Sam Ben-Meir

Never has fantasy been more commercially successful. Yet it is not obvious that it has become more imaginative. Long before the rise of the modern novel, fairy tales provided generations of listeners and readers with images of transformation, justice, adventure, and hope. They offered something more than entertainment. They opened windows onto worlds that differed fundamentally from the one immediately given.

Today fantasy is more popular than ever. Global audiences consume vast fantasy franchises through books, films, streaming platforms, video games, theme parks, and merchandise. Yet the question remains whether contemporary fantasy still performs the same cultural function as the fairy tale tradition from which it emerged. The answer may be less reassuring than many admirers of modern fantasy suppose.

The contrast between L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and contemporary phenomena such as Wicked and Harry Potter reveals a profound transformation. What was once a vehicle of utopian longing increasingly functions as an extension of consumer culture. Imagination survives, but its social and philosophical horizon has narrowed dramatically.

To understand this transformation, it is useful to begin with two thinkers who devoted considerable attention to the significance of fairy tales: the philosopher Ernst Bloch, and Jack Zipes, author of Once upon a Time There was Truth: or, Why We Need Fairy-Tales (2026).

For Ernst Bloch, fairy tales are among humanity’s most important cultural achievements because they preserve what he called the “principle of hope.” Bloch’s philosophy begins with a simple observation: human beings are never entirely at home in the world as it exists. We experience hunger, injustice, alienation, loneliness, and mortality. Yet we also possess the capacity to imagine conditions different from those immediately present. Human consciousness reaches beyond what is toward what might be.

This orientation toward possibility is not accidental. It constitutes one of the defining features of human existence. Fairy tales therefore matter because they express what Bloch called the “not-yet-conscious”—those unrealized possibilities latent within both society and ourselves. They give symbolic form to desires that existing institutions cannot satisfy. The castle beyond the mountain, the hidden kingdom, the sleeping princess, the talking animals, the magical helper, the youngest child who succeeds where the powerful fail—all represent more than narrative devices. They embody hopes that reality has not yet fulfilled.

For Bloch, the fairy tale is fundamentally utopian. It points beyond the world as presently organized. This is why fairy tales often invert ordinary social hierarchies. Peasants become kings. Animals become teachers. Children outwit adults. Giants fall before insignificant opponents. The impossible becomes possible. The fairy tale reminds us that reality need not remain what it currently is.

Jack Zipes extends this insight historically and politically. Against approaches that treat fairy tales as timeless literary artifacts, Zipes emphasizes their origins in popular culture. Fairy tales emerged among ordinary people whose lives were frequently characterized by hardship, exploitation, and political powerlessness.

The stories expressed desires that could not be realized within existing social arrangements. For Zipes, fairy tales historically performed a critical function. They kept alive visions of justice, reciprocity, abundance, and freedom. They preserved alternative possibilities against the apparent inevitability of prevailing institutions. This is why Zipes finds Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz particularly significant. Oz presents a world in which conventional forms of authority repeatedly prove illusory. The Wizard himself is exposed as a fraud. The Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion discover that the qualities they seek already exist within them. Cooperation repeatedly triumphs over domination.

Most importantly, Oz does not simply reproduce the assumptions of ordinary American society. It creates sufficient distance from existing reality to allow readers to imagine different ways of organizing social life. The point is not escapism. The point is estrangement. By stepping outside familiar institutions, readers acquire the ability to view them critically. Oz therefore performs precisely the function Bloch attributes to utopian imagination: it makes alternative possibilities visible.

Yet neither Bloch nor Zipes entirely captures what makes fairy tales powerful. G. K. Chesterton understood something equally important. In Orthodoxy, Chesterton argued that fairy tales do not teach children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales teach children that dragons can be defeated. The significance of fairy tales therefore lies not primarily in social criticism but in their cultivation of wonder. For Chesterton, modernity suffers from a peculiar exhaustion of imagination. Familiarity breeds indifference. We cease to perceive the astonishing character of ordinary existence.

Fairy tales restore a sense of astonishment. They remind us that existence itself is extraordinary. A tree, a river, a bird, a sunrise—these become marvelous once more when viewed through the lens of enchantment. This insight complements rather than contradicts Bloch. Hope depends upon wonder. One cannot imagine a better world after losing the capacity to perceive value in the world at all. Fairy tales teach gratitude before they teach rebellion.

J. R. R. Tolkien developed this idea even further. In his essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien famously defended fantasy against the accusation of escapism. The modern critic often condemns escape as a form of evasion. Tolkien turned the accusation upside down. When a prisoner seeks escape from prison, we do not condemn him. We condemn the prison. Fantasy becomes problematic only if reality itself is satisfactory. But if society is dehumanizing, destructive, or spiritually impoverished, then escape may represent the beginning of criticism rather than its abandonment.

Tolkien identified three central functions of fairy tales: recovery, escape, and consolation. Recovery means seeing the world anew. Fantasy restores freshness to perception. Escape means liberation from conditions that diminish human flourishing. Consolation means the experience Tolkien called “eucatastrophe”—the sudden turn toward joy that reveals despair is not the final truth. These themes connect deeply with Bloch’s utopianism. Yet Tolkien grounds them less in political transformation than in metaphysical renewal. Hope is not merely social. It is ontological. The world itself contains depths that exceed utilitarian calculation.

Against this background, Wicked becomes revealing. At first glance, the story appears politically sophisticated. It critiques propaganda, prejudice, state violence, and the manufacture of enemies. Yet its conception of liberation is strikingly individualistic.

