The following scenario is widely recognized to be a wish-fulfilment fantasy: The heroine in some YA novel mostly read by girls has two hot dudes competing for her affections, and she must choose between them. It's such a common take now to go "they should just go poly and they could all be together", and sure, it would be cool with a wider array of relationships in fiction, but let's set that aside for now. The people involved don't want to have a poly relationship, and the heroine must choose.
Why is this a wish-fulfilment fantasy? After all, it's not a fun situation in real life. She cares about both boys, and when you care about someone, you don't want to see them sad - but inevitably, the one she turns down will be sad and disappointed. Also, even if they try to be all mature about the situation and stay good friends, this is often difficult in practice.
The reason it's still an escapist fantasy that many like to read about (or watch) is that fiction need not treat the situation very realistically and really dig into these problems. Instead, it focuses on how desirable the heroine is. Girls learn from an early age that it's extremely important to be desirable to boys/men, and if you've got two guys who are hot themselves competing for your affections, that means you're super desirable!
Once we realize that fictional scenarios need not be any fun in real life to provide wish-fulfilment and escapist fantasies to the audience, we can also see that there's so much more fiction that fills this role than just "YA heroine must choose between two hot guys".
Major clarification before I move on: It's possible to really enjoy some piece of fiction and still recognize that it has problematic elements worth criticizing. We don't need to choose between rejecting something, or embracing it while vehemently insisting that it's perfect. I'm gonna talk about Rick and Morty, and I love that show! I've enjoyed the hell out of it from the start! I can still criticize it! "This is perfect" and "this is problematic and therefore terrible and must be rejected" is a false dichotomy!
Okay, here goes: Rick and Morty is a great show but a substantial chunk of the fanbase are made up by terrible people. This shouldn't come as a surprise, since the titular Rick provides wish-fulfilment for nasty people.
Rick is a huge jerk himself, but he's simultaneously the smartest and bestest person in the world (at least in early seasons - later on, he sometimes looks stupid and pathetic, and he doesn't always come out on top anymore). Even when he completely fucks up, like that time he turned the world into a "Cronenberg nightmare" and had to hop over to a different dimension, it's the kind of grand fuck-up only the smartest and the bestest could make. As terrible as he is to other people, their ability to stand up to him and talk back tends to be limited by how inferior they are.
Now, if you're a terrible jerk-ass yourself, this likely has negative consequences for your social life and life in general. But if you're nasty and hateful, you don't want to fantasize about some shiny happy scenario in which you're popular and nice with tons of friends, because you don't like other people, so you don't want to be nice to them or friends with them. Instead, you'll fantasize about being as shitty to others as you like, but they must put up with it, and you get away with it without negative consequences.
Now, I've seen people argue that douchebags for whom Rick is a wish-fulfilment fantasy haven't paid sufficient attention to the show, because we actually see that he's also lonely and depressed, and even contemplates suicide at one point.
And sure, being depressed or even suicidal isn't fun in real life (duh!). But it can still serve as wish-fulfilment in fiction that doesn't dig into a realistic portrayal of these terrible feelings, but instead just use them as a kind of jerkass license. When Morty feels that he's had enough of Rick's shit and it's time to stand up for himself, Birdperson explicitly says that he mustn't do that. You see, Rick feels bad, and therefore, everyone should keep swallowing all his shit and never talk back. He must be allowed to vent and shit on everyone else as much as he feels like, because he's depressed.
People can fantasize about being the smartest and the bestest in the world, but it's usually obvious that this is never gonna happen to them. But a situation in which everyone around you goes "oh, now I finally understand how hard things are for you! How grand your suffering! I will never again complain about your behaviour - from now on, I will show you nothing but compassion, understanding, and admiration for how well you bear your grand suffering, regardless of what you do or say to me!" might seem like something that could actually happen. So people can absolutely fantasize about, not suffering in itself, but having their suffering recognized as a valid license to be shitty.
This also goes for tragic backstories like murdered parents or a fridged girlfriend. Of course this would be terrible in real life. But if those dead loved ones only fill the narrative function of making the hero cool, dark and brooding and giving him a license to be shitty to others, such deaths can definitely serve a wish-fulfilment purpose.
So why does any of this even matter? Well, I'm not gonna claim it's super important to be able to spot wish-fulfilment fantasies when you see them. But off the top of my head, I can think of two reasons:
1. If you're a writer, you might want to know whether you write something that works as wish-fulfilment, and if so, for which demographic. That way, you can make conscious choices instead of being taken by surprise by what kind of fans you attract.
2. Also, if you think wish-fulfilment stories are bad and should be criticized - you shouldn't just criticize stuff like Twilight, but stuff like Rick and Morty as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment