Escapism

Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

— J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories" lecture, 1939

Escapism is basically a mental diversion or "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life. Everything that makes us escape from Real Life can be considered a form of Escapism. Common forms of Escapism are Fiction, Video Games, Game Shows, drugs, gambling, and TV Tropes.

This trope applies to fictional characters using escapism in order to escape from their problems and/or not having to face Real Life.

For an in-depth analysis of this trope, go to Analysis.Escapism. Compare to Anti-Escapism Aesop. When an evil government uses escapism to keep an entire society compliant, it's Bread and Circuses. See also Cope by Creating.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Rikka Takanashi, the female lead of Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!, is constantly under the delusion of an Elegant Gothic Lolita fighter, so as to cope with her trauma arising from Parental Abandonment.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Asuka relies on playing video games after her Mind Rape, in order to forget her childhood experiences and her past trauma. To a certain extent, striving to be the best pilot is a way of escaping her past too.
• Opposing this trope is pretty much the entire point of Paranoia Agent.

Comic Books

• In The Sandman (1989), nightmares Brute and Glob exploit the dreams of an abused foster child to carve out a little corner of the Dreaming for themselves. They make him the sidekick of a superhero named Sandman, who is really a brainwashed spirit of someone recently deceased, only anchored to the living world by his pregnant widow who lives in the dream with him. Thus, their plan is facilitated by the desires of two miserable victims who wish for a better reality than they have.
• The Unbelievable Gwenpool's relationship to escapism is complicated to put it mildly. The main character, Gwen Poole, is an average comic book fan, who managed to push her escapism so far to actually escape. She is perfectly willing at first to exploit this as much as possible to indulge her more sociopathic impulses without consequences which seems like a prime setup to deliver an Anti-Escapism Aesop... the series doesn't do that, instead opts for now you're responsible for the tales you're telling, we hope you grow up to the responsibility.

Comic Strips

• Played with - multiple comic artists have done one shots or simple comics showing fantasy characters such as wizards, warriors and dragons playing a fictional role playing game of our world such as Papers & Paychecks instead of Dungeons & Dragons. (Example here◊)

Fan Works

• Fortune_Lover_(TGS Beta)(SARU_rip)[T+Eng0.75_Sincere].zip: This is the reason why Parasite_Ib downloaded a pirated copy of Fortune Lover of unknown provenance. While she played the game to completion previously and knew its endings, at the time the story happened she was forced to dump her boyfriend and felt rather "bummed" for it, so she "decided to lose myself in Fortune Lover for the umpteenth time."
• Gone Batty (Sefiru): The reason Tsuna likes going to the Pocket Circuit so much is that he can get lost tinkering with the toy cars for hours without worrying about his bad grades or being bullied and called names. He hopes Reborn never discovers the place, but unfortunately he does.
• Pretty Ore: Gray's bookworm traits are because he uses books as escapism for his stressful life.

Film — Animation

• In Brave, Merida rides her horse, practices her archery and does anything she can to keep her mind off what she considers the boring lessons her mother is teaching her regarding etiquette and managing a kingdom. Things come to a head when time catches up with her and she has to actually deal with matters head-on.

Film — Live Action

• Sidekicks is about a sickly and bullied kid who copes by having vivid daydreams — bordering on hallucinations — about teaming up with Chuck Norris.
• Basically the underlying premise behind Sucker Punch. To cope with the traumas in their lives, the girls create fantasized versions of themselves, who are badass warriors who mop the floors with robotic Nazis, orcs, and whatever else comes their way.

