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The title irked me. The trailer irked me. The entire implication that, if it weren’t for meeting the “love of her life,” Jane Austen couldn’t have written her novels—or even been a complete person—irked me. So why did I go to see Becoming Jane anyway? Well, first off, you know I enjoy criticizing films, especially when they tread on what I consider to be my turf. Secondly, it features dance scenes with fiddler Aidan Broadbridge, whose live music I’ve frolicked to during New Year’s Eve parties for dance-nerds.
Notice that my love for Jane Austen’s novels is not one of my reasons for going to see Becoming Jane. Dormouse suggested that it might be better off for me and for my fellow moviegoers if I regarded the movie as being about a random person who just happened to have the name of Jane Austen. And, actually, I don’t mind a movie that fictionalizes a writer’s (or any historical figure’s) life in order to make a good story. Go right ahead. What I do resent is that at least the latest two films benefitting from Austen-mania (the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice and Becoming Jane) have ignored Austen’s wit in favor of sweeping romance; in other words, I don’t mind that the life being depicted isn’t really Austen’s, but I do mind that the writing being depicted isn’t really Austen’s.
Because the young woman played by Anne Hathaway is supposed to be a writer, I do resent the moments in the movie that suggest that she drew her inspiration directly from—no, directly copied—real people and conversations in her life. Sure, all writers work from experience—you can’t avoid it. But not all experience is empirical, though the popular creative writing theory of today would have us believe so. Experience doesn’t have to be seen or touched or overheard in order to be real. To have a character in Becoming Jane, and a male character at that, utter the phrase “It is a truth universally acknowledged,” and then to see “Jane” scribbling it down in the next scene (never mind that Sense and Sensibility was written before Pride and Prejudice) makes her into a mere scribe. Would a film ever cast an iconic male writer in this light? Probably not.
To be fair, Becoming Jane does at least address the “writing comes from [empirical] experience” assumption that underlies its story and dialogue. Young Irish lawyer Tom Lefroy, before he sweeps Jane off her feet, tells her that, in order to become more than an “accomplished” young lady writer, she must experience the wider world, thus to attain the scope of “masculine” (yep, he uses the word) writing. Then he gives her Tom Jones. What the heck? It is a truth universally acknowledged that Tom Jones is not exactly a portrayal of realistic experience. Anyway, after reading Tom Jones for herself, Jane does get to offer a comeback to Lefroy, but it seems a bit confused, perhaps because, plotwise, the most significant effect of the novel is to awaken her sensuality.
The Knightley Pride and Prejudice and Becoming Jane do have in common that they’re mostly about mud and sex (never the two at the same time, though—we wouldn’t want to offend the audience’s sensibilities too much). Sure, mud and sex existed in Austen’s world, and it’s fine to acknowledge that. What I react against is, again, the emphasis on empirical experience as the only experience that matters. Pretty much, the movie boils down to “Jane wants Lefroy because of sex, but she ultimately chooses not to marry him because of mud.” Poverty, the film tells us, equals mud—Jane’s mother has to dig her own potatoes because she married a poor clergyman. Now, Jane is willing to endure mud for herself, but when her decisions threaten to leave others wallowing in the dirt, she has to stop and reconsider actions driven by sexual attraction and romance.
(By the way, I do credit the filmmakers with choosing the perfect operatic piece to underline the sexual themes of the movie: “De vieni non tardar,” from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, which, as a voice teacher once told me, is all about sex. If you know the words and their subtext, it works perfectly—for what the movie’s trying to achieve, anyway. If you don’t, it may seem odd that Jane is so moved at hearing a fat middle-aged lady sing a random song.)
Anyway, to return to the art/experience theme . . . a potentially interesting twist occurs when Jane meets Mrs. Radcliffe, author of Gothic novels such as The Mysteries of Udolpho. Radcliffe lives a quiet life, and Jane makes the rather obvious comment that her lifestyle contrasts so greatly with the supernatural content of her novels. Mrs. Radcliffe points out that imagination can supply what is portrayed here as a deficit of experience. Argh. This is making me want to do some breakin’ down of the binaries, if you know what I mean. Why do imagination and experience have to be portrayed as separate sources of inspiration? Anyway, most of the potential complexity the scene contributes gets squelched because Jane seems more interested in Mrs. Radcliffe’s personal model of combining marriage and writing than she is in learning anything about writing itself.
