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Introducing "Ancanar", A Mid-Summer's Film Fantasy

© Michael Martinez

Believe me, this has everything to do with Tolkien's world. What we call "modern Fantasy" finds it roots in ancient literature stretching all the way back to the Gilgamesh epic. The medium began to take form, really, in early novels such as Gulliver's Travels and Ivanhoe, generations before people thought of "fantasy" as a literary genre separate from others. A few sticks-in-the-mud might argue that Ivanhoe was no more a fantasy novel than Swiss Family Robinson, but both books meet the minimal criteria to be "fantasy" except for one item: there is no real indication of "magic" in them. Ivanhoe is set in a mythical England that didn't really exist. It draws upon a broad knowledge of Angevin England but Sir Walter Scott made up so much of the world for the story that he literally wrote the first "alternate Earth" fantasy, even if there was no real "magic" in it (in terms of lightning-bolt casting wizards and shapeshifting witches, etc.). Swiss Family Robinson comes about as close to magic-oriented fantasy as an Errol Flynn swashbuckler comes to being a World War II flick. And yet, who wasn't terrified when the mysterious monster came rampaging across the island to eat the family's poor mule? As a child, at least, I read that chapter under the covers, because I was worried the characters I had become so attached to might actually be killed. A giant snake may not seem so fantastical to anyone who has watched "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" ("while I remain safely in the helicopter, Jim wrestles with the 30-foot anaconda" -- okay, Marlin Perkins did help wrestle with the anaconda, too). The point is that each of these stories, given to a reader today, would strike that person as "fantasy", or something close to it. Why? Because there is nothing to latch onto in any other genre. The Robinson's island doesn't exist. The episode with the raider monkeys and the deadly tent trap is comical and tragic, and it is the precursor for many "mankind fights off the evil creatures" episodes. Sir Ivanhoe rides across an imaginary countryside with familiar place names, faithfully serving the good king Richard (who in reality was hardly even close to his people, let alone "good" or "bad"). All of today's fantastic stories about knights and fantasy monsters are foreshadowed by books like these. Tolkien himself wrote less like a modern fantasist and more like a Sir Walter Scott. He intentionally looked backwards for the feel and tone of much of his story, even though The Lord of the Rings is very much a modern 20th century book. But The Silmarillion bears little of the modern voice. It's a chronicle of ancient times, a record of deeds otherwise long forgotten. As with Ivanhoe, the author transports us back to a world in a time that never was, but which seems so familiar.