Why do people insist on claiming the inferiority of genre fiction? When did escapism stop being a valid part of art? Why does everything to be considered good have to have some sort of supposed "message" that at the end of the day almost always seems to have been gotten wrong by those claiming to see it? Nine times out of ten isn't it just death of the author by people with egos who want to treat art as though it's objective in how it should be interpreted? If I gave Percy Jackson to a bunch of stuffy old fucks in a lounge and told them it was high art could you promise me that they wouldn't come back with pages of notes on the brilliant allegory at work?
TL;DR: is your art really better than mine or are you just better at pretending it is?
it's better dude lol
hahahahahahaha
Please stop until you get better at your shitposting. This is amateur stuff.
>>7747827
not literature. reported.
>>7747831
Better by your shit standards?
all this anger and no actual rebuttal to be found
top zozzle i dont know what i expected
>>7747827
>Why do people insist on claiming the inferiority of genre fiction?
In case of Lotr and Wolfe? Memes
>When did escapism stop being a valid part of art?
Since always literally. No great piece of literature I know of is escapism.
>Why does everything to be considered good have to have some sort of supposed "message" that at the end of the day almost always seems to have been gotten wrong by those claiming to see it?
Well it just means the author had something to say. No overarching idea that doesn't necessarily end in a spelled out message means it's worthless.
>Nine times out of ten isn't it just death of the author by people with egos who want to treat art as though it's objective in how it should be interpreted?
Some works have more interpretations. Some have one. Depends on the work. Marxist, feminist, post strufturalist and gender interpretations are always a priori garbage since they insert their own narrative into the work, if that's what you are asking.
>If I gave Percy Jackson to a bunch of stuffy old fucks in a lounge and told them it was high art could you promise me that they wouldn't come back with pages of notes on the brilliant allegory at work?
That really depends on the person. Assuming it was Bloom type people they'd most certainly tell it's garbage and if it was a Rothfuss loving 60 year old vegan with a degree in literature decades away from now they probably couldn't tell the difference.
>TL;DR: is your art really better than mine or are you just better at pretending it is?
My art is better than your art.
I know OP is shitposting, but I'll answer honestly.
There is good genre fiction and bad literary fiction.
No one would ever said that Dune, The Book of the New Sun, The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarilion, and some works by Erikson, Christie or Doyle are inferior, just different.
What makes people butthurt about genre IMO is the fact that most of people will not read anything literary.
>>7747827
>mfw perhaps a conversation i had might have caused a /lit/ war
>>7747885
Lotr isn't actually very good friend. It's all action/plot driven and there is very little point to hearing the characters inner thoughts. It was better as a movie.
>>7748087
>It was better as a movie.
>>7748087
Lotr is not about a plot or characters (though these aren't bad at all) but about a world.
Because people are small-minded and can't context swap. Borges did a defense of the forms like the adventure novel in his review of The Invention of Morel
"Around 1882, Stevenson observed that the adventure story was regarded as
an object of scorn by the British reading public, who believed that the
ability to write a novel without a plot, or with an infinitesimal, atrophied
plot, was a mark of skill. In The Dehumanization of Art (1925 ) , Jose Ortega y
Gasset, seeking the reason for that scorn, said, "I doubt very much whether
an adventure that will interest our superior sensibility can be invented today"
(p. 96), and added that such an invention was "practically impossible"
(p. 97). On other pages, on almost all the other pages, he upheld the cause of
the "psychological" novel and asserted that the pleasure to be derived from
adventure stories was nonexistent or puerile. That was undoubtedly the
prevailing opinion of 1882, 1925, and even 1940. Some writers (among whom
I am happy to include Adolfo Bioy Casares) believe they have a right to disagree.
The following, briefly, are the reasons why."
>>7748098
>not about plot or characters
frodo, gandalf, aragorn, sauron...
the ring must be destroyed, evil is bad. evil almost triumphs, but we got him in the end!