I do think that Becoming Jane does an admirable job of portraying the difficult economic negotiations of late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century marriage—for men, as well as women. It just loses credibility in the reasons for Jane’s and Lefroy’s attraction to each other (except for the aforementioned sexual attraction). It’s not exactly a meeting of like minds. When, in Pride and Prejudice, Lizzy says that, between them, Mr. Wickham and Mr. Darcy have just about enough goodness for one man, she wasn’t suggesting that filmmakers try to make one man into both Wickham and Darcy. As appealing as actor James McAvoy is, even he can’t make oscillations between Bad Boy and Misunderstood Gentleman entirely convincing. It seems like, plotwise, he could have just been poor, rather than dissolute to boot. Ah, but then we wouldn’t have the “widening” of Jane’s experience. Grr.
Of course, even the film can’t argue that the happy-ending-marriages in Austen’s novels were based in empirical experience, since Austen herself never married. What does the movie do instead? It suggests that Austen’s endings were a way of giving her characters the good things that she never had. I don’t think the screenwriters intended it this way, but for me, it comes off as suggesting that Austen’s novels were a kind of adolescent wish-fulfillment, which is about as insulting as you can get toward some of the wittiest and most insightful novels in the English language.
There were parts of the movie that I still enjoyed, but in order for me to turn my feminist and aesthetic indignation off, it would have needed to forsake all pretense of being about a writer at all, let alone a writer named Jane Austen.
Final Random Observations: (1.) I like the score for the movie. Might have to buy the soundtrack, and not just for Aidan Broadbridge. (2.) Even though he isn’t conventionally handsome (but he is a skinny Scotsman, so I of course like him) and though his character is a little schizophrenic, James McAvoy does a good job with the soulful glances at his ladylove. Unfortunately, since she’s played by Anne Hathaway, whose eyes are a bit unnerving, she can’t reciprocate very well.
August 21st, 2007
It’s hard to talk about The Last King of Scotland without revealing the ending. Major reviewers haven’t succeeded in remaining spoiler-free with this particular film, and because, in part, I want to respond to them, neither will I. So if you intend to see this movie and want to experience it as a suspense-thriller, then stop reading now.
So, here are the plot-revealing reviewers’ comments that made me interested in, and yet initially wary of, The Last King of Scotland. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly writes, “The conclusion suggests, quite questionably, that only through the testimony of white men like the doctor could black Ugandans influence world awareness of Amin as a mass murderer.” And, on a similar note, Christianity Today’s Peter Chattaway adds, “In this film. . . a black colleague tells Garrigan he wants to help him escape the country so that he can tell the world what Amin is really like: ‘They will believe you, you are a white man.’ So for all the film’s post-colonial subtext, it does little to challenge the idea that the stories that matter are the ones in which the white man takes centre stage.”
I expected to agree with these assessments and to share the reviewers’ concern that the movie implied that the salvation of Africa lay in the white man’s hands. As much as I admired Hotel Rwanda as a powerful, well-made, well-acted film, I did squirm a little bit at the implication that, if only the white world hadn’t turned its back, things might have been different. No one should ever turn a blind eye to genocide, but never should it boil down to “whites” fixing “black” problems, either. I even worry about this with things like Bono’s crusade against AIDS in Africa and the ONE campaign. I certainly don’t want them to stop, because I think they’re raising awareness to something we all ought to care—and do something—about, but I do wonder sometimes if it just gives us one more excuse to shake our heads at the “Dark Continent” and mutter, “the horror, the horror.”
The Last King of Scotland does certainly have its share of “the horror, the horror” moments, but they mostly occur because the young Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy, who seems to be in every Oscar-baiting movie released these days) gets himself into genuinely horrifying situations though a combination of his own stupidity, naïvete, arrogance, and carelessness. I had been referring to Last King as a “genocide movie” before I saw it, but we actually see very little of the mass carnage of the Amin regime. All the brutality we see occurs at a more personal level, mostly within Amin’s own cabinet and household.
What’s more, I disagree that the film leaves you with a sense that white men’s testimony is the key to solving Uganda’s problems. If anything, the opposite, because this particular white man is so naïve and inept. When the black Ugandan doctor utters the line, “They will believe you—you are a white man,” it is with utter bitterness and contempt. This doctor risks his life to save Garrigan’s worthless hide, and we’re left thinking that Garrigan has a major personal debt to repay, not just a racial or even national one. (Way more problematic than that line is the fact that two Americans, Forest Whitaker and Kerry Washington, play the two Ugandan characters with the most screen-time. Whitaker does a fabulous job, of course, and I wholeheartedly agree that there need to be more good roles for African American actors–I just wish that directors would cast Africans as Africans more often, though.)
