Faerian Drama

…Without the Fairies: Two Post-Tolkienian Examples

Janet Brennan Croft

Rutgers University

Abstract

       In “On Fairy-stories” (1939), Tolkien introduces the concept of Faërian drama: plays which the elves present to men, with a “realism and immediacy beyond the compass of any human mechanism,” where the viewer feels he is “bodily inside its Secondary World” but instead is “in a dream that some other mind is weaving.” In an earlier paper,* I suggested that Tolkien may have been influenced in his development of the concept by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl, and looked at some examples of Faërian drama in Tolkien’s fiction and poetry, concentrating especially on his final story, Smith of Wootton Major (1967). Along the way I discussed A Christmas Carol and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, two works with clear intervention by otherworldly beings. Here I want to look at several more recent examples of Faërian drama in fantastic film and television which achieve the same effect, but do so without the fairies: the movie Groundhog Day (1993) and the American version of the television series Life on Mars (2008), with side glances at such other examples as the movies Inception and The Thirteenth Floor and TV episodes of The Librarians (“And the Point of Salvation”) and Doctor Who (“Heaven Sent”).

        In one section of his influential 1939 lecture (and later essay) “On Fairy-stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien introduces the concept of Faërian Drama: “plays” which the elves present to men, where the viewer feels he is “bodily inside [a] Secondary World” but instead is inside “a dream that some other mind is weaving” (Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories” [OFS], 1939, pp. 63-64).

      In an earlier paper (Croft, 2014), I suggested that Tolkien may have been influenced in his development of this concept by medieval dream-vision writing, especially Pearl but also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (K.M. Wickham-Crowley, in an article in the 2015 Tolkien Studies, finds the roots of Faërian Drama in Sir Orfeo instead, another major dream-vision source.) I examined some examples of Faërian Drama in Tolkien’s fiction and poetry, concentrating particularly on his final story, Smith of Wootton Major. Along the way I discussed Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, more familiar and modern sources that might also have influenced his ideas.

      Tolkien describes Faërian Drama this way:

Now “Faërian Drama”—those plays which according to abundant records the elves have often presented to men—can produce Fantasy with a realism and immediacy beyond the compass of any human mechanism. […] To experience directly a Secondary World: the potion is too strong, and you give to it Primary Belief, however marvellous the events. […] This is for them a form of Art, and distinct from Wizardry or Magic, properly so called. […]

[This] potent and specially elvish craft I will, for lack of a less debatable word, call Enchantment. Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. (“On Fairy-stories” [OFS], 1939, pp. 63-64)

      This is all well and good, but as Verlyn Flieger and Doug Anderson point out in their commentary on OFS, “no definition of what the faërian [drama] consists of [and] no examples of such ‘plays’ or ‘abundant records’ are given”; Tolkien’s description actually “does little to clarify the concept” (“Editors’ Commentary,” 2008, p. 112) or show how the experience of Faërian Drama truly differs from an ordinary dream or vision.

      However, as I said in my earlier essay, I think there is a hint here about the purpose of this art form that may set us on the right path. I believe the purposes of fantasy, as outlined in Tolkien’s essay, are also the purposes of Faërian Drama: in particular, Recovery of a fresh view of life and the Consolation of the happy ending.

      I think there also clues to be found in Tolkien’s commentary on his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien points out that through Gawain’s adventures, his temptations and reactions, “he becomes a real man” (Introduction, 1975, p. 7) rather than a prig who is a little too proud of his own perfect courtesy and piety; he is “peculiarly fitted to suffer acutely in the adventure to which he is destined” (p. 6).

      And here is where I think we can see Tolkien pointing towards a moral purpose for the dream vision and thus Faërian Drama: Gawain’s experiences were designed to lead him, specifically and exclusively, through a series of trials and temptations uniquely suited to expose his peculiar weaknesses and frailties, and chasten, strengthen, and mature him (Croft, 2014, p. 37). Likewise with other examples: the experience is tailored to the recipient.

      What I tried to do in the course of this earlier paper was expand and refine Tolkien’s vague and preliminary definition by working backwards from several examples of what we might classify as Faërian Drama (because they appear to produce the effects which Tolkien describes), studying how they achieve their effects, looking at sources Tolkien was familiar with, and then examining how Tolkien uses the concept in some of his own works. Here is what I came up with:

1. The Goal: The artistic goal of Faërian Drama, like that of the fairy tale itself, is to awaken in the witness/participant an openness to Fantasy, Escape, Recovery, Consolation, and the possibility of Eucatastrophe [that is, the sudden joyous turn in the story where disaster turns to triumph]. The one essential goal within the experience is Recovery, the “regaining of a clear view” (OFS 67), which makes the witness/participant receptive to the rest […]. There is a specific moral teaching purpose designed for the chosen participant/witness.

