OK, now we're getting somewhere! Combining the Potterosophy mythos with Bewitched and Sabrina the Teen Witch would be a hoot! Particularly if Samantha's Uncle Arthur and Dr. Bombay were in the script.
Posted on 07/18/2005 9:57:30 PM PDT by Eurotwit
What accounts for the success of the Harry Potter series, as well as the "Star Wars" films whence they derive? The answer, I think, is their appeal to complacency and narcissism. "Use the Force," Obi-Wan tells the young Luke Skywalker, while the master wizard Dumbledore instructs Harry to draw from his inner well of familial emotions. No one likes to imagine that he is Frodo Baggins, an ordinary fellow who has quite a rough time of it in Tolkien's story. But everyone likes to imagine that he possesses inborn powers that make him a master of magic as well as a hero at games. Harry Potter merely needs to tap his inner feelings to conjure up the needful spell.
"Tonstant Weader fwowed up," Dorothy Parker reviewed A A Milne's "Pooh" stories in the New Yorker, and I am sad to report that reverse peristalsis cut short my own efforts to read J K Rowling's latest effort, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. In any event I am less interested in reviewing the book than in reviewing the reader.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but complacency is the secret attraction of J K Rowling’s magical world. It lets the reader imagine that he is something different, while remaining just what he is. Harry (like young Skywalker) draws his superhuman powers out of the well of his "inner feelings". In this respect Rowling has much in common with the legion of self-help writers who advise the anxious denizens of the West. She also has much in common with writers of pop spirituality, who promise the reader the secret of inner discovery in a few easy lessons.
The spiritual tradition of the West, which begins with classic tragedy and continues through St Augustine's Confessions, tells us just the contrary, namely, that one's inner feelings are the problem, not the solution. The West is a construct, the result of a millennium of war against the inner feelings of the barbarian invaders whom Christianity turned into Europeans. Paganism exults in its unchanging, autochthonous character, and glorifies the native impulses of its people; Christianity despises these impulses and attempts to root them out. Western tradition demands that the individual must draw upon something better than one's inner feelings. Narcissism where one's innermost feelings are concerned therefore is the supreme hallmark of decadence.
A culture may be called decadent when its members exult in what they are, rather than strive to become what they should be. As God tells Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, Man all too easily grows lax and mellow, He soon elects repose at any price; And so I like to pair him with a fellow To play the deuce, to stir, and to entice. [1] What characterizes the protagonists of great fiction in an ascendant culture? It is that they are not yet what they should be. The characters of Western literature in its time of flowering either must overcome defining flaws, or come to grief. Austen's Elizabeth Bennet must give up her pride; Dickens' Pip must look past the will-o'-the-wisp of his expectations; Mann's Hans Castorp must confront mortality; Tolstoy's Pierre must learn to love; Cervantes' Don Quixote must learn to help ordinary people rather than the personages of romance; Goethe's Wilhelm Meister must act in the real world rather than the stage. Goethe's Faust I have long considered the definitive masterwork of Western literature, first of all because its explicit subject is the transformation of character. As Faust tells Mephisto, Should ever I take ease upon a bed of leisure, May that same moment mark my end! When first by flattery you lull me Into a smug complacency, When with indulgence you can gull me, Let that day be the last for me! That is my wager! [2] Failure to correct defining flaws, of course, leads to a tragic outcome, as in Dostoyevsky or Flaubert. More consideration is required to portray characters who change rather than fail, to be sure; that is why the late Leo Strauss thought Jane Austen a better novelist than Dostoyevesky. Finding the right partner in marriage, after all, is the most important decision most of us will make in our lives. Whatever good we otherwise might do has little meaning unless another generation draws its benefit, and that character of the next generation depends on the character of the families we might form. If we take inventory of all the married couples we know, how many of them can be said to have done this with due consideration? Courtship is a high drama that should keep our teeth on edge. Instead, we relegate the subject to the genre of romantic comedy, and to the consoling familiarity of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
The more one wallows in one's inner feelings, of course, the more anxious one becomes. Permit me to state without equivocation that your innermost feelings, whoever you might be, are commonplace, dull, and tawdry. Thrown back upon one's feelings, one does not become a Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker, but a petulant, self-indulgent bore with an aversion to mirrors. To compensate for this ennui one demands stimulus. That is the other ingredient in J K Rowlings' success formula. Magical devices distract us from the boredom inherent in the characters, and one cannot gainsay the fecundity of the author's imaginative powers. She manufactures new enchantments as fast as Industrial Light and Magic churns out new computer-generated graphics for the "Star Wars" films, or amusement parks erect faster roller coasters.
Pointy hats, it should be remembered, were made to fit on pointy heads. Rowling's fiction stands in relation to real literature the way that a roller coaster stands in relation to a real adventure. The thrills are cheap precisely because they could not possibly be real. The "boy's own" sort of adventure writing popular in Victorian England had a good deal more merit.
When we put ourselves in the hands of a masterful writer, we undertake a perilous journey that puts our soul at risk. Empathy with the protagonist exposes us to all the spiritual dangers that beset the personages of fiction. In emulation of the ancient tale in which a seven days' sojourn among the fairies turns out to be an absence of seven years, Thomas Mann sends Hans Castorp to the magic mountain of a tuberculosis sanitarium - but it is the reader is captured and transformed.
