Magic realism
culture wars in literary form
The equinox has passed, and in Sequel Country it is the season of mists up here on the Mountain of Venus, a landmark we lately reached by climbing the treacherous trail behind us. As Venus (or the Faerie Queen, depending on which folklore you prefer) seems to be on holiday from her mountain, I would like to expound on another topic which, like psychogeography, has been a particular interest of mine for many years.
The topic is magic realism, which I mentioned previously in part 25 about my screenplay Let Us Pray. Magic realism adds elements that are magical, bizarre or supernatural to a predominantly realist story, but in such a way that the characters in the story accept them as part of their reality (if they don’t, it’s not magic realism, just a story about something supernatural; or if it’s not predominantly realist, it’s called fantasy). In my 10 minute screenplay (presented as part 24) I used magic realism, in the form of a talking gargoyle, to solve a combination of problems: to avoid over-intellectualising an already theologically complex theme, keeping the storytelling visually interesting, and to avoid introducing more characters into such a short film, who would have needed plausible backstories and motivation, distracting from the story. But in fact, I’ve been writing stories with magic realism elements for twenty years, and have ideas for a magic realism novel.
As with psychogeography, the exact meaning of magic realism is somewhat disputed. It’s best understood as an umbrella term, with the similar term “magical realism” being mostly used to refer specifically to South American literature, where this form was a thing long before it was picked up in English literature. Versions of magic realism tend to be more popular in post-colonial parts of the world than they are in England and the USA. It’s also often found in fairytales, which rely on a kind of naive view of the world where everything is like the real world, except for a magic element which inexplicably doesn’t change anything else in the everyday world. One way of categorising magic realist novels is folkloric vs scholarly, i.e. magic being used naively or for literary effect; in this view, His Dark Materials would be “folkloric” while Midnight’s Children would be “scholarly” (though I think “literary” is a better word for it).
In the context of novels, I mentioned as long ago as part 2 what is a novel that one of the defining characteristics of the novel is that it tells a story in a realistic way. But it’s important to remember that, in the modern novel, the realism of the novel doesn’t refer to its content, but the way in which the content is presented. The people, and the way they think and act, should be believable, but the story and its setting don’t have to pretend to be a representation of the actual world we live in (otherwise there would be no SF&F, for example). However, magic realist novels do use a setting closely resembling the real world, and that’s what gives the magical elements their impact.
Magic realism is closely related to surrealism (which taps into the subconscious in a way that is deliberately disturbing) and fantastic realism (where stories have magical elements that are perceived by the characters as not normal). All three use magical elements to explore a philosophical or psychological dimension of the story which would not be available in pure realism.
And that, I think, has something to do with why I’m fascinated with books that have magic realist elements. The reader is forced to ask themself “what’s really going on here?” Does the small green moon, to take an example from the four-book novel 1Q84, mean that we’re in a parallel world now? How different is it? Are we ever even going to find out? I think it’s the ambiguity that I enjoy, prompting me as a reader to think about the story and what might be going on in a less linear way than I might do in a novel set in a world with clear, consistent rules.
The fact that “not all normal rules might apply here” also makes magic realism an inherently subversive or transgressive form, and that may also contribute to what I like about it. The author using magic realism within a mostly realist novel is a rule-breaker, departing from the hegemony – specifically the rule-based “classical” form of the realist novel, in the sense of classical vs romantic (formal vs emotional). Magic realism is a way to express the idea that there could be other ways of seeing the world, which is an essential step in challenging dominant ideas, ideas that are widely seen as representing an inevitable truth. By dissenting from the traditional form of the novel, it dissents from traditional ideas of how the world works (and just think how many of the worst political and cultural ideas are justified with “it’s traditional!”). In fact, this is exactly why magic realism has been more popular in post-colonial parts of the world (as I mentioned earlier). The post-colonial project is engaged in dismantling ideas of culture handed down by the colonial powers and seen through their (usually Western European) cultural lens. Magic realism has also been used to explore other ideas of dissent, including feminism and the gender binary.
I’m an adherent of the idea that literature (among other things) works better when form and content work together, when the form suits what is being told. Otherwise, the form tends to limit what can be said (this is true elsewhere too, in music for instance). In other words “form follows function”, or it should. Magic realism is a form which opens up possibilities to say something new and different from the norm, and I’m interested in that, as someone who is against patriarchy, dualism, binary gender, colonialism and all that old rubbish.
Besides, magic realism can be lots of fun, for the reader and for the writer. If a character suddenly has a conversation with a stone gargoyle, that’s really more fun than describing them having an inner dialogue with themself, especially if the gargoyle is really ugly and speaks in middle English or asks the character to scratch behind its ear because it’s had an itch there since the 14th century. Or magic realism can come from extending a metaphor, such as someone “burning with a passion” who is suddenly visibly on fire, blundering around setting fire to other people. That’s visual storytelling, reifying an inner conflict (whether a personal conflict of emotions, or a conflict of political ideas) into something material in the world of the story. Or it can work the other way round, for example if the bottom of a deep well giving access to a world where something works differently, then the world-portal is the metaphor for what would be a psychological journey if described in terms of realism. However it’s used, magic realism can be a fun way of describing something difficult or tedious to explain in a realist way. Or it can subvert dominant ideas, and subversion is fun.
On that note, let us set off down the mountain through the Meadows of Metaphor, and I hope to see you back here next week for a look across the border of Sequel Country into a neighbouring province. In the meantime, if this has been interesting, please share it with your social-media-friends:
I guess it's science fiction if the magic is supposed to follow a strictly coherent and predictable system, otherwise just fantasy. I once read a novel where a couple of programmers find themselves in a world where magic works, but but few can master complex spells. They make a spell out of simple spells that lets them combine a series of simple spells into something more complex, and they call that spell "emacs"... and so on... I guess that would count as scifi.
There's a series of books set in a world where magic works and science hasn't been developed, otherwise this world in the past, though that's hard to tell because what makes things modern is science really. Anyway, it's probably not magical realism, but is it science fiction? No science though. It's an interesting conceit though.