You've compared telling superhero stories to writing magical realism. What do you mean by that?
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| Art by Lauren Hoffman |
First, let's look at what the critics say magical realism is:
Gabriel García Márquez uses the technique of magical realism in his novels as well as his short stories. Marquez uses magical realism to blend reality and fantasy so that the distinction between the two erases. (http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/ncw/marquez.htm)
Literature of this type is usually characterized by elements of the fantastic woven into the story with a deadpan sense of presentation. (http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_mr.html)
In magical realism, the supernatural is not displayed as questionable. While the reader realizes that the rational and irrational are opposite and conflicting polarities, they are not disconcerted because the supernatural is integrated within the norms of perception of the narrator and characters in the fictional world. (http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/MagicalRealism.html)
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| Art by JP Dupras |
How else do you describe a story in which a man has carte blanche to risk death time and time again simply because he has been foretold the day of his death (the Grandstander, Show Me a Hero)? Or a tale in which a woman who grew into a gargoyle form from birth is able to inspire others with her acts of heroism (Frique, Show Me a Hero)? Or a man is transformed into the living embodiment of an long-forgotten, ancient goddess (Fishnet Angel, Show Me a Hero)?
Super hero tales work as magical realism when the setting doesn't wink with a knowing grin at the reader. It works when the writer and the characters play it straight, as it were. The trick is to treat it with both a sense of wonder and sense of being commonplace somehow simultaneously. Miss that tricky line, and super hero stories become either farce or fantasy, both of which are fine, but not (in my opinion) the best that super hero fiction has to offer.
I'm much more grounded in physics. A super powered man sized individual, lets say Hercules for example, could never pick up a car unless he was directly underneath it. Unless his feet are stuck to the ground if the object is heavier than he is, he is not picking it up from the side.
ReplyDeleteI think applying physics and the supernatural equally is what I enjoy. For example, there's no reason Fishnet Angel should be able to fly or become the embodiment of an ancient goddess, but equally so, she can't stop a falling plane by merely catching it in the air.
ReplyDelete1. There's no equal and opposite force to push back against when the plane hits her.
2. Even if there were, the plane would fall apart at the point of impact since the weight isn't even distributed across the base of the craft.
Therefore, true to magical realism, I had to apply real-world rules with elements of a supernatural occurrence as though the two belonged together as a natural normal state.