Sure, you could see Garrigan as a stand-in for centuries of whites who have mucked about in Africa and generally made a mess of things. What’s interesting, though, is that Garrigan, in his 1970s optimism and self-styled liberalism, honestly seems to believe that he has more in common with the oppression of black Africans than with the privilege of a white Englishman. “I’m Scottish,” he insists, whenever anyone dares to call him British.
Yes, the film does tell the story of Idi Amin from a white man’s perspective, but I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. In fact, I think the “Scottish” angle is a brilliant way to tell one part of Idi Amin’s story (and it’s certainly appropriate for a director who is, after all, Scottish—I’d be more troubled if a Scottish director claimed to be accurately representing the experience of black Africans). Amin’s real, documented obsession with Scotland (he wore kilts and named his sons things like “Cameron” and “Mackenzie”) becomes a way for the film to explore issues of both race and colonialism. In one of the DVD extras, director Kevin Macdonald explains that Scotland represented for Amin an ideal position in relation to England: it had been colonized by the English, but it now had a separate (and, in the 1970s, a growing nationalist) identity. Yet it still benefited economically and politically from being part of Great Britain.
However, does it make a difference that the Scots and the Brits are both viewed as white? Garrigan seems to want to believe it doesn’t make a difference, and early on, Amin seems willing to play this game. As the story progresses, though, you better bet race becomes significant. Garrigan becomes a lot more ready to associate himself with the British when they seem to hold the key to his exit visa. What ultimately allows him to escape? Yes, the sacrifice of the black doctor, but, practically, this opportunity wouldn’t have arisen if it weren’t for Garrigan’s white skin. (He blends into a group of European hostages who are being released.)
Now, the whole hostage situation and its exact timing with Garrigan’s capture and near-death is a little improbable. Even worse on the probability scale is the melodrama that develops when Garrigan begins having an affair with one of Amin’s wives. This whole subplot seems to exist to ratchet up Garrigan’s guilt over the mess he’s made of things, the harm he’s caused to the people he’s supposed to be trying to help (a theme already dealt with quite effectively when he unintentionally causes the death of a fellow Amin adviser). Garrigan gets Kay Amin pregnant, and she asks him to perform an abortion for her before Amin or anyone else finds out. He refuses, she goes to a village doctor, who badly botches the job, she goes to a real hospital, and in the meantime, somehow gets butchered by Amin’s men, who have found out. Now, the last part of this is actually historical fact, though Kay Amin’s affair was with a black doctor, not a white one. But, given Garrigan’s closeness to Idi Amin, it seems improbable that Amin would remain ignorant of the affair—or that he wouldn’t act immediately to kill and/or dismember Garrigan once he knew. Garrigan’s stupidity in the whole business is actually believable, because the film establishes early on that he has overactive hormones and a certain lack of regard for the marital bond. What happens to Kay Amin as a result of Garrigan’s actions may be a symbol for what happened to Africa under European colonialism, but it’s a symbol that fails to work at a simple plot level.
Anyway, I’m certainly glad I’ve seen The Last King of Scotland, because it was thought-provoking, if uneven. Peter Morgan, screenwriter for The Queen, was one of the co-writers for The Last King of Scotland, and I think it’s in part his words that led to Forest Whitaker’s and Helen Mirren’s victorious awards season earlier this year. I’m looking forward to his next work on The Other Boleyn Girl (seriously, what’s up with his royalty trend?) and Frost/Nixon (though, since that’s based on a play, I’m not sure how much he’ll have to do).
August 11th, 2007
First, the spoiler-free tidbit: while being interviewed by Meredith Vieira, Rowling began to talk tentatively about her religious beliefs. But she got no further than saying that her beliefs about death and the afterlife, and her struggle to believe, are imprinted all over Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—then Vieira whisked her away to the next, much less interesting question. I wanted to hear about her struggles to believe, because that’s something I can respect. If she’s struggling, then she’s not merely accepting a bland, watered-down version of Christianity. Not that her professions one way or the other necessarily affect how I read her books (she has previously stated that she’s a Christian), but I am curious about her faith-struggles, as they probably reveal her deepest values.
Okay, now for the spoiler-ish material. SPOILERS! (Fortunately, I can’t accompany them with the annoying little dllllling! that prefaced the spoilers on Dateline.)
