MIND OUT OF TIME PT. 2

Here's the statement I made at the end of Part 1:

...despite the strong association of the colloquial use of the term "fantasy" and the "magic rationale," I think there's a more fundamental appeal to "magical fantasy" than the use of said rationale...

One reason I eliminated "the magic rationale" as the main attraction is that some extremely popular "magical fantasies" make only very minor usages of magic.

Case in point: the ARABIAN NIGHTS folktale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." In the standardized version of the story-- which is the one most often adapted for modern narratives-- poor woodcutter Ali Baba witnesses a gang of thieves using a magical cave to conceal their ill-gotten treasures. The cave-door, which opens or closes in obedience to certain magic words, is the only magical item in the story. Everything else in the narrative, however improbable or melodramatic, would be deemed isophenomenal, governed by naturalistic laws. We don't know if the "open sesame" cave is the result of active or passive magic-- though I tend to favor the former, that some individual placed a spell on the cave-mouth to act as cave-mouths don't usually operate. But there's a sense of a regular magical procedure involved in the treasure-cave's makeup. The cave doesn't open "just because," say, it's funny for the purpose of a gag, a la my earlier example of ROGER RABBIT. That nonsense-rationale would imply the cave might open some times and not others.

The appeal of magical fantasies, whether they use a lot of magic or very little, inheres more in the fact that they reproduce a society that is fully or mostly "pre-industrial," in which it's possible for the characters to invest in magic because there is no competing rationale of "science." That does not mean that there is no science as such in the world, such as (say) the engineering principles needed for Ancient Egypt to build the pyramids. But in an archaic world, science simply is not as IMPORTANT as magic.

So, I'm admitting that "magical fantasies" have a vital appeal because they invest in the magic-rationale and not the other two rationales-- but there's also a greater, supervening appeal in that the contemporary reader/audience is transported back to a time when science had less influence than magic. And I'll look at some possible reasons for that appeal in Part 3.

Parenthetically, Ali Baba got the "just because" treatment in 1937's POPEYE MEETS ALI BABA, and in that cartoon short it's clear that gags like "Abu Hassan got 'em anymore" overshadow any investment in even the minor magic of the "open sesame" cave.