The Diamond Island

Harvesting this year’s crop of tomatoes, corn, and basil.  A much better outcome than last year’s withered out crop of rotten potatoes.  No joke about it, last year’s harvest was a crash and burn bummer.

This year was worse in a way though.  The weeds kicked us around the block with their modifier-bonus allies the insect brigade.  With morale low, the agriculture worthiness guardians could have easily made us cry uncle.

Hek, our plot neighbors didn’t show up once this year.  I can see the skeletons of their hopes dashed to the ground, in the form of scattered forgotten tools and half-opened fertilizer bags colonized by wind-borne seeds.  Their weeds and brambles are taller than me now.

For a moment I catch a glimpse of another labyrinth traveler’s camp, taken over by the wild.  Could have been us.  No shortage of remains around here!

I might have mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating.  I emphasize with the weeds, and admire their tenacity and inventiveness.  If there’s something in the plant world that I think of as resembling the hyper-ferocious predators from the Alien movies, weeds fit the bill.  Break ’em up into pieces and they spread doom.  Removing them is tricky and back-breaking work.  If you let them past the beachhead of sprout they soon grow out of control.

Weeds are also our friends in a twisted sort of way.  They move into hostile ground and turn it to their advantage, wresting a baseline of nutrients out of almost nothing and returning it to the ground.  You can’t argue with a series of plants that insist on growing no matter how difficult the repression of our desire for the “order” of a cultivated garden.

Do weeds suffer, and cry out as they transform the land into something from nothing, messing up our plans for an easy go of things like tricksters keeping it real?

Artists today are like weeds.  The environment of inauthentic wasteland monoculture breeds tougher and tougher weeds.  Until those who aren’t committed to growing to their vision, and I mean committed enough to be humbled by the whole thing yet keep doing the work, end up not being there the next time.  You’ll just see their remains, swallowed up by the earth.

If they do suffer, they’re singing the blues, from the ground up mutha-scratchas.

Okay, so like what the dame Hek is going on?  I’ll tell you what’s going on, total craziness, that’s what’s happenin’ yo.

The brand new trans-triple headed crossroads warp core is installed and calibrated.  The whole honeycomb hideout resonates with the sound of the rhythms of the grave, from the ground up.  The cats might as well be staying on a gigantic spaceship of peace and love with catgrass on the house.  Even the catboxes are ghost free and soothing to the rump.

Took me and K a while to recover from “stunned” and then the disorientation hit.  That kind of strange contentment that comes from breaking free of a conflagration-fulmination into blue skies.  At first you think you’re hallucinating.  But it’s true, it’s true, it’s dame Hek true ahroo!

Back at the controls, I’m thinking about Ariadne’s thread.  Yeah, we all need a grounding out technique to keep us from getting lost.  But what if the minotaur needed a thread too?  You know, so he could keep from getting lost to the outside world?  What you say?!  Monsters with a guidemap to jack us?  Hek-yeah.

It’s a two way street, coming and going, departure, return.  Aum.

And that goes for the divine as well as us human losers on this patch of dirt.  The living spirit looks to us to try.  Judging by that haunted house labyrinth I think some journeys are a one time only limited time offer.

I have the sense of answering the living spirit’s own prayer here, that there is a seeing up at the heavens and beholding earth.  How many people ever get to go to the moon and look up in the sky to see themselves, their home suspended above from what was supposed to be above for so long in our imaginations?

I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles.

We are the aliens, landing at a Mount Olympus near you.  Do we bring messages of peace and advanced technology, or are we coming to invade?  Are we bound by the prime directive when visiting Saint Anthony’s cottage for a cup of tea?  Whose outside world manifestation are we anyway?  Boxes within boxes, elephants all the way down.

Okay, I know there’s a reason we have “drains” at the front of bathtubs.  To keep water from overflowing and making a mess.  Unfortunately, there’s no way to override this safety feature.  And the bathtubs in this country as a default really don’t serve adult size bodies very well.  They’re too shallow.

I suppose this is to allow easy step-in and step-out, or maybe to make crawling out easier in case one is overwhelmed by the hot water.  But then why not just make all bathtubs shower stalls instead?  It’s a middle of the road compromise that makes for a pretty shoddy generic bath experience.

I mean, if the average bathtub were even a few inches deeper it would make all the difference.  Part of the pleasure of civilized immersion is in the knowledge that one is, without a doubt, securely doused.

Yes, yes, one can always do a workaround or purchase for themselves a more suitable arrangement.  I’m well aware of that.  Why, imagine, one could very easily just drive to some facility somewhere and partake of their options.  What a truly advanced civilization we are!

My point is, we’re talking about the default, absolute minimum you can expect.  You can always buy yourself a plastic cover for the front drainage area, but if the bathtub has a textured surface this won’t work.  One is forced, as always, to use advanced technology suitable to the undeveloped situation at hand.

The washcloth.

Jam that confounded cloth into the drainage holes and you will get some measure of improvement in the situation.  Although, as I have noticed, some bathtubs are plus or minus a few inches.  One cannot pretend to be a pleased crocodile with eyes and nostrils peering above the water for tasty ideas to crop up in one’s saurian brain if one does not have a satisfactory illusion propping up one’s suspension of disbelief.

