On Fiction and Fantasy

I recently caught the movie The Break-Up (2006) on TV and watched it the way through. The flick is a typical rom-com of its era, featuring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn as the leads. However, there is a surprisingly rough edge to it. The relationship depicted is genuinely in a bad place, the characters are broadly unsympathetic (which is not wholly unrealistic considering that those entrenched in a breakup often show the worst parts of themselves), and they face serious life-changing problems people really go through. What interested me was how everything unfolded and especially how it ended. This movie is bad, but it is bad, in my view, for a very particular reason: it is pure fantasy (not in the sense of genre, but in the sense of fantasising).

Rather predictably, the plot goes as follows. It begins with the couple living together with what appears to be pretty fatal differences between them. They break up, and since they live in a home they bought together, the fallout is rather extreme, with both sides being petty and cruel (with Vaughn being a real asshole). Eventually, they go their separate ways, which is all very sad. Following this, though, a montage lasting around one minute begins where both characters go on to flourish and grow by themselves apart. Finally, the movie ends with them meeting by ‘chance’ a year (?) later, strongly hinting to the viewers that they get back together and no doubt live happily ever after.

Why do I call it pure fantasy? Well, fantasy has a few distinguishing features. First, it is often exceedingly positive, representing some ideal state of affairs. Everything works out in spite of everything going wrong. Second, and relatedly, fantasy exceeds actuality. Whatever one fantasises about is often something that is very unlikely (or even impossible) to come to fruition. Third, it is effortless. Everything always falls into place while problems all fall away. The fantasiser either stays the same or changes effortlessly. Those around them do the same, automatically assimilating themselves into the fantasiser’s desires. It is life as it is, excised of its crippling difficulties, excised of precisely that which makes it life. Fantasy affirms as right that which is already there, revealing no solution except constancy. Thus, finally, fantasy is beyond recognition. We cannot recognise ourselves in fantasy because everything that makes us who we actually are, everything that makes real life what it is for us, is gone. This means no solution to any problem is recognised, and no lesson is learned about what you are and what you could be; you are only reinforced to be exactly as you are.

I think you would have to watch it to understand what I mean, but the movie has each of these aspects in spades. Despite the debilitating issues ailing both the main characters and their relationship, everything, by the end, is forgotten. Or at least we are supposed to forget. Thus, the ending totally exceeds any possibility: their change is completely unbelievable. I almost expected Aniston’s character to wake up revealing a dream sequence. No change in either character is actually observed. (I think Vaughn’s character gets a haircut and a nice coat in the final shot!) All that is shown is a brief montage of success, containing the false transcendence of the difficulty, struggle, and emotional reconciliation this success would require. Consequently, the characters are only mutilated images of life, phantasms of our world, rather than likenesses. This world and its characters exist in a realm unlike our own. 

Now, I am not saying that work of fiction must reveal every bit of character development on screen. I am just saying that if you would have me believe that two incommensurable beings reunite without reckoning with their profound differences in any meaningful way, then I think you are thinking of a fantasy world, not of our own. It honestly feels like it was written by a woman trapped in an uncaring relationship with a real piece of shit, fantasising that she could just travel to India for a year and come back to find his PlayStation gone, his new peacoat donned, and dinner on the table.

(I will add that the humour is pretty good, and some of the side characters, and sometimes even the main characters, are very funny. I do not hate the movie or anything; it really is fine as far as this kind of thing goes. It is just that the fantasy element just really struck me in this case. Further, it just happened to be this flick, rather than any one of a great many others that have the same fantastic structure, that catalysed my thoughts here.)

This structure of fantasy is not limited to just this movie—a lot of fiction shares this structure. The romantic comedy, and the ‘romantic’ in general, is often just the greatest offender. The fantasy element is why we laugh at these kinds of movies as sappy, ‘bad’, or as ‘guilty pleasures.’ These kinds of responses occur even in their popular understanding. It is because we implicitly recognise that this kind of fiction is a flight from life. The next time you watch a movie like this, I highly recommend imagining that someone who is going through a failing relationship wrote their improbable fantasy of its effortless reconnection or its smooth transcendence into a film. Viewed this way, the flick will make perfect sense.

“Ok fine”, you say, “but who cares if the movie is ‘bad’ and indulges in a little harmless fantasy? It’s a comedy! It’s entertainment! People just want something easy, something to pass some time! Give me a break; they’re not trying to be Ingmar Bergman.” Point taken, I am not here to police what you watch, nor do I care that these kinds of flicks are just fun, that they are mere entertainment, that people enjoy watching them, that they are not serious, et cetera. Entertainment and escape is a perfectly appropriate end for some media. Nonetheless, certain features of certain forms of entertainment do still deserve some scrutiny. And in this case, it is excessive fantasy that I wish to scrutinise. Works of fiction that indulge in this excessive fantasy are uniquely bad as forms of entertainment in a way that other forms of entertainment are not.

