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.
Oh, my goodness! Did I have a momentary lapse of memory regarding the first name of an author, when posting at 3 in the morning?
Heavens, that certainly is significant.
P.S.
You couldn't have picked a more appropriate avatar.
"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" !
It seems that you are so eager to quarrel that you're not even bothering to notice what it is I'm saying.
I compared classic fairy tales *favorably* with HP.
I would agree that fairy tales have been a significant element of Western Culture, and in particular for the transmission from generation to generation of some of the eternal verities.
"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?"
I really wish you'd make an effort to argue against positions I have actually taken.
Not every fairy tale addresses the same subject or teaches the same lessons, obviously.
I am not familiar with fairy tales named "THE PINK" or "THE TOCKABBIES," and in fact find no mention of "THE TOCKABBIES" anywhere on the Internet.
" I suspect that the latter are a minority, and that they have always been a minority."
Yes, which is why schools used to (and should) force the majority to read them.
'Scuse me. Should have clarified a thing or two. Harold Bloom's "Closing Down of the American Reader" was an article in (ugh!) The Boston Globe in 2003. Wasn't a book.
And of course you're correct about Allen Bloom's book title, "The Closing of the American Mind."
Sooooooooo, we're both right. I love happy endings, don't you?
Cheers,
CSG
Once, four hundred times, I don't care. I wish I'd written Harry Potter. However, my imagination was stultified during my early years in the book biz when fantasy for children was considered totally rotten by the school and library muggles in power. Had I not been so prejudiced, I would have recognized the opportunity presented to take over children's books at the publishing house that owned the rights to the entire Wizard of Oz series and had them in mothballs. I turned them down, and a few years later, copyrights expired and the Wiz went large. Live and learn, but does it have to be so expensive?
Potter is fun. Doesn't need to be great literature. Obviously.
"Oz didn't give nothing to the tin man
that he didn't already have..."
In the same way, Potter isn't conjuring up anything for kids that their magical little minds hadn't already considered.
placemarker
You are mostly wrong on every possible interpretation of this comment. This is made particularly clear in the latest book, which deals explicitly with this very issue.
One of the things that becomes evident to any child who reads the Potter books is that magic is no short cut to anything. Althought some of the characters experss sympathy for people without magic powers, in actuality, magic makes life no easier or happier than electricity or any other "natural" source of power. It has advantages, in the same way that being born into a rich family has advantages -- but then look at the Kennedys.
For those who havent't noticed, magic is a metaphor.
" I do not know you, dear reader; the only thing I know about you with certainty is that your innermost feelings would bore me."
He proves that he has succumbed to that same selfish attitude which he despises. His own innermost feelings he would find fascinating -- evidenced by this poorly written and overly wordy critique. It is everyone else's feelings he finds boring.
These things are actually part of an older tradition - as you say in fact. I mentioned printing because that was the first indication of the demand for these things.
Ariosto was certainly not the first such fantasist. "Orlando" is actually a sequel to Boiardo's similar work (I assume, since I have not read Boiardo).
I have no problem with calling "Orlando" a work of the Renaissance. The 1500 cutoff is pretty arbitrary.
My larger point is that Potter and its ilk have ancient roots, and sure, they are not necessarily Christian ones. But even Christianity did not lack such influences, from St. Paul onwards.
Funny. I've heard Tolkein praised for decades, and
I had high school students who read everything he
wrote. So I'm not knocking his ability to create
"another dark world" for people to wander through.
Yet, I've tried many times to read his stuff and
just can't get into his characters. Hobbits and
Efts are ok for those who enjoy them, but I prefer
my main characters to be at least somewhat on my
level of being; i.e. human! <>g<> OTOH, I couldn't
get into Watership Down or that spider heroine either.
I've come to chalk it up to my flawed taste.
As for Rowling vs Tolkein...I find Harry and his
friends most satisfying, enabling me to lapse
back to my youth emotionally and mentally. It's
a real trip! Most kids have an Hermione and Ron
in their cache of memories. How great it would
be if every kid also had a Dumbledore and a Dobby
tucked away in his childhood!
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