I’ve got a technique to maintain here people!

However, there’s a second potential fly in the soup to consider.  How powerful the water heater is.  There’s the pathetic half-size heaters in many apartments that barely give you a decent shower, let alone allow you a solidly hot and full bathtub.

Then there are the “almost there” heaters that seem to choke on the last 10% of the amount required.  Scalding hot water comes out cool within moments, and if you aren’t paying attention you’ve got ice cubes in your hot tea, so to speak.  What a major rip off!

There was one good thing about the haunted house.  The downstairs bathtub had a decent volume, it was one the same level as the heater, so no loss of amount on its way up the pipes to reach you.  The water never failed to be perfectly hot and satisfying.

As long as I was willing to ignore the third light bulb of four flickering on and off at random moments, the door with no doorknob (just a big hole for ghosts to peer through), and the thought that only a drywall separated me and the Chucky doll in the spooky basement—why I could regularly have an awesome experience!

It really is like trying to put together an alchemical experiment at times.

The new living quarters are situated in a nice forgotten world, suitable for K, the kitties and I to recover safely from our ordeal in the crum-bum haunted house.  We’re puttering around the house, K and I, trying to figure out what to allocate our slowly increasing warp power to today.

I get a transmission from my way-out, surprisingly random Aquarius friend Mar-Jam, also known as “Goddess”, solver of prickly practical problems, and strangely clever girl.  She knows I’m a big-big monster, so I like a big-big bite.  Thus the three-megabyte image attached to the transmission of a tri-force shelf unit of impeccable usefulness in just the right dramatic moment.

Move heavy objects and do some more work on the new place’s layout, when we’re still recovering from the month long moving nightmare?  You bet.  We need more shelves and they need to fit this one area near the kitchen in just the dramatically appropriate way.  We’d be fools to turn down this mission, and all it’s attendant experience points (only true adventurers need apply).

We get to see Mar-Jam’s nifty living quarters (and we take notes on the controlled randomness obscurity circuitry we see), and her adorable little ones absorbing nutrients from the tidepool they are living in.  With the help of her handy other half we transport the goods to the Honeycomb Hideout .  They get rid of junk, and we make use of junk!

Everybody wins, ice cream on the house.

There’s some damage—cuts, aches and pains—all that good stuff from taking on such a mammoth task.  But the three shelving units plug into the hyper-altimeter retro space byway like they were meant to be there all along.  It’s then that we realize what has come to our humble abode:  Cat Town.

By some strange arrangement of the furniture, the tops of the tall shelves are a perfect place for the cats to hang out and survey the downstairs situation.  Frankee finds the secret route over the mountains first.  Then Michael, fat and ungainly monticore that he is, manages to attain heights I haven’t seen since he was a young monticore.  It’s unreal!

Of course, the shelves make perfect storage units for the china, extra dishes, and various assorted things we’ve been dying to unpack but couldn’t find the right disembarkment combination for.

So, welcome to Cat Town, highest point in the downstairs living energy flow, with lots of space to plop down comfortably.  Plenty of great angles to rub one’s fur against, and also enough of a sunk-in effect to peer down if necessary or hang one’s paws over lazily.  I am sure it will only be a matter of time before cat beds, soft towels and other assorted comfy surfaces begin to accumulate.  Along with favored toys carried up to be ripped lovingly to shreds in the safety of alpine security.

But wait, there’s more!  It even comes with a bonus for humans too.  Within moments of plugging in Cat Town, K and I find ourselves inspired to do more work on the house.  The downstairs and upstairs bathrooms are cleaned, cleansed, and made fully pleasing to our mind’s eyes.  Unpacking galore!  At last we can open up both rooms to the cats, having arranged all things to our liking.

It’s like in a video game when you open up a whole new area of the adventure board.  Hey, I’ll take the bonus.  The cats are the happiest I’ve seen them since we smuggled them free of the haunted house under a blood red sky, and landed them in the new place with their eyes bugging out, hardly daring to believe it was true.

There is no place I know to compare with pure imagination.

My policy is not to talk about work, but I believe this is a suitable exception.  I’m not one for following my rules off a cliff I suppose you might say.  Mr. Punch, being an intriguing rascal, appears to enjoy stirring things up.

So.  Not one to easily forget the discovery I made of Mr. Punch in an earlier post, I bided my time.  The passing of time elapsed, and an opportunity presented itself to me in the form of a talent show at work.

I didn’t immediately recognize it as such.  Many folks where I work recognize that I have certain leanings towards the creative performance.  So it wasn’t a surprise when I said randomly, “Sure, sign me up.  I don’t know what I’ll do, but whatever.”

The show approached, and all I could think of was doing some unformulated comedy routine.  Meanwhile, the other volunteers honed their ideas and practiced what they would share with the rest of us at the office.  Heartfelt duets, piano-violin duets, funny duets.

Me, I had nothing.  And from nothing comes something, or rather, Mr. Punch came along and said I should do a show for him.  The folks at the office would love it, and I would get a chance to actually run a show.

