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.
We can only imagine ....
A pre-requisite for writing such a diatribe as this should be to at least read the subject matter to which one is referring to. If the author had read the Harry Potter books, he would discover that the protagonists in the book had nothing handed to them.
Harry Potter and his friends didn't just pick up their wands and wave them around as this piece implies. They had to undergo several years of intense studies at Hogwarts and a lot of practice to get to the point where they could even attempt the heroics described in the books. Not to mention the enormous obstacles and adversity that they had to contend with.
Yeah, it's only fiction, and children's fiction at that. But this author is r-e-a-l-l-y stretching here to link the Harry Potter books with the decline of the Western civilization.
I fell in love with The Hobbit when I was ten, because it was so completely different from what the other kids were reading, and I was seeking out stuff that would continue my love of Baum and Dahl. I wanted fantasy, and found it in the Hobbit. Bilbo became my favorite character (still is to this day) and was desirous of sending a fan letter to Tolkien, but found out from the librarian that he had passed away three years prior to my discovering the book. Then she said those magic words : "he wrote even more about hobbits..." and LOTR became a whole new world to me.
I do agree with those who have said they couldn't stomach Tolkien's writing - to a point. Anytime he wrote through the eyes of the hobbits, I was enthralled. It was when he deviated into the "language of the Men" or Elves that I found my attention slipping into disgust or boredom.
I realized a brilliant thing about Tolkien's book though not too long ago. One can tell which hobbit is "telling the story", and the POV is very much line with the personality of the hobbit. Merry's POV is very businesslike and extremely formal, almost sounding like he is writing the medieval textbooks or Biblical passages. Sam is very down to earth and pragmatic. Frodo does exactly what happens to him as the story progresses : disappears and subverts himself to reaction, which just highlights the fact that his every step closer to Mordor erases more of his original personality. Pippin is my favorite, because his POV is very similar to Bilbo's and can tell a good story, with a few smart remarks thrown in for good humor.
That's what I love about Tolkien, and I find it rare that a fantasy writer can do the same.
I love Ursula LeGuin's writing for the exact opposite reason I like Tolkien though : she is very precise and elegant in her choice of words. She doesnt use a whole lot of description, but what she does say speaks volumes.
And then, there is Patrick O'Brian....
I would never say that JKR's Potter books were in the same league as those authors, but there are some merits to what she has done.
Very true.
It is possible to love both Jane Austen AND Harry Potter. I belong to an Austen internet community where the webmistresses have set up an entire temp board just to discuss HBP.
Rowling herself loves Austen. She's said it on several occasions. Besides, where else could she have gotten the name "Mrs. Norris" for Filch's cat? Anyone who knows Austen knows that this name fits that cat PERFECTLY.
It's a particle accelerator. You just lost geek cred, bud.
"But what passes for high culture has never been lower"
Well, we have one point of complete agreement.
"abysmal, ghastly rubbish."
That's pretty kind, actually.
"I would suppose that in 100 years people will still read Rowling's books and, for example, some of Steven King's"
I'd take that bet, if I thought I would be around to collect.
"But the people who win Nobel prizes for fiction today, will then be read only by specialist academicians, and insufferable snobs."
Well, I mean, really, the Nobel people (with the possible exception of the hard sciences) are among the moral lepers I mentioned earlier.
I'll bet we'd have some surprises if we were able to see what will survive the test of time.
Mental equivalent of a Snicker's bar? I always say cookie. :-)
And guess who else didn't wear pants? Donald Duck. AND he has 3 kids!
The tendency of the previous Pope was not to say much, even about things that you'd think were practically begging to be addressed. The new one is more garrulous. I fully expect that when (not if) he addresses Potter he will be pretty down on it.
I lost interest in the second paragraph. Who the hell writes this way? The title should be a giveaway that the author is a pompous ass.
He's a Roman Catholic. Or, a Comin' Wratholic. Take your choice.
Help is available, Mr. Spengler. Dial 1-800-GET-A-LIFE.
Really? Wow!
I guess the wonks at the Ernie Douglas Institute of Advanced Dorkosophical Studies will be asking for my membership card back.
I have a lot of catching up to do in Ghostbusterosophy 101!
Is there a Cambridge Companion to Ghostbusters? Does it come with flying green Jello?
Courtesy of The Ernie Douglas Fan Club
Isaac Asimov once classified such notions into six broad "Security Beliefs":
1. There exist supernatural forces that can be cajoled or forced into protecting mankind.
2. There is no such thing, really, as death.
3. There is some purpose to the Universe.
4. Individuals have special powers that will enable them to get something for nothing.
5. You are better than the next fellow.
6. If anything goes wrong, it's not one's own fault.
I always figured DD was some kind of degenerate. I'm taking back that nefarious HP book and locking my kid in a closet until he gets older.
In the real world, geniuses are a tiny percentage of the population. Are you opposed to education programs specifically designed to hone their special ability?
LOL! You ought to expand that into an article. I bet you could get it published.
"Now, Chip, if I catch you or Ernie reading my Playboys or any of those
sick Harry Potter books again, you can kiss those electric guitars goodbye!"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
My Bill just checked another HP out of the library today. (Anoreth turned up her nose.) I have a Regency Romance, talk about the decline of civilization :-) ... but wait, aren't Jane Austen's novels Regency Romances?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.