2. The Witness: The participant/witness must be in a liminal and receptive state: he or she must be troubled by something, [or] in need of intervention […]. His or her resistance to the experience is typically broken down by “softening” events leading up to it. The participant may, consciously or unconsciously, deliberately seek out the experience.

3. The Techniques: The goal is achieved through a variety of artistic effects, the most basic of which is that the participant must believe fully in the reality of the experience while within it. The dreamer is always an acting character in the drama. The moral purpose of the experience may or may not be revealed to the participant at the time; it may become clear only on awakening or after long reflection. […]

4. The Consequences: The experience of Faërian Drama cannot be dismissed as a mere dream; upon awakening, the participant must retain a sense that the events were real and “other[worldly],” with lasting consequences and moral effects, and not solely creations of his or her dreaming mind. […] (Croft, 2014, pp. 43-44)

      In this paper I want to look at two more recent sources that I would argue exhibit the characteristics of Faërian Drama: the 1993 movie Groundhog Day and the 2008-2009 single-season American version of the television series Life on Mars. In both cases, the central characters go through experiences that are clearly outside their normal day-to-day existence and yet feel totally real while happening; experiences which leave them changed men, with a newly clear view of their lives. Susan Palwick, in discussing examples of science fiction as “conversion narrative,” speaks of the “re-orientation of [the] self-image” (2010, p. 156) through the power of participating in a story; that is very much what happens to these two characters. But neither of these sources offers an explicit explanation for the redemptive experience undergone by their heroes. Can you have Faërian Drama without the fairies? And if so, how do we need to adjust our definition?

Groundhog Day

      In Groundhog Day (1993), Bill Murray plays an arrogant, egotistical Pittsburgh-based weatherman who feels he deserves stardom, but who is humiliatingly sent off for the fourth year in a row to cover the Groundhog Day festivities in nearby Punxatawney, PA. Dismissive of the small rural town and its unsophisticated enjoyment of its yearly festival, condescending and even cruel to his co-workers, Murray’s character Phil Connors begins his aventure in a liminal state, at the end of a long day of ego-fueled rage when a snow storm which he failed to predict prevents him from escaping the dubious charms of Punxatawney (echoing the tornado at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz [Kupfer, 199, p. 43], both of which Fowkes terms “ontological ruptures” [2010, p. 96]). He falls into bed, only to awaken and find it is February 2^nd all over again. And again. And again. And again. Each day starts the same way; he is endlessly alone, starting each day as the only person reliving it. This continues until he begins spending his days free of ego: in service to his fellow human beings, developing and sharing his intellectual and artistic gifts for the sheer joy of it, and loving unselfishly.

      Suzanne Daughton (1996) lays out the stages of Phil’s reaction to this Sisyphean situation. He starts from a position of cynicism: miserable, self-centered, and friendless. Once the time loop begins, he initially reacts with alarm and disbelief, but then takes refuge in hedonism, using the consequence-free terms of his situation to indulge all his fantasies (at least as far as possible in Punxatawney). But unable to seduce his charming and kind producer, Rita (Andie McDowell), Phil falls into depression and anger, culminating in his first attempt to kill himself. This leads to denial, avoidance, and a long series of suicides. The futility of this course of action as he reawakens each morning anyway leads to a stage of resignation; a conversation with Rita causes him to consider that perhaps his condition is not a curse, but that it all depends on how he looks at it. Phil moves into a period of acceptance and growth, turning “the curse into a blessing” (p. 149), helping other people, developing his talents, and viewing Rita as someone to be “respected, admired, and emulated” (p. 149). When the sequence finally breaks, he has become a person that Rita herself admires and pursues.

      As Daughton puts it, “The changes that take place in Connors’s character encourage viewers to make the enthymematic leap that he was finally judged by some greater force to have ‘gotten it right’” (p. 151). But in contrast to the similar situations in It’s a Wonderful Life¹ or A Christmas Carol, where an actual guide grants the main character an explicit opportunity to see what the world would be like if he continued on his present path or never existed, there is no figure telling Phil what the recurrence is all about or why it ends. “He is abandoned without instruction or insight in his icy, isolated hell” (Gilbey, 2004, p. 11).