>>7748105
"The first of these ( I shall neither emphasize nor attenuate the fact that it
is a paradox) has to do with the intrinsic form of the adventure story. The
typical psychological novel is formless. The Russians and their disciples
have demonstrated, tediously, that no one is impossible: happy suicides, benevolent
murderers, lovers who adore each other to the point of separation,
informers who act out of fervor or humility. . . . In the end such complete
freedom is tantamount to chaos. But the psychological novel would also be
a "realistic" novel, and have us forget that it is a verbal artifice, for it uses
each vain precision (or each languid obscurity) as a new proof of verisimilitude.
There are pages, there are chapters in Marcel Proust that are unacceptable
as inventions, and we unwittingly resign ourselves to them as we resign
ourselves to the insipidity and the emptiness of each day. The adventure
story, on the other hand, does not propose to be a transcription of reality: it
is an artificial object, no part of which lacks justification. It must have a
rigid plot if it is not to succumb to the mere sequential variety of The
Golden Ass, the seven voyages of Sin bad, or the Quixote.
I have given one reason of an intellectual sort; there are others of an
empirical nature. We hear sad murmurs that our century lacks the ability to
devise interesting plots; no one attempts to prove that if this century has
any ascendancy over the preceding ones it lies in the quality of its plots.
Stevenson is more passionate, more diverse, more lucid, perhaps more deserving
of our unqualified friendship than is Chesterton, but his plots are
inferior. De Quincey plunged deep into labyrinths on his nights of meticulously
detailed horror, but he did not coin his impression of "unutterable
and self-repeating infinities" in fables comparable to Kafka's. Ortega y Gasset
was right when he said that Balzac's "psychology" does not satisfy us; the
same thing could be said of his plots. Shakespeare and Cervantes were both
delighted by the antinomian idea of a girl who, without losing her beauty,
could be taken for a man; but we find that idea unconvincing now. I believe
I am free from every superstition of modernity, of any illusion that yesterday
differs intimately from today or will differ from tomorrow; but I maintain
that during no other era have there been novels with such admirable
plots as The Turn of the Screw, The Trial, Le Voyageur sur Ia terre, and the
one you are about to read, which was written in Buenos Aires by Adolfo
Bioy Casares."
>>7748105
this is why i read picaresques. sure, it doesn't have a lot of under the surface meaning, but at least it's fuckin honest.
>>7748107
I didn't say these elements does not exist you turd.
You need to read Lotr as a history book, not like your favorite epic fantasy novel.
>>7748098
So it has a fully realized world? Kay I'll bite. What kind of currency do they use in middle earth? How does Gondor feed its citizens? About the only interesting thing about the trilogy is that elvish is fleshed out to a full language but it is pretty irrelevant within the story.
>>7748149
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Money
>>7748110
As an extension to Borges' point though, its more like genre fiction nowadays doesn't come up with good plots because every trick in the book is more or less exhausted
Like he writes, if people came up with interesting plots you'd have considerably less complaints. I don't understand why anyone would write a linear hero conquering villain sword & sorcery fantasy anymore. Even if you say world-building, in a world that has already been graced by Borges' own Tlon Uqbar Orbius Tertius or Stapledon's novels, most of the shit is simply uninventive and I can't even escape into those properly.
Lem made this argument in his review of the book
"Even in its boldest and best attempts, SF extrapolates only existing civilizational trends, and goes no further. When it constructs societies following a nuclear war or other cataclysms, it always lifts models slavishly from the thesaurus of actual history: quasi-medieval monarchies or rigidified, socio-static technocracies. Every one of its future societies is placed somewhere between dictatorship—as a merciless order—and anarchy. (American SF often nourishes itself on the crumbs it pecks out of Stapledon's work. In this respect, we truly can discern his "echo." But whenever SF steps beyond the framework of Stapledon's work, it never moves in the direction of anthropological philosophy. Need we explain what this reluctance means?) In every field, students must remember their masters, in order to surpass them. Compared with this book, which is almost 40 years old, SF is one great step backward. SF does not polemicize with it, nor does it defend it; it has tried neither to continue it nor to conquer it. This work, to which Aldiss refers with such complacency, should cause a pang of conscience to all those who insist on the cultural weight of SF. The situation is grave enough, in my opinion, to dwell on for a while. Since Stapledon's time, SF has increased by several million pages, yet it has raised neither the theme of bio-evolution (in its axiological sense) nor the theme of socio-evolution to the level of ontological questions and solutions. Even little tales that seem childishly naive beside Last and First Men—for example, the history of the "holy robot"—cannot expect publication in SF magazines, and an author who writes about the political conflicts surrounding "hibernation technology" will not find a publisher. If SF would only awaken to its intellectual servility, and oppose it, even if only with sterile outrage! But that is out of the question: the narrow little measure of its fate corresponds perfectly to the dimensions of its aspirations."
