5: Contemporary Fantasy Fusions, with J.K. Rowling
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense."
First lines of Chapter 1, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's (Philosopher's) Stone
By J.K. Rowling
Published 1997
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Link to the rest of Chapter 1 (and the entire book): HERE
Taking another short jaunt into the literary world, with the first lines/chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It'll be my stand-in today for contemporary fantasy genre as a whole; it's not the most clean-cut example of the genre, but it's mega-sold so many copies that odds are you already know the gist1, and that's helpful.
It's important to remember that genres are mostly made up and pasted on after the fact, so I stand by none of what follows as far as definitions and such. That said, 'contemporary fantasy' is basically fantasy that takes place in the real world of the author's own time2. In 'Harry Potter', although most of the action takes place in the magical world of e.g. Hogwarts, Rowling built that world into our own; Harry lives with his aunt and uncle in a modern suburb, he can get to school by train, hiding from 'muggles' is a constant concern, several major scenes take place in London, etc.
Contemporary fantasy, as a large umbrella term, is one of the most popular genres of all time. Rowling made Harry Potter a big enough name by itself, but then you've got things like superhero fiction (from Superman to the the Marvel universe), urban fantasy (responsible for the vampire crazes, and including everything from fantasy romance to supernatural procedurals), supernatural fantasy (touching on a lot of ghost/monster/horror stories), an enormous amount of YA, arguably even stuff like 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'. As people, we seem primed to like narrative, and to really like this kind of narrative. Actually, it might not be outrageously stupid to suggest that part of why, say, mythology has always been so potent is because those stories are typically a deep integration of the magical with our own world, an aspect we seem to really like. In Greek myths, gods routinely walk the earth, hunt, drink, have sex and children with humans. There are secret godly places, but even these are generally still accessible from the human world (see, for example, Oedipus *walking* into the underworld for Eurydice). Such stories can have a religious nature when they're used for explanation or moral instruction, or can increase opportunities to communicate with symbolism or poetry, but it's hard to deny that they're also just fun. I mean, we know how much the world often sucks. And we know that we only get to see tiny bits of all that's out there. So why not escape the world by pretending that part of what we don't see is this magical place with immortal creatures and magic and mystery and things bigger and grander and better than we've ever known?
Going back to Bruegel, part of why I like the 'Icarus' painting is that it often reads to me like a contemporary fantasy scene done by a cheerful cynic. You have a boy with wings, wrapped in centuries of myth, who is here chucked unceremoniously into the ocean (while the plowman gets center stage for just doing a very nice job with his rows). In this light, the painting is definitely a (semi-dark) comedy; it's not that Icarus' fall wasn't noticeable or significant, it's that all these people are so self-absorbed they didn't see someone with giant bird wings spewing wax and feathers plummeting out of the air. This painting, in other words, is kind of like what would happen if you condensed the whole Harry Potter series down to a series of interviews with random muggles who happened to be nearby getting inconvenienced. Which, for the record, I would read.
NOTES:
1. I am, in fact, going to assume you know the gist. Apologies if you don't, but there's a link up there, a movie to watch, and tons of people willing to shout summaries at you on the internet.
2. In contrast, stories like 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Game of Thrones' take place in an entirely new world created by the author, and are known as 'high fantasy'. Stories like 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe' start in the real world, but don't count as contemporary fantasy either: they're usually known as 'portal stories', because the normal world is just there to set up a magical doorway to, again, an all-new world, where all of the major action takes place. (Books are usually several genres at once, so for example a portal story can also be high fantasy for the portion set in that other world. Harry Potter is also like this, serving as contemporary fantasy and high fantasy, among other genres.)