You see, I’ve been doing a lot of Internet reading about Mr. Punch.  Not just to search for clues, but because I found the whole concept fascinating.  Perhaps I might actually become a “professor” one day!  That’s a person who is a Punch and Judy performer, by the way.  It has roots in the old days, when professors weren’t merely academics but also people with mystical or showmanship skills.

Okay, I have no funds right now, having spent all my reserves moving out of the haunted house.  There’s no way I was going to actually be able to buy real props.  Not with two days to go before the big show, where I was getting the feeling I’d be standing up on stage like a frightened Andy Kaufman, except it wouldn’t be an act.

So, I pored over Punch and Judy scripts and made one of my own.  Well, in true rip-off street entertainer style I snatched up a bunch of ideas from other professors online.  I decided on Punch, Judy, and the Constable, with the Devil for a chaser.  Memorized some classic lines and that was that.

Next, a makeshift stage.  Obtained some tall, stiff cardstock and taped it together.  Large enough for me to sit behind and raise my hands above.  A bit wobbly—wouldn’t it be hilarious if it fell down during the performance?  Well, that’s show biz folks.  I’d run with it.  The great thing about Punch and Judy shows is they are designed to be totally improvised and mobile if the situation calls for it.

Finally, the puppets.  Again, ripping off pictures of Punch characters from the Internet and printing them out.  I traced the outlines onto a fresh piece of paper and exaggerated the lines a little to make them larger.  Then I colored the faces and cut them out.  Taking four brown paper lunch bags, I glue-sticked the faces on to the bottoms.  When the bags are folded, the faces “face” forward and have a little motive ability.

For Punch’s stick I used a cardboard tube from a paper towel roll.

I practiced the voices and the lines back and forth for an hour.  Slept on it.  And then the next day I’m at work ready to go!  We are talking a dirt cheap, bare bones, never been done before by me, on the fly show.  Boy I sure hope I don’t choke!

Mr. Punch came through.  I did the work, and he had my back when the time came for him to show up.  There’s something primordial about puppet shows, and archetypal characters on stage that has a strong life energy of its own.  The show was a big hit, with people laughing at the stupidity of the paper bag puppets talking in funny voices.  The interactivity really makes the audience implicit in the story, while still allowing them to be particpationists (it’s all rote responses right….right?!).  This is what genius is made of.

I didn’t think I would be able to run all three side characters in the five-minute time slot, but it all flowed beautifully.  Judy boggled at the audience larger than she could cook for, so she decided to call in delivery (the office was having a lunch afterwards of Chick-Fil-A).  The constable was suitably outraged at Punch’s misbehavior.  And when the Devil showed up there was a nice chill down the audience’s spine, at the same time a hope Punch would get his comeuppance this time!

I don’t know when I’ll get to do a Punch and Judy show again.  It’s a tremendous privilege for Mr. Punch to come along and give me even one opportunity in life.  I feel as if I’ve participated in an ancient, honorable tradition and made people happy.

And that’s the way you do it.

Okay, so what did I like about the Harry Potter movies?  Some of the characters stand out as appealing to me.  There are times when I really enjoyed what was happening because it was portrayed well.

I like Snapes a great deal.  He strikes me as the most human of all the characters.  His bitterness is compelling all the more because its over a love lost to one’s tormentor.  Despite his obvious competence he wears a serious face to mask his insecurity.  He hides it well, but also seems to have a realistic fear of and appreciation for what Voldemort can do.

I continue to be impressed by Alan Rickman’s work as an actor.  His portrayal of Snapes never lets me think for a moment he is an actor playing a part.  His mere presence improves nearly every scene he appears in.  Easily, he’s consistently the best part of the movies.

I also like Hermione.  I’ve had my fill of overt, know-it-all female sidekicks, but somehow she works for me.  I totally buy that she’s a driven overachiever, attempting to live up to the pressures of being from a non-wizard family.  Despite her mask of self-control, she shows moments of vulnerability and insight.  Of Harry’s friends I feel she comes closest to being his equal in adventure.

The actress portrays her with a little less depth than I’d like, but still does a good job.  Better anyway, than a lot of the other actors around her phoning it in.  Harry always gets the attention and Ron is there for comic relief.  But I usually get the feeling that whatever Hermione is working on is based on her hard work.  Whether it’s saving the day with a little time travel or brewing a shapechange potion, when she gets to act with agency she does it nicely.  No fumbles there.

As far as scenes go, I think a few are done well enough to make me forget I’m watching a dysfunctional Hollywood movie.

I liked the scene where a torrent of letters come flying into the house to tell Harry his adventure has arrived.  I found that both hilarious and heart-warming.   It’s an affirmation that our destiny will drag us toward it willingly or not, and push anyone who stands in the way aside.

The scenes involving the cloak of invisibility tend to be pretty good.  Invisibility is an awesome power to have, and whenever Harry uses it I feel like he is being his own person.  There are so many people keeping secrets from Harry, not just enemies.  I like that he is able to turn the tables and get his own answers at times.

When Harry uses the Patronus charm to save his other timeline self and his godfather is pretty awesome.  He’s been practicing, facing his fears under the tutelage of probably the only competent Dark Arts tutor in the series.  Then when the time comes for him to be the great wizard (that is, embody the image everyone has of his father for once), he performs magnificently.