Most significant: Rowling revealed the entirety of the original last line of the book, which was going to be something along the lines of “Only those whom he loved could still see his lightning scar.” (Remember hearing her say how the last word of the book was going to be “scar”? Well, there it is in context.) Argh! Why didn’t she keep it that way? That’s so much better than “All was well.” Nothing is ever completely well, not on this earth. Rowling said in the interview that she changed the line because she wanted to emphasize that, for Harry, the battle was over. I think we could have picked up on that on our own . . . Of course, I’m fascinated by Harry’s scar in the last few chapters and how it is and isn’t like the scars of Jesus’ wounds. When Harry is in King’s Cross (whack! whack! goes the symbolism) Station, in a sort of afterlife-limbo, his scar is gone. Unlike Jesus, Harry’s “glorified” body does not include the signs of his sacrifice. After his “resurrection,” however, the scar is back. I like the original last line because, while Jesus’ friends (well, at least Thomas) only recognized him by his scars, it’s only Harry’s friends who truly see his scar, and thus, him. It kind of dances around the Christ-figure stuff, while still remaining distinct (as it should).
Also interesting: Rowling’s pre-publication comments that one character who was going to die had received a reprieve, and two more characters had died instead, led me to believe that all three of these deaths or not-deaths occurred within Deathly Hallows. Nope. It was Mr. Weasley who was saved from the chopping block, and that was back in Order of the Phoenix, when he ended up almost dying. Rowling said that, given the lack of good father figures in the books, she couldn’t bring herself to kill the best father among her characters. Of course, so much in the Harry Potter books revolves around parentage. As soon as Lupin asked Harry to be godfather to baby Teddy, I knew that both he and Tonks were doomed. Rowling does like symmetry, and it was obvious that Teddy was destined to be a parallel to Harry (though growing up in a happier time). Interestingly, given that he is presumably raised by his grandmother, he could also be a kind of parallel to Neville.
To others who watched the Dateline interview: what struck you as most memorable?
July 30th, 2007
When I first heard that Robert Zemeckis was directing a film version of Beowulf, I had visions of Grendel offering our Geatish hero a box of chocolates, followed by a conciliatory hug. When I learned that the film was going to be in 3-D motion capture (like Zemeckis’s freaky-looking The Polar Express), that didn’t help matters. And the casting announcement that Angelina Jolie would be playing Grendel’s mother? Please. I know she’s now adoptive mother to half the world, but she’s hardly monster-mama material.
And then I heard that Neil Gaiman would be working on the script. Neil Gaiman, who once said, “the big problem with authors is you can’t train most of them. We don’t train very easily because we’re like otters. You know, a dolphin you can train. You can say, ‘Do this, and you’ll get a fish.’ With an otter, if it does something cool and you give it a fish, next time it will try and do something cooler.”
With Neil Gaiman on board, I became intrigued. I checked out the just-released trailer (coinciding with 20 minutes of the film being screened at Comic Con), and it seems motion-capture has come a long way since The Polar Express. It also looks like it veers away from the original story a bit, which could be interesting. In the trailer, Grendel’s mama is being all seductive, which doesn’t seem like it would occur after he’s killed her son (which is when the battle between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother takes place in the literary work). Is there some sort of Morgan-le-Fay/Arthur thing going on, in which Grendel is actually Beowulf’s son? Or maybe this conversation does occur after Grendel’s death, and seduction is just Step 1 in Grendel’s mother’s plan for killing Beowulf.
Well. I guess I’ll have to see it to find out.
Also, you have to visit the official movie web site just to hear Beowulf say, “I am here to kill your monstah.” It had me rolling on the floor. Not quite the intended effect, I think, but oh well.
July 28th, 2007
My post’s title is inspired by a recent essay in TIME Magazine: “Who Dies in Harry Potter? God.” This post will not address the issue of anyone else’s death in the book. In other words, it’s SPOILER-FREE as far as details, though if you haven’t read the book and you plan to, I do discuss the overall tone.
I am happy to report that, unlike in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, God does not die in the last volume of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. This is for the simple reason that God has never existed in the world of Hogwarts. (And, actually, this is the point of the TIME article, which, despite having an interesting premise, makes me wonder if the author has actually read the Harry Potter books. Or The Lord of the Rings. “Frodo was last seen skipping town with the elves”? Yeah, the Grey Havens are a real escapist lark.)
Now, saying that God isn’t in the Harry Potter books is not the same thing as saying the books aren’t Christian myth. After all, God never officially appears in The Lord of the Rings, the most thoroughly Christian extra-biblical myth ever written—and one that’s all the better for not being set in an explicitly Christian universe. Has Rowling succeeded in creating this type of Christian myth? Some readers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would say “yes,” including Meghan Cox Gurdon of the Wall Street Journal, who writes that Deathly Hallows “confirms something else apart from the well-thought-out-ness of Ms. Rowling’s moral universe: It is subtly but unmistakably Christian.”
Gurdon’s evidence? Some is thematic, involving “forgiveness and redemption” and “sacrificial love overcoming the powers of evil.” Other proof consists of visual images of crosses and direct scriptural quotations that appear on two tombstones in a churchyard in Godric’s Hollow: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21 and Luke 12:34) and “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26).
