrup asked himself, How would a medieval noble face this situation? While wreaking havoc with a broadsword was tempting, he said, the better choice was to "face a situation with courage, mete out justice while expecting it from others, show mercy as you'd expect others to, be generous without regret, have faith in humanity, show nobility in adversity, have hope for the future, and have the strength to do it all over again the next time."
A dress-up medieval reenactment group or "escapist" book or movie offering life lessons? And yet they can and do. Such is the premise of Star Wars Jesus: A Spiritual Commentary on the Reality of the Force, a book by Caleb Grimes, that aims to both playfully and seriously analyze the six Star Wars movies like holy texts or philosophical tracts. Unlike me, Grimes is a Christian, and sees in the Star Wars universe another way to look at his universe. The movies are another text that provide a metaphor or signpost for how to tackle life's thorny troubles. As his website says, his project is "all about the celebration of the ‘more' that exists in the Star Wars films. You can enjoy the movies without seeing these things, but that does not mean they don't exist."
Which bring us back to that scene between Yoda and Luke in the swamps of Dagobah. Here, poor whiny Luke is struggling to harness the Force and lift the sunken X-wing fighter from the murky depths of the lake:
Luke closes his eyes and concentrates on thinking the ship out. Slowly, the X-wing's nose begins to rise above the water. It hovers for a moment and then slides back, disappearing once again.
LUKE: (panting heavily) I can't. It's too big.
YODA: Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hm? Mmmm.
Luke shakes his head and complains that Yoda wants "the impossible."
Quietly Yoda turns toward the X-wing fighter. With his eyes closed and his head bowed, he raises his arm and points at the ship. Soon, the fighter rises out of the water and moves majestically toward the shore. Yoda guides the fighter carefully down toward the beach. Luke stares in astonishment.
LUKE: I don't...I don't believe it.
YODA: That is why you fail.
Perhaps even a Saturday matinee western, disguised in the garb of a science fiction space opera, can make us believe in things and forces we can't see or understand. Or a game of make-believe knights in shining armor can instruct us how to be better people, not in a time or galaxy far, far away, but right here on planet earth.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the book, part travel-memoir, part investigative cultural journalism, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
Do. Or do not! There is no try: Part 1
Instead of quoting Bible passages, my family quoted Star Wars.
The X-wing fighter has sunk, and only the tip of its nose shows above the lake's surface.
LUKE: Oh, no. We'll never get it out now.
Yoda stamps his foot in irritation.
YODA: So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?
Luke looks uncertainly out at the ship.
LUKE: Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.
YODA: No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.
LUKE: (focusing, quietly) All right, I'll give it a try.
YODA: No! Try not. Do. Or do not!! There is no try....
The lines above are from the screenplay to The Empire Strikes Back, the second of the first trilogy of Star Wars movies, aka Episode V. Many of us who originally saw the 1980 film back in the theater fondly remember this scene in the swamps of Dagobah featuring the grumpy and whiny student, Luke Skywalker, and his impatient, diminutive, Kermit the Frog-like teacher, Yoda.
Now, insert brother and sister into their roles and you have some idea of my childhood fantasy life. Instead of quoting Bible passages for spiritual guidance, sometimes my family quoted Star Wars.
Recall the wonder of the Force, this arcane and powerful energy field that filmmaker George Lucas proposed as a kind of religious rubber cement that held together his universe. In the words of Yoda, the Force "surrounds us and binds us. ... Here, between you...me...the tree...the rock...everywhere!" For a skeptic like me, neither raised in a religious home nor educated about Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or anything else even marginally spiritual, the Force seemed like a cool and even plausible explanation for not only what might bind together a galaxy far, far away, but my small and mundane world in rural New Hampshire. To heathens like me, the Force made a lot more sense than the Holy Trinity.
It's easy to dismiss science fiction and other genre movies (and books, and games) as mindless entertainment. But the reason for the popularity of Star Wars, Twilight and Lord of the Rings can't simply be that our culture craves vapid adventure stories to while away the idle hours. I think we consume these modern epics because, for many of us, traditional institutions don't cut it anymore. Church, family and government once handed over fairly rigid instructions on "how to live": how to be a good citizen, neighbor, spouse or parent. The cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s changed all that. Vietnam, political assassinations, government corruption, and the rise of the corporate state left us suspicious of conventional authority and religion. We got jaded.