      The film has encouraged a range of literary, philosophical, and religious interpretations. It’s been “taken up by Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans […],” discussed for its “Platonist, Aristotelean, and existentialist themes,” used to teach ethics or in sermons (Goldberg, 2005). Scholars reference Nietzsche (Kupfer, 1999) and Voltaire (Daughton, 1996). David Pecotic traces the theme to Ouspensky and Gurdjieff (2012, p. 343). Suzanne Daughton sees the film as a feminine initiatory rite of descent, with Phil “journeying inward in order to encounter and submit to the power of the dark goddess” (p. 140), explicitly comparing the seven stages of his reaction to his plight to the descent of the Babylonian goddess Inanna into the Underworld (p. 145). James Walters sees significance in the blue sky/blue screen imagery of the opening and in Phil’s “personal winter” (2008, p.140). Murray Baumgarten reads it as a “reconceptualization” of A Christmas Carol with echoes of Faust and pagan “female/chthonic holidays” (2003, pp. 61, 67), though Grace Moore indicts it as a lesser remake of the ur-text of the Carol with its concentration on Phil’s personal redemption as opposed to service to the community (2013, pp. 234-35). Joseph Kupfer finds it a text illustrating Plato’s ideal of the good and virtuous life, as Phil must combine intellectual pursuit, moral action, practical wisdom (p. 36), and “romantic love enriched by virtue” (p. 40) to succeed. Katherine Fowkes considers it as an example of “new romance,” with Phil required to “trade some of his stereotypical masculinity” for a “more feminized (or feminist) version of manhood” (2010, p. 97); Gilbey notes the auction in which Rita “buys” Phil as an upsetting of gender roles (2004, p. 61), but also discusses Jungian interpretations of anima, shadow, and persona themes in the film (p. 99) and Camus’s retelling of the myth of Sisyphus (p. 100). Relevant to this paper, William Racicot finds its emphasis on “incremental repetition” and courtly love reminiscent of medieval romance, a clue that linking it to Tolkien’s Faërian Drama through the intermediary of Pearl and Gawain is not so far-fetched an idea (2007, p. 186). This “incremental repetition,” in Martin Hermann’s view, finds its roots in computer games; he distinguishes time-loop games, where the game is reset but the player retains learned skills useful to his quest, from forking-path narratives (2011, p. 148); to bring this full circle, Petér Kristóf Makai (2010) explicitly links Faërian Drama to computer gaming, which I’ll come back to later.

      In any case, Phil never knows why or how he repeats the same day over and over. Interestingly, one early draft of the script (by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis) does include a curse called down on Phil by a former lover; another includes a scientist spouting gibberish about black holes and singularities (Gilbey, 2004, pp.18-19). But Rubin was against including “any explanation for why Phil’s days were repeating”: “Not defining Phil’s predicament gives the audience more to ponder while never slowing down the story by explaining things” (Goldsmith p. 76). “If we explain it, we trivialize it” (qtd. in Gilbey, p.18). The viewer also has no indication as to how long Phil lives the day over; we see a minimum of 34 separate days (Goldberg, 2005), but in Ramis’s draft it’s 1,000 years and the original story by Rubin mentions 10,000 years (Goldsmith, 2010, p. 76). As with the mechanism, the screenwriters also felt the story was more effective without a clear-cut time span (Goldsmith, p.76). Phil never talks about what happens after his suicides, when the day goes on for the other inhabitants of the town; does he experience an afterlife (Gilbey, 2004, p. 69)? And there is also no reason given why Phil should even bother to perform the good deeds he does for others—catching the falling boy, saving the choking man, changing a flat tire—if the day simply resets each time. Does each repetition work off a bit more bad karma (Fowkes, 2010, p.100)? As Stanley Kauffmann (1993) put it in his review for The New Republic, “The best thing about Groundhog Day […] is that it doesn’t explain.”

      So how does Groundhog Day fit the definition we developed? First, the goal. Phil is certainly awakened to Recovery, gaining a clearer view of his past life, his present situation, and what “a life made meaningful by activity that is intrinsically valued” (Kupfer, 1999, p. 52) can be like. He learns, in his “acceptance and growth” phase, to view his predicament not as a catastrophe but as a eucatastrophe, giving him a chance to make things right and “explore what makes a knight worthy of his lady” (Racicot, 2007, p.186). The recurrence of this particular day is precisely designed to teach him these lessons. This is the clear, if unspoken, ethical goal: the rehabilitation of the Scrooge-like Phil as a man capable of emotional self-control and unselfish love.