Come to think of it, the whole adventure where Harry and Hermione travel back in time to complete the timeline is pretty awesome.

The return of Voldemort just after Harry and Cedric win the tri-wizard cup is probably my favorite.  Cedric is killed almost immediately, showing us how stupid the cup challenge is as a measure of best wizard.  For once, Voldemort has the upper hand.  He achieves a major goal in getting a physical body again, punking out the so-called good guys and getting in some serious gloat while he’s at it.  He chitchats with his death-eater pals, showing us exactly how the other side interacts.

It was a mistake for him to let Harry go, given that Harry still had a really stupid Deus Ex Machina card to get him out of the jam.  But I can forgive Voldie for not having meta-story knowledge.  It’s still cool to watch Harry say, “fine, have it your way” and go out fighting.  Essentially tossing the expectations on his shoulders aside and accepting his death.

I was hoping he’d use the Patronus charm and catch everyone off-guard enough for him to escape (let that be a lesson to you Voldie!), which would make logical sense and rock the mike.  But the confusing and out of the blue save by the power of love ruins the scene, reducing it to just awesome.

Finally, even though it leads nowhere, I still liked Harry’s training of the students in the secret room.  Having fought and escaped the big dude baddie makes him somebody worth listening to.  And the dedication it takes to deceive the school authorities while teaching the students to fend for themselves is awesome.

The community rallies together in a sane and serious manner to prepare themselves for danger.  Plus the fact that the school reveals a hidden personality dedicated to just such a purpose is a nice touch.  It turns the school into something more than just an indoctrination center.

Basically I enjoyed scenes where I felt the characters had permission to matter.  That is, where they had agency enough to control their fates.  Too often I felt they were pulled around by circumstance and forced to react rather than act.  When they assumed control of their own lives, for good or ill, I was drawn in.

Fundamental problems aside, the movies themselves are awful for the most part.  Like the Batman franchise, the people at the helm have no clue about what to do with the material.  It’s dysfunctional, all over the place, amateurish attempts at audience manipulation.

Despite a pretty detailed (if simplistic) world in the books to draw upon, the movie-makers seem unable to work with the material.  They are simply unable to craft scenes that get to the heart of the plot, let alone draw out nuances implied in the text.  A lot of time is spent throughout all six movies watching scenes thrown together without logic or understanding.

Unless you’ve read the books most of the scenes are extremely confusing.  Half the time I was wondering what was going on or what the significance was of what had just happened.  So much looked like filler that could have been cut out.  That’s not an endorsement.  If you need recourse to the books to understand the film it’s a poor adaptation.

I don’t buy that there’s too much to fit into a movie.  You could literally tell the story of all seven books in one movie.  People want to believe all of it is important, but it really isn’t when you are talking the short-term medium of the film.  You want the whole thing made visual, clamor for a TV series.

Given that we have a film a book (and two for the finale!), not only is it possible to fit in the essentials but more than a few nice touches.  It’s possible, and it’s been done before for other adaptations.  These movie-makers just aren’t up to the challenge.

This isn’t a manifesto or a detailed analysis (I just ain’t that interested), but here a few major goof ups from each of the films that illustrate what I’m talking about.  I’m not even going to touch the theme that some of these ideas are pretty basic Dungeons and Dragons awfulness, that’s fish for someone else to fry.  I’m assuming that you at least buy the world as it is even if it doesn’t please you.

Spoilers are a-comin’ in, ahroo!

HP & The Sorcerer’s Stone
Too much time is spent getting us into the world of Hogwarts and not enough developing the main conflict (the race to reach the stone).  For example, once it’s established that the letters are going to keep coming until Harry goes to school, move on to the next scene people.

Instead we get a ridiculous scene where Harry’s foster family somehow manages to go to an island lighthouse just off the coast and hole up there so we can go through this again.  Never mind the believability, this just wastes time.  The point was made very well clear the first time that Harry’s Destiny is ON.  The Call To Adventure doesn’t take fifteen minutes for goodness sake!

The time they wasted on that could have been used to shorten the movie (and improve the pace) or make room for a longer scene to allow themes to develop better.  I’m biased, but for example they could have put back in the deleted scene with Snape.

It’s an interesting scene because it demonstrates his incredible knowledge (and it’s a clue for viewers as to the identity of the “prince” in movie six), as well as drives home the point that there’s something about Harry that is personal to Snape—look how close the man gets even as he applies realistic skepticism to the fanciful image of Savior Harry.  It’s a character “tell” as well as a good lesson.

HP & The Chamber of Secrets
In the first film, a hostile giant troll roamed the halls of Hogwarts without getting jacked by all sorts of magical defenses one would think the professors in a magical society would have.  We can fan-wank (that is, imagine given our meta-story knowledge) that “the man with two faces” being in a professor’s position disabled those, allowing the troll free reign.

In this movie we have a gigantic snake-like creature roaming the halls turning people to stone.  At least, I think that’s what was happening.  One wonders why the basilisk didn’t poison the victims for good measure, but Voldemort (in the form of Tom Riddle via mental possession of Harry) isn’t exactly eating with both hands here.  Which makes me wonder how he’s still alive, because crazy people tend to make mistakes in high-stakes games.

