Art is not just Escapism

Spend any time on the internet and you might often hear the claim, normally by people who have the emotional maturity of toddlers, that entertainment is escapism. The reason why we turn on the TV or the gaming console is that we can escape into another world and enjoy swinging around New York City like Spiderman.

While this is true, I do believe that there is a flaw in this claim, there sometimes. Especially among the more terminally online/ideologues complain about anything they don’t like being shoved in their faces regardless of how well the depiction is presented. I want to talk about the importance of escapism how that can sometimes be impossible, and why culture war might be to blame for this hyper-political nonsense when it manifests.

Sometimes art is escapism

I am not going to say that all art is supposed to say something profound about the nature of man or something like that. Games like Devil May Cry or movies like The Fast and the Furious are as dumb as a pile of rocks and that is perfectly fine. Sometimes we need to have fun shooting things with lasers. I love games like Stickman: The Game because they are stupid dumb fun and never cease to make me laugh. I also am not against sitting back and just enjoying the meaningless fun of Seinfeld.

There is fun to be had in the escapist fantasy of the isekai genre of anime, who doesn’t want to be whisked away to a whole new world for the chance of a better life and get laid? Japan certainly agrees with the escapism angle given how profitable and in demand the isekai genre is over there. Power fantasies like Solo Leveling or Sword Art Online are popular with people who want to believe they have the chance to kiss the hot girl and become a badass by playing video games. I can relate and respect that.

However, escapism as the sole purpose of a piece of art is often very shallow. The spectacle of deserter movies might have been impressive at the time. But once the CGI stopped being impressive in a decade you will often find the rest of the movie to be lacking. Solo Leveling and Sword Art Online are both fun for the spectacle but the tension is non-existent and the characters are remarkably shallow. Devil May Cry and Stickfight: The Game might challenge the player and offer a lot of fun but tends not to say much.

They might stuck in your mind cause of the visuals and the thrill, but not much else. The isekai genre is riddled with shallow plots, meaningless fanservice, and stock characters. Escapist art can be enjoyable in the moment, but all too often it can be lacking in substance or creativity once you have stopped consuming it. Art that has something to say often sticks in your mind and starts conversations.

Art is more than just an escape

From Silent Hill to Bioshock to One Hundred Years of Solitude and There Will Come Soft Rains. Art expresses the thoughts and feelings of the creator regardless if it is deliberate or not. Ken Levine and co wanted to give a rebuttal to Atlus Shrugged by showing just much of a shit show it would be if it was implemented in the real world. There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury confronts the reader with the horrors of nuclear war, that nothing will be left if we destroy each other.

And There Will Come Soft Rains was published in 1950, right as the Cold War was beginning and the threat of nuclear destruction was hanging over the world. Was that too political for the people waiting with bated breath for the blast to go off? I mean yes it was but it was well done and very cathartic to the reader then and now. People complaining about the political nature of art is a tale as old as time.

I know personally from my own country of South Africa, where a major political scandal broke out over a piece of art called The Spear (warning NSFW), the art is expressive in how critical the artist is of the Zuma presidency. The only difference between the dozens and dozens of YouTube channels complaining about games/comics/books and The Spear is stakes and who is doing the complaining. Art that expresses a belief is going to cause conflict, people have to expect it.

The demand for non-political art however can be misleading, sometimes the person in question wants art that isn’t lecturing you or has its political themes inserted with as much care and precision as a cacti carpet bombing. And that is a criticism I can agree and empathize with, nobody wants their entertainment to be ground to a screeching halt to be lectured to for four hours over why the author’s stupid political opinions are valid (they often are not).

Political art that makes you think is important to the cultural enrichment of the consumer and shouldn’t be discouraged, but it also shouldn’t allow idiots to play politicians. We have to distinguish between the good and the bad political art, the ones that respect intelligence and those that don’t. And unfortunately, I can’t do that alone. It is something we all need to work on.

The power of metaphor

One of the reasons I love speculative fiction is the power of the metaphor. There is something comforting about exploring dark or important topics within the comfort of something alien or different from what we know.

This can be aliens being stand-ins (among other things) colonies in H.G Wells's War of the Worlds or the parasitic elite draining the common folk literally in Bram Stocker’s Dracula. Monsters are rarely if ever just monsters, there are themes and histories behind each monster, each world that is conjured out of thin air. Artists can use the brilliance of metaphor to explore ideas that might not be comfortable to explore explicitly.

This can include politically charged stories with themes that might be relevant currently or in universal themes about war or authoritatism etc. If Tolkien can use fantasy metaphors to give those fallen in WW1 a reason for them to have never died in vain. I think we can use the metaphor of say a haunted town to explore themes of guilt and sexual frustration, or I use the metaphor of a haunted shopping mall to mourn the loss of prosperity and the death of the American dream.

You know, things like that. Is it hard for people to be reminded of the 2008 financial crisis or the current economic climate? Yes of course it is, but that is horror, horror that means something. It undoubtedly was hard for Tolkien to write scenes like the Dead Mashes given how it was very likely to have been inspired by his experience at the Somme. All art comes out of something, the writer’s experiences whether they like it or not. The artist merely has the responsibility to produce something that is not too difficult for the consumer to consume. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.

The triggered

It is an easy thing to say that most of the people complaining about the lack of escapism in art tend to be social/political commentators. They are mostly the hyper-political commentators who make their bread and butter from complaining about the current thing. Whenever something new comes out or someone says something dumb, they will be there. They tend to be the ones who cannot read anything over the surface text or only through the lens of good vs evil.

They don’t want to explore new ideas or experience things with different people, they don’t want to be challenged. While I am not saying their points are always invalid. They do often call out the shallow pandering by major companies. But rather than improve the representation or write something better. They would much rather just remove anything that would be seen as political. They would rather turn everything into a gray mindless sludge than be challenged. The same can be said for the other side of the political aisle, the commentators would rather burn art to the ground than improve it. To make art purely escapist is to make art gray and boring.

Real-life influences art

Ultimately, art reflects the person who created it, the aggregate of the art created reflects the culture (at least in theory I am not getting into that here). At the moment there is a push, a need to be seen in supporting common causes that encourage people to buy the product. Sometimes the writer just wants to talk about a specific topic, be it about black characters or gay characters. Will it be done badly? Often yes, cause more often people at least in the West tend to think their opinions are more important than writing a good story. That representation is the only important thing, resulting in shallow characters and boring plots. That is something I don’t want to encourage and I think it will only hurt stories in the long run.

I also don’t want the backlash against bad representation to overtake the possibility of good stories with weird and wonderful characters and settings. I don’t like the idea that world-building and characters have to adhere to reality otherwise it is grooming or pushing an agenda. I see a boring world where creativity is stifled and stories are safe, stilted, and empty of challenge. Just because we have corporate pandering and bad writers trying to write stories underrepresented in the current discourse doesn’t mean we should just throw out the baby with the bathwater. I want to read stories that don’t look the same or just have two overpowered people twatting each other with sticks.

Conclusion

It is important to realize that art is made by humans influenced by the world they grew up with. There is also a problem with ideological incuriosity and anti-intellectualism in refusing to explore or interact with themes or imagery they disagree with. There is a whining about how political games or TV shows are, no matter how well the subject matter is depicted.

We should reject this type of rhetoric of throwing away any depiction that goes against your political ideology. It is entitlement to whine when the artist doesn’t fully deliver what you think the art should be about. If you cannot handle differences in worldview and get triggered over pronouns in Starfield then you need to reconsider your choices in life. If you want to see art get created that matches what you want you have to sit down and do it yourself.