Basically, Fantasy people need to read Philosophy to come up with cooler axioms for their fantasy worlds.
>>7748157
which is why we need more people like Gene Wolfe.
>>7747827
An analogy is a half truth. The golden rule of sci-fi suggests a setting should be 80% to 90% similar to the contemporary. Fantasy suggests a lower value, say 50%.
Absurdity is when the similarity rating of a comparison falls below a value society agrees is too low. This is why furries are so hated.
The greatest works of literature depict worlds 100% similar to our own. They illicit our world perfectly.
>>7748125
It reads nothing like a history book. Maybe a collection of fake myths at best and that has some merit but the story as told doesn't take advantage of the medium at all. The words all describe events as you would see them in a chronological order. There is no delving into the characters inner thoughts, no complicated relationships, nothing. It's a verbal description of a small group of characters on a long adventure. A movie is a better fit for that kind of story.
BECAUSE IN TERMS OF INTELLECTUAL VALUE OFFERED IT OFFERS LESS THAN A SACK OF DOG SHIT
>>7748258
is intellectual value the only kind of value now? what about entertainment?
>>7748278
FOR THE MAJORITY OF MINDLESS BRAINWASHED SHEEP IN OUR MISERABLE SOCIETY, YES, IT IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT. NOW GET BACK INTO THE PRODDING LINE AND GET BACK ON INSTAGRAM
>>7748278
pleb
>>7747885
>Marxist, feminist, post strufturalist and gender interpretations are always a priori garbage since they insert their own narrative into the work
i don't think that's fair
Post-structuralism just looks at the book surrounded by the society/culture that created it and then (optionally) goes on to analyze its effects on the society/culture that's reading it. It's a field that assumes that the text doesn't exist in a vacuum.
it tends to focus less on the ideas of a text themselves and more on how they're transmitted, to what end, and analyzes the effects of that transmission, which i think is a valid route of study (alongside traditionaly literary theory, not by any means a replacement), but i do agree that the field is wantonly politicized. given the fact that PS tries to square signifer/signified with regards to its various audiences, it does indeed throw texts under the lens of various ideologies - and while this can reveal some intertextual significance, contemporary resonance, and other ideas that are "bigger than the book", an epidemic in the field is the blatant ignoring of context and fact (both textual and historical) for the sake of furthering an agenda - essentially, a systematic cherry-picking of killing the author only when it's convenient for them.
>>7748288
SORRY BUT ALL I READ WAS "KEK KEK KEK KEK KEK"
>>7748288
HOLY FUCK NO ONE GIVES TWO STEAMING HOT GERBIL TURDS ABOUT YOUR "PROGRESSIVE INTERPRETATION" YOU ARE THE SAME SHITS WHO DISCREDIT LOVECRAFT FOR BEING RACIST
>>7748285
spoken like a true patrician, now get back to your constant and nagging sense of intellectual unfulfillment as you voraciously seek purpose in a world that will deny you it until the day you die a sad bitter old wretch still droning on about the "brainwashed sheep" who died long before you with a smile on their face in the arms of someone who loved them
>>7748301
GET BACK TO WATCHING NETFLIX WHILE IM READING FRANCIS BACON FEELS GOOD MAN
>>7748299
yeah he was pretty racist but he wrote some cool monsters
did you know that an author's work can be appreciated apolitically for its merit while the ideologies behind it (and their marriage to the text) can be analyzed separately
>>7748314
is that varg? are you an adult?
>>7748320
DID YOU REALIZE THAT SEPERATING DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF A WORK AND GROUPING THEM AS INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS DESTROYS THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE WORK?
DID YOU REALIZE THAT CALLING A NEGRO A NEGRO ISNT ACTUALLY RACIST?
