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Hythloday
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Name: Sean
Country: United States
State: California
Gender: Male
Interests: Jesus Christ, literature, writing, music, computer/video games, movies, general merriment
Expertise: If you figure out what "Hythloday" means, then you'll know.
Occupation: Student
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Member Since:
10/26/2004
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| You have absolute power in your country for 1 hour; what do you do?I declare anarchy.
I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too! | | |
| The Very Last Thing I'll Ever Say About Harry Potter for a long, long time, I promiseOkay, so I'm going to just finish up with a very basic post--no weirdo analysis or anything like that.
What is worthwhile about the Harry Potter series is its ability to take
the ideals of things like bravery, love, courage, and friendship as
well as more sticky concepts like evil, power, and relativism and make
them palatable and believable for a postmodern audience.
Okay, I lied. Some weirdo analysis.
I don't think that the Harry Potter series is that much different from
the Chronicles of Narnia in that regard, though certainly the era was
different and Lewis had things to say that Rowling never has said. But,
at least, on a superficial level, I think both series are equally
valuable.
NOW do I have your attention?
Think about it--Voldemort embodies all the worst of Nietzsche,
ultilitarianism, and moral relativism, which have birthed all of the
destructiveness of the Postmodern era (which can be described, in
short, as an era whose single fundamental prinicple is chaos--if I tell
you anything more than that, your head will explode). One of the very
first things Voldemort tells Harry is that "there is no such thing good
and evil. There is only power, and there are those who are too weak to use it."
Now Harry, on the other hand, is not the embodiment of goodness but
rather is an archetypal hero. He is the stuff of legend from his birth,
but all of his great accomplishments do not come from extraordinary
skill or knowledge (he has neither) but from his consistent decisions
to choose what is right over what is easy.
And that is the core of the series--what do you do when you have the
ability to do almost anything? The nature of magic is not like that of
"Muggle" technology, where there is a sense of constant dependence on
the machine. Magic, in the Harry Potter series, is all based on one's
will. What one wants to happen, one needs only to know the right word
to say (or think) and perhaps to have a wand.
So, the nature of good and evil in Harry Potter is primarily explored
in terms of decision-making--it is a largely existentially-based
morality. And goodness is largely discussed in terms of love, whereas evil is largely discussed in terms of control.
Characters such as Harry, Dumbledore, Ron, Hermione, Lily (harry's
mum), and the Weasleys are generally characterized as good because they
love and value being loved. They care for people beyond their own
selves, even when such care will hurt them, as long as it affects other
for good. They generally lead by serving rather than leading by
controlling.
Characters such as the Minister of Magic (though they never entirely
depart from "ministry," or the service of others), Dolores Umbridge,
the Death Eaters, and Voldemort are typically (in Voldemort's case,
almost exclusively) characterized as evil because they seek above all
else to control. Their decisions are based on establishing and
maintaining their own power. Umbridge represents "the establishment"--a
mechanical, bureaucratic, discompassionate, legalism. She believes
that, provided, the authority is "official and proper," authority is
total. She would see Voldemort as an upstart, a revolutionary.
Voldemort is the epitome of selfishness. Now, he is not a passive sort
of character who, seeing a lack of control over his own life, ends it
as a means of getting control. Rather, he is an active character who
seeks above all else to protect himself. He seeks control over others
because, ultimately, it will keep them from hurting him. He has refused
to love anyone apart from himself, and so has made the world into
enemies that he must subdue--either by deceit in offering to share in
his power or by threatening to use his power. The thing that he fears
most is the thing that undoes all men (I read somewhere that
"Voldemort" is French for "flight from death"). Therefore, he seeks
immortality as his life's quest, and dooms himself as he delves deeper
and deeper into dark magic (magic used to control and hurt others) to a
life based on circular reasoning--no one lives just to keep on living,
there must be another purpose to make life meaningful.
Voldemort is portrayed spiritually as a wounded and tortured infant at the end of Deathly Hallows--he has gained no wisdom or purposeful experience, he is utterly self-centered, and has destroyed himself in the process.
Anyway, I could go on, but there it is for now.
There is something to the series that Christians should be cautious of
if they plan on using it as a teaching tool of some sort. I will not go
into detail about that here, but provide a link to the article that Orson Scott Card wrote
that illuminates that aspect (he is very insightful in his explanation
of how Harry ultimately cannot be considered a Christ figure).
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| Some Thoughts on Harry Potter (I'm afraid there are a few spoilers in it)I am going to tread some ground that Courtney and Orson Scott Card have covered already, so if you're familiar with what they've written about "The Boy Who Lived," then you may be well off just not reading this.
Anyway, my hope is to show what good there is to get out of the series. A common misconception of criticism is that its purpose is to reveal artistic weakness and inability--its actual purpose is to attempt to show others what is worthwhile and enriching. Criticism appropriately encourages both artist and viewer when it is done well. So, then...
My first exposure to the series was through my friend Ryan Baird, who had read through a couple of the books already. I was vaguely aware that the books were somehow controversial, but I didn't think much about them because they were kids' books. I bought Ryan one of the books for his birthday, and when I informed my well-meaning mother and sister about my purchase, I became shockingly aware of how controversial they were to many Christians.
