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.
He makes some good points, though. The Potter books do have an oversimplified view of good and evil. Some characters are naturally good, and others naturally evil, and that's that. Introspection and internal division aren't central features of the book.
But the soldiers who won the Second World War for us were largely readers of comics and other junk literature. They weren't averse to sacrifice or higher values or overcoming the self, but they didn't make a cult of such things, as some on the other side did.
"Spengler" reads something like Frederic Wertham and other critics of comics and popular literature of the 1950s. He's high-minded and right about much in popular culture. But Wertham underestimated the resiliancy and durability of society, and perhaps "Spengler" has done the same.
I don't know of any ancient writers complaining about narcissistic fictional characters.
Maybe you just meant to say the decline of civilization in general has always been talked about. Sure. And some times they've been completely right.
"they can only lose themselves in games of pretend."
Good point.
As to the overall theme that a culture fixated on self-absorption is a decadent one, I can find little to criticize except to note that plenty of cultures that are at less then their apogee have had the same problem. In fact, I can't think of a single culture without it. It may be a part of the human condition, in which case either we're all on the road to perdition or perhaps we're simply human. That the human condition displays imperfections is the very source of literature in the first place.
I do think that the overall issue of magic - or magick, or majick, or a basketball player named Johnson - has a good deal to do with the desperate hope of the powerless for some means of bringing the powerful to their knees through some means that is at once mysterious, obscure, omnipotent, and nonexistent. Mumbling corrupt Latin and making strange gestures and focusing one's putative mental powers on willing a condition other than the mess one is in is, I am afraid, the common refuge of the impotent. This also is cross-cultural and as much a human imperfection as halitosis and hangnails.
And so to our young friend Harry. The entire submergence in magic is an expression of an adolescent rebellion against powerlessness that is addressed by a hot rod, a credit card, and eventually by a job to pay for it all. It is at that point that, like Faust, we find that our power comes at a price.
"The central theme of this article by Spengler is . . . "
. . . contained in this sentence: "A culture may be called decadent when its members exult in what they are, rather than strive to become what they should be."
Spot on. Jacque Barzun says just about the same thing in "Dawn to Decadence." What else do you think explains MTV and hip-hop?
"Such snobbishness invites criticism in return"
When I was a kid it was considered "snobbish" to say "isn't" instead of "ain't" and "I saw" instead of "I seen."
Time for some people to put the things of childhood behind them.
I like O.S.Card's alternate history series.
I tried to read Tolkin, when I was 22 and it a bore and absolutely unreadable! Everyone kept telling me that THE HOBBIT and the Ring books were right up my allesy; they weren't and still aren't. But the damned HIPPIES sure loved those books.
"A WRINKLE IN TIME" and the rest of that series, is really quite good for kids, as are the NARNIA books.
And I think that Jack Finney's novels, novellas, and short stories would really suit a lot of 11,12, and 13 year old as well as adults.
But this whole anit-Potter industry is just plain crazy and I don't even like the books; find her writing to be 10th rate Roald Dahl, as a matter of fact.
There's nothing wrong with children playing games of pretend. As a matter of fact, few children actually do it today, which is why imagination is in such supply nowadays.
this is reality of it people: its just a book,magic doesnt exist and no kid is gonna turn into a devil worshipper because he read about a little kid who wears big round glasses and yells PRESTO every few pages...JEEEZ
"I can find little to criticize except to note that plenty of cultures that are at less then their apogee have had the same problem. In fact, I can't think of a single culture without it."
I think the important thing there is that a culture becomes decadent when the people who compose it stop striving for the good. It's less a matter of self-absorbtion than that people choose to "exult in what they are" rather than setting their sights on what they should be.
So, what are we? Well, we're lustful, so let's exult in and idolize our lust. We have violent impulses, so let's make heroes of the violent and scoff at any onus to control those impulses. We (many of us) like intoxication, so let's lionize drug pushers and users. We're acquisitive and covetous, so let's knock George Washington off his pedestal and put rich, womanizing, drug-using athletes up there.
It's not just self-absorption. It's a 180, a culture turning its heart and its hopes away from the good and toward whatever evil our natures conjure.
Yesterday's hero: John Wayne.
Today's hero: Poop Foggy Nog, the eggregious P.I.G., and a whole array of other moral lepers.