Literature

• This is the main theme of the sci-fi novel Escapist Dream. The book tells the story about a virtual reality world that can grant anyone the fun escapist lives they have always wanted. You want to gain superpowers and become a superhero, live a life of an anime character, or just be with your deceased wife and kid? Come and visit this world. The major theme of this book is how escapism can drove some into irrationality and insanity, especially with those who have lost something in the real world.
• Though Alice's sister accuses her of daydreaming and avoidance and refusing to grow up and 'be sensible', her entire journey through Wonderland and the Looking Glass worlds are a frank satirical examination of the absurdities of British culture, seen from the eyes of a girl expected to earn acceptance into a society she often finds too insane and incomprehensible to accept herself. This makes it an inversion, as Alice looks fully into aspects of British society that her teachers and mentors have blinded themselves to.
• The main characters in Bridge to Terabithia create a fantasy world in order to escape their hardships at school.
• In Dragon Bones, the protagonist's mother became The Ophelia by drugging herself with herbal potions so often that her mind isn't clear even when she's sober. She did this to escape her bleak reality, with her abusive husband who would also beat and almost kill her children. It is said that now "She only hears what she wants to hear." Escapism is also used as literary device; instead of someone being tortured, the readers gets to see only dream sequences, which the protagonist is implied to be hallucinating while his brother is being tortured to make him talk.
• Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein is a Troperiffic parody and celebration of escapist stories.
• In A Little Princess, Sara goes from being wealthy, well-respected, and popular to a scullery maid in a single day. She moves from the largest room in the school to the rat-infested attic. How does she deal? She pretends her doll is sentient and that she is a princess and must act accordingly. She continues to pretend and act as if she is a gentle and beautiful princess even as the antagonists treat her terribly.
• In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo plays the piano to escape her brutal, unforgiving life.
• In The Silence of the Lambs series it is said that, while in prison, Hannibal Lecter often lives in the memory palace he has built in his mind.
  "Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view."
• Quentin Coldwater of The Magicians is in the habit of using the Fillory And Further series of children's books in order to escape from the disappointing aspects of his life. The land of Fillory remains the target of Quentin's obsessions even after he becomes a student at Brakebills, as he believes that the setting to be a place where happiness never leaves. Later in the novel, he discovers that Fillory is a real place and journeys there in order to re-enact the heroic exploits of the book characters - only to find out the hard way that treating a real place with real inhabitants as your own personal playground is a good way of getting people hurt.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!:
  • Back in Catarina's previous life, her best friend Atsuko also used fiction to cope with her own Friendless Background:
    If I imagine myself slipping into these stories as I read them, I can forget all about my loneliness. I pretend that I’m the protagonist of these stories. That way, even someone who is lonely, shy, and unhappy like me can become a popular girl who everyone loves.
  • Sophia's interest in romance novels comes from her Hikikomori years, as she seeks solace in stories of popular people as she is shunned by everyone due to her albinism. She says it best in her POV segment below. Does the fact that Sophia is Atsuko's reincarnation has anything to do with this? It's one of the bigger mysteries of the series.
    In my quiet room, I read book after book. The wondrous, beautiful stories within transported me away from my cruel reality. When I was reading, I could forget all my troubles.
• The short story Silent Snow, Secret Snow is about a little boy gradually growing distant from everything in his life due to an obsession with a fantasy about snow. One day he finds that his fantasy has come true and is elated, before returning to reality. When his mother tries to get him professional help over his detachment, he pulls away and runs off to disappear into his fantasy world.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In "Normal Again", Buffy gets venom from a demon that convinces her she is really in a mental hospital and that her life as a Slayer is just escapism fantasy.
  • The sixth season, which the above takes place in, has Buffy trying to escape from her depression by having torrid rough sex with Spike.
• The Charmed (1998) episode "Brain Drain" has The Source create an elaborate spell to trick Piper into giving up the sisters' powers. He makes Piper imagine that she is really in a mental hospital where Prue, Phoebe and Paige aren't really her sisters and she doesn't have powers. The doctors in the hallucination claim she created her life as a Charmed One to cope with the death of her grandmother. The chilling part is that the hallucination is well timed to Piper regretting becoming a witch so she almost believes the hallucination.
• In Community, Abed frequently refers to his life in the format of seasons and refers to tropes, though instead of Abed actually being meta he's simply building a framing device around his own life. While reality is confusing and unstructured to him, he has a very strong understanding of tropes, and as a result he will not hesitate to start framing reality in the form of pop culture to help him cope with problems (or sometimes just to make his life more interesting). This is deconstructed multiple times as being unhealthy, mainly because of how extreme Abed will take these delusions and how little empathy he has for others in his attempts to keep the illusions going.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "Better Than Life", the crew discovers the titular long-lost VR game. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• In Smallville, it's implied that Clark is just a crazy person that created a fantasy world in order to escape reality. Until that's revealed to be a hallucination by Dr. Hudson (a "zoner").
• In WandaVision, Wanda is shown to have fixated on sitcoms as an escape from the tragedies of her life and her creation of the Hex is the same thing on a grand scale, a Reality Warper able to generate her own little world where Vision isn't dead and every conflict is resolved by the end of the episode.