Tolkien would of course revolt at the idea of using direct biblical quotation in a work of myth, but Rowling’s world, as it is set in both our own world and a fantasy world simultaneously, is not bound by these same rules. However, the quotations were a bit jarring as I first read them, since the series has made no previous explicit references to any sort of religious text or belief. Maybe they wouldn’t have the same effect on someone who didn’t immediately recognize their source. Harry and company certainly don’t seem to do so; Harry even voices concern that the latter quotation echoes the values of the evil Death-Eaters (and, as usual, Hermione sets him straight on that score, though without referring to the Bible).
There are also patterns of action in the book that call to mind the central myths (and by “myths,” I mean narrative arcs, and not “untruths”) of Christianity, and probably deliberately so on Rowling’s part. I don’t disagree that she intended to create a subtly Christian myth. But even her overt references to Christian symbols show a limited understanding of Christianity. (I am not commenting on the quality of Rowling’s belief, because I am no fit judge of that—I’m merely speaking of her works.)
It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what’s missing. For Deathly Hallows actually shows some improvements in the ethics of Rowling’s world: Harry must make several crucial decisions that involve self-control on his part, and, for the first time in the series, he chooses rightly. There’s no nonsense here about how following his heart can save him, even if he makes an immoral or unwise decision. So maybe, given that he finally wises up, I should forgive Harry for all his prior stupidity—especially since forgiveness is apparently a theme in the book (I have to admit that I don’t see much of it there).
I’m pleased that Harry learns greater wisdom. However, something still doesn’t click. Part of the difficulty of analyzing myth-stories is that they either hit you or they don’t. Beauty-and-truth-together strike you so hard in the sternum that you lose your breath for a moment. There’s a sense of rightness, a feeling of “yes, that’s exactly the way the story had to go,” and part of that satisfaction is that it leaves you with a longing ache for more. Not “more” in the sense that you wish the author had written more or even in the sense that you’re sad the book is over, but “more” in the sense of being so close to the ultimate Beauty-and-Truth that the myth is pointing to.
Harry Potter has never hit me. I greatly enjoy the books, and I might even be pleased that Rowling has tried to create a myth at least consonant with Christianity, but my sternum remains untouched. I have no longing for whatever it is that Rowling’s books are trying to point to. (And, incidentally, a book does not have to be by a known-to-be-Christian writer in order for me to feel this pull. Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy does it for me quite nicely.)
Part of the problem may actually be a lack of imagination in the creation of Rowling’s world. I do not believe in authorial creation ex nihilo, but I do believe that humans are called, as beings made in God’s image, to be co-creators (or sub-creators, to use Tolkien’s term) with God. I’m not sure Rowling feels complete license to claim her identity as co-creator. Much of her material is derivative, though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A story doesn’t have to be told for the very first time in order to be compelling. But so many things in this last volume, more than in any of the other Potter books, seem pale shadows of Lewis and Tolkien.
In spite of my lack of sternum-response to Rowling, I will give her credit for creating, in Deathly Hallows, a vivid example of the intersection between history and myth. Tolkien always insisted that the two categories were not mutually exclusive, which is how orthodox Christians can accept the Bible as both history and myth simultaneously. To say that the Bible is a mythic work is not to make a comment one way or the other about whether it is factually true. It is simply to claim that the story operates at that grand and beautiful sternum-whacking level. That it is also factually true makes it that much more impressive.
So, while I’m not comfortable comparing Harry Potter to Christ, I will compare Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to the Bible . . . in one, very limited sense. For me, the most compelling thing about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is how it makes World War II into myth. Again, this is not to say that Rowling is denying the real horrors of World War II. As in the Bible, history and myth are not incompatible. (There. Comparison over.) Rowling’s skill in myth-icizing World War II is indeed impressive. She does not make Voldemort into a symbol of Hitler, or anything that facile. Harry is not Churchill. But the whole book is permeated with the aura of that historical moment: at one point, Harry and friends even try to tune in to a secret “Resistance” radio station that must continually change its access password. As one might expect, the Purebloods’ hatred of Muggle-born Wizards has overtones of the early Third Reich, though again, this is skillfully done, in a way that does not deny the particularity of the Jews’ suffering.
The World War II aspect Rowling captures most successfully is probably Britain’s self-identification as the only nation really standing up to Hitler and also paying the cost of that stand. The book’s extended battle scene, which is far more satisfying than any of the climactic scenes in any other Harry Potter book, has that sense of desperation that binds a community together in bravery. And there is a cost to be paid. But that cost is a very human cost, even when the story takes on some of the trappings of Christian myth.
