Adventure, passion, and sexiness for the modern market

I am complete and unashamed fan of Sword & Sorcery. The niche of fantasy that is known for its muscled hunks in loin cloths, with goblets of wine in one hand, the decapitated head of an enemy in the other hand, and one or more mostly naked beauties clinging to their legs.
It's awesome, but also stupid and offensive.
Now the old classics that stood the test of time have a lot more depth than that. A lot of the derivative trash that followed does not. Much of that stuff is as awful as it sounds.

In either case, it's a form of fantasy deeply rooted in romanticism. Where passion beats reason every time. Adventures that are about action and daring instead of intrigue and strategy. With larger than life heroes and villains who always throw themselves fully into the thick of things and never apologize for what they are and what they feel.

"Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content." - Queen of the Black Coast

I feel that this is something you don't really see showing up in contemporary fantasy, and I really want to bring it back. Unfortunately, fantasy of this kind expresses its romantic nature through a literary language that is soaked in sleaziness, violence, and selfish egocentrism. What is supposed to an admirable hero also usually comes across as a prejudiced bully, based on ideals of manliness and femininity that are abhorrent to the modern mindset. You can not simply write stories like they used to anymore. It's one thing to cut some slack for the blind spots of people from 60 or 80 years ago, but you can't repeat the same archetypes, dynamics, and aesthetics now when you should know better.

I think a new literary language needs to be developed to bring unashamed romanticism back into fantasy. And there are several things we would need to figure out to present in ways that reflect our contemporary culture.
Masculinity and femininity
Passion and responsibility
Exoticism without stereotyping
Luxury and excess
Violence with restraint and forgiveness
Sexiness without sleaziness

Looking at this list, this kind of sounds like a monumental task. But I think looking at it from the opposite site, it also appears like a huge opportunity to create fiction that is meaningful and really has something to say.

 

I've seen many people suggesting that many of the element that were popular in Sword & Sorcery currently live on in grimdark. And there might be something to it. Sword & Sorcery has always had a strong connection to horror and fascination with violence. It seems very much plausible that many of the itches that made people fall in love with Sword & Sorcery are today satisfied by grimdark.

But in other ways, it's really not the same. Grimdark is fully submerged in bleak nihilism and craves it, while in contrast Howard and Leiber also had a huge emphasis on pure joy. (Moorcock and Wagner admittedly not so much.) To bring back that classic quote by Robert Howard "I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

Superhero stories certainly can have the fun and excitement. The superhero genre is a product of the pulp culture that birthed Sword & Sorcery and Planetary Romance, so there certainly is a very close genetic relationship between them. But by the very nature of superhero's target audience they are intentionally safe and clean. When they get "controversial" they might make a monocle drop here or there, but that's it. I feel like Sword & Sorcery is kind of what you would get when you bring grimdark and superheroes together, though that's not fully describing it sufficiently.

I feel a big part, and perhaps the key element of Sword & Sorcery, is that it's sensual, visceral, and passionate. A blend you don't get in either of the other two genres.

Sword & Sorcery has never been high culture in any incarnation, and both during its two prime periods in the 30s and in the 70s/80s it was trashy. I would even say leaning into exploitation fiction. And the more I am thinking about it, I feel like it always was somewhat transgressional and deviant. It always has been a little bit offensive to mainstream culture, though on different grounds than what we would now regard as problematic about it. But look for example at the art of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. Even with all the naked ladies, don't tell me you're not seeing the subtext here.

Now I am a fully committed and unapologetic queer, green-blooded, intelligentsia lefty with a background in religious studies and currently working on a BSc on sustainable food production. (I don't have blue hair, though.) But I think the cause of tolerance and inclusiveness is really in serious need of some transgression these days.
How to think of both masculinity and femininity going into the future is a huge issue. So are excess and craving for the exotic, as well as sensuality. These things are regarded as problematic, and the prescribed behavior is to not touch them at all. That's not positive discourse, but internalized repression. All the discussion revolves around what is bad, but rarely does anyone seem to say what is good. Because it might offend someone's sensibilities. And what transgression we do see is not positive or inviting discourse, but just plain hate speech.

