Sarah Clementson- Fantasy- Outside Reading #5

Why read fantasy you might ask? An article by Tamora Pierce entitled “Fantasy: Why Kids Read it, Why Kids Need it” discusses how fantasy gives children imagination, it empowers them, gives them an escape from reality and hope in what could be. I have never been one who is interested in reading fantasy or even one who gets caught up by fantasy films but as I read this article and took the CNU Adolescent Literature class I began to understand why kids love Fantasy so much. So many things in our lives are structured. In or first movies class, Dr. Redick described religion as the establishment of a consecrated order of a “sacred cosmos that will be capable of maintaining itself in the ever-present face of chaos.” (Peter Berger, p. 51) Thus we are in a world of constant change and we as humans are seeking order and structure. Children do not want to be constrained or told what to do though, and fantasy proves to be an effective outlet for them away from the structure life.
The two films that I have watched this semester that go best to prove the need for fantasy is the Pink Floyd film that showed very disturbing imagery of how society will try to force conformity but an individual must fight the system. It was a very dark and upsetting film, but another one was the one I wrote my final paper on, Dead Poets Society. It was about boys attending an all-boys preparatory school with constant monitoring and societal pressures to succeed and in the end, one boy commits suicide because he cannot stand his father’s expectations. Fantasy is important in religion because it can convey the themes in a way that those watching or reading are immersed in it and take part in it. It almost makes religion tangible instead of an incoherent distant thought.
Pierce’s article reveals the necessity of reading fantasy, the movie Big Fish, although not my cup of tea (but that is because I do not have a good imagination), depicted the importance of never getting too old to use your imagination or box in your life in. This makes me think of Isaiah 55:8 “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways’ declares the Lord.” Our imagination is one way of not limiting ourselves to the social structures that everyone around us places on us. I have been challenged in both this class and Adolescent Literature to remind myself the importance of stepping out of the social confines and even the balance we seek to create through religion and to expand beyond that.