In his “Who Dies in Harry Potter? God” article, Lev Grossman argues that the revolutionary aspect of Rowling’s novels is that “magic comes not from God or nature or anything grander or more mystical than a mere human emotion”—this “mere human emotion” being love, in case you missed the theme of Dumbledore’s sermons in every single book. In other words, Rowling’s world is supposedly more human, and therefore less supernatural, than those fantasy worlds of her predecessors.
To me, however, Rowling’s world is not human enough—and that’s actually why it’s not supernatural enough. Think about the real World War II, which, along with World War I, shook Western Enlightenment confidence in the goodness of rational men. Yet, in the World War II-influenced landscape of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling seems to want to throw us back into a world where good people are good and bad people are bad, for no other reason than that the “good” people don’t torture or kill others (though sometimes, actually, they do). Anyone living in the world with half a conscience knows it’s more complicated than that. Imperfect human nature is a mix of twisted desires and stunningly selfless goodness, and no one is completely without either.
Yet, again and again, Dumbledore tells us that Harry is “innocent,” when we all know very well that he’s not. None of us are. He may not have parceled his soul out into Horcruxes, but, if he’s human, his soul is already divided. Many readers know this, in spite of what Dumbledore and the narrative voice insist. In fact, I think it may be why so many of us are more intrigued by the figure of Snape, who, at least, the novels acknowledge as having a complex—that is to say, human—nature.
Jenny Sawyer has an interesting piece in The Christian Science Monitor, in which she attempts to explain Snape’s appeal in both moral and narrative terms. She writes, “Rowling has publicly expressed mystification over her readers’ fascination with Snape, even suggesting that his appeal is simply ‘the bad boy syndrome.’ Instead, her readers, whether consciously or not, have tapped into something that Rowling herself may have failed to recognize.” That something, for Sawyer, is the “need for a protagonist who genuinely struggled to define—and do—the right thing”; I don’t agree with that exact diagnosis, but I do think she correctly identifies Snape-ophilia’s roots in the issue of struggle. However, I would say that Snape is a more satisfyingly human character than most in the Potter-verse because his inherent divided nature is acknowledged, rather than pushed under the rug, as it is with Harry, even in this last tome.
Once again in Deathly Hallows, after all Harry has been through in the way of temptations, clumsy exposition informs us that he is “selfless” and pure and loving and wonderful. Any hint of evil in him is suddenly due to external causes.
God does not die in Harry Potter. But the messy glory of human nature sure takes a hit.
July 27th, 2007
Because, although I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night, I’m much more shocked by something I just discovered while reading a review of Harry Potter 7 on Slate: children’s fantasy writer Lloyd Alexander died this past May. Somehow I missed hearing about it. He was 83, he had cancer, his wife died just a couple of weeks before him. Those are the bare facts. But they don’t capture the amazing scope of Alexander’s many novels.
The Chronicles of Prydain are my favorites, of course, but the Westmark Trilogy and some of his stand-alone novels are also worth reading and re-reading. The Washington Post’s obituary sums it up well.
Lloyd Alexander loved cats and violins, and had a habit of creating long-nosed characters one suspected were based on himself. (His long-nosed bard of Prydain so infused my childhood consciousness that, when I met my future husband, who has a rather lengthy schnoz himself, the very first words that popped into my head were, bizarrely, “Fflewddur Fflam.”)
As a child, I once wrote to Alexander, and the gracious reply I received is still among my treasures.
So, if you’re looking for something to read now that Harry Potter’s saga is finished, try the Bard of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Many of his books are more satisfying than Rowling’s, anyway.
July 22nd, 2007
Note: This post has no spoilers concerning Book 7, though it does refer to crucial events in Books 5 and 6.
Last week, when I posted my review of the movie version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Dormouse asked a very good and very important question in the “Comments” section. I’ll repeat it here for those of you who may not have seen it:
Given that she [Rowling] has shown us over and over again that even her most “good” characters can have fatal and dangerous flaws and her most unpleasant characters can be truly heroic, how might she demonstrate “good” to your satisfaction? Aslan isn’t a real possibility in this universe. Indeed, I would argue that a Christ figure isn’t really an acceptable way to show human good in any non-allegorical story, as Christ is both human and more-than-human, and in a story about surviving in the modern world–magical or not–we only have Christ as an idea and a presence in our hearts and minds, and not sitting at our kitchen table, telling us how to be good. How do you demonstrate goodness if you are determined to keep your characters deeply human?
I replied that I’d have to think more about it, but that I could answer off the top of my head that what I was looking for wasn’t flawless characters, or even abstractly expressed principles of good and evil.