>>7748340
>▶
YEAH WHY DONT YOU JUST TALK ABOUT IT MORE AT YOUR GROUPTHINK "UNIVERSITY"?????
>>7748087
you're either dumb or bad at shitposting, and I dont know which is worse
>>7748335
>DID YOU REALIZE THAT SEPARATING DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF A WORK AND GROUPING THEM AS INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS DESTROYS THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE WORK?
did you realize that this is the entire point of post-structuralism since it is literally taking apart the "structure" inherent to all texts, poking them with sticks, and seeing what happens
there is no meaning in anything aside from what is gleaned by those perceiving it, there's no proof that we see the same colors, the only book that'll ever totally preserve its intended meaning is a book that's read only by its author, etc. etc. etc.
>>7748345
It's just me being honest with myself and not relying on other people's opinions to make up my mind for me. Something I'm sure you're unfamiliar with.
>>7748344
You must be a big Thunderf00t fan.
>>7748358
I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT POST-STRUCTURALISM BECAUSE ITS COMPLETELY USELESS AND IRRELEVANT TO ANYTHING BESIDES LIBERAL MENTAL MASTURBATION. AND IVE SAT THROUGH A FUCKING REQUIRED SOCIOLOGY COURSE
>>7748345
not him but I agree that LotR made better movies than books. it helped that Jackson lived and breathed the source material, though.
where did that passion go when he made The Hobbit, though? damn.
>>7748345
angry redditor alert
>>7748365
nope, you're showing a severe lack of understanding of the damn book, which I'm quite sure you didn't take the time to read properly because "lol elves and shit", or ADHD.
Nobody with a functional mind can claim that the movies were better than the books after experiencing both mediums, because the movies missed everything that made the book good and transcend it's fantasy trappings.
The movies are about pretty sights, elves, fights and "bravery" I guess.
The books are about the inevitability of change, how nothing is indestructable nor timeless, how time destroys beauty but also creates new wonders, how overwhelmingly difficult it is to not repeat history and the mistakes of the ones who came before, no matter how hard you try, and in the story of Frodo and Samwise it actually manages to put forth a convincing argument how hippy shit like friendship and kindness can sometimes accomplish things that strength and bravery can't, and it manages to do that better than anything that came before or since because it avoids naivete and sentimentality in their negative forms, which is extremely fucking rare.
The world Tolkien created has tremendous thematic consistency and down from the smallest things(how Frodo and Sam eat a damn rabbit for example) up to the biggest things(say, the end of the battle of helm's deep), are the manifestations of the same themes, not shit that's been made up for the sake of coolness, but the movies miss all that, because they're made for the sake of entertainment instead of the realization of a personal vision for mythology. On top of that, you will miss a lot of the thematic motifs in LotR if you've never touched Silmarillion, as LotR is pretty much the endgame of the thematic buildup that's been going on for about 1500 pages or so. Humanity, the prodigal son of the One God finally finds redemption, Elves fade away because nothing beautiful lasts forever, leaving humans the room to find and create their own way, magic begins to fade away and eventually disappear and the gods withdraw ever further from the world of Men, which is a juicy parallel to our own world, where gods and superstition and mythology and fantastic beings are being replaced by the rational science of man. Something beautiful is lost in the change but that leaves room for something new to take its place.
But no, you lack the capacity to comprehend all this because you're a dumb frogposter whose lacks the patience to comprehensively investigate a celebrated work before passing judgment.
>>7748661
i agree
>>7748661
nah, it sucked. go back to plebbit
>>7747827
>Nine times out of ten isn't it just death of the author by people with egos who want to treat art as though it's objective in how it should be interpreted?
holy fuck your an idiot
>your an idiot
FUCKING ZOZZLE
>>7748374
completely wrong
>>7748661
Way to put lotr up on a pedestal. I bet you think Star Wars is a brilliant exploration of bushido and the death of the samurai through the lense of an alien world.
Lotr contains themes of impermanence but don't act like it is the only book to broach that topic nor is it the best. It's not as consistant as you say it is it's just that most of the world building is just reciting old stories from the fake history and any inconsistencies are attributed to them being old and misunderstood.