      As a witness/participant, Phil is in a liminal state at the beginning of his experience, battered by the frustrations and humiliations of the day and direly in need of an intervention to bring him face to face with his failings as a human being. There is also a hint from his first view of Rita at the Pittsburgh studio that he is attracted to her; that her sense of fun and delight in playing with the blue screen effect of the weather map delivers a jolt to his boredom and cynicism, and leaves him more open to new possibilities in life. There’s a chink in his armor.

      The artistic technique of this particular instance of Faërian Drama is quite simple; no matter what happens, the day resets at 6:00 a.m., the clock radio playing Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe,” Phil waking up under the covers in the Punxatawney bed and breakfast. Phil is an active participant; his actions have an effect that day, on himself and others. He has no reason to think this is “just a dream.” But the contradictions inherent in the way the repetition works (like muscle memory from learning piano or ice carving or developing his French accent being retained the next “morning,” but not hangovers or injuries) can best be explained if this is a deliberate example of Faërian Drama and he, as the subject, is meant to retain and build on skills that will lead him to the conclusion. Hermann sees this film as heavily influenced by video games and explains this retention of skills by considering the film a combination of quest and time loop. As in some types of video games, each day is a reset; the player (Phil) retains skills and knowledge to improve his performance incrementally with each repetition. In terms Hermann (2011) borrows from Aarseth (p. 153n31), Phil is the intriguee, the unknown game designer the intrigant. Or Phil is both puppet and game user (p. 155), though no designer is present and he is given no choice about participating (to refuse the “call to adventure,” in Campbellian terms) or exiting.

      Phil never knowingly meets a dramaturge or other denizen of Faerie, or is told how or why this happens to him, just as he was never given a choice about participating; the process just stops. The consequences are quite clear. On finally awakening to Rita beside him, reaching over to turn off the clock radio, Phil realizes it is February 3^rd and he has been granted a whole new life and a chance to start over. The events of his final February 2^nd have had real and lasting consequences; he has his love, and a new understanding that, in the Platonic sense, “living virtuously is the good life” (Kupfer, 1999, p.36). Phil is freed of his cynicism, but there’s “a hint of ambivalence” (Fowkes, 2010, p. 98), “a priceless note of uncertainty” (Gilbey, 2004, p. 81) in the ending as he says to Rita “Let’s live here … we’ll rent to start” while “Almost Like Being in Love” plays over the closing credits. Could he return to the time loop if he heads down the wrong path again?

      The final shots of the film may represent the point of view of our unknown dramaturge. As James Walters points out, this is the only shot in the film where “any character has walked away from a stationary camera position” (2008, p. 152): Rita and Phil jump over the gate and walk out together into the snowy landscape, away from the camera, into the new day. The camera leaves them; we detach and return to the shot of clouds in motion that started the film.

Life on Mars

       If the Faërian Drama aspects of Groundhog Day find their roots in It’s a Wonderful Life and ultimately A Christmas Carol, Life on Mars in both the BBC and ABC versions find them in the movie The Wizard of Oz (itself a prime example of Faërian Drama), from which they borrow imagery, music, and themes. In both versions, Sam Tyler’s deepest wish is to return home—but does he really understand what home is, what people and relationships are essential to his sense of home, and why he wants to be there?

      Life on Mars started as a British series aired in 2006-2007. The show is a hybrid of police drama, science fiction, romance, and period piece (Nelson, 2010, p. 143). Sam Tyler (John Simm), a police detective in 2006, is investigating the kidnapping of his partner/girlfriend by a serial killer when he is struck by a car and flung back into 1973. He both enters fully into the life of his 1973 precinct and never ceases trying to get back to 2006. He is beset by odd phenomena—TV programs talking about his medical condition, people in 1973 who seem to know all about 2006, and so on. “His world is ‘full of cracks’” (Lavery, 2012, p. 146). At the end of the series, he is revealed to have been in a coma. Upon awakening and finding his 2006 world stale and flat and lacking in the kind of personal relationships he developed in the past, he commits suicide and returns to 1973. This ending, foreseen from the original conception of the series, is explained (or overruled and rewritten, depending on interpretation; Becker, 2015, p. 174) in the follow-on series Ashes to Ashes (2010), where the 1973 world is revealed to be a subdivision of Purgatory specifically designed for police “to sort out their demons” (Becker, p. 181) and managed by his 1973 commanding officer Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), and into which all the major characters have entered while in their own individual comas or other near-death experiences (Lacey and McElroy, 2012, pp. 13-14).

