Throwback Thursday: Childhood: The Gateway Drug to the Fantastic

Crossposted in Blogetary:

This article was originally published in the July 2010 issue of Illuminata, a newsletter of Tyrannosaurus Press. It has been slightly edited and updated.

Childhood: The Gateway Drug to the Fantastic

By Rachel Olivier

When I was in high school and college Nancy Reagan had just begun her “Just Say No” to drugs campaign and much was made of “gateway drugs” such as marijuana or gateway alcohol, like beer. Girls were warned about gateway behavior down “that” road – the road to slut-hood, shame and who knows what else.

I remember that also around this time a friend of mine was persuaded by me and a few other friends to read the Tolkien trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Those of us who had read it had also cut our speculative teeth on series such as The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and books like The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. We didn’t know anyone who had read those books who didn’t like them. And we didn’t want to know people who had read them and didn’t like them.

It was a huge shock, then, when that friend showed up one day to say he’d read the trilogy finally and would never read it or anything like it ever again. Why? Because it was too good. Too tempting for him to read the books, get involved in the world and not want to do anything else or read anything else. I didn’t see anything wrong with that, but apparently, for him, it was a “gateway drug”.
That was a long time ago and I hadn’t thought about that incident again until recently. I’ve been watching movies like UP (2009) and The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and rewatching movies such as Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) and Flash Gordon (1980). While two are animated films and two are live action, they are all similar in that they are basically movies for “kids” that adults enjoy as well. In fact, much of the subject matter is very adult, despite the fact that kids are the target audience.

In UP, for example, a young boy grows up, falls in love, gets married and then watches his wife grow old, fade and die. And that’s just the first 15 minutes of the movie. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is basically about a con artist with big dreams trying to make a life for his family. Something Wicked This Way Comes deals with a handful of temptations that adults have a difficult time with, but two ten-year-old boys are expected to resist. Flash Gordon is basic Good versus Evil, with a football player leading the Good Guys, but it also explores some adult themes (torture and sex being but two).

In many ways these stories are not much different from straightforward “children’s” stories such as The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham or any other fairy tale or myth or legend shared with children when they are young. They use an imagined world with imagined characters to explore themes such as Good versus Evil, resisting temptation, fighting for what you believe in, love, loyalty and friendship. These are stories children read or have read to them. Somewhere along the line, many children abandon the fairy tales for “real” stories that take place in contemporary society.

For many of us, however, one of those many fairy tales or “children’s” books like Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll or Robin Hood by Howard Pyle, or even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling became our “gateway drug” to the world of the fantastic. Because we fell in love with these stories, we learned we could joyously suspend our disbelief for other stories about exploring outer space or traveling to the center of the earth or being able to change into an animal.

We love the fantastic and suppositions of what the world may become in the far future on a distant planet, or what it might plunge into in a dystopian future. In the parlance of current 21^st century speak (leaving Nancy Reagan far behind) it is our “drug of choice”. Some of us are lucky enough to be born into families where many members are also lovers of the fantastic. Some of us have to seek out others who love it as much as we do. I still end up defending science fiction and fantasy to my mom and dad who think of vampires, werewolves and zombies as “weird”. (“Why don’t you write stories about real things?” is a common question.)

I guess what I’m saying is that if you’re part of this speculative fiction “fad” that “all the kids are raving about” (psst – remind your friends and family that it’s not a fad and not going away any time soon), you aren’t alone. You’re part of a group of people who enjoy your imagination and enjoy the endorphins that wake up when you explore planets and realities outside of your own. Be proud. Hold your head up, look people in the eye and say: “Hello. My name is _______  and I love science fiction and fantasy.”