Is it no wonder, then, that many now seek moral guidance and spiritual example not in mosques and chapels, but huddled in darkened movie theaters or bathed in the holy glow of our Blu-rays? Our new gods and priests might be writers, movie directors and actors. When, in Lord of the Rings, Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf the wise intones to Frodo, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us," it's hard not to prick up our hobbity ears and nod our heads in agreement. Yes, that's damned good advice. And for many of us, it's guidance much easier to swallow than the kind shouted from the pulpit on a Sunday morning.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
Even the smallest person can change the course of the future
In fantasy, heroes do things we can’t do in real life
Several days ago, I attended a special screening at New York City's Radio City Music Hall of the first movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. What made the event unique was the accompaniment by a live orchestra and choir, some 300 musicians in total, who played Howard Shore's rousing and moody score in front of the hall's massive screen. Suffice it to say, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien were pleased. Some even dressed the part as Gandalf and Frodo; others, whether in their night-at-the-opera best or street clothes, merely resembled hobbits and wizards in their stature or generous facial hair.
Unlike most movie screenings, where the audience usually remains respectfully silent (well, most of the time), here the audience felt free to let loose. When each of the major characters appeared on screen --- Elijah Wood as Frodo, Sean Astin as Samwise, Viggo Mortensen as Strider/Aragorn, Orlando Bloom as Legolas --- the audience erupted in cheers and clapping. Most fans had seen the Fellowship before, and I suspect many has seen it several or even a dozen times (like me). But that didn't matter.
We watch fantasy movies with heroic characters for plenty of reasons: because they're fun, because they're exciting, because we need to tune out and decompress for a couple of hours, or because they show us places and creatures that could never be. But one essential reason Tolkien's world, Middle-earth, is so appealing --- particularly the richly-imagined version brought to life by director Peter Jackson and composer Howard Shore --- is that its heroes do things we can't do in real life. They fight the good fight, and slay the evil orcs and goblins and uruk-hai. They take risks. They behave as we might want to: with bravery, honor, and sacrifice.
The plots of Lord of the Rings and its ilk are as old as The Iliad and Beowulf. But the feelings of being empowered are renewed each time we read or watch these epic stories of triumph and derring-do. Moreover, they inspire us. As I sat there for three and a half hours, watching a familiar quest story that has become, in the words of Gollum, "precious" to me, I realized why these tales of hobbits and magic rings and an malicious power have power over us. They remind us again, as the cliché goes, "what is worth fighting for." It comes down to that line of dialogue uttered by the elf queen Galadriel (played by the ethereal Cate Blanchett), "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future." If a three-foot hobbit can learn to wield sword, face down evil, and emerge victorious, perhaps you and I can find courage to face down our own problems and challenges, no matter how small in comparison.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
Pop Ten blog
Ran across this site today --- PopTen "top ten lists and pop culture rants" --- bits like "Top Ten Wi-Fi Connection Names" and "Top 4 reasons NOT to date a European (+ one reason to date a British dude if you must)." And,some nice words about "Fantasy Freak and Gaming Geeks," too:
"Revelatory and balanced Ethan shares his impressions while allowing the people he meets to share theirs. The book quickly becomes about more than just gaming as the discussion leads to larger questions about our escapist society as a whole. ... Gilsdorf takes a Kerouac meets Cliff’s notes approach to Geekdom, and while he met great people along the way it was really about the author’s journey.... His problems are that of the everyman, and although his experience is with geekdom the frustration is universal."
more reviews and coverage
The Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks juggernaut keeps rolling across the landscape, picking up some reviews and coverage along the way. Three recent items you might want to check out:
1) My blog on the Powell's site, "Geek is no longer a four-letter word"
2) the sneak-preview of the Booklist review:
Booklist, September 15, 2009
After an aneurysm drastically changed his mother’s personality when he was in his teens, Gilsdorf found refuge in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Eventually he left the RPG (role-playing games) world behind, and became a successful writer. Then at age 41, he rediscovers his old gaming paraphernalia and decides to take a trip deep into the world of fantasy, hoping to get to the heart of its allure. Gilsdorf’s quest takes him to gaming conventions, medieval reenactments, fantasy-inspired concerts, and even to Middle Earth itself—the New Zealand setting that served as the backdrop for Peter Jackson’s enormously popular Lord of the Rings films. Along the way, he meets a wide variety of people of all ages and social backgrounds who, like him, in some form or another seek an escape from the mundane reality of the modern world. Gilsdorf is an engaging and personable guide. Like many who will pick up his book, he’s got one foot squarely in the real world, the other in the fantasy one. This is a journey well worth taking. — Kristine Huntley
3) Boston Magazine mentions Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks to its "Consumer Index: September": "Nerd Association"
Enjoy!
