I really enjoyed our class discussion on what exactly is ‘the fantastic’. Connor Murray noted it’s something too great or wild or unnatural to be real. Professor Serrano said it’s the juxtaposition of the real and the unreal, the moment of hesitation in distinguishing the two. But I also wonder what I should call the emotion that I felt looking at one of the first few pages featuring objects of ownership. The image of the family drawn in child’s scrawl was the most powerful to me. It made me sympathize with the immigrants in that I felt upset imagining losing that hand-drawn picture. Could that renowned, real emotional feeling for an image, something that is unreal, be considered fantastic? It is the combination of a real response for something fictional… And I think the word fantastic denotes something of great power, something moving and strong and provoking. Although my emotional wasn’t a “hesitation” exactly, it was overwhelming. What do I call this?
One thought on “Defining the ‘Fantastic’”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I enjoyed your post about defining the “fantastic” especially because I feel as though everyone has a slightly different opinion on this. I took a class a couple of years ago about science fiction. In this class, we talked at length about the difference between fantasy and science fiction, as there is considerable overlap. However, it is important to distinguish between them. To me, the difference is in the narrative. A science fiction novel and a fantasy novel may both be set in an unrealistic setting. However, the narrative of a science fiction novel tends to be realistic and rooted in science (go figure). In my opinion, fantasy narrative tends to be more unrealistic and often strays from a scientific basis. Interestingly, a number of nuances are introduced when we start to consider the time during which many novels are written. Indeed, a science fiction novel today may have been deemed fantastical 100 years ago and may be deemed fiction 100 years from now. Thus, a lot of genre classification is dependent upon external factors that may even change as society progresses.