Escape and Escapism Varieties of Literary Experience - Robert B. Heilman

Escape and Escapism Varieties of Literary Experience is an article by Robert B. Heilman found in the journal The Sewanee Review [Vol. 83, No. 3 (Summer, 1975), pp. 439-458]. The article describes what escapism is, why it is needed, the type of people who feel the need to escape, and the repercussions of this. The article speaks of both straight forwards escape literature (for example, a book called 'Escape from Time' - where it is titled with escape in it) to literature that helps one escape.

As discussed in my last post, my work is very much influenced by my love of books, in particular the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. These books served as a getaway, a huge sense of escapism for me, and so I thought it appropriate for me to understand more about Literary escapism. I also believe that a lot of what is talked about literary escapism can be transferred to other forms of escapism - such as visual.

I will be noting particular quotes from this article and giving my thoughts, explanations and linking such ideas to both my self and my work.

• "The simplest function implied by escape literature is much older than the term. Tales that held old men from chimney corners, as Sidney imagined it, doubtless freed the old men for a time from the chains of the ordinary (enthrallment as ironic liberation), but I can find almost no evidence that, until very recent times, what happened was thought of as an escape"
  
  - This implies that while escape literature has been existing for many many years, it has not been called that. Not even that, but it may not have even been seen as an escape, simply a story.
  
  
• "If we run through any historical dictionary we find that escape has long meant a departure from tangible sources of distress and disaster"
  
  - Escape in a physical form has been something that all humans have had the need to do for some reason. Physical escape is not new, and the term 'escape' has long referenced only the physical version.
  
  
• "A hasty sampling of a university library catalogue reveals the publisher's conviction that escape sells"
• "Since publishers have noses for titles that sell, we may be sure of the charm of the escape metaphor"
  
  - The promise of escape within literature clearly lures people in, or publishers wouldn't continue to use it as a selling point. There is a demand for the promise of escape, people seem to need it.
  
  
• "Has the age of anxiety been undergoing a metamorphosis into the age of claustrophobia or the age of paranoia? Do we sense needlessly enclosing walls everywhere? Or ominous forces surrounding us, hemming us in, imprisoning us, depriving us of freedoms with which we are, or believe we should be, endowed? Do we create these forces or enlarge them, by an act of imagination?"
  
  - Here, Heilman questions how anxiety has evolved and the state of minds of society. He questions whether we feel we are enough, whether we are feeling trapped in the world in which we inhabit. Not only this, but do we emphasise and make these anxieties and feelings of entrapment only worse by overthinking and believing our own exaggerations?
  Personally, as an answer to Heilman, I would say yes, stemming from my own personal experiences. I live with anxiety and I know that my mind makes these anxieties worse when not controlled.
  
  
• "Does the apparently intensifying passion to escape reveal a malfunctioning in the world? Or perhaps ourselves?"
  
  - Heilman furthers his questioning. I think his suggestion of a malfunctioning world is only too evident in 2020. We have weeks of bush fires, flooding, virus outbreaks, poor politics, an overwhelming amount of deforestation, plastic and air pollution, poverty and yet it feels impossible to break the cycle. When you try to help fix one thing, it's entirely possible you're harming another thing. To me, the need to escape is both escaping a malfunctioning world and a self that feels immense pressure to help fix this malfunctioning world but also feels stuck in doing so. For dietary reasons, I cannot go vegan even though I want to stop animal cruelty. I haven't got the funds that others do to completely erase plastic out of my life, and become sustainable. Of course, I do what I can, but there is still a lot of guilt.
  
  
• "We have doubts about the defensibility of escaping. Our doubts compel us to invent the term escapism"
  
  - The term 'escapism' stems from an uncertainty of whether the act of trying to escape is acceptable, or whether it would be frowned upon. It allows for a more toned down, less permanent term to be used.
  
  
• "Healthy people always want to escape, life itself is 'an adventure and an escape"
  - The need for escape is experienced by all, not just those who are currently going through something traumatic, for example.
  
  
• "Benson (within his book Escape and Other Essays) has charmingly transmuted running away into dashing forward, flight into creativity, resentment at the way things are into a struggle to make things better"
  
  - Escapism does not always have to be a way of forgetting real life, but we can use our journeys of escape in the real world to make it a better place. It can fire up our motivation, spark our creativity. What happens when we read escape literature is not always to be frowned upon, as it has been in the past
  
  
• "but we may wonder about the reader of all these escape stories. Is it his participation in the escapes of the characters ... another escape of his own? Does their escape into making a better world simply relieve him from an actual world?"
  