In the end it s literally a story of the fellowship traveling across middle earth getting a surface view of the goings on in each town/city they pass through with no deeper understanding of the greater significance of anything.
It's like a fantasy version of around the world in 80 days if in that story the motivation for the trip was to destroy the Devils pitchfork.
>>7748188
>The greatest works of literature depict worlds 100% similar to our own.
I agree. The only literature worth reading is academic literature. A 'literary' fiction is an oxymoron. It can't be a literature if it's written as fiction.
>>7749687
I mean similar in terms of technology and social structure, not completely identical down to the last atom.
Nothing wrong with escapism. Nothing right about it either.
It's shit because it says nothing about the human condition, which is what great art strives to do.
Escapism in the 21st century is so easy and banal that any intelligent person should reject it, and fight towards real human interaction and experience.
Fiction is masturbation. Art is lovemaking.
>>7747827
You can't get a stiffie from the smell of your own farts if it's from genre fiction. At least with literary fiction and a message you can act like you're more important than you already are.
>>7748188
>The greatest works of literature depict worlds 100% similar to our own.
>>7749736
>Look mom I make analogies xd
>It's shit because it says nothing about the human condition, which is what great art strives to do.
nu-uh
Lurk moar faggot
>>7747827
inferiority depends on the context. you can enjoy genre fiction every bit as much as anything else but don't pretend it's "literary fiction." by definition it's not. genre fiction can have some of the merits of literary fiction if it were doing it in the same degree it wouldn't be genre fiction anymore now would it?
>>7749846
this was me. and btw I love LotR. enjoy reading the histories of middle earth beyond lotr, hobbit, silmarillion and more. but again, I don't pretend it's something it's not. nor do I get upset by it.
>>7749794
>what is an archetype?
>>7749853
shitter archetypes are as much in children's tales as in high literature, you dont choose it , they come when you truly express yourself
>>7749853
>1: the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies:prototype;also: a perfect example
>2:idea1a
>3: an inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of C. G. Jung that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual
>100% like the real world
>>7749803
Go on then. what has the great cannon of fiction provided to humanity?
Every fiction story is just a retelling of a myth or legend. Congratulations you changed setting and costume, well done.
What is lurking more going to do?
Teach me to be a dumb dumb like you?
>>7749896
>cannon
lol
Arguing with people who dismiss all "genre fiction" is a waste of time, they're all /mu/ or /tv/ crossboarders from 2012 onward. They dont read they just want the appearance of someone intelligent
>>7748188
>illicit
>muh realism: the thread
it's funny that most of the revered novels that people claim to be superior to whatever recent fiction novel you try compare, were for the most part written when communication was limited and in ages where censorship was the norm, I bet my trousers that if any of those novels were released today, where people have access to almost every piece of literature ever written in history, those novels would sell less than your generic "linear hero conquering villain sword & sorcery fantasy" novel that you can find in every country/language and nobody would give a shit about them.
>>7749794
I disagree wtih him, but people actually thought Odyssey stories were true on that time.
IMO Beowulf and The Song of Nibeluges are better exemples
Which is the most autistic side of this thread?
>>7747827
>If I gave Percy Jackson to a bunch of stuffy old fucks in a lounge and told them it was high art could you promise me that they wouldn't come back with pages of notes on the brilliant allegory at work?
Of course they wouldn't. The prose doesn't fit the role of high art.
But no, not all genre fiction is bad, it just happens to contain a lot of bad.
>>7750939
low eq autists vs cant handle being wrong autists
>>7750922
>people actually thought Odyssey stories were true on that time
citation very needed
>>7749846
The differentiation betwixt "literary fiction" and genre fiction" is?
Most literature can be categorized into a genre ("War and Peace" can be categorized as historical fiction, war epic, etcetera). That a work can be catagorized into a genre does not delegitimate a work's artistic meritoriousness as an instance of axiomatized catagoricity.
The genre-literary dichotomy possesses no diagnostic value.
>>7751393
The difference being one is written and just happens to fall into a genre, while the other is written entirely because it is aimed at that genre.
>>7751419
>The difference being one is written and just happens to fall into a genre, while the other is written entirely because it is aimed at that genre.
