Real or Wannabe?

If stories seem untrue to the world that is, perhaps they are true to the way one wishes it to be. Stories shape our understanding. But if they are not true to how life actually is then they cause confusion.

I have seen a few episodes of "The Rings of Power."

I know I am late to the game and few will read my thoughts on it anyway. I am a fan of Tolkien and believe his LOTR is true to the world as it is. Not so much this Amazon re-telling.

I am aware of fantasy as a literary genre. I am no literature expert, but I believe reality is not up for grabs. Even fantasy is anchored with points at least analogous to life as we know it. Deny reality and there is intrinsic loss of meaning. Fixed things must be assumed and built upon.

Which brings me back 'round to TROP. An early scene of the army commander (Galadriel) shows her climbing a vertical ice-covered mountain in a snow storm. Very few men -- if any -- could do it with the speed and success depicted. If a woman could do it ever she would be one in a billion. I know Galadriel is an elf with special powers, so maybe that explains everything. And yes, movies often show exploits impossible in the real world.

This still seems wrong. She presents as a real human woman and thus tells a flat lie about how women and men respectively engage in the world.

It is an agenda, not altogether bad for that. All novels, presumably, try to strike the balance between realism and "how could the world be better." TROP writers are likely saying the world would be better if women and men were more or less equal in military endeavors, and we can shape that by shaping the story that way. Thus Galadriel, while clearly a woman, fights distinctively yet still much like a man. This intermingles the meanings of woman and man, and that shapes our understanding.

Except the world is not that way. As I watched, my mind was strained and I knew there was a propaganda going on. Propaganda, I propose, is what happens when we go from reflecting what is to shaping what is into what we want it to be.

This, ever and always is the rub. TROP writers err on the side of messing with reality about human nature. They, and all of us, do so to our peril.