It's a fundamental shift. A healthy society is striving to climb the mountain to better things. A decadent society has decided that everything worth having is in the pit, so they have turned around and are running full-tilt in the opposite direction.
"There's nothing wrong with children playing games of pretend."
That depends on what they're pretending, and what they're learning from it.
Where were these folks early on when evangelicals were getting hammered over their comments on Potter?
For well over 100 years children fantasized about going into outer-space.
Being Tarzan used to be pretty big too, but I doubt that any child ever learned much of anything from that, except stretching is imagination and THAT is almost a dead trait now.
I guess that you never heard of the "pennydreadfuls", which well over 100 years ago, had children idolizing petty murderers and thugs and drunks, out west, such as Billy the Kid.
I did too. Thanks for the post.
So, what are we? Well, we're lustful, so let's exult in and idolize our lust. We have violent impulses, so let's make heroes of the violent and scoff at any onus to control those impulses. We (many of us) like intoxication, so let's lionize drug pushers and users. We're acquisitive and covetous, so let's knock George Washington off his pedestal and put rich, womanizing, drug-using athletes up there.
"We" meaning you and I, we're not any of those things, or at least I suspect not. Especially you - if you were, it wouldn't bother you. Do these complaints represent any broad tendency in our culture? They're certainly visible tendencies, but I'm not sure they're particularly significant ones, at least not in the light of the deeper and more permanent ones that Spengler invoked to represent the best things about Western culture. After all, would you expect Faust or The Magic Mountain to be more popular than comic books? I'd be disappointed if they were - they take work. That's what Spengler was getting at, I think, that many people are less willing now to put in that sort of skull-sweat in order to understand and appreciate the world they're in.
In fact, I don't think that's quite correct. It isn't elitist to state that this part of culture is available only to those willing to work for it, because that's open to anyone with a library card and and inquiring mind. But there is a meritocracy at work here. It isn't free. I like it that way. Take heart.
Then how does one account for the enormous and continuing popularity of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (in both book and movie form)?
That said, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Harry Potter books are pablum. I picked up the first one at the library one day, intending to read it ... read a couple of chapters there in the library, and put it back on the shelf again. I read constantly as a child, and there was a LOT of children's literature that certainly put those first two chapters to shame. (Try the Edward Eager HALF MAGIC books sometime ... now *those* were fun! :)
Yes, and Miss Bingley was portrayed by the author as a nitwit and a b*tch. Character assassinations of the heroine by an antagonist are not to be relied upon. I concur that Elizabeth's issue was prejudice, not pride.
"boys have played war games for millennia."
Something that teaches an array of survival skills and prepares them for very real possibilities.
"For well over 100 years children fantasized about going into outer-space."
Which also turned out to be a possibility. What's your point?
"Being Tarzan used to be pretty big too, but I doubt that any child ever learned much of anything from that, except stretching is imagination and THAT is almost a dead trait now."
Well, let's see: what were the central themes that Edgar Rice Burroughs stressed?
Courage, honesty, loyalty, fidelity and monogamy in love, perseverence, self-reliance, self-improvement, personal responsibility, and above all being a wimpy little twit who doesn't need any of those things, and need not suffer the consequences of lacking them, because he has magical powers.
Oh, wait a minute...that last one is from a different author.
One of my objections to HP is the same one I have to "The Karate Kid." In KK, the wimpy little twit finds a teacher who teaches him how to short-cut past the years of hard work that are (in reality) required to obtain any such skill.
That's a bad lesson to teach a kid, because in real life there are no shortcuts. You put in the work and the time or you just don't get there, period.
In the same way, HP gets fast-tracked to unimaginable power, and that is also a bad paradigm for a child to imbibe.
One of the possible consequences of teaching such models of life to a child is that he grows up to become one of those people like the loser brother in "Parenthood" who is always looking for a short-cut to riches.
People have been comparing HP to classic fairy tales, but where that falls down is that classic fairy tales always have a lesson for life in them, something that is both true and potentially useful in this life.
In the animal kingdom, juvenile predators play games that teach them to catch prey, while juvenile ruminants play games that teach them to avoid predators.
With that as a model, HP is at best the equivalent of teaching juvenile gnus that the best way to avoid predators is to learn to disco dance, and at worst the equivalent of teaching them that "predators are your friends."
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