Escapism is good and fun, sometimes.

[cypsiman2]

Our world is a goddamn mess. There are so many problems going on that even if we all of us everywhere were to band together against them, it might well not be enough in the face of everything that is going on. Being faced with that 24/7 would crush us so we all deserve the ability to escape into other worlds for a time and be able to share those escapades with others still.

But there are corollaries to this. What is a fun, whimsical, and harmless escape for one might be a reminder for another at how fundamentally excluded they are. And I think we can all grasp this; just think of any popular genre work where people like you are plainly secondary, where you are never the star, never the hero, never important as more than at best an accessory to the real important people, and you know what I mean. Refusing to recognize this when someone brings up these problems in an escapist work doesn't protect anything more than your own bubble.

The more important corollary though is that no matter how we try, we can't ever have a complete escape from our lives. We will always bring something with us into our escape, and we will always bring something back after we return. It might be small and ephemeral at first, like the Pevensie children in the Narnia books only having foggy memories of their decades in Narnia, but over time it does build up and it does affect us. And then we bring that back into new stories and the cycle continues all over again.

No, no one story is going to mind control you into, I don't know, hunting down all sharks or something. But we can be mature adults and recognize that things are not about all or nothing and that subtext is more than just hot people kissing a lot.

Comments

[sarajayechan]

Fun and escapism are one of the most subjective things out there. Even going beyond the "your white straight Hallmark movies make LGBT and people of color feel sidelined and ignored" aspect, something you might enjoy and consider innocent fun might contain something triggering or uncomfortable for someone else. Something like Peanuts might hit too close to home for a person who's been bullied the way Lucy picks on Charlie Brown, for example. Or "The Simpsons" might not be funny to someone with abusive parents who can't just overlook Homer strangling Bart as a gag.

[cypsiman2]

Both absolutely good points!

[sarajayechan]

That said, I also offer a counterpoint:

Keeping in mind that escapism and fun are subjective is one thing. It's important to understand that someone's going to find fault in a thing that makes you happy, and that it's not a personal attack on you. You're not obligated to have a lengthy discussion about the things that person sees or feels, but you are obligated to accept that your idea of fun isn't universal and that people are allowed to have those feelings.

But there are also people who will take it in the opposite direction and go "because this thing makes me uncomfortable and left out, it's objectively bad and anyone who enjoys it is hurting me personally". Like the time Sheith fandom went on Twitter to lecture SPOP fans who were happy when Catradora became canon, going "keep in mind that we didn't get our ship and our feelings were hurt, go ahead and be happy but remember us and think about how your ship is a painful reminder of what we didn't get".

[cypsiman2]

This is absolutely true. Self-indulgence and entitlement can go all different ways.