       Ever since I was old enough to catch on to what C.S. Lewis was up to with the Narnia books, I’ve been wary of science fiction and fantasy premises that turn out, in their final twist, to have been thinly veiled religious allegory (and yes, I also found the ending of Lost a major disappointment). For myself, I prefer the “bonny road” that leads to “fair Elfland” to the “narrow road” to Heaven (trad; quoted in OFS, pp. 28-29). Which is why I personally, in defiance of the vitriol aimed at it by nearly all of the critics I have read, find the American version of the series quite satisfying. For one thing, I find the use of the deeply American Wizard of Oz a more congenial fit as an organizing myth for an American than British series.

       Public opinion seems more divided than critical, and the US version does have its fierce partisans; 71% of Amazon reviewers ranked it at five stars, and it gets a 7.4 rating on IMDB. Distaste for the American remake on the part of critics and viewers who prefer the British version had to do with many factors: the physical dynamic between the imposing British Hunt and wimpier Tyler (though arguably it’s preserved in the American version, as its shorter, older, more wiry Hunt [played by Harvey Keitel] physically dominates tall, muscular Tyler from their very first meeting); the setting changed to flashy New York City instead of a gritty industrial city similar to Manchester; the Annie character recast as a sexier and more obvious romantic interest. Most importantly, to these viewers the ending felt more contrived or less deep than the British ending—a “droolingly literal” interpretation of the series title, in one reviewer’s phrase (Stevenson, 2016), as we’ll see.

       For the American remake (2008-2009), the producers were “encouraged to change the mythology” (Appelbaum qtd. in Lavery, 2012, p. 148), and change it they did. When this Sam (Jason O’Mara) awakens back to reality, it turns out that his 2008 life was as unreal as his 1973 one. The main characters we have been following throughout the 17 episodes are actually the crew of a Mars mission in 2035—which explains many of the peculiar clues about his condition that Sam has received, from miniature Mars lander robots spying on him to his flighty next-door neighbor Windy nicknaming him 2B.

       The crew all entered their own individual “neural stimulation programs” early in the mission as a way to keep their brains active while their bodies rested in suspended animation during the trip. Here we have a Faërian Drama-like state sought out more or less willingly, with technical assistance, for purposes of entertainment and mental health. Different crew members have chosen different programs (Ray, for example, choosing a scenario that put him on a desert island with 200 girls who “look like either Splash-era Daryl Hannah or Scarface-era Michelle Pfeiffer” [“Life is a Rock” 1.17]). A meteor shower they encounter causes a hiccup in Sam’s program, which was originally designed to insert him as a fully-immersed character in a police drama in 2008; instead, he is pushed further back, to 1973, and he retains the overwritten 2008 scenario as his primary memories. While he lacks his real memories, his 2035 crewmates play roles in the program leading to one of the most foregrounded parallels with The Wizard of Oz—his moment of “And you guys were all there!” upon awakening (“Life is a Rock” 1.17).

       As Dorothy’s experiences in Oz did for her, the drama has enabled him to work through deep but not explicitly expressed psychological issues. His 1973 experience ends after he has declared his love to policewoman Annie Norris (Gretchen Mol) and kissed her, and embraced his boss Gene Hunt after deliberately rejecting an opportunity to go back to 2008 (rather than, as in the British version, returning to his “home time” and finding it unbearable). By experiencing this program as real, Sam has role-played resolving his rivalry and difficult history with his father and fellow crew member “Major Tom” Tyler (fractured in his 1973 program into Gene Hunt, his father Vic Tyler, and his mentor Fletcher Bellow), and overcoming a fear of commitment and admitting his attraction to his real-life commanding officer, Colonel Annie Norris. The character of Maya Daniels, Sam’s 2008 girlfriend, in combination with 1973’s Annie and his sometime-lover social worker Maria Belanger, may indicate he was also dealing with issues of working with strong, competent women who might be his professional equals, rivals, or superiors as well as romantic partners. After these dream-experiences, he is now ready to do the same in the real world.