Music

• Jimmy Buffett himself said "I sell escapism". Most of his more famous songs are about living an easy life in the islands.
• "Seeya" by deadmau5 can be interpreted as escapist dreaming.
• The topic of escapism comes up in the chorus of Epica's "Mother Of Light (A New Age Dawns Part II)":
  Reality is sometimes stranger than fiction
  Whatever happens in my dreams—I know it can't be worse than this
  So I prefer to sleep
• The narrator of "Imaginary" by Evanescence builds her "sleeping refuge," her own world in her head, to escape the horror of reality.
• Insidious One - Эскапист is specifically about escapism and fleeing into a better world of fantasy.
• "Escapist" by Nightwish.
  I tread the way and lose myself into a tale
  [...]
  A nightingale in a golden cage
  That's me locked inside reality's maze
• A common interpretation of the work of Owl City. Perhaps the most noteworthy example is "The Real World":
  Downy feathers kiss your face, and flutter everywhere,
  Reality is a lovely place, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Roleplay

• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Simon joins the Acting Club because he's attracted by the idea of taking on a persona and escaping from his real-life problems- namely his nightmares and need to take medication- for a while.
  • Edward likes sci-fi, fantasy, and video games, as they offer him some escape when he's hospitalised for the surgeries meant to treat his cerebral palsy.
  • Rose's parents neglect her and her babysitter doesn't care much for her either. She deals with it by escaping into the world of Dungeons & Dragons and other pieces of fiction.

Video Games

• Disco Elysium is about a man retreating into his own world to avoid facing his personal problems.
• This trope is discussed in A3 during the Spring Troupe's third play when Tsuzuru, the troupe's playwright, realizes that all of the plays he's written for the Spring Troupe so far have been about an Odd Friendship between two men because he's been subconsciously using a friendship he once had with another boy as inspiration for them and also that he's been giving these plays happy endings to compensate for his own Odd Friendship having ended badly. This realization causes him to wonder if these plays are just his self-indulgent fantasies about what he wishes could have happened in his own life and if he should give his latest play a sad ending just to avoid bringing his escapist desires into it. He's ultimately reassured by the other Spring Troupe members that his plays having some degree of Wish-Fulfillment in them isn't an inherently bad thing as long as they have characters and plots that resonate with other people too.
• Escapism, and learning to overcome it and accept hard truths of life, is one of the key themes of Eternal Sonata.
• Sumia in Fire Emblem: Awakening is an avid reader who likes to pretend to be the protagonists in her novels because she hates who she really is. The Avatar can help her escape this habit in their supports.
• In OMORI, Sunny creates Headspace, an imaginary dreamscape where his group of friends are still together, as a coping mechanism for his Accidental Murder of his sister.
• The protagonist team of Persona 5, spending their nights as thieves as escapism from the limits of daily life. Learning to deal with real life and its issues is the Central Theme of the game.
• In Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, this is how Hikari ends up in the Cinema in the game. Unlike most cases however, the distraction from reality comes in the form of depression, so rather than think about ways to escape the harshness of reality, Hikari just doesn't allow herself to feel anything about it.
• "Simmy" Kim in Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall is a woman in the Kreuzbasar who's addicted to "Better-Than-Life" simulations. After spending enough time with her, the player can learn that she got hooked after suffering a miscarriage that left her infertile, and Monica suggested she try them out to help cope with the trauma. There's a reason that her preferred simulations all involve her assuming a motherly or childish role.
  Simmy Kim: Monika said I would forget. She thought the sims might help. In there, I'm strong. And I never have to lose anyone. But then I come back out... here. Where children play in the street, and I remember. Where I see Dr. Ezkibel, and I remember.
• In What Remains of Edith Finch, Lewis finds his work at the cannery so dull that he immerses himself in a fantasy world he creates in his head. Eventually, it leads to him completely forgetting about the real world.