Fantasy Freaks on Grinding to Valhalla
Randolph Carter, the keeper of the site Grinding to Valhalla, claims to be "recognizing heroes of the MMO community one interview at a time." I'm not sure that I'm a hero, but I was sure pleased to get the chance to answer some questions about the book, my background, what I put into the book and how I wrote it. Thanks, Randolph, for this chance to explain my geekish desires!
The book in its natural habitat
Today I spotted the book in Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass... near where I live. I guess this is proof that the book really exists and people are going to buy it. Yah!
They've got it in the "popular culture" section but I've convinced them to move it to the front of the shop. And I signed the little stack of 5 copies.
first amazon.com review -- 4 stars
The Amazon.com masses (well, one single mass) seem to like Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks... so far, so good. Feel free to add to the discussion! Here's what this reader had to say:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Close to home, August 21, 2009
By Wolvercote (Rhode Island) -See all my reviews
Being a "closet gamer/fantasy geek" myself I completely related to Ethan's book. His story is my own and I'm sure a large number of other guys out there. Trying to balance the desire to immerse yourself in fantasy, (be it Tolkien, D&D, or online gaming) and living in "reality" with its expectations of what is considered "normal" is a recurring theme in the book and in my own life.
I felt the angst that Ethan dealt with as he slipped back into gaming and fantasy after years of self-denial. Anyone who has felt that twinge of embarassment over being a gamer or fantasy fan will enjoy Ethan's journey and obeservations.
I certainly did.
X Games: The Movie 3D does not move me
MOVIE REVIEW/ Boston Globe
X Games 3D: The Movie
In 3-D, X Games jump off the screen
Touted as the most elaborately filmed 3-D production ever, “X Games 3D: The Movie’’ uses 10 simultaneous digital camera rigs to cover snowboarding, rally car racing, motocross, and skateboarding. The action includes the Step Up, a gravity-defying high jump on a dirt bike. Skateboarders ride monster Mega Ramps, structures that can be 350 feet long and 200 feet high.
Such thrills and inevitable spills should please X Games fans, and video game fans, too. Director Steve Lawrence (“Down the Barrel’’) follows six top athletes competing at the 2008 Summer X Games and at private practice sessions. Most of the dudes (and they’re all dudes) have that low-key but driven demeanor endemic to these dangerous sports. They push the body hard and the sport even harder, trying to nail tricks like a physics-bending front flip on a dirt bike.
We see the jumps and crashes in slow-motion, from multiple angles, intercut with footage of guys like skateboarder Bob Burnquist quipping, “There is no such thing as ‘You can’t do that.’ ’’
With its self-promoting tone and overwrought voice-over, the movie can seem more an ad for the X Games (and ESPN Films) than a real sports documentary. Lawrence treats the competition with nothing but hype and awe. What’s missing is context. Are the rally cars racing against the clock or each other? What is this dark past medalist Danny Way mentions that drives him to escape into skateboarding, break his bones, and keep on competing?
You’d think the 3-D effects would bring the action closer, but the kooky optics often have the opposite effect, turning the athletes into GI Joe and Boba Fett action figures zipping around a dollhouse set.
“X Games 3D: The Movie’’ finally begins to gain momentum as it falls back onto a tried-but-true competition story line. By the time Ricky Carmichael (a.k.a. “the G.O.A.T.’’ or “Greatest of All Time’’) jumps 33 feet in the Step Up, and good buddies Way and Burnquist go head to head on the Mega Ramp, the 3D effects don’t matter. You just want to see who wins. And perhaps be inspired to fly, and become an action figure yourself.
Ethan Gilsdorf’s new book is “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.’’ Contact him atethan@ethangilsdorf.com
a night with "Dormia"
Last night at the Brookline Booksmith, Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski read from (and acted out) their new YA/all-ages novel Dormia. The book tells the story of another young boy (not THAT young boy) with special gifts and a hidden lineage that he gradually figures out on a world-girdling quest.