       But why is his program altered in this specific way? This is where the potential to read it as a true Faërian Drama comes in. Are the resonances with Sam’s real 2035 life part of the reason why he chose this program, consciously or unconsciously? We know that one of his crewmates picks a purely hedonistic program, and another questions why Sam chose the 2008 cop program in the first place; choosing a program for its therapeutic value does not seem to have been an expectation. Or is the program so interactive and responsive to his needs that it picked up on Sam’s issues and helped him work through them? Is the 1973 narrative more useful in understanding and resolving his issues than the 2008 program would have been? Is it possible that something much deeper was happening to Sam? If the series had continued, or if the writers had had the chance to end it more slowly and deliberately, we might have found some answers. But it was cancelled midway through the season, and in the rushed final episode, all we see as viewers are the first few minutes of Sam’s disorienting reawakening, living his confusion along with him.

       The illusion that we are witnessing Sam Tyler’s personal Faërian Drama is not as perfectly maintained as it is in Groundhog Day, for we as the audience are privy to several scenes that he does not see—Gene Hunt burning his bribe money in “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows” (1.4) or Annie’s interactions with her roommates in “Coffee, Tea, or Annie” (1.14) for example. (See also Handlin, qtd. in Lavery, 2012, p. 148). These might simply be artifacts of copying the original British narrative, in which all the cast are in individual comas, and not thinking it through clearly in light of the changed American mythology. But to use a computer game metaphor, these may serve the function of cut-scene (non-play narrative) segments in computer games. Again, the early cancellation of the series leaves us frustrated. But these cut-scenes do reinforce the viewing of a program like this as a Faërian Drama for the audience as much as for the character.

      So how does Life on Mars fit our definition? Judging from the results, the goal of Sam’s dream-vision was to help him gain a clear view of his life through drama therapy, role-playing around two major and liminal issues: father-rivalry and fear of commitment. Sam is receptive, entering the program he chose voluntarily, but not expecting the sudden twist as it jumps back to 1973—he continually questions his experience, and apparently does not consciously expect it to later prove relevant to his life.

     As far as technique, the 2035-vintage neural stimulation program is a fully immersive artistic experience; we see no indication that 2008 Sam realizes he’s from 2035 in the opening few minutes of the first episode, before the program goes haywire. It feels unquestionably real to Sam, emotionally and physically. In 1973, he knows he’s not in his proper world, and this sense of displacement is essential to his “cure”—but he doesn’t know his proper world is one level further removed.

      Upon awakening, he questions the earth mission commander Frank Morgan (and yes, that’s another deliberate Wizard of Oz reference, to the actor who played Professor Marvel, the Wizard, and other roles): “What did you do to me? My trip got trippy” (“Life is a Rock” 1.17). He clearly retains the knowledge that it was out of the ordinary. Does the experience have lasting consequences? Several critics complain that “Sam seems only barely affected by his experience” (Becker, 2015, p. 180) and “takes nothing away from [it]” (Markovitch, 2011 p. 190) but this is not true; we see him starting to change his life already, telling his father he no longer wants to fight and hinting at his interest in Annie to one of the other crewmembers.

      Like Groundhog Day, though, there are some ambiguities that make us question whether Sam is truly done with his “trippy” experience—the scenes he does not witness but we as the audience do, the lack of a time-lag in communication with Earth, the facile explanation of the meteor shower, the iconic final shot of Gene Hunt’s trademark white loafer taking that first step on the Martian surface . . . the audience is left with nagging questions as much as Sam is.

Conclusion

      Can we call Groundhog Day and Life on Mars examples of Faërian Drama? and if so, what does this do to my definition?

      Both of these examples are arguably strongly influenced by computer games. Groundhog Day is “a time-loop quest” (Hermann, 2011, p. 148) in which the main character is the player, playing the game in linear fashion and retaining his memories with each reset. Life on Mars is more immersive, a quest-exploration of a game environment, and the main character is not self-aware as a player. A parallel might be found in the Season 9 Doctor Who episode “Heaven Sent” (2015) in which the Doctor does not retain memories of the billions of times he has experienced the same events inside his confession dial until he breaks through the azbantium wall. Other potential examples like the movies 13^th Floor (1999) or Inception (2010) and the “And the Point of Salvation” episode of The Librarians (2015) use the game format more explicitly.² Does this point to a future of therapeutic gaming, to Faërian Dramas specifically constructed by a game designer rather than an Elvish dramaturge, and sought out by the individual, or even prescribed for purposes of psychological or spiritual therapy or purgatorial cleansing?

      In this case the goal part of the definition can stand even if the experience is explicitly human-designed. We can bypass the lack of a known designer by simply saying that one may be there in these examples, but neither we nor the characters have explicit knowledge of them. We share Phil and Sam’s mystification.