I think Sword & Sorcery might be uniquely well suited as a genre for stories that go against the grain. Not everyone is interested in tearful drama stories to reflect about self-image and identity. Young men in particular being hard to reach with the language in which our culture talks about such things. Wild fantasy adventures full of action and passion could be another way to communicating positive messages to people who aren't really John Green readers.

 

After reading some Robert Howard beyond Conan, I've started to believe that not only is it unjustified to call his stories sexist or racist, I think he was actually pretty progressive, even by today's standards.

Women and black men seem to always be underprivileged in his stories, but he never leaves it at that. His stories work with the fact that this is unfair to them, and the protagonists generally are sympathetic to their situations and treat them with much more respect than anyone else is doing. He is not creating ideal worlds in which discrimination does not exist, but worlds in which people have to struggle with their discrimination. I know of two contemporary horror stories that are about murders committed with voodoo magic and that instantly rings all alarm bells. But when you read the stories, they are really about people resorting to the most desperate measures available to them to fight against the horrors of their enslavement.
Since he's a Texas man from the 1930s supporting his family by writing for the mass market, he's is using the language of the day to describe women and blacks. Most of what we get to read that uses that language is highly discriminatory, so we take the terminology itself to be sexist and racist. But the statements that he actually makes using those terms really speak a very different language.

It's not so noticeable because Conan is a white man and he doesn't take shit from anybody, but many of the secondary characters are actively struggling to gain some agency of their lives in a world were real freedom is simply out of reach.

 

I love the movie. Saw it once as a child and it really made an impact on me, even though I only remembered some fragmented images, like the castle at the sea and the flaming bull. Somehow I only watched it again well into my 20s, and I still really quite liked it. Been a couple of years since then, probably should go watch it again.
From what I currently remember it's very much within the broader scope that I was thinking about.

Romanticism goes even further back, being a countermovement against Enlightenment since the mid 1700s. I've read some Goethe and Hoffmann in school, and some of their work would clearly be called fantasy today. At the time of their writing, Urban Fantasy.

I am very much in agreement regarding descriptions. There are a lot of things in the content of Tolkien's stories I am quite opposed to, but I really love them for the richness of his description. He's telling you how to put together a painting of the places in your mind. I've often seen Howard praised for that as well, but I never noticed it myself when reading. It's something that I've been very much missing from many modern books, wich can have great plots but read more like scripts. I enjoy the majestic in fantasy and that's something you just don't get without giving the reader lavish descriptions and some time to let it soak in.

Interesting that you mention Star Wars and Myst. Like The Last Unicorn, they are both on my pretty short list of works for aesthetic references. I'd also add Morrowind and the artwork for Planescape to that, but that mostly covers it. I've not seen anything of The Dark Crystal, but it always looked like something I should get around to, just based on the visuals.
One thing that really upset me about the latest Star Wars movies was that they never actually felt like Star Wars to me, because one thing that is terribly absent from them are the long and lavish establishing shots of the environment every time the location changed in the older movies. Even in a visual medium where you can havr all the props on screen, these moments are adding a lot to the overall experience.

One recent work of very populat media that stands out for me in regard of telling a bold passionate story that does not appologize for anything and feels no need to explain itself is Fury Road. It doesn't have the supernatural aspects and they are on cars instead of horses or ships, but the narrative to me encapsulates everything else that I think a modern form of Sword & Sorcery could be. Furiosa is the perfect archetype for modern heroes that fully commit themselves and give absolutely everything without any need for sentimental dialog. She suffers a lot put dishes it out even harder, and she will ask for help when she needs it, but does not depend on it.
In a time where there has been lots of crybaby whining about women in action movies, this one was a huge hit with the masses. And I still find it funny when I remember that it was created by three old white men. That movie is full with visual symbolism that is all up right in your face, but it still works as a high adrenaline action spectacle because it lets the symbols and events speak for themselves and never asks to have a moment of your time while it's getting up on its soapbox.

 

I am really surprised by all these responses here. When I tried to start similar discussions in the past, I always felt like nobody was really understanding what I was talking about. Responses here have been great.

