A Review of Reviews

Since I seem to be varying from my standard format, I'll sneak in this post. I ran across a pair of Harry Potter reviews from earlier this year that address two opposing Catholic viewpoints of the books. Unsurprisingly, I completely agree with the positive essay by Paolo Gulisano, which talks about the book's emphasis of weakness over strength and the central theme of death and what lies beyond. I was somewhat startled, however, to find that although the final conclusion was flawed, the negative essay by Edoardo Rialti rose to meet the story on its own terms and made several good points along the way.

Ironically, both essays use Tolkien and Lewis as the epitome of excellent fantasy, but while Rialti claims that "There is no hero more antithetical to Harry Potter than Tolkien’s young man Frodo", Gulisano points out that Rowling's use of small (or sometimes very large) acts by unlikely characters is very reminiscent of Tolkien. Gulisano wins the point in that debate, I'd say. Harry was always meant to be more of an Aragorn than a Frodo anyway, both were laden with more destiny than they knew what to do with.

However, if we're going to pick at how Rowling falls short of the Tolkien ideal (not just LOTR, but Tolkien's definition of a transcendent story, see "On Fairy Stories"), I would say the real problem is that the magical world of Hogwarts and wizards was not far enough removed from the real world. The purpose of fantasy is not to frown upon real life, but to see the magic that is already there. Because we kept running into the Durselys and the likes of the muggle Prime Minister or the Riddles, anything muggle comes across as ridiculous or tedious, despite all the main characters' defense of the non-wizarding world.

This not-quite-separation is the real cause of what Rialti calls "a deep and serious lie, the . . . . temptation of joining salvation and the truth with a secret knowledge". It is not the magic itself that causes the problem, but its placement so close to the mundane world. In fact, the main problem I have with Rialti's essay is that he over-emphasizes the significance of magic in the overall theme of the story. He claims that the real heart of the story is witchcraft: "proposed as a positive ideal; violent manipulation of things and persons thanks to occult knowledge . . . . the ends justifies the means, since the wise, the chosen, the intellectual know how to control the dark powers and turn them into good". I found this claim to be interesting because Rialti is describing a real, tangible danger. Tolkien called it a "morbid illusion" and Lewis a "spiritual lust", but it basically boils down to the same thing--a desire for secret knowledge, for elevation above the masses that was once embodied by alchemy and sorcery, but can be built on anything from new-age spirituality to science or even selective faces of religion.

The fundamental problem here is that Harry's magic is not gained through occult knowledge or a pact with dark forces, it's simply a talent that certain people are born with. If you are not born a wizard, no amount of study or knowledge will change that, and even with no knowledge of magic whatsoever, it is possible to perform it. The inclusion of the non-magical world is a flaw that opens the door to the real danger that Rialti warns of, but not a fatal flaw because of the way it's handled throughout the story. In the world Rowling created, magic is a plot tool and a hook for the real story of love and self-giving that follows it.

I once knew a boy who really, truly thought that magic could give him power. He had a very difficult home life, was bullied or excluded at school, and thought that a circle of salt or the right words said at midnight on a full moon would give him the control and revenge that he so desperately wanted. In between other attempts to dissuade him, I tried to get him to read the Harry Potter books, thinking that the magic would interest him enough to pick up on the story's deeper, more valuable lessons--but he wasn't interested in the slightest. There was nothing he could use in those books, nothing that fed his desire for secret knowledge and power. Any time someone mentions how dangerous the Harry Potter books are, I think of him, and how much good it might have done him to read them.

Partial Restoration

Yay, the pretty is back! (knock on wood, I still don't know what was wrong in the first place)

The layout isn't perfect (don't bother clicking on the tabs, for instance, they don't go anywhere yet) but hopefully tomorrow I'll actually post something substantial :-p

Rebellion

Grrr, I apologize for the weird format. I'm not sure what's wrong, and I don't really have the time or energy to fix it right now :-p Hopefully I can bring the prettiness back soon.

Iron Man by Peter David

I was at the library a few weeks ago and just happened to stumble upon the novelization of the Iron Man movie. I was unenthusiastic at first--a novel based on a movie based on a comic--there's only so many iterations a story can go through before it runs out of steam. But I picked it up anyway, read through a few paragraphs, and remembered that I really liked the movie, had wanted to see it a second time, but probably wasn't ever going to get around to it. So, with nothing to loose but a few hours of my time, I took the book home with me ^_^

Overview
It turned out to be basically a line-by-line retelling of the movie. Tony Stark is a genius weapons designer who idealistically believes that his weapons are only hurting bad guys until he gets kidnapped by terrorists who used his own weapons against American troops. Tony then does some serious re-thinking of the universe. This re-thinking involves, among other things, the creation of a mechanized suit of armor with incredible destructive and defensive capabilities, which he uses to convince the terrorists of the error of their ways. (Or maybe he blows them all up, one of the two)

Recommended for: Meh. The movie was excellent, (you should really see it if you haven't already) and I'm assuming the original comics are also pretty good. I can't really recommend the book, though. Maybe if you need an extra dose of Iron Man, or you really want to know what's going on but can't get your hands on either the movie or the comic.

Parental Worries: The movie was PG-13, and that fits the book as well. Tony is a playboy who likes his liquor, and people get blown up, shot, and otherwise roughed about in traditional action-movie style.

Ramblings
Don't get me wrong--I did enjoy the book, but only because I'd enjoyed the movie and was able to play it back in my head. The novelization was not all that great. There's literally only two, maybe three places where you pick up information that wasn't available in the movie, and for the most part they're either obvious or inconsequential. Everything else is a straight re-write of the script. There are some novelizations that add significantly to a movie, but this wasn't really one of them. For example, I thought the novels for the first two Star Wars prequels were vastly better than their movies, although Iron Man was a much better movie, so maybe that's an unfair comparison.

One more beef before I sign off--all of the action scenes in the book were written in italics, as if we couldn't figure out that a change in POV had taken place. That's entire pages written in italics, which gets old really fast.