      Significantly, though, in both Groundhog Day and Life on Mars there is a clear purgatorial element—the witness/participant must live through certain things and learn certain lessons before being released. This a frequent but not universal theme in Faërian Drama narratives. Phil is in a “purgatory of his own making” (Fowkes, 2010, p. 99)³ but not choosing. Sam is caught in a self-chosen interactive narrative but not self-aware inside it. But neither of these places is actually Purgatory, because both Phil and Sam return to their mortal lives with the chance to mend their ways. Purgatory does not allow this—as Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol tells us, the individual soul in Purgatory cannot make actual amends to the people it wounded on earth:

      “[I]f that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness! […] Incessant torture of remorse. […] [N]o space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused!” (Dickens, 1976, pp. 77-79).

     Yet Marley is at least able to arrange a Faërian Drama, the visits of the three Spirits, in an attempt to save Scrooge from suffering a similar fate.

      So it’s clear that we need to add “Not Purgatory” to the definition of Faërian Drama. The return from the vision (bearing a boon, as Joseph Campbell would have it in his description of the Hero’s Journey) is essential. To take this back to examples from J.R.R. Tolkien’s own work, Smith of Wootton Major (1967) is clearly a Faërian Drama as Smith returns to his mortal life with a boon—his revivifying knowledge of the faery world. But Leaf by Niggle (1964) is purgatorial; Niggle does not return but moves on after each phase, further in and further up in to the mountains.

      The “bonny path to Elfland,” the way of fantasy leading to neither heaven nor hell, leaves the person who has witnessed and participated in a Faërian Drama free to think and act upon its revelations in real life. For us, the audience once removed, depictions of Faërian Drama also serve to help us “to see the world afresh” (Poliakoff, qtd. in Lacey and McElroy, 2012, p. 2). We can open ourselves to the possibility that such a clear view, and such a radical re-assessment and re-alignment of our own lives, is possible this side of Purgatory, and that one may have a chance to resume one’s mortal life—in Punxatawney or on Mars—after such revelations and do it right this time around.

References

Baumgarten, M. (2003). Bill Murray’s Christmas Carols. In J. Glavin (Ed.), Dickens on Screen

(pp. 61-71). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Becker, Christine. “Off Goes the Telly: Writer Discourse on the Life on Mars Franchise

Finales.” Journal of Screenwriting 6.2 (2015): 173-88.

Campbell, J. (1973). The Hero With a Thousand Faces (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton UP.

Croft, J. B. (2014). Tolkein’s Faërian Drama: Origins and Valedictions. Mythlore, 32.2 (#124)),

31-45.

Daughton, S. M. (1996). The Spiritual Power of Repetitive Form: Steps Toward Transcendence in

Groundhog Day. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 13, 138-154.

Dickens, C., Hearn, M. P. (1976). The Annotated Christmas Carol. New York: Avenel Books.

Fleming, V. (Director). (1939). The Wizard of Oz. Warner Brothers.

Flieger, V. and D.A. Anderson. “Editors’ Commentary.” (2008). In Tolkien, J. R. R., Anderson,

D. A., Flieger, V. Tolkien on fairy-stories (pp.85-121). London: HarperCollins.

Fowkes, K. A. (2010). Groundhog Day: No Time Like the Present. In K. A. Fowkes (Ed.), The

Fantasy Film (pp. 92-103). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Gilbey, R. (2004). Groundhog Day. London: British Film Institute.

Goldberg, J. (2005, 14 February). A Movie for All Time: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Groundhog Day scores. National Review.

Goldsmith, J. (2010, November/December). Lost Scenes: Groundhog Day. Creative Screenwriting,

75-76.

Hermann, M. (2011). Hollywood Goes Computer Game: Narrative Remediation in the Time-Loop

Quests Groundhog Day and 12:01. In J. Alber & R. Heinze (Eds.), Unnatural narratives–unnatural narratology (pp. 145-161): Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter.

Holdsworth, A. (2011). Television, Memory and Nostalgia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Katleman, M. (Director). (2009). Life on Mars: The Complete Series. ABC Studios, Dist. Buena

Vista Home Entertainment.

Kauffmann, S. (1993, 15 March). Fantasy and Fandom. The New Republic, 24-25.

Kupfer, J. H. (1999). Visions of Virtue in Popular Film. Boulder CO: Westview.

