Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes: How Myth and Religion Shape Fantasy Culture by Douglas E. Cowan (review)

Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes is part of a four-book series by Douglas Cowan analyzing the intersection of religion and popular culture. Other titles in the series include Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen (2008), Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science-Fiction Film and Television (2010) and America's Dark Theologian: The Religious Imagination of Stephen King (2018). The sociologist of religion concedes that fantasy is harder to write about than horror or science fiction because the conventions of the genre are less well-established. But this obstacle is compounded exponentially by the fact that this is not a book about fantasy books or films but fantasy culture. As such, it covers such phenomena as Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, LARPing (live action role-playing), "cos-play," and obscure YouTube channels devoted to these pastimes, as well as the books and films that inspire them. Thus, this book covers an ambitious amount of "geeky" material in a very short space. (I counted 208 films, film series, and television shows cited in the mediography.)

Cowan describes Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes as a "love letter" to the stories he grew up on (14). While that includes a lot, Cowan encourages readers to use his analysis as an example of how to conduct similar explorations of their favorite elements of fantasy culture. The most important through-line to this book is the idea that the variations on familiar stories are often more significant than the stories themselves. Fantasy culture is primarily concerned not just with celebrating fantasy stories, but with constantly modifying, rewriting, and reenacting these stories to serve a variety of functions. This work is not especially driven by theory, however. While there are ample scholarly citations, Cowan is more concerned with modeling a method for analyzing fantasy culture rather than presenting a new theoretical framework for doing so. In some ways this approach can be more useful, especially for teaching undergraduates how to explore popular culture.

Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes contains nine short chapters. The introduction lays out the genre. Chapter 2 demonstrates why variants of stories are significant by focusing specifically on retellings of fairy tales involving princesses. The Disney versions of these stories are contrasted with darker interpretations such as Michel Cohn's Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997) in order to show how new twists on familiar yarns create opportunities to talk about things like sexuality or gender roles. Chapter 3 explores the idea of "magic" and considers such media as Bewitched (1964–1972), Charmed (1998–2006), the Harry Potter series, and, of course, the backlash against it by conservative Christians. Chapter 4, "Puer Aeternus and Vitam Aeternum" considers the ideas of eternal childhood and eternal life as reflected in the stories of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland and in the variants of these stories such as The Lost Boys (1987), Hook (1991), Resident Evil (2002) and Alice in Wonderland (2010). Chapter 5, "The Mythic Hero: East" considers the heroic values exhibited in some rather obscure kung-fu films of the 1970s that influenced Cowan as well as the television series Kung Fu (1972–1975). Chapter 6, "The Mythic Hero: West" gives a similar treatment to different interpretations of the King Arthur legend as well as the Mad Max franchise. Chapter 7, "Imagining the Warrior Heroine," looks at heroines in such media as Terminator II (1991), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). Chapter 8 "The Stuff of Legends" analyzes performing legendary roles through role-playing games, taking as its data recordings of gaming sessions posted on YouTube. The conclusion uses the obscure science fiction film Zardoz (1974) to consider how the endings of stories are often a distraction and that the more interesting object of analysis may be the perpetual impulse to...