Regarding the recent action movie heroines, there are lots of very legitimate complaints about badly written female characters in plots that don't make any sense. I am thinking of the recent Star Wars and Terminator for example. Those movies absolutely deserve being called out for their nonsense. (Though blaming the actresses for defending their performances is absolutely unacceptable.) But Fury Road is an example where this really wasn't the case. There were still complaints about icky girls in a boys movie and their beloved macho series being turned into feminist propaganda, but those people always complain about it in any action movie that has female characters in meaningful roles. I completely stand by calling those idiots crybabies.
The background of the creators does indeed not matter when it comes to judging the quality of their works. That was what I meant to get at. Old white men are supposedly the most out of touch people when it comes to creating works that appeal to contemporary sensibilities, and here you have three of them doing it completely effortlessly. Writing good female action characters and giving them plots that address their status within their society is not dark magic. Everyone should be able to do it with just a little bit of effort and approaching the work seriously. The big legitimate complaints we had in recent years seem to basically come down to those movies appearing to be written completely half-assed and as nothing but cash grabs. Put some women in lead roles, give them guns, and wait for the mountains of money to come in. That just doesn't cut it. To me this feels a lot like the cliche of having one black guy in the cast who is then the first one to die without having contributed anything. They check off a box and call it a day, because apparently they don't understand what the issue is but hear some muffled cries about diversity somewhere off in the distance.
I think Furiosa would have worked really well as a man, too. She's just more noticeable because she's a woman. I really like Max in the movie too. He's a bit antisocial, especially in the first half, but I think that's attributed to mental illness. Once he starts to socialize again he becomes a selfless hero who doesn't judge any of the low social status people around him.

 

So some thoughts on the skimpy clothes.

I think fantasy literature itself doesn't really have that much of a problem with it. At least I don't ever recall a writer spending long paragraphs on describing the details of a chainmail bikini. It's really much more of an issue in cover art and movies. It probably would be quite easy just to never mention it and you'd perfectly safe in that area. And of course, you don't have to if you're not comfortable with it or don't think it feels appropriate for your work. But I still believe that it's something that should not be dismissed out of hand for being problematic and seriously be considered when writing passionate and hedonistic stories that revel in life and physicality.

The main reason I see is that when you are having characters who are driven by their emotions and inner desires and who live life to the fullest, it will obviously intersect with sexual and erotic elements at some points. Not necessarily for every character, every character will interact with it very differently, and it depends hugely on the overall tone of the work how subtle or explicit you want to make it. This can obviously extend into erotica and smut, but that's a whole different discussion from the topic we have here. Just to clarify, what I want to talk about here would be more mainstream literature, though that can still mean "rated 18" (if there were ratings for literature). But perhaps I am thinking way too innocently about this without first hand knowledge what is going on in grimdark.

This can actually be done pretty tamely. The two movies Return of the Jedi and Fury Road both have very skimpy outfits and I don't think many people would consider them sleazy or creepy. They are also among my most favorite movies and I've been thinking quite a lot about whether I can really defend them against accusations of objectification instead of just dismissing such claims out of hand.

And my conclusion is that creators are totally entitled to dress characters up in everything, if it is appropriate for the context. You can put a character in anything you like, but with a lot of outfits you have to justify your decision. When you put your characters in sexy outfits, you are making a strong statement with that, and you better be able to defend it. Sex sells is not a sufficient reason. That's by definition exploitation.
I see two contexts in which skimpy enticing outfits are absolutely appropriate. The first one is when the characters choose to wear the outfit because they want to look sexy and be looked at. If that's the context of the scene, that's completely justified. The other one is when the outfit is forced on the characters against their wishes and when the story acknowledges it as the grave injustice they are enduring. The two images of costumes I linked above are examples of this second case. Those are not ordinary outfits for people in their worlds. They are symbols of the objectification they are subject to and the stories make clear statements that this situation is unacceptable and needs to be overcome. I can totally accept that. (Though I still don't understand how they got that chain strangulation into a PG movie.)

What absolutely does not fly with me are the chainmail bikinis. They are clearly no substitutes for armor. The only situation where chainmail bikini's could ever be justified is as a stripper costume. When the context calls for practical outfits, the characters have to wear practical outfits and not put on a show for the audience. It drives me absolutely crazy in 95% of all fantasy videogames.