Visual Novels

• After he accidentally kills 12 people in an avalanche, the protagonist of Double Homework shuts himself away in his room, playing video games all the time.

Web Animation

• James Lee: In "Ellen & The Court of Public Opinion", the Court of Public Opinion condemning and executing Ellen DeGeneres is deliberately done to avoid all the "bad stuff" (climate change, COVID-19, everything Trump-related) literally happening outside of the building.

Web Video

• This trope was referenced in Potter Puppet Pals in one of Harry Potter's nightmares. He dreamed that he was a Muggle that created a fantasy world in order to escape the guilt of seeing his wife die. Played for the lulz.

Western Animation

• In Chaotic, the heroes' best friend is constantly avoiding Real Life through a trading card game. Then this trope is subverted when Chaotic turns out to be real.
• Discussed during the credits of Gravity Falls episode "Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons"; Soos, Blubs, Durland and Toby Determined are doing a LARP when Durland (Of all people) posits that they're just using fantasy to ignore their real-life problems, and should use the time to better themselves. Blubs just tells him that "Fortresses can't talk" (Durland's role) and the subject is forgotten.
  • In "Weirdmageddon Part 2: Escape from Reality", Dipper Pines realizes that this is why Mabel Pines doesn't want to leave the personal Lotus-Eater Machine; it lets her avoid the Growing Up Sucks trope that's been her character arc for the series.
• Gaz of Invader Zim is obsessed with video games. In her world humans are generally stupid, ignorant and repulsive and the world they live in is polluted and unclean. She uses video games and apathy to escape her reality.
• Jem: It's implied that the "Jem" persona is escapism to Jerrica. As Jem she can be free-spirited and do things she normally couldn't do.
• Moral Orel: Nurse Bendy's room looks like that of a little girl, full of bright colors and toys. She acts out the role of a mother to a loving family with a teddy bear husband and teddy bear son. She does it to escape from being constantly used, being utterly alone, and having no one who really thinks about her thoughts and feelings and treats her like a real person. However, once she is reunited with her actual son Joe, she throws away her "son" doll, because she finally has a real son who cares about her a lot. Very arguably one of the most positive portrayals of anti-escapism in television.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Castle Sweet Castle" is about this: Twilight does everything in her power to stay away from her new castle, which has replaced the old library destroyed by Lord Tirek's attack at the end of the previous season. When the others realize this, they try to make it seem more inviting to her.
• Opal has a very dark take on escapism that the titular character discovers when she enters in the house across the street to help Claire: everyone in this poor girl's family uses some form of escapism as a crutch to keep themselves distracted from their horrible lives.
  • The grandfather escapes using by watching TV and smoking, both of which have left him incredibly unhealthy and overweight.
  • The father escapes by focusing only on his appearance, surrounding himself with mirrors that block others out and becoming incredibly judgmental of other people's looks.
  • The mother escapes by turning to drugs and alcohol, leaving her incredibly woozy and temperamental as she lazes in her room alone.
  • Last but not least, Claire escapes by imagining that the Opal's Burgers billboard is a comfy house, that the family on it is her own and that she is the girl on the billboard, locking herself in her room in the attic to spend time with them in a happier house instead of her neglectful real family.
• This is referenced in a Phineas and Ferb commercial were Phineas tells the audience to turn off their computers and enjoy life outside.
• In the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft", there is a nerd that is depicted as completely obsessed with World of Warcraft and completely out of touch of reality. He is described as having "no life" by the characters.

---