Magic Realism: Difference between revisions
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The use of [[Magic A Is Magic A]] typically helps the audience accept the incongruity. [[Psychic Dreams for Everyone]] is also widespread.
Among some people, magical realism is sometimes misused as a term to explain why a work they liked is [[wikipedia:Literary fiction|"literary fiction"]], and thus [[Sci Fi Ghetto|allegedly somehow superior]] to [[wikipedia:Genre fiction|"genre fiction"]] like [[Fantasy]] and [[Science Fiction]]. On the other hand, the inclusion of well-written
Magical Realism can also be interpreted as a very progressive form of [[Speculative Fiction]], showing that elements of Science Fiction and Fantasy can be used legitimately in literary fiction. In other words, a great way towards getting out of the [[Sci Fi Ghetto]]. Also, it should be noted that [[Speculative Fiction]] is not the only genre fiction. Romance, mystery, horror, and the like are also genre fiction that literary snobs enjoy looking down on as well.
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* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' might fit into this category better than [[Science Fiction]]. Among other things, it seems that dead people go to (or through) the Wired after they die, computer equipment can grow like vines, and the physical reality is as much "data" as the computer-world and can likewise be programmed by gifted individuals.
** And it's perhaps the only cyberpunk, or scienfictionish narrative to convincingly do so, The reason why Serial Experiment Lain might be an example of this trope {{spoiler|it's because it basically deals with the digital world, merging with the real world. Thus creating a hybrid where the rules of this reality don't apply}} The problem with this theory is that people do seem to take notice of the change {{spoiler|one guy even shots himself in the head because of it}}
** Perspective is everything. Lain's point of view perhaps flips towards [[Urban Fantasy]] in the end, but Arisu's remains in the field of
* ''[[Haibane Renmei]]'' also fits. Yoshitoshi ABe is a huge fan of the genre.
* ''[[Nagasarete Airantou]]'' is a comedic first-class example. Ikuto, young man of the modern age and the main character finds himself on an island stuck -culturally, at any rate- in the late 19th century. Normal enough at first but before long he's rationalizing away the more... unconventional aspects of his new home, like magic, talking animals, youkai, etc.
* Despite being ostensibly sci-fi, the ''[[Aria]]'' series incorporates the supernatural whenever cats are involved. {{spoiler|This includes time travel.}}
* ''[[Asatte no Houkou]]'' - The setting is mundane except for the wishing stone that changes Karada and Shoukos' ages.
* The over arching plot and background of ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' has elements of
* ''[[Lucky Star]]'' (anime only) dips into this once when the main character's dead mother visits her family as a ghost. This was later in a manga volume.
* ''[[School Rumble]]'' is a normal high school story with normal (if goofy) protagonists. Then Yakumo states that she can magically read people's minds. Another example where it's hard to tell if she really can, if she's just unusually good at reading people, or what.
* The crux of the plot of ''[[Death Note]]'' is a magical item from another world falling into the hands of an ordinary (albeit with some... personality quirks) human boy in our world and what he chooses to do with it. Aside from the Death Notes and shinigami, the world depicted in Death Note is highly realistic, and much of the plot focuses so heavily on the human characters using real-world methods and technology to try to catch the [[Villain Protagonist]] - and the magic itself is treated in such a mundane and almost scientific fashion - that you might occasionally forget that the plot is founded on the supernatural to begin with.
* ''[[The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service]]'' might seem like [[Urban Fantasy]]
* ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' is about the hunt for a [[Serial Killer]] who may or may not be [[The Antichrist]]. He has an almost supernatural talent for evading justice and detection, [[Complete Monster|despite having murdered probably hundreds of people over a decade,]] and he seems to have the ability to show other characters a visions of [[The End of the World as We Know It]], albeit on an individual only basis. Near the end, a character sees him as a dragon with multiple heads, another reference to [[The Antichrist]], but said character was drunk. The killer also survives (with surgery) two gunshot wounds to the head in separate incidents, once as a child, which is yet another reference and, further, which he survives with no obvious brain damage (he was already a murderous psychopath before he was shot), though he seems to have become a little more depressed in the intervening years. Most of the rest of the story in contrast is actually fairly realist.
* ''[[Tekkon Kinkreet]]'' has the main characters be able to fly/glide, alien assassins, and psychic bonds between brothers. None of this is explained or even really acknowledged.
