My impression is that there is a lot of rethinking of these tropes going on in current fantasy fiction, especially children's/YA which is the only bit I know anything about, but that TV/film is a long way from catching up. Game of Thrones - which I was basically watching for Brienne while paying minimal attention to everything else (and I haven't finished it so I don't know where it takes its various narratives) - seems, rather like The Magicians to be well aware of all these problems yet buying into exactly the same narratives. Jackson - ugh, I am fond of the LotR films but my fondness for them is easily surpassed by my fondness for demonstrating their racism and classism (WHY do your orcs have lower-class British accents, Jackson? DO EXPLAIN) to innocent undergrads and watching their dreams fall apart.
Entirely agree that The Magicians deals with tropes of imperialism very very poorly. I feel like this is perhaps simply bad writing and that in regard to all the problems you identify, there is no plan or careful thought behind them. It looked, at points, as though the show was going to engage with them and then it was basically - oh look, something shiny, let's handwave this entire narrative strand and not think about it ever again! I'd like to see fans taking all this on through fic - like the writers who took on SGA and its even more stunning displays of imperialism, or what astolat is doing right now with 'Transformers'...
Not apropos of your main point, my kids are really really into Percy Jackson at the moment, and both Rick Riordan and The Magicians (TV not books) seem to me that they are making a similar move to post-Tolkien and Lewis British fantasy. That is, once you have lost the empire and your status as a world power is fading, you solve this by setting aside the 'conquer other worlds' plotline and instead making the ultimate battle between good and evil a local issue for a group of young (white) heroes in their home country (see: Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, J. K. Rowling et al). In this way BOTH the plots, and the books/media themselves in their mass circulation, become agents of cultural imperialism or soft power - they suggest that the key battles are fought by English-speaking white people, and are located in Western settings.
Percy Jackson and The Magicians specifically reimagine the USA as the new centre of operations of magic and the classical gods, and they're thinking about American imperialism - or buying into it - and about the loss of those powers. The Magicians NEARLY does something very explicit and interesting with this transfer of imperialist power from British to American hands, but fails to follow through properly on this and on its implications. (As with so much else.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-03-10 10:50 pm (UTC)Entirely agree that The Magicians deals with tropes of imperialism very very poorly. I feel like this is perhaps simply bad writing and that in regard to all the problems you identify, there is no plan or careful thought behind them. It looked, at points, as though the show was going to engage with them and then it was basically - oh look, something shiny, let's handwave this entire narrative strand and not think about it ever again! I'd like to see fans taking all this on through fic - like the writers who took on SGA and its even more stunning displays of imperialism, or what astolat is doing right now with 'Transformers'...
Not apropos of your main point, my kids are really really into Percy Jackson at the moment, and both Rick Riordan and The Magicians (TV not books) seem to me that they are making a similar move to post-Tolkien and Lewis British fantasy. That is, once you have lost the empire and your status as a world power is fading, you solve this by setting aside the 'conquer other worlds' plotline and instead making the ultimate battle between good and evil a local issue for a group of young (white) heroes in their home country (see: Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, J. K. Rowling et al). In this way BOTH the plots, and the books/media themselves in their mass circulation, become agents of cultural imperialism or soft power - they suggest that the key battles are fought by English-speaking white people, and are located in Western settings.
Percy Jackson and The Magicians specifically reimagine the USA as the new centre of operations of magic and the classical gods, and they're thinking about American imperialism - or buying into it - and about the loss of those powers. The Magicians NEARLY does something very explicit and interesting with this transfer of imperialist power from British to American hands, but fails to follow through properly on this and on its implications. (As with so much else.)