Danielle Spratt

Throughout history, escapism has manifested in many diverse forms.  Aldous Huxley’s futuristic, dystopian novel Brave New World, first published in 1932, deals with a scientifically engineered population controlled by technocrats.  Huxley envisioned a future in which pharmaceutical drugs would be ingested ubiquitously in order to sustain happiness, so the novel’s characters (much like readers of the novel) experience escapism.  J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, published several decades after Brave New World, often isn’t considered “literary” by the literati/intelligentsia.  However, the Ringstrilogy deserves a place in the literary canon because it created a now-burgeoning field of literature, film, and television: epic fantasy.  Today, in a world dominated by the Internet and interactive social media, escapism has evolved beyond print media.  Indeed, World of Warcraft, an iconic Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) first launched in 2004, showcases a new form of escapism that immerses a player into a multiplayer digital world where the impossible becomes possible.  What Huxley began, Tolkien continued and World of Warcraft virtually revolutionized, and these texts often have more to say about reality than fantasy.