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** [[Your Mileage May Vary]]. Field of Dreams shares the same plot as many fantasy ghost stories: the undead communicate with the living in order to achieve a certain goal. Usually, these stories are in the horror genre and Field of Dreams is obviously a drama but otherwise, it's pretty standard.
* ''[[A Hard Day's Night]]''. Most of it is realistic enough that viewers have mistaken it for a real [[Documentary]]; but there are a couple of segments which just cannot happen in even [[The Beatles]]' real life, and (this being a comedy) there isn't even a [[Hand Wave]] for why they happen.
* Nearly every film the Coen brothers make has at least some
* The [[Film of the Book]] of ''[[Being There]]'' diverges from its source novel in this manner. Hal Ashby, the director, came up with {{spoiler|a different ending than the one scripted}} as a salute to how believable the actors were - since the audience would already accept Chance the Gardener becoming one of the most important men in the world in a matter of days simply through misunderstandings, then they would also accept {{spoiler|the final shot's revelation that he can literally [[Walking on Water]]. There's no explanation given as to how, and Chance is as surprised as the audience is; he even tests the depth of the water with his umbrella...but, being who he is, he accepts it right away as just something he can do.}}
* ''[[Groundhog Day]]'': [[Bill Murray]] gets stuck in a [[Groundhog Day Loop|weird time loop]], for which no explanation is ever offered.
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* '' [[Pan's Labyrinth]]'' At first sight it might seem as a fairy tale, albeit not a happy one, once you take into account {{spoiler|that Orfelia might have just made everything up}} and add to the mix a mandragora... which is ignored by everyone since they are all too busy dealing with this little thing called the Spanish Civil War ... [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|then it becomes less clear whether it's a straightforward fairy tale]].
** [[Word of God|Guillermo del Toro]] says that all the magical stuff actually happened.
* ''[[Stranger Than Fiction]]''. The movie is more or less like this, Harold is struggling with life, and the only magical thing is that he seems to be the main character of a book. The book in question also seems to have
* The 1998 theatrical film based on the [[Cirque Du Soleil]] show ''[[Alegria]]''. It's obvious the world the characters exist in is a little more colorful and eccentric than ours, but possible magic comes in at the end when {{spoiler|the manager/ringmaster encounters and converses with his own stage character}}.
* ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066516/ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders]'' is a surreal Czech film based on novel of the same name, in which love, fear, sex and religion merge into one fantastic world.
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* [[Magical Realism]] is very prominent in 20th century Latin American literature. In fact, [[Magical Realism]] is so prevalent in Latin American literature that the [[wikipedia:McOndo|McOndo movement]] was formed specifically to distance itself from its clichés.
** [[Jorge Luis Borges]]' body of short stories pretty much invented [[Magical Realism]].
** Mexican Laura Esquivel's ''[[Like Water for Chocolate]]'', wherein the protagonist's feelings for her beloved are transferred into the food she is preparing, which her sister then eats, which causes her to literally burn up in
*** Magical cooking is a popular concept for magical realism and "straight" fantasy both within and without Latin America. See also ''[[Chocolat]]'', for instance.
** Other prominent writers include Alejo Carpentier and Isabel Allende.
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* The ''[[Illuminatus]]'' trilogy and most of the other novels by Robert Anton Wilson tend to alternate between this genre and [[Science Fiction]]; the world is mostly as we know it, but there's usually some technology that can't exist in the era the stories are set in, such as a sentient computer in ''Illuminatus!''. There are always [[Psychic Powers]] as well, some more subtle than others.
* Writer George Saunders is big on this. In the short story collection ''CivilWarLand in Bad Decline'' he has several examples, as most of his stories are very dreamlike. In the title story, the main character works in a Civil War themed Amusement Park where he regularly encounters a family of ghosts who lived on the land during the Civil War. Another story features a man hounded by the ghost of a child who was killed due to his negligence. Other than these elements the stories are grounded in reality (if perhaps an overly bleak version of reality.)
* Walter M. Miller's ''[[A Canticle for Leibowitz]]'' seems to be straight post-apocalyptic [[Science Fiction]]
** Not to mention ''[[Tear Jerker|Rachel]] [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Grales]]''...
* Pick a Salman Rushdie novel. Any Salman Rushdie novel.