Are you insinuating a paradigm wherein archetypes and extra-referentiality cannot be utilized artistically? For instance, "The Inheritance Cycle" is often lambasted for its archetypical similarities and extra-referentialities to "Star Wars: A New Hope". This aforementioned attitudinally antagonistic assessment is emblematic of your artistic-ontological standard and is applied without any relationality to artistic nuance or novel, improved or exemplary utilization of an archetype or extra-referentiality; as if a work cannot be considered by its meritoriousness irregardless of confirmation of genre archetypes and extra-referentialities; as if superlative originality is our superlative standard for literary merit; I would posit that literary merit is more relational to application and presentation than originality; as if originality was even capaciously existent anyways. The aforenoted similarities and extra-referentialities betwixt SW: ANH and TIC is further advantageously contextualized when one realizes how Lucas was not (as is implied) original and drew capaciously upon Japanese cinema, SF serials, Joseph Campbell, amongst other influences. I would posit that a work's adherece to genre conventions (whist such adherence can reduce a work's literary merit if applied ponderously or without ingenuity or artful presentation) is not sufficiently justificatory for absolute dichotomization betwixt "literary fiction" and "genre fiction".
>>7749794
>The greatest works of literature depict worlds 100% similar to our own. They illicit our world perfectly.
Is The Metamorphosis shit so?
>>7749794
The Divine Comedy is fiction, we would call it "fan fiction" today.
Both The Gilgamesh Epic and The Odyssey are works of fiction, and no one believed they were real back then, they knew it was just an epic tale.
The greatest works of literature are mostly fiction, let's bring every mythology and their texts into it, The Edda was fiction, the Arthurian Cycle is all fiction, the Holy Bible - even.
>>7751627
I kek'd.
>>7751793
I offer my concurrence.
Token was a meme tier author of genre fiction who had NO DISCERNIBLE TALENT.
>>7748087
>>7748098
Both confirmed for having never read LotR.
LotR is about sin, redemption, hope, sacrifice, and, ultimately, salvation. It's got the same aims as Dante but utilizes different techniques.
Pretty much every character is forced to make a moral choice between self-serving and selflessness (sacrifice, charity, fellowship, etc.).
Tolkien wasn't the best writer from a purely technical standpoint, but he was a magnificent moralist and weaves theology into his work in a masterful fashion.
Also, mythopoeia.
>>7754189
Oh, right, other than those three-and-a-half languages that he invented in the span of one lifetime
Daily reminder everything ever written is fiction.
>>7748157
It's kind of a vicious circle really: speculative fiction draws people thans to its broad strokes > these people will naturally lack the needed instrospection to understand what made the things they lked meaningful > this will make speculative fiction writers not need to dig deeper > this gradually brings the branch farther away from descriptive fiction* > this creates a stigma pushing both sides further away > both sides lose as one becomes vacuous and the other completely neurotic.
*to call it something beside "literary"
>>7748376
The original director (del Toro?) bailed and he had to step in.
>>7748358
When your perceptions are shite, they are irrelevant. The text is more important than those who read it, and absolute meanings exist in language because when two people are not retarded they can actually speak to each other and understand what is being said. Complicating something that shouldn't be to privilege criticism is banal, limiting, and an insult to the beauty of language, which can actually communicate something universal and vital.
>>7751617
Has anyone ever told you that you're a cunt?
Probably because people who read genre fiction act as though it being escapism excuses it from being absolute garbage. There are tons of works of fantasy and sci-fi that are regarded as at the very least pretty good. For some reason though, you seem to think that literally anything that has fantasy or sci-fi slapped on it is immune to criticism. Don't peddle your garbage Wheel of Time shit and try to whine the people are racist against genre fiction.
>>7755920
>For some reason though, you seem to think that literally anything that has fantasy or sci-fi slapped on it is immune to criticism. Don't peddle your garbage Wheel of Time shit and try to whine the people are racist against genre fiction.
The example was lord of the rings, i never liked wheel of time and you seem to be projecting a bit.
>>7748791
>your
How embarrassing.
>>7755694
based aramini BTFO deconstructionists.