Lacey, S., & McElroy, R. (2012). Introduction. In S. Lacey & R. McElroy (Eds.), Life on

Mars: from Manchester to New York (pp. 1-15). Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Lavery, D. (2012). The Emigration of Life on Mars: Sam and Gene Do America. In S. Lacey &

R. McElroy (Eds.), Life on Mars : from Manchester to New York (pp. 145-152). Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Makai, P. K. (2010). Faërian Cyberdrama: When Fantasy becomes Virtual Reality. Tolkien Studies,

7, 35-53.

Marcovitch, H. (2011). Memories of Mars: Life on Mars and the Discursive Practices of Memory.

In C. Lavigne & H. Marcovitch (Eds.), American Remakes of British Television: Transformations and

Mistranslations (pp. 173-192). Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Moffatt, S. (Writer). (2015, 15 November). Heaven Sent [Doctor Who. Season 9, episode 11]. BBC.

Moore, G. (2013). From Bedford Falls to Punxsutawney: Refashioning A Christmas Carol In M. Di Paolo (Ed.),Godly

pheretics : essays on alternative Christianity in literature and popular culture (pp. 221-238). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc ,Publishers.

Nelson, R. (2010). Life on Mars. In D. Lavery (Ed.), The essential cult TV reader (pp. 142-148). Lexington, Ky.:

University Press of Kentucky.

Nolan, C. (Director). (2010). Inception. Warner Brothers.

Palwick, S. (2010). Suspending Disbelief: Story as Political Catalyst. In D. L. Timmel (Ed.),

Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles (pp. 152-159). Seattle: Aqueduct.

Pecotic, D. (2012). From Ouspensky’s “Hobby” to Groundhog Day: The Production and Adaptation

of Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. In C. M. Cusack & A. Norman (Eds.), Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production (pp. 331-348). Leiden: Brill.

Racicot, W. (2007). Anything Different is Good: Incremental Repetition, Courtly Love, and Purgatory in  Groundhog

Day. In D. W. Marshall (Ed.), Mass Market Medieval: Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture (pp. 186-197).
Jefferson NC: McFarland.

Ramis, H. (Director). (1993) Groundhog Day. Columbia Pictures.

Rogers, J. (Writer). (2015, 15 Dec.). And the Point of Salvation [The Librarians, Season 2,

episode 8]. TNT.

Rusnak, J. (Director). (1999). The Thirteenth Floor. Columbia Pictures.

Simon, J. (1993, 12 April). Frail Fantasy, Forceful Fiction. National Review, 63-65.

Stevenson, S. (2010). Life on Mars: Why Americans Hated the British Hit. Plus: The Dumbest

Finale in TV History. Slate. Retrieved from:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2010/01/life_on_mars.html

Tolkien, J.R.R. (1939). “On Fairy-stories.” In Tolkien, J. R. R., Anderson, D. A., Flieger, V.

Tolkien on fairy-stories. (pp 27-84). London: HarperCollins.

—. (1964). Leaf by Niggle The Tolkien Reader (pp. 85-112). New York: Ballantine.

—. (1967). Smith of Wootton Major. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

—. (1975). Introduction. In Tolkien, J. R. R., tr. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Pearl.

Sir Orfeo (J. R. R. Tolkien, Trans.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Walters, J. (2008). Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema: Resonance Between Realms.

Bristol: Intellect.

Wickham-Crowley, K. M. (2015). ‘Mind to Mind’: Tolkien’s Faërian Drama and the Middle English

Sir Orfeo. . Tolkien Studies, 12, 1-29.

1In earlier drafts, this movie was to have been playing in Punxatawney’s only movie theatre

(Gilbey, 2004, p. 9).

2See Makai (2010) and Hermann (2011) for more on game design.

3See also Racicot (2007) on medieval Purgatorial imagery in the movie.

Janet Brennan Croft is Head of Access and Delivery Services at Rutgers University libraries. She earned her Master of Library Science degree at Indiana University in 1983. She is the author of War in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Praeger, 2004; winner of the Mythopoeic Society Award for Inklings Studies) and several book chapters on the Peter Jackson films; has published articles on J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, Lois McMaster Bujold, and other authors, and is editor or co-editor of many collections of literary essays, the latest being Baptism of Fire: The Birth of British Fantasy in World War I (Mythopoeic Press, 2016). She has also written widely on library issues, and is the author of Legal Solutions in Electronic Reserves and the Electronic Delivery of Interlibrary Loan (Haworth, 2004). She edits the refereed scholarly journal Mythlore and serves on the board of the Mythopoeic Press. https://rci-rutgers.academia.edu/JanetCroft