Briefly stated, fantasy is reality minus details, plus details.
F = (R - d1) + d2

Delving more deeply, there exists a reality. Some may say there are many, or that there is one but viewed from many angles, all of which I don’t care to debate. Whatever it is, it’s full of details.

These details often get in the way of our full apprehension of it. Scott McCloud makes reference to this in his theory of “masking“, in which a less-rendered protagonist is more accessible to a reader than a fully-rendered one.

Once the reality has been distilled from its trappings, additional details can be re-introduced safely. In the inarguably well-rendered Buffyverse, there are specifics to the point of trivia. Still, the writers of the show have stated that the Monster-of-the-Week is merely a metaphor for abstracted human issues. Dealing with stress becomes demonic slave-drivers. Reality is still intact, but wholly transformed into fantasy.

This is no thought exercise. These issues come up on a regular basis for many of us. Granted, I may have first become aware of them in my high school days, where my own hobbies were under constant scrutiny by the hacky-sacking upper crust, despite their established positive effects… More recently, watching an episode of Firefly with my girlfriend led to questions like, “Why are they speaking in Chinese?” and “Why does that guy have a sword?” which pulled my relationship with fantasy (specifically sci-fi in this case) to the center of my human relationship. I was forced to confront why (or better yet, how) I better relate to Malcolm Reynolds than an office-mate.

The details in “Children of Men” are not what made it a great film, but they are what made it fantasy. I’ve seen plenty of movies about men with kids, but none have so well abstracted the concept of fatherhood. No doubt an excellent script and flawless acting helped create the world, but the world was what made the film reach me and establish a connection between my abstracted model of myself-as-father all the way back to the reality of my being one someday.

Fantasy is the laboratory in which many of us discover reality. It may take a certain kind of mind, but to those people it is invaluable.