  - Heilman speaks of a character's escape affecting the reader. Personally, I do find that a character's escape, their heroism and them changing the world gives me relief of the heavy challenges and doubts that I place on myself. This is of course very personal and others may not experience the same, however I feel unaccomplished and useless because of my current inability to make the world visibly better. When I see a character do that, it is a relief. In that moment, I am in a world where things are better. I think it is then that the previous quote comes in to play, and I am then motivated to be better and do better.
  
  
• "Escapism may take as many forms as there are escapists - from drugs and sex to an escape to south sea islands"
  
  - For me, photography has become my form of escape. I think that is much the same for most fantasy or mythological artists.
  
  
• "We began to fear an addiction to escape and so we were driven to invent the concept of escapism as a brake on the dangers of runaway escape" (the term was first used in 1939)
  
  - To escape was often seen as running away, and therefore had rather negative connotations. As people began to fear others or themselves being addicted to running away from reality and therefore lose sight of the real world, the term 'escapism' was created in order to make it seem and feel more acceptable and less permanent.
  
  
• "With one part of our psych we want to get away from it all; with another part we frown on the ways of doing it"
  
  - This suggests that we are torn on the subject of escape, we want to do it and yet don't want to carry out the actions needed to do it. I think this was more accurate at the time of writing, because I think now escaping through various mediums is a lot more encouraged. We are told by our parents to read these escapism books as a child, ones that feature characters and spirits far superior and more powerful than ourselves. Adults tell each other to read a gossip magazine or watch a film to unwind.
  
  
• "In one sense it is historically a postrealist phenomenon; antirealism needs a heavy dose of realism as a spur"
  
  - This helps me understand where my work fits in terms of its concept and focus on escapism
  
  
• "An accusation of escapism can be, for instance, a piece of one-up-manship by the accuser. He says 'I face facts, I live with truth, you escapist, you run away you are at least irresponsible and you may be cowardly' "
  
  - Escapism has not always been congratulated as I have previously said I think it is today. I think there is certainly a balance to be had with reality and escapism, and I think that balance is shown very vividly in my images. If you are purely in the world of fantasy then you lose sight of real issues that you could help. And yet if you spend too much time in our own world it becomes unbearable with tragedy.
  
  
• "A charge of escapism is thus a fairly simple way of disposing of a difference in tastes"
  
  - Heilman discards the accusation of escapism being a negative thing, but only people having a varying taste in literature and other activities.
  
  
• "If I am right in arguing that escape reading is, for the most part, an activity of people an activity of people who have at least a decent minimal security in the world, and who do not find that world objectively awful or intolerable, then the state of  affairs escaped from is inner rather than outer and may even be even more intangible than one world attribute offhand to this population of readers"
  
  -   Heilman suggests that escape, for most people, is not about escaping the world, but escaping something that resides within the self. Perhaps inner turmoil or trauma, regrets and a lack of confidence. However, I think that it is both, for with me the inner parts that I try to escape are influenced and formed by the outer world. The environmental issues and the fact that the world is continuously getting harmed by humans, including myself. It is this inner, and this responsibility, that I feel the need to escape from.
  
  
• "Escape through literature is not a minority dereliction but is, in one way or another, universal. It may be managed through all kinds of arts and with as diverse results"
  
  - The form of escapism that I have chosen has expanded to not only literature but within photography, and by extension, with my research and themes, photography.
  
  
• "there is one kind of antiescapist, of course, who's concern is not what escape does for the escapists, be it good or bad, but what it does to the world escaped from to him escapists are traitors to the activism needed to save the world escaped from. To him escapists are traitors to the activism needed to save the world"
  
  - To this antiescapist, I would be an issue to him, however I think that in order to perform activism successfully one would need to temporarily escape, or so the things one needs to be an activist for can get too heavy for a persons mind.
  
  
• "There is a strong tinge of escapism within most activism"
  
  - Heilman's answer to this is that within activism there is escapism. I can understand this, for to want to be apart of a cause you must have hope, or an idea, or a vision of a better world. You are using activism as your form of escapism, for it holds the notion of a positive place.

overall, this journal article has been really helpful to me and how I understand the idea of escape and escapism. As my love for mythology, which I am now exhibiting within my images, comes from literature, it is also entirely relevant.