We are too complacent to wish upon ourselves such a transformation, and too lazy to attempt it. We find tiresome the old religions of the West that preach repentance and redemption, and instead wish to hear reassurance that God loves us and that everything is all right. We have lost the burning thirst for truth - for inner change - that drives men to learn ancient languages, pore over mathematical proofs, master musical instruments, or disappear into the wild. We want our thrills pre-packaged and micro-waveable. Above all we want our political leaders, our pastors, our artists and our partners in life to validate our innermost feelings, loathsome as they may be. I do not know you, dear reader; the only thing I know about you with certainty is that your innermost feelings would bore me.
Western literature, along with all great Western art, is Christian in character, including the product of a putative heathen like Goethe, whom Franz Rosenzweig correctly called the prototype of a modern Christian.[3] It is Christian precisely because it deals with overcoming one's "inner self". A jejune Manichaeanism pervades the Potter books as well as the “Star Wars” films, and I suppose a case could be made that such a crude apposition of Good and Evil corresponds in some fashion to the emotional narcissism of the protagonists.
In that sense, Christian leaders who disapprove of the whole Potter business simply are doing their job. According to some news reports, Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, disparaged Rowling's books in a private letter written two years ago. But according to NZ City on July 18, "New Zealand Catholic Church spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer says there is some question over the validity of the letter. She says more importantly, Vatican cultural advisors feel the book is not a theological work and is just plain children's literature. Ms Freer says it's wonderful children are being encouraged to read, and the Potter books are no different from the likes of Grimms' Fairy Tales and Star Wars." How reassuring it is that the ecclesiastical authorities of Auckland have taken the initiative to correct the pope on this matter.
That she did.
And it never made any economic sense, as they used it to buy things like "self-sealing stembolts", which also therefore presumably could not be made by a replicator, otherwise you wouldn't need to buy them with gold-pressed latinum. The Ferengi were capitalists as conceived by writers who didn't understand capitalism -- if they were real capitalists, they'd have advertising crawls on their ship-to-ship communications, sponsor logos on their starships, and "this message brought to you by..." splash screen at every hail.
OK, now we're getting somewhere! Combining the Potterosophy mythos with Bewitched and Sabrina the Teen Witch would be a hoot! Particularly if Samantha's Uncle Arthur and Dr. Bombay were in the script.
Exactly.
I "discovered" ERB even earlier. My mother used to read from the Tarzan books every night. When I was old enough to begin learning to read, she and I would read together. Eventually, she had me read to her. I went through the Tarzan, Pellucider (sp?), and Mars series... I just bought "A Princess of Mars" and hope to begin reading it again soon. I hope that I won't be disappointed: But then, I wasn't the least bit disappointed when I re-read the Heinlein books a few years ago.
Mark
No religion? Why then, do they celebrate Christmas? Why do they talk of God? Why all the talk about "tearing the soul?"
Also, remember, there may be a School of Witchcraft and Wizardry somewhere in the U.S. I'm thinking somewhere near Salem, Mass.
"Star Trek is pure Marxism."
Nonsense! When you have replicators what do you need money for?
Like the ones in New Haven, Washington, D.C., and Hollyweird? Or...uh...New Orleans?
Oh, I don't know. HP has lessons on loyalty (such as Neville in the first book), and perserverance in the face of overwhelming evil.
I was always liked Witchy-Poo from the Banana Splits.
Oh, I've reread, as an adult,some books that I loved as a kid and still loved them. Others, I found a terrible disappointment. I wish you well with your new Burroughs book.
The Veronica Lake film is a riot! Too bad though - her tragic decline, that is.
I guarrantee.
Picard's statement "We have eliminated the need for money, we seek to better ourselves", and the idea of global government is marxism.
Star Trek is Marxist utopia.
First off, the "federation" does not control those sort of things. It's a confederation of planets. Each planet is independantly governed. They aren't forced to be members, but they can join if they want.
As far as property, in the form of land, given in the ST universe, there's practically an unlimited number of inhabitable planets, and the ability to get there via warp drive, the concept is more along the lines of the old homestead acts. Sort of like one of `ol Lazarus Long's rule, about leaving a planet once the government gets to a certain point of development. If you don't agree with the politics of the planet, then get your own, and do it the way you like!
Will that lead to marxism? Not really. At least not in the same sense as we see marxism. The main difference is that in the real world, with marxism, you force people to produce for others, while denying the individual the fruits of their labors. In the ST universe, nobody actually has to produce. They have everything they need provided without actually having to work. The comment by Picard, about seeking to better themselves would be more about avoiding boredom than anything else.
Sure, it's utopian, but then it's fiction. They aren't constrained to reality.
Mark
What more defense does it need? Whay more defense does Peter Pan or Snow White need? They both contain magic. What's the big deal with HP?
It's a kids book indeed and kids are reading and are understanding that it's fiction. Training then to understand fiction will help the with the New York Times and CBS later in life.
Creepy flick. Louis Cipher ...
Fairy tales are the direct descendants of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. They were ORIGINALLY stories for adults and often filled with sex; or at the least, sexual overtones. Horrible violence as well, which has only lately been sanitized/Disneyed out.
And in fairy tales, there are good and bad witches and faries and imps and all sorts of other types of "magical" creatures. None of whom have decimated "WESTERN CULTURE" !
You really should read Bruno Bettleheim's books about the wonderful good that fairy tales does FOR children, as well as some of the Opies' books about the origins of and original tales themselves.
Tell me, what exactly does the magical powers either given to, or used to help the girls, in such fairy tales as Cinderella, THE PINK, THE TOCKABBIES, and such, does to teach children how to strive for themselves? :-)
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