Another relative of mine (who is actually very intelligent and not prone to the raving mob hysteria over ultimately trivial matters that grips many American Christians and makes us out to be worldwide fools year after year) explained that J.K. Rowling had done quite a bit of research about magic and was planning to make the books darker as the series went along. This relative of mine explicitly said that she did not think Rowling was writing sorcery manuals, but clarified that she thought that in ignorance Rowling was writing books that would expose readers to dark and potentially demonic influences.
This kept me away from the series for quite a while. I do not like scary movies or scary books for the most part, and, having witnessed some demonic activity, I was eager to stay away from it.
However, my good friend Ryan Baird, despite the controversy of these books that was most heated within his own community of faith, continued to read the books and enjoy the movies. I knew Ryan was a sucker for trouble, but something demonic just would not appeal to him like that. He would have run from it. Perhaps I was missing out on something? After all, I had never actually read one of the books or watched one of the movies.
So, I decided I would try out the movies first. I had to start from Year One with Sorcerer's Stone, of course, and I found the movie to be interesting but very bizarre at parts. Why were Harry's aunt and uncle keeping him in a cupboard? Why was this big hairy person using an umbrella for a wand? Why was John Cleese a headless ghost? Why is it that "love" dissolved the bad guy? The movie left me more puzzled than entertained.
I was intrigued enough that I decided to watch Year Three (the house I was staying at didn't have the second film), The Prisoner of Azkaban. I remembered the advertising featured a really demented (no pun intended)-looking Gary Oldman in mug-shot form, and I was expecting him to be a murdering psychopath of some sort. Of course, that's what everyone else in the story thinks for a while, but it turns out quite different. This movie is what really turned me on to the Harry Potter series--in that climactic scene at the lake when Harry bellows out, "EXPECTO PATRONUM!!", I actually cried. There was something really moving about it that I didn't understand but wanted to explore further.
Of course, I went back to school for the fall semester and had enough on my plate that I never read the copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (the British title) that I checked out from the library, and the series went on the back burner in my mind. But after I graduated...well, I still didn't read it. I just didn't have time--I was looking for work. At that point, I was also obsessed with reading "scholarly" stuff, and there was no way I was going to read a book that had been praised by a bunch of feminist students I didn't like and negatively criticized by my "Children's Literature" teacher.
But, as destiny would have it, I was invited to see the film version of Goblet of Fire with none other than my friends Ryan and Chalene Baird. I still hadn't read any of the books, of course, so I had no idea what to expect from the film other than a very long-haired Daniel Radcliffe. It was fun waiting in line for the film, though--seeing a bunch of kids with black robes on and crimson-and-gold striped scarves wrapped around their necks. I asked Ryan and Chalene a few questions about the story, and they answered them. They also emphasized a particular part of the story that was supposed to be very frightening that they referred to as the "graveyard scene."
Of course, once the scene came on, I knew why they were talking about it the way they did. Here was, for the first time, something of the witchcraft that the Bible warns about and that so many parents don't want their kids to have anything to do with--the use of dead things, blood, incantations, and what not. I still squirm when I watch the scene.
I had thought the rest of the film very enjoyable, though, so I asked Ryan and Chalene what they thought about it. To my surprise, they were actually disappointed, and said that too much had been cut from the story (though they argued a little bit about what should or shouldn't have been cut).
So it was that I got my needed motivation for reading the books.
To be continued...
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| I Finished It
A review will be forthcoming, but I want to give people a chance to read it without spoiling anything for them...yet.
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| Harry Potter and the Quarter-Life Crisis
The title's a bit melodramatic, I know.
And this isn't a review of the latest film or my thoughts on the next book. I'm actually not sure how best to articulate what it is I'm feeling, but I think that if I were to say that "I feel like a grown-up" that that would be as close as I could get to it.
I sound like an idiot now, but try to imagine if you will what you thought about "grown-ups" when you were...I don't know, five. Try eight, if five is too far back for you.
I remember them as giants, talking about things that made no sense to me and treating me with this really annoying "aren't you so cute" attitude. I was often afraid of them, for they not only had the authority to see I got a good spanking but also a certain awareness of something that I just didn't understand. They seemed frustrated, if only mildly, that I didn't relate to them.
It was for this reason that I despised being a child. I loved having fun and not having responsibility, mind you, but I wanted more than anything to be on an equal plane with grown-ups. I wanted to be treated like an adult--I eagerly anticipated each new birthday bringing me into greater awareness of what adulthood was like and a greater experience of adult freedom.
That freedom, I now know, is terrifying. And this awareness, I believe, is what I did not have as a child.
I think you really have to have moved out of your parents' place before you can understand this--the legal ability to vote, be drafted, buy real estate, drive, and drink alcohol never brought this home to me. But when you no longer cling to your parents to provide you with shelter, when you must establish where your own home will be in the world and where it is you may end up raising a family of your own...
It is not all bad, mind you, this simultaneous freedom and responsibility, and you are always in God's hands, but all of a sudden you're trying to figure out how to best use the next seventy-five years of your life and wondering how you will do and will have done once you come to the end.
I don't know if Ian and Jessie feel this yet, but I think they may soon. Possibly not in the same way a single, generally more pessimistic man does, but maybe.
How does this all relate to Harry Potter, you may ask?
Well, in this last book, he comes of age. Seventeen-year-olds are considered adults in the wizarding world, you see. And now, he faces the rest of his life without the protection of Dumbledore, who has basically "sheltered" him his whole life up until now. He has a monumental task ahead of him, but his goal is clear.
I envy that clarity.
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