Twelve-year-old Alfonso Perplexon has a sleepwalking problem -- sometimes he wakes up and find himself at the top of a tree or having accomplished some amazing feat. In his hometown of World’s End, Minnesota, the dad is out of the picture (a familiar theme in Star Wars, E.T., HP, and other boys-to-men coming of age stories).Alfonso and Mom carry on. Then a stranger comes to town, a quirky man who claims to be Alfonso’s long lost uncle. The man tells of the kingdom of Dormia, far in the Ural Mountains, and that Alfonso has the gift of "wakeful sleeping." This lost land is in trouble, and only Alfonso has a chance to save it. So out the door they go, headed for adventure, picking up oddball characters and mishaps along the way.
At the reading, Halpern did a masterful job play-acting some key scenes from the book, and Kujawinski deadpanned the tale of how this team of authors managed to write the book from the distance of New York, Paris, Israel and a Navajo Reservation in northwestern New Mexico. Their story inspired me to try my hand at spinning my own tale, or perhaps collaborating with my pal JP (the dude who taught me D&D; you can read about that in Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.)
And the funny thing is, there's a 12 year old boy gamer named Alex who I talk to in my book. And I was 12 when I began to play D&D. What's the attraction to age 12 and all this fantasy stuff?
No longer 12 years old: Ethan Gilsdorf and Jake Halpern show off their books
A Postmodern Kindle Book selling moment
What does an author do when a reader asks if his book is out on Kindle, and he says, "Yes," and then the reader says, "Great. So will you sign my Kindle?"
Not "Can you sign my book?"--- the physical book --- but the device.
Beth Davidson of Greensboro, North Carolina, met me at the gaming convention Gen Con in Indianapolis last weekend. I was posted at booth #221 (manning some prime corner real estate generously offered by the folks at Troll Lord Games) where I was selling my book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. Beth wanted to take home a signed copy. But she didn't want one of the signed hardcopies my signage ("GIT YOUR AUTOGRAPHED COPIES HERE") was not-so-subtly promoting. She didn't want to buy a bound paper-and-print copy of the book. She wanted to download it on Kindle.
The e-book is a concept us old-fashioned writers are gradually getting used to (some of us more begrudgingly than others), but it's a conceptual leap we're all going to have to make.But here's the twist: how does this translate to a book signing. How do you "sign" a Kindle book? How does a reader walk away with that palpable evidence he or she met an author, engaged in small talk, and was handed over physical proof of the moment? In the Kindle world, this would seem impossible. And yet Beth really wanted the signature.
"Would you sign my Kindle?" she asked.
"Uh," I paused. "Sure! Why not?"
She opened her bag and took out her shiny Kindle 2. She flipped it over to reveal its pristine, stainless steel backside. It was the first time I'd held one in my hands. The device is slim: 1/3 of an inch thick, about the width of a pencil. I took out my black Sharpie. "You really want me to do this?" I asked.
"Yep, go ahead," Beth said.
I practiced on a piece of paper first, adjusted the size of my John Hancock, and signed away. It looked pretty close to what I'd hoped for (though I sort of flubbed the "D-O-R-F" of my last name). But I consoled myself: this was my first Kindle signing. Besides, Sharpie-on-steel has a different feel than pen on paper.
"Won't it rub off?" I wondered.
"When I get home, I'll paint it with clear nail polish." That would protect it.
Beth looked happy. She thanked me, I thanked her, and off she went into the crowds of gamers and geeks.
Immediately, alarms fired off in my head. "Is this the end of civilization as we know it?" I wondered. And then I pondered this irony: my book wasn't even loaded on her Kindle yet. I had signed an empty shell that will later be filled with a digital version of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks when she buys it online (and she better buy it).
Will the Kindle revolutionize reading? Will it change the way we consume books? Perhaps. But the fact that the Kindle and other e-book readers try to look like books, with "pages" that are digital approximations of real pages, proves that we're pretty old fashioned after all. The Kindle mirrors a real book, the real world. It still wants to be a book. The Kindle 2 is only a tool -- one of several tools --- to let us store our words and ideas.
Books were already highly efficient, functional, elegant, well-crafted objects. They didn't need an upgrade to be released as Book 2.0. But progress and the marketplace makes us want to reinvent what already works best. So be it.
Looking back on it, I found my Kindle book signing ultimately a heartening moment. Despite our electronic age of data streams and pixels, we still crave the concrete. We want that signature, that mark of chisel strike on stone, ink on paper, paint on canvas. That proof that I, and you, were there. We spoke, we laughed, we shook hands.
No digital signature or pixel-scape can ever replace that.