I’ve been thinking about it . . . and thinking about it . . . and talking about it. Then I came to a semi-conclusion last week, after listening to the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on audiotape. I think my biggest problem with the morality of Rowling’s world is not that the greatest virtue is “love,” but that, in Rowling’s world, “love” is almost completely emotion-driven.
Yes, love in the Harry Potter books can inspire acts of self-sacrifice, but, as Pop Otter reminded me, even immature adolescents dream of martyrdom. Again, it’s an emotion-driven phenomenon. There are exceptions, certainly, most notably when Dumbledore seems at times to respond with mercy to students like Malfoy and former students like Snape and Voldemort, in spite of his personal feelings towards them. But then Dumbledore also shows favoritism towards Harry and does lots of other things that make me not only dislike but also distrust him.
Perhaps the single most irritating thing Dumbledore does is to exposit about good and evil, which is not his fault but Rowling’s. And here’s where I have to admit that part of my judgment on the moral universe of Harry Potter may be aesthetic. “Show, don’t tell!” chants the chorus of creative writing teachers in my head. Yet, volume after volume, Dumbledore tells us, with increasing long-windedness, why Harry has been able to withstand Voldemort’s attacks. And, can you guess? The answer is “love”! (At this point, the chorus of English teachers begins singing cynically, “All You Need Is Love.”)
For example, let’s take the passage from Order of the Phoenix that inspired this whole post (and also inspired me to wholeheartedly agree with Alan Rickman (Snape) when, in the movie, he sneers, “I think I may vomit”). Sirius has been killed, Voldemort has tried to possess Harry, and it’s time for Dumbledore to explain everything (after Harry stops shouting):
“Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you. . . . He did not know that you would have ‘power the Dark Lord knows not.’”
[That’s from the prophecy, don’t you know, because prophecies always sound grander with inverted word order.]
“But I don’t” said Harry in a strangled voice. “I haven’t any powers he hasn’t got, I couldn’t fight the way he did tonight, I can’t possess people or—or kill them—”
“There is a room in the Department of Mysteries,” interrupted Dumbledore, “that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.”
And, “blech,” say I. Again, I admit that part of this reaction is aesthetic, and some of it is based on my personality preferences: to me, all sap is Stinksap. I do have a preference for the “hard” virtues involving self-control. I would prefer it if Harry could successfully close his mind, or actually use love/mercy to drive Voldemort off (which he seems to do in the movie). But I might at least be satisfied if we had some proof of Harry’s ability to love, proof other than “he likes his friends a lot” and “his mother died to save him,” which seem to be the only support Dumbledore mentions.
It’s not that I inherently mind Harry’s failure to exercise virtue—and here I must, as you all knew I would at some point, resort to an example from The Lord of the Rings. It’ll be short, I promise. For me, one of the most theologically significant things about The Lord of the Rings is that Frodo fails. He fails. Of his own willpower, he cannot make himself destroy the Ring. Enter Gollum, who nicely takes care of it for him. But Gollum is only there to bite with his nasty little toothses because, years ago, “pity stayed Bilbo’s hand” and because Frodo has continued to exercise that pity towards the creature that wishes him evil. In other words, yes, there is undeserved grace (brought about through unsuspected means), but it’s impossible to separate that grace out from the specific acts of mercy performed in the past by Bilbo and Frodo.
It makes my little theological heart go pitty-pat. It’s just so . . . right. Though pity and mercy can be initiated by emotion, acting on them requires one to go beyond emotion.
Once again, I’ve done a better job of complaining about what isn’t in Rowling than explaining how convincing good could be portrayed in her universe. But I’ve got to say that where I think she’s most convincingly portrayed the kind of good I’m talking about is in the character of Snape. I’m not saying Snape equals good, but he more frequently acts on good (acting on behalf of others in spite of his own personal preferences) than most characters in the series.It’s kind of like what Sirius says in the movie, that good and evil both exist inside everyone, but that what matters is which you choose to act on. Now, I haven’t seen that idea borne out much in the books, not even in Dumbledore’s exposition. More often, he mouths things about Harry’s inherent innocence and such improbabilities.
I’ve said before that in some ways I’m dreading Book 7, because I don’t trust Rowling to produce a satisfying conclusion. I do, however, expect Snape to die saving Harry, even though he profoundly dislikes him. I’m looking forward to that. And maybe, with Dumbledore and his exposition out of the way, Snape’s act of love—yes, I will say it—may be allowed to stand on its own merit.
July 19th, 2007
First of all, I’ve updated my review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix–check out my corrected observations on Kreacher, Grawp, and Occlumency lessons with Snape.