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a gigantic snake moving through the halls without somebody else noticing.  Even more so in a restrictive environment where Harry can’t walk through the halls at night without the risk of someone giving him detention.  This thing is gigantic (maybe sixty or seventy feet long), and not exactly quiet or likely to leave things like wall hangings or furniture intact as it slithers about.

I think the basilisk is made huge because Hollywood movie-makers equate size with power.  The basilisk really should have been a lot smaller.  The strength of the tooth Harry uses on the book is in the poison, not the size.  Really, you have a poisonous monster that can kill you if you look at it (or petrify you if you see the reflection), does it really need to be that size and stretch all credibility?

Go to YouTube and watch what constrictor snakes only fifteen feet long do to guys trying to capture them on nature shows.  Now imagine that if it bites you or you look at it you’re dead.

HP & The Prisoner of Azkaban
There’s a scene where Sirius Black, the super evil second-in-command werewolf to Voldemort, shows up to initiate The Big Reveal of the film.  He’s really a good guy who was framed.  Lupin, the new tutor for Defense Against The Black Arts and Harry’s new trusted friend, has been protecting him.  And he’s also a werewolf (but a different kind).  The real bad guy is rat-tooth man who has been masquerading as Ron’s rat all along.  For fourteen years.

Got that?  All of this is revealed onscreen so fast I could barely understand what was happening.  Other than a vague hint that something is amiss with Lupin, and the sudden additional screentime of Ron with his rat familiar (the function of rat familiars is never explained), there are no hints to any of this throughout the entire movie.

No sooner does Harry start to comprehend that his new friend has deceived him (like all the other adults) then the movie drags to a halt, as the plot has to assimilate these new developments and make some sense of them.

Hollywood loves the surprise ending, but they nearly always fail because it isn’t the audience that should be surprised.  It’s the characters.  Movie-makers always focus on the audience instead of the characters.

HP & The Goblet Of Fire
My favorite WTF moment is in the beginning of the film.  You have a camp of what must be tens of thousands of wizards with their families and friends.  If I understand the context it’s an international grouping so you are bound to have all sorts of people with different points of view, life experiences and magical training.  The magical arena must be seating at least fifty thousand people.  All the big dude dinners of the magical world are there, including Dumbledore.

As near as I can tell, a half dozen Voldemort supporters (called death-eaters) attack this gathering with what look like crappy fire bolts.  These thousands of wizards run screaming home as the camp burns up in flames.  There’s a panic, but only Harry gets trampled into unconsciousness (without any physical or psychological after-effects from such a traumatic experience).  The death-eaters then disappear without taking any casualties.

Nobody talks about how six wizards terrorized thousands without a scratch.  If it was just the section that Harry was in, why isn’t this portrayed?  Not that this would explain how they escaped without a scratch or why everyone panicked, given that the magical world is so violent and random.  It makes no sense at all.

I mean, at this point in the series are we supposed to be taking all this as fantastical metaphors of some kind?

HP & The Order Of The Phoenix
Two-thirds of the film is used to build up a repressive, insane bureaucrat as the villain.  The students band together and train to learn magic despite the bureaucrat’s attempts to crush them (without any interference from parents, faculty or the slight majority of bureaucrats who voted Harry “not-guilty”).

When the big moment of confrontation comes, the community doesn’t band together to remove this madwoman from power and put her away.  Harry and Hermione lead her into the forest where she conveniently disappears.

Do the efforts of the students mean anything?  No.  They neither defeat the madwoman nor show off their new skills (and foresight) fighting off a Voldemort attack.  Do the efforts of the madwoman lead to tragedy when the students are unprepared, showing how one must not surrender to repression?  No.  It’s all filler.

The movie might have well started with Dumbledore and Voldemort fighting, then ended with Prime Minister Whats-his-name saying, “Voldemort is back!”

HP & The Half-Blood Prince
Traitorous Malfoy lets the bad guys past the now-activated magical defenses into Hogwarts.  Okay, Trojan Horse idea done to death but it works.  Malfoy’s inner struggle might prove interesting if they focus on it.

Nope, all about young lust for half the film.  And letting the bad guys in is all part of the cunning plan to let the death-eaters see Snapes kill Dumbledore.  Because Voldemort, being enough of a chess player to beat the chess challenge in the first film, does not understand the concept of sacrificing pieces to set up a checkmate.

Lets see, most powerful good wizard dead.  Second most powerful on bad guys side (or at least pretending to be and thus needs to stand by while atrocities are committed).  Near as I can tell just Miss Crabapple, The Mini-me Magician, and a handful of no-liner professors left.  Students are totally unaware and vulnerable.  Bad guys have run of the place.

Do the evil death-eaters, led by crazy woman who kills people at the drop of a hat go on a rampage?  This is their chance to wipe out all the students and professors unsympathetic to their cause.  They should have a list of the dozen or so people they’d spare, given that Malfoy and others have been observing events at Hogwarts for six years now.

Do they take this opportunity to loot for powerful magical items and destroy any parts of Hogwarts not suitable to the new Voldemort order?  Do they even take Harry Potter with them as a prisoner?

No.

