Fantasy: inherently conservative?

For a change, why don’t we take a post that I mostly agree with and take a side issue to nitpick? Here’s a short extract from Gareth Rees’ excellent credo for critics

This objection eventually amounts to a denial of the legitimacy of criticism on political or moral grounds: that an author’s choice of setting and political ethos for a work of fiction cannot be subject to criticism. Brahm: “Writing does not need to be didactic or satirical in order to be important or insightful: you seem to view the situation as that either Martin should be condemned because he supports the medieval feudalist system or that he should be damned because his work is not a satire and therefore meaningless. Why he can’t simply write a story in a medieval world, that realistically shows the workings and limitations of the system as well as the mindsets of those that inhabit it, is beyond me.”

Ethical criticism has got itself a bad name because it’s at the root of the Victorian idea that books must be morally improving. But you can reject that position without denying the legitimacy of ethical criticism tout court. I don’t necessarily agree with every point McCalmont makes but I think his argument is basically right: fiction that treats of kings and queens without any kind of satire, irony or other form of undermining is implicitly endorsing conservative and authoritarian ideas.

I think that is wrong, or at least not the whole truth. Sure, on the one hand there are fantasy authors, with the most obvious example being Tolkien himself, who do believe in the idea of a rightful king and all the baggage that implies, while on the other hand there are legions of lesser writers following the footsteps of a Tolkien, unthinkingly taking the same bagage with them, but that doesn’t mean that all fantasy set in a medievaloid setting with kings and queens has this bagage, or that fantasy authors explicitely have to reject these ideas not to have it. There needs to be room for writers who want to use a medieval like setting to tell stories that aren’t political in the sense Gareth is talking about, who take the political and sociological implications of such a setting as a given, rather than something to be endorsed or condemned.