Second, Porpoise drew my attention to a set of predictions for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that claims Hagrid is almost certain to die–a claim based on an alchemical formula. According to said formula, apparently, the combination of black, white, and red signifies transformation. So far we’ve had the deaths of Black (Sirius) and White (Albus Dumbledore), so now we just need red (Rubeus Hagrid). The source is actually a little vague about whether this is from alchemy or tarot, but if it’s alchemy, it seems like a good theory. After all, Rowling knows a bit about alchemical history, as the British title Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone reminds us.
Third . . . have you ever thought lolcats were just too cute and fluffy? Then try LOLDEMORTS, courtesy of Dormouse! He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as you’ve never seen him before.
July 17th, 2007
It’s Princess Di!
How do I know this with absolute, without-a-doubt certainty? Nope, it’s not that I have even the somewhat questionable Divination powers of Sybil Trelawney; rather, I have just looked up a disturbingly obsessive Potter timeline that informs me that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is set in August 1991–June 1992. Therefore, Book 7 will begin in the summer of 1997.
As Diana was killed on August 31, 1997, she will no doubt be the Muggle-death that sometimes begins Harry Potter volumes–little did we know that Voldemort was one of the paparazzi that fateful night!
The only question is: was she one of the deaths Rowling had planned from the beginning, or is she one of the two additional characters who will bite the dust in Deathly Hallows?
Seriously, the Harry Potter Lexicon timeline is amazing. And odd. I’d heard people say that Harry Potter was born in 1980, but I never knew the reason behind the claim. It all stems from Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington’s (a.k.a. “Nearly Headless Nick”’s) Deathday Cake, which appears in Chamber of Secrets. His cake states that he died on October 31st, 1492. According to Lexicon creator Steve Vander Ark,
“This party was to celebrate Nick’s five-hundredth Deathday, which means the 500th anniversary of his death. Add five hundred years to 1492 and you get 1992 [Y12], so the party, which took place on Hallowe’en night, took place in the fall of 1992 [Y12]. This reference is the only direct date given for an event in the Harry Potter books. It is from this single note that all the rest of the timelines of the books have been derived. By the way, an inconcistency found in book one, where Nick bemoans the fact that he hasn’t eaten in ‘almost four hundred years,’ has been remedied. The text of book one has been amended to say ‘five hundred years,’ which supports the Deathday Cake date as canon.”
What’s even more interesting is that Rowling and her franchise seem to have drawn their official timeline from the HP Lexicon. Again, here’s Vander Ark:
“According to sources at Warner Bros. who worked on the DVD of Chamber of Secrets, here’s what happened. The folks at Warner came up with a timeline. There is pretty strong evidence that the timeline they came up with was from the Lexicon–the master timeline and the day-by-day calendars of the first two books. They showed this timeline to Rowling. She looked it over and made one or two comments or little changes, then approved it.
That timeline now appears on the DVDs of Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire. You can’t get to it on your television; you need to put the second DVD in a computer’s DVD drive. Since it was approved by Rowling, it is considered to be official. . . .
How do I (Steve Vander Ark) know that they borrowed the timeline from the Lexicon? Because I had made a tiny, stupid little typo on my day-by-day calendar of the first book. I had accidentally put the first visit of Harry and Ron to Hagrid’s cabin on Saturday instead of Friday. I did that because I write Monday-through-Friday schedules all the time as part of my job, filling information onto week grids. The last square of the calendar I work on usually is Friday, so I put the visit to Hagrid’s cabin in the last square without thinking. That typo is reproduced in the ‘official’ timeline on the DVD.”
Well, I guess obsession pays off. Or something.
July 13th, 2007
Since she is still alive, I assume she must be desperately in need of money to allow this abysmal-looking adaptation of The Dark Is Rising to be made. It looks like the worst children’s book adaptation since Ella Enchanted, which made mincemeat (and imitation-Shrek mincemeat at that) out of Gail Carson Levine’s delightful novel.
Just take a look at the trailer. Or don’t. Up to you.
They’ve CHANGED THE SETTING TO AMERICA! For some books, this works fine (e.g., A Little Princess), but not The Dark Is Rising. It’s so dependent on its British setting. Since when did Herne the Hunter roam the forests of North America? And this immediately rules out sequels that have anything to do with the books, because the rest of the books in the series revolve around the Arthurian legend. We ain’t got no King Arthur here.
And the rest of it? The adolescent-crush emphasis, the cheap humor . . . arrghhh! I can’t go on. I’m going to go kick things now and then hug my book in consolation.
July 12th, 2007
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