They blow up the dinner hall furnishings and burn Hagrid’s hut for dramatic vandalism appeal (which comes off as funny, not tragic, because Hagrid is always an un-serious character and thus the butt of jokes).  Then they depart.

This is never explained.  There’s no excuse for this kind of plain lazy movie-making.  We aren’t talking about Critters 2:  The New Batch!  I mean, to explain why they don’t go on a mass murder rampage, all you have to do is have the following occur:

Random death-eater: “Crazy woman whose name begins with a B, I sense the dementors are coming.  We’d better split, sister.”

Crazy woman whose name begins with a B: “You’re right.  Even though we could take on fifty thousand wizards in the fourth film, I feel an intestinal grip coming.  Lets leave it for the next two films.”

Sadly, Hollywood continues only to be able to make good movies by accident.  But all is not completely lost, stay tuned.

K and I watched the five DVD movies and saw the latest in the theater.  We’re now reading all the books one after the other in rapid succession (my mind is a salt water crocodile when it comes to a culture binge).  She and I had a good amount of chuckles and thoughtful moments discussing the various permutations and shortcomings of the movies.

Yes, I recognize the irony of someone who finds the series generally awful exposing themselves to the whole kitten caboodle.  I have no regrets, as it was an internal impulsion moving me to explore the series.  Now that I believe I’ve found an answer to the attraction for people, and had a chance to examine the franchise with my small microchip brain, I find myself less negative about the series.  But don’t ask me to wear the t-shirt or eat those gosh-forsaken beans.

Looking at the fantasy world of Harry Potter in general, as portrayed in the movies, there are several things I find unattractive and a few things I found myself identifying with.

Probably my biggest complaint against the series is the division of people into wizards and non-wizards.  People with magical powers and those without (known as muggles).  The Star Wars prequels made a similar mistake in making one’s power to access The Force dependent upon the number of magic ant-farms you were born with.

This automatically divides people into haves and have-nots.  Almost nobody is going to identify with the have-nots because they don’t get any cool powers.  Meanwhile, the have-nots almost always become lower class in the social structure and thus pawns in the Great Game between the Good Guys (who want the have-nots to remain ignorant and obedient) and the Bad Guys (who want to shoot have-nots into a brick wall with a cannon because it’s fun).

There are stories that take this and make for compelling drama.  The Harry Potter movies, however, treat this with a combination of whimsy and over-the-top theatrics that frankly made me uncomfortable.  Harry’s muggle parents are depicted as outlandishly stupid and hostile.

I mean, I have relatives I’ve wanted to strangle, and some of them have been incredibly clueless at times.  But caricatures are so cliché, I can’t identify with this.  It makes Mommy Dearest look understated and makes light of real family dysfunction.

It’s not clear to me what makes a person capable of wielding magic.  It looks like they are born with it.  Doesn’t that make muggles recessive carriers and thus precious?  Even if they aren’t, they’re people and thus moral agents.  Shouldn’t they be allowed to make decisions about magic too?

I understand the need to control one’s powers around people (though there seems to be a lack in that area among wizards, the makers of the movies need to learn about self-discipline and martial arts with regards to the ability to cripple or kill people with bare hands), but keeping non-wizard people in ignorance?

Well hey, those great wizards are born with superior intellect and thus more capable of making these kinds of decisions.  Kind of like the “men of best quality” who set themselves above their fellows and declare themselves above regular human beings.  It’s the same old republic run by representatives of rich people.  Only in this case it’s wizards.

I have to ask, what do wizards in this world do?  I mean, what are Harry and the other students learning exactly besides the ability to use magic?  I know it’s just a fantasy.  It’s just that if you are going to place magic in a real world setting these things have to be attended to.  Otherwise, the fantasy won’t stand up to even a moment’s reflection.

Do wizards go around building wells and schools for communities in third world countries?  Do they perform shows to raise money for charity?  Do they go around like troubleshooters, protecting non-wizards from monsters and undoing harm by rogue wizards?

Or is it that even in the “upper class” of wizards there must be a janitor class of wizards who maintain all the awesome buildings and enchantments of the folks at the top of the pyramid?  Not everyone can be an ideological gatekeeper teacher with a cushy teaching job molding young minds.

I mean, in a magical world where anything can be conjured (kind of like Star Trek with its matter-replicator economy), why even use coins at all?  The Weasleys are referred to as poor, but their cottage and the farmland around it look pretty nice to me.  They just must not have been born with a lot of magical ant-farms.  Only so many nice pieces of furniture and flying cars per year I suppose.

Well, if you have a hierarchical system of haves and have-nots, then you need a training school for the haves who will serve the wizard management.  The professors and minister bureaucrats need to be educated so they can internalize the interests of the ruling class of wizards after all.

And that means Hogwarts boarding school for the privileged!

This is my other big squirm factor.  For me, the English boarding school system represents harsh discipline and repression of the young.  Both by professors and one’s own peer group.  I always think of the teacher scenes from the Pink Floyd movie The Wall, or the deranged repression of the rebellious students from the movie If…

For me, the main forms of indoctrination displayed in the movies are the enforced identity politics of the four student houses and the violent two-team blood sport of quiddich.