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* ''[[My So-Called Life]]'' was a straight up teen [[Soap Opera]] [[Dramedy]] and contained absolutely no supernatural elements whatsoever. Except for the episode "Halloween," where Angela encounters a ghost. Or "My So-Called Angels" (widely regarded as one of the best and most [[Tear Jerker|tearjerking]] episodes) where both Angela and ''her mother'' talk to a (sort of) angel.
* ''[[Twin Peaks]]'' actually barely fits here, but it's worth mentioning. Most of the show is fairly mundane, but when it isn't, it's uproariously supernatural. Actually, most of the works David Lynch is known for are like this: mundane human drama interspersed with the '''pants-crappingly bizarre.'''
** Lynch's films have it both ways. Some of them really do fit the definition of
** There is some disagreement over the setting of ''[[Eraserhead]]'', whether it's a [[Magical Realism|Magical Realist]] Pittsburgh or a [[Post Apocalyptic]] nightmare land or [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|Purgatory]] or anything really. Perhaps it would be better to say that there may be some agreements about ''Eraserhead''.
** ''Inland Empire'' straddles the line of this and Absurdism, but ''Mulholland Drive'' IS magical realism.
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== Video Games ==
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]''. Real world setting, real guns, walking robots, magical floating psychics, autotrophic snipers, bee men, ghosts, and a bisexual, flamenco-dancing vampire. The original title featured a collection of [[Charles Atlas Superpower]] bosses, the [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] of which was a floating, fourth-wall breaking psychic. Later games would expand upon this with a steady increase of
* ''[[No More Heroes]]'' seems to take place in a fairly dull Californian city. Except for the fact that the protagonist purchases a functioning lightsaber on eBay and proceeds to off progressively more bizarre assassins. At one point {{spoiler|his mentor dies, but afterward the mentor's ghost continues his job working at the gym.}} No one seems to find any of this at all odd.
** Of course, this is from the same mind that brought us ''[[Killer7]]'', a political thriller starring a man who can transform into seven different people, see and speak to the dead, and fight exploding monsters that possess human bodies. And then there's ''[[No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle]]'', which has Travis Touchdown using dimension warps and fighting ghosts, among other things.
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*** Though they may have the gene that permits advanced perception, Apollo still has a bracelet that reacts when it senses that someone is feeling tense.
* A recurring element in the ''[[Sly Cooper]]'' series. Mojo and ghosts exist, and raising the dead nets you a life sentence in prison.
* The entire ''[[MOTHER]]''/''[[Earthbound]]'' series has definite elements of
* The game of ''[[The Darkness]]'' is about a mafia hitman who just so happens to become possessed by a millenia-old demon that grants him superpowers. The main focus of the plot is still his quest for vengeance against the entirely mortal don who betrayed him.
* ''[[Silent Hill: Shattered Memories]]'' follows an ordinary man journeying through a realistic town... which periodically turns to ice and spawns hideous monsters. Exactly what is causing these things to happen is never fully explained (merely implied, and ambiguously so at that).
** Heck, the [[Silent Hill]] series as a whole. There are various explanations, but they're ambiguous, or contradictory, or there are elements in place suggesting that things aren't quite as they seem.
*** It's not
* ''[[Pathologic]]''. The setting is realistic, the characters are very human, one of the playable characters has [[Lovecraftian Superpower|Lovecraftian Super Powers]]. There are a bunch of medicine men wrapped head to toe in bandages who sell herbs that grow from blood. There are loads of children walking around without parents, and occasionally wearing the dead heads of dogs as masks. [[Nightmare Fuel|Disease clouds attack you. They come in the form of horrendous, symbolic abominations]]. We haven't even discussed the rather meta theater themes...
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== Webcomics ==
* ''[[Shortpacked]]'' is an interesting example. The previous webcomic by the same author, ''It's Walky'', was straight-out science-fiction adventure about a group of alien-abductee government agents. ''Shortpacked'' exists in the same world, but in a much more mundane
** Since the weirdness ''does'' have a canon explanation in [[The Verse]], just not in that series, it's more like [[All There in the Manual]]. Except replace "manual" with "[[Archive Binge|the entire archives of several previous comic strips]]".
* ''[[Pictures for Sad Children]]'' is mainly about the pressures of modern life and the clash between the opposite sides of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|Sliding Scale]]. The main characters are Paul, a recently-deceased [[Bedsheet Ghost]], and Gary, whose extended family was recently revealed to collectively possess the same powers as [[The Bible|Jesus]].
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