Elphaba’s struggle ultimately centers on authenticity. She learns to remain true to herself despite social condemnation. This is admirable. But it differs substantially from the utopian horizons envisioned by Bloch or Zipes. The central question shifts from “How might society be transformed?” to “How can I become myself?” Collective emancipation yields to personal self-realization. Even resistance becomes psychological rather than social. The result is a form of rebellion perfectly suited to contemporary liberal culture. Structural transformation recedes into the background while identity and self-expression move to the foreground.

The political implications of this shift are significant. In Baum’s Oz, the exposure of the Wizard’s fraud invites reflection on authority itself. The problem is institutional and social. In Wicked, by contrast, injustice increasingly appears as a failure of perception. Elphaba suffers because society misunderstands her. If only people could see her as she truly is, much of the conflict would disappear. The solution therefore becomes recognition rather than transformation. This framework is emotionally powerful, but it narrows the utopian horizon. Structural domination becomes secondary to personal prejudice, and political struggle becomes a quest for visibility. The audience learns to sympathize with the marginalized outsider without necessarily questioning the broader organization of power that produces exclusion in the first place.

What appears radical often turns out to be surprisingly compatible with existing social arrangements. The system remains largely unchanged. Only the individual’s relationship to it changes. The central question is not how the structures that produce injustice might be transformed, but how an exceptional individual can preserve her integrity within them. Unlike Baum’s Oz, which remains enchanted in Chesterton’s sense, Wicked often treats enchantment primarily as a vehicle for contemporary political and psychological concerns. Wonder becomes subordinate to self-expression. The marvelous survives, but increasingly as a means of affirming identity rather than encountering mystery.

The irony is difficult to ignore. A story that presents itself as a critique of power now circulates primarily as a cultural brand. Rebellion becomes a marketable identity, and dissent becomes a consumable experience. The audience is encouraged to sympathize with the outsider, yet the imaginative energy that once pointed beyond existing social arrangements is increasingly absorbed into the machinery of entertainment itself. The utopian impulse survives, but as a marketable experience rather than a challenge to the existing order.

The case of Harry Potter is even more revealing. What makes Harry Potter especially troubling from the perspective of both Tolkien and Bloch is not merely its commercialization in the real world, but the extent to which commodification has become internal to its imaginative universe. For Tolkien, genuine fairy stories enact what he called recovery”: they allow us to see the world anew by freeing perception from the deadening habits of possessive calculation. The highest achievement of fantasy is not escape into consumption but a renewed encounter with wonder, gift, and gratuity. Yet the wizarding world of Harry Potter is saturated with branded objects, status commodities, and the logic of consumption. Indeed, readers enter the wizarding world through shopping.

Before Harry attends school, he acquires robes, books, pets, candy, equipment, and most importantly a wand. Identity is repeatedly mediated through possessions. The wizarding world appears magical, but its social logic often resembles an enchanted version of consumer capitalism. The most famous example may be the Nimbus 2000. A flying broom could symbolize transcendence. It could represent liberation from ordinary constraints. It could become an image of freedom itself. Instead, it functions largely as a premium product. The coveted Nimbus 2000 is not simply a broomstick; it functions much like a luxury product whose value lies in prestige and competitive advantage. The market is not transcended. It is enchanted.

Even Hogwarts, ostensibly a place of enchantment, often resembles a marketplace of magical goods. From a Blochian perspective, the problem runs deeper still. Ernst Bloch understood fairy tales as repositories of the Not-Yet, symbolic expressions of humanity’s longing for a transformed world beyond domination and scarcity. Their utopian impulse lies in revealing possibilities that exceed existing social arrangements. But the world of Harry Potter rarely imagines alternatives to hierarchy itself. Wizards remain divided by status, wealth, bloodlines, and institutional power. The magical economy largely reproduces the logic of the existing one, firmly imprisoned within the horizon of late capitalism, but merely draped in enchanted imagery.

Even the narrative’s resolution reveals the limits of its imagination. The defeat of Voldemort restores legitimacy to existing institutions rather than opening space for new forms of collective life. Hogwarts survives unchanged. The Ministry survives unchanged. Social hierarchy survives unchanged. Evil appears not as a product of broader structures but as the work of a pathological individual. Once the villain is removed, the system may continue largely as before. In Bloch’s terms, the future collapses back into the present. The Not-Yet disappears. The utopian impulse yields to restoration.

Unlike the road out of the Shire, which opens onto a world charged with mystery, sacrifice, and grace, or Baum’s Oz, which gestures toward collective experimentation and social possibility, Rowling’s universe offers what might be called managed enchantment: wonder packaged as a consumable experience. In this sense, Harry Potter exemplifies precisely what Jack Zipes fears has happened to the fairy tale under contemporary capitalism: the transformation of a literary form once capable of expressing radical hope into a vehicle for branding, consumption, and the reproduction of the existing order.

Bloch reminds us that fairy tales should nurture hope. Zipes reminds us that they should preserve visions of alternative social possibilities. Chesterton reminds us that they should awaken wonder. Tolkien reminds us that they should recover reality rather than merely reproduce it. The greatest fairy tales accomplish all four. They do not merely entertain. They enlarge the horizon of possibility. They teach us that the world as presently organized is neither inevitable nor complete. They remind us that reality contains depths not yet exhausted by existing institutions, markets, or ideologies. The true fairy tale does not ask what product we desire next. It asks what kind of world we still dare to imagine.

Sam Ben-Meir teaches philosophy at the City University of New York, College of Technology. He is the author of Ethical Interanimality: Toward a Relational Philosophy of Nature (Westphalia Press, 2026).