Both encourage students to cooperate only with their in-group and to direct external aggression towards an out-group ritually personified by “the other house” or “other team”.  In the case of the student politics between houses, the professors decide who is most obedient while being the most competitive through the capricious allocation of points.  Students must obey orders after all, while maximizing their ability to serve effectively.

The sport of quiddich blew me away with the terrible risk to life and limb, both to players and spectators.  You have people flying around in the air at high speed, moving projectiles around capable of wrecking large sections of the arena when the magic malfunctions.  There’s no physical or magical safety system of any kind that I can detect.  As long as you are not obvious, magical tampering with the game is possible.

One can only guess at the minds of people who willingly take part in this spectacle, the likes of which Roman emperors could have only dreamed about.  Harry and his antagonists take quite a few nasty lumps while playing.  But I wondered what happened to the players without plot immunity when they slammed into a pavilion or another player.

I think of those Halloween decorations of the witch slammed into a flat surface that people hang on trees or the sides of their house’s wall.

This is the same kind of social adaptation that trained soldiers to charge the machine gun nests in World War I.

Hey!  Teacher!  Leave that kid alone!

There’s a scene in the movie version of Harry Potter And The Order of the Phoenix where Harry saves himself from Voldemort’s magical possession by focusing on what makes him different from the villain.  He chooses to focus on his friendship with people (his proper social adjustment) and that he has something to fight for (a magic system of us and them, wizards and non-wizards).

Fail.

Voldemort doesn’t have “friends”?  In the movie version of Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire there’s a scene where Voldemort talks shop with his death-eater buddies.  True, it’s presumably a co-dependent, master-minion relationship.  How is this dysfunctional, hierarchical arrangement different from the one where Dumbledore is forced to allow a minister bureaucrat to torture children (that nasty pen that uses your blood business)?

I would say Voldemort’s relationship with his minions is the more honest one.  He fixes his minion’s hand, even after castigating the guy for not being dedicated enough!  Save for the scene where Harry’s broken bone is fixed improperly (and played for laughs), I never saw anyone in Hogwarts heal Harry of his injuries.

Don’t they at least have a Cure Light Wounds spell at Hogwarts?

Near as I can tell, Voldemort and his evil buddies are all in on the evil plan to do whatever it is they plan on doing.  I never see the evil buddies struggling to share information or share clues with one another.  I get the feeling that unlike the professors, who keep their plans hidden from Harry, Voldemort at least lets everyone know what’s up.

Does Harry share what he knows with his “friends” and “mentors”?  No, when he has dark dreams or finds out crucial information he clams up.  Until the plot demands he reveal what he knows.  And his “friends” never call him out on this.  They seem to take it for granted that he always hoards information.

Voldemort doesn’t have something to fight for?  Admittedly, I’m a little unclear as to what the big dude evil guy’s plan is.  Nobody in the white hat section seems able to articulate much more than “he’s evil, has killed people and is very dangerous.”  Isn’t mere self-interest something to fight for?  We could venture a guess and say he wants to be King and Pope of the wizard republic.  It’s an unhealthy, narcissistic dream.  But still a dream that can inspire someone to go all out.

If its just causes we’re talking about, I’d say defending a repressive, aristocratic republic from a dictator’s coup does put Harry on stronger ground.  This gets to the core of what I think really makes Harry different from his counterpart:  moral choices.

Dumbledore brings this up with regards to the sorting hat and Harry’s choice to override the hat’s decision.  Harry and Voldemort are essentially the same person in terms of character sheets.  But Harry chooses differently.  That’s his point of reference—our choices make us who we are.

You pay the price for what you do in who you become.

The idea that because Harry has “friend” versus “minion” under followers on his character sheet, or “fighting for the status quo” versus “fighting for my supremacy” in the motivation text box, makes him different is ludicrous.  It’s the character of those differences that makes the difference, not the differences themselves.

Both are tinged with a certain degree of good and evil, with Voldemort favoring the shading more than the line.  It’s much less uncomfortable (and therefore easier) to identify with one side or the other.  Who wants to admit to being in the middle of things, between the awful pounding of the cliff sides with teeth?  Yet that is exactly what is required, to recognize the other within one’s own self regardless of the discomfort.

What lies between the twin pillars of fear and desire?  Can one pass through the gap created by the two guardians and into the sacred space of nothingness?

How much more complete Harry might have been if he had admitted his own shadow?  The good guy with a scar of evil running across the side of his forehead, the voice of his conscience and the source of his destiny (the evil figure is always charged with the irresistible life-force of fate).  Is not the tarnished good guy, the anti-hero, an intriguing and interesting figure?

How much more human Voldemort might have been if he had accepted his own inability to carry collective expectations?  To admit weakness and failure brings a cost as surely as refusing to do so, but it’s a human cost rather than an archetypal one.  Is not the bad guy who acts for others despite himself a compelling figure?

Voldemort could not expunge the good in his nature no matter how often he tried to kill his enemy, his only true friend.  Harry ultimately defeats the figure that does not conform with our image, but at the cost of losing what might be the best part of himself.  Love thy enemy, for thy enemy is the instrument of thy destiny.

Each, by repressing the other destroyed themselves.  The keepers of the grail groan to themselves and do a facepalm.