Underneath their plastic surface, these films, comedic elements included, are still trying to tell a story that could be real or at least contain elements analogous to real situations. By doing this, they purport to shed some light on those aspects of real life that resemble the events depicted. (This is unlike some action or horror movies, for example, where this is not strictly necessary.) Indeed, this is what makes fiction that deals with elements of the human condition so damn good: they show you something about the world. I am not speaking, necessarily, of things profound and deep. Merely being a clear reflection of life in some aspect is often enough for us to take something genuinely revelatory away from this kind of fiction. However, in creating or consuming something that could only ever be fantasy, this is never achieved.

Excessive fantasy in entertainment fails to depict life. It takes out the aspects essential to it and replaces them with fantasy. The best fiction depicting human (or near-human) relationships, no matter the genre, whether it is drama, comedy, horror, science fiction, or even fantasy (the genre), is made great by its adherence to life and recognition of a real human element. Actual great works depicting love and relationships recognise that people often do not change, that every last thing does not work out, that people’s emotions and desires are temperamental and oscillatory, and that relationships and love are actually really hard work. In other words, they show that our perfect desires and ideal aspirations must make way for real life and real struggle. But further, and even more importantly, they show that in spite of all this, in spite of real life: love, beauty, and joy are all possible, all something we can hope for in this world.

Fantasy teaches us nothing, not even hope. To genuinely hope for something, there must be the possibility of failure. Instead, it gives us cheap satisfaction by affirming either inaction, because we are perfect within a fantasy, eliminating the need to aspire towards anything. Or it affirms effortlessness, that whatever it takes to solve things will come about in your natural course of development. All this occurs without changing outlook, environment, or expectations. Further, fantasy depicts the other’s existence as mediated through our own desires, as tools to be taken into the service of bringing about our ideal world rather than as persons to reconcile with in the real world. This is ultimately a denial of the other’s individuality as a willing, desiring being with their own goals and projects, and it is a denial of their irreducible freedom to pursue those things. 

What is particularly pernicious about this movie is that the characters’ growth and reconciliation are skated over so briefly, and the ending is so predictable (that everything will be fine) that it runs afoul of all of these faults. If we are to apply its lessons to the real world, we are left assuming that the world will just be given up to us. We do not hope for our fantasy to come true; we complacently await its fated inevitability. This is why films with excessive fantasy are so easy to consume. They give you what you want without depicting the struggle that would be involved with getting it. We do not always have, or even want, the courage to face the world.

(Now, I am not arguing for the obviously incorrect conclusion that we are never justified in turning away from the world. There is some usefulness to escapism and fantasy. It is precisely in those situations we feel most alienated that flight can be a comforting respite from the world. I just think we should recognise it as such. Nor am I arguing that people come away from a movie like this applying itself exactly to their lives. It is more like this stuff just washes over most viewers! That being said, it seems plausible that a diet of recognising oneself only through fantasy and escapism could eventually become a problem.)

Conversely, in experiencing art that provides us with a real grounding in our world, art that depicts the complex reality of ourselves and others, we are actually able to recognise ourselves in the work. We see ourselves in all our shining imperfections. Whether we find ourselves through the characters, their aspects, or the situations they find themselves in, we learn something real about life and the human experience. We are reminded of our imperfections and differences, our compatibilities and incompatibilities. Even when things do not turn out well for the characters, the satisfaction is full-blooded rather than cheap because you are shown something about the world such that you can recalibrate and attune yourself properly to its contours. You learn something about the world. You learn not merely that things can change, which is a trivial truth, but what things can change. In practical terms, good fiction orients us properly towards future action. Further, it reminds us of others’ inalienable subjectivity and freedom to choose. They remind us that others are not tools to be subordinated to our desires but individuals with their own complex inner lives, their own hopes, desires, and dreams that might not include us in them. They remind us that we must create a situation for the other that makes them want to choose to live life with us and that this can be hard.

This can be done successfully, even in the confines of the genre that is often the greatest offender. Specific examples of romantic comedies that do this are Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) and his criminally underrated Husbands and Wives (1994). In the former, the reality of what relationships often amount to, in all their absurdity, is laid bare in a hilarious way. (It is, by my estimation, the greatest romantic comedy ever made.) Similarly, the latter, while a little more serious, tackles the same issues except now in the context of marriage, and it does so with great agility and breadth of scope, touching on innumerable little complications of romantic life. Another example is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2004), an offbeat and quirky Adam Sandler romantic comedy that shows two imperfect beings carving out their own space in the world. You might think this movie’s seeming absurdities and the surface differences from life would contradict the account of recognition given above, but it does not. Even though the world is not exactly like our own, it remains a deeply human story to which we recognise and relate ourselves. Another great one is The Awful Truth (1937), a fantastic and very funny screwball comedy.