The two ought to have joined forces.  These irreconcilable opposites are precisely the ingredients for the mysterious solution.  The world of the non-wizards needs magic.  This locking away of magic by the forces of ministry ogre-know-it-alls and their patrician-professor gatekeepers is the reason our world is a ball of confusion.

And perhaps only Voldemort and Harry working together might have stolen the fire from the false gods of wizardry and given it to the public, to the people.

May the old fart loser-evil failure Voldemorts and young impressionable good wizards recognize each other.

Because we need magic today.  Many lives are so often not magical.

Flash back to when there were only three Harry Potter books out.  I decided to buy the first in the series—Harry Potter And the Sorcerer’s Stone.  The cover art looked compelling, the titles seemed catchy enough, and I enjoy fantasy fiction.  Most of all there seemed to be a buzz about the books.

I’ve read much worse (as in literally incomprehensible), but I still found the book a chore to read.  It made me never want to read another Harry Potter book again.

The sixth Harry Potter movie came out this weekend.  For the umpteenth time the communications channels have been abuzz with the excitement.  The whole phenomenon leaves me wishing it would end.

It’s like having a friend of the family show up every year with their enormous brood of brats and eating your brain.  I’m looking forward to the seventh and final book to appear in movie form (although the book will be split into two movies to prolong the thrill).

I decided I ought to get caught up on the source of all this legerdemain, and actually watch the movies.  Despite what I might think of the books, we are talking about one of the defining events of culture for the generation after mine.  These new mutants get to have it all—the past movements of creative wonder as well as the freshly minted attempts at civilization.  They are growing up with tremendous potential, and great things are expected of them.

As was said in the Spider-Man movie cash-in of sixties experimentation, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  I’m reminded of the mature numerological cycle of the twenty-one, wherein one has the same potential for ultimate creation and destruction as the ten.  However, there is accumulated wisdom in the world symbol as seen from space, so there is hope.

I believe that is the core of why this series is so popular.

You have the professors of the school of magic who represent an earlier, older generation who carried with them similar expectations as today’s generation.   But their race is run, their choices are made, and their failure remains supreme:  The student who turned to the dark arts and became Voldemort.  He Who Must Not Be Named.  The carrier of the ten, which is the first number to combine the one (human beings) and the zero (the divinity).

The highest fall from the highest pinnacle of achievement.  Dumbledore gets a vomit flavored bean.

Then you have the new student generation with Harry representing the hope that the dragon of the past can be overcome.  Great things are expected of him, and in no small part his friends Ron and Hermione.  Here you have a collective teen group of friends, which is not unlike the roleplaying adventure parties of today’s online games and dice-rolling dungeons and dragons crew.

The fellowship is as age-old as we can imagine.  Bands of hippies, parties of adventurers.  Carrying the ring to destruction, trying to level up.

You have the four student houses, which represent the four pillars of the world, the universe, the world, twenty-one.  The magical school Hogwarts is the setting in which choices the professors faced will play out again, in similar form.  Harry is carrying the thwarted dreams of the past and the pensive expectations for the future.

Slay the dragon that slew us, say the professors.  Give us a toffee bean.

I wonder if anyone’s back is that strong.  So often adults, parents in particular, put their fears and hopes into children.  Choke the child’s life out of them and make the child live a life that isn’t theirs.

Even Voldemort seems to have this problem.  His evil plans invariably end up involving Harry in some way or another.  See, there is a larger problem at hand than any of the principal players of the story can comprehend.  There is a need, I think, in this series for a Promethian act.  A stealing of fire is required, which they all only faintly grasp.

The professors tried to realize this unconscious dream and ended up serving the system.  Or dispossessed in some fashion.  Sirius Black is a framed criminal, Hagrid is a loner go-fer, the Weasleys are “poor” and Harry’s parents end up as corpses.  The Voldemort buddies?  Those who threw their lot in with the bad guy appear to have descended into fanaticism.  And there’s the bad guy himself who has probably gone mad and likely doesn’t remember what he was meant to do anymore.

Victims, fanatics and crazies.  You could say that the weight of the world has made them what they are.

Jung talks about this in his psychological studies.  Every child bears with it the pressures of the dead to succeed where countless millions have fallen down.  Those who have failed and yet still live, pray for deliverance before they die.

No wonder the books are so popular!  Talk about relevance to today’s moral problems.  The books are telling a story that the new mutants feel in their bones because it’s of their time.  One the professors of the sixties still hope will blossom into a rain-song sunrise.

Alas, in the Harry Potter books they are all doomed.  No one here gets out alive.  Have an earwax bean.

I believe that’s why I reacted so strongly against the series.  Even in the first book, it speaks of hope (projected images on the backs of youngsters rather than ourselves), but delivers inevitability (meet the new kid, same as the old kid — but with more obedience).  Starting at the very beginning, it perpetuates the illusion that there can ever be good without evil.

Can nature create an individual who can lead us out of darkness and redeem our previous attempts?  That is, can the terrible furor and despair of the times lead to a new imagining?  In The Road Warrior, it’s in the wasteland that Mad Max learns to live again.  Perhaps what is needed is a Parzival-like characteristic—a natural empathy, an opening up of the heart.