Harry Potter and the Disappointed Re-reading

I just finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When I thought back on it before all I could recall was 1,000 pages of camping followed by a short and terrible epilogue. I wanted to know if there was more to it, if I was twisting it based on how disappointed I was when I first finished it. So I went back and read it again.

I won't go too in depth with a full blown criticism. Originally I just wanted to make a short post about adapting it into a movie. I do have a few points to make since re-reading gave me a few surprises. It turns out that the good parts are better than I remembered. Her writing style still hasn't progressed as much as it should have. The ideal reader for each book is Harry's age so the style of the first book is written for 11 year olds. I don't know if she wanted to skew it for younger readers or if she's just never going to be that good of an author but Rowling is certainly not writing for 17 year olds in this last volume. That aside I was pleased with the action based scenes. The kept me interested and any immature writing was offset by the years I've spent reading about and becoming fond of these characters.

But... the bad parts are terrible and just as bad as I remembered if not worse. There are numerous small inconsistencies that just make the whole tome feel sloppy and weak. Examples? Sure.

• Hermione changes the fact of whether or not she has ever modified anyone's memory before. She states that modified both her parents' memories when she makes them forget about her and sends them to Australia Then a few scenes later she states that she has never done anything like that as she changes the memories of the two Death Eaters, Dolohov and Rowle, in a diner.
  
• How does Harry have his cloak at the end of the book after the last battle. He uses it to sneak off and avoid attention when heading to Dumbledor's office but earlier after he drops it right before his first duel with Voldemort. From that point until he's carried back into the castle he is playing dead and therefore has not opportunity to pick it back up. It should still be in Aragog's clearing, on top of the death stone hallow.
  

There are a number of other problems. There's the terrible abuse of off-screen killings. Rowling also has a tendency to introduce long passages of exposition far after they were necessary to make sense of actions. She tries to make up for this fact by sometimes giving us the same overly long exposition twice but that's just worse. Harry's a horcrux? Not only should we have all figured that out by the time we're told in Snape's last memory but then Dumbledor goes on about it after Harry's dead inside the metaphorical King's Cross station. Very useful. An aside here is that I also find that the rest of Snape's memory, his entire back story, makes him less of a sympathetic character. We assumed that he had some convictions of honor or nobility that bring him to spy for Dumbledor. Instead we find out that he was a creepy obsessive who pissed away his entire life on an unrequited childhood crush. Ew.

And then there's the constant retroactive continuity editing. I understand that she had no clue as to what would happen this far into the series when she wrote The Chamber of Secrets. I might be able to forgive her the desperate grasping at horcrux lore regarding Riddle's diary. Might. But what she does when trying to weave out a path of ownership over the Elder wand is flat out wrong. She establishes a certain set of rules and then throws them out in order to make a twist. That's similar to having a murder mystery with witnesses and then it turns out it's not who the witnesses saw, regardless of the accompanying DNA evidence. Here's her path of the wand:

Grindlewald → Dumbledor → Draco → Harry and there it stops.

The problem is that Voldemort bests Harry with magic when he sends Harry to the train station of death. So really the path is:

Grindlewald → Dumbledor → Draco → Harry → Voldemort

We know that the wand owner doesn't need to die because Grindlewald survives his duel with Dumbledor and Dumbledor survives his duel with Draco, dying after that at the hand of Snape. We also know that the Elder wand doesn't even need to be part of the duel that decides its ownership as Harry gains mastery of the Elder wand in his duel with Draco, even though Voldemort is in possession of it at the time. We also know that choosing not to fight back has absolutely no frakking affect on whether the duel is valid or not since Dumbledor most certainly did not fight back against Draco. So during Harry's second fight with Voldemort, it is Voldemort who is in possession and the rightful master of the Elder wand. He should have killed Harry again.

Fine, Harry won. Maybe he's a magic sexy Jesus. Whatever. There are still two more problems with wand issues left in the book. The first is that Harry tucks away the wand and says that as long as he dies a natural death the wand will lose power since it will have no master. But we know that all that has to happen is for him to be disarmed in a duel with any wand and any point during the rest of his life. What are the odds that won't happen?

The other problem introduced regarding wand lore is simply that all one must do to become a new master of a wand is to magically obtain it. That means that everyone who was disarmed with expelliarmus in class and during practice in Dumbledor's Army has lost mastery of their wand. I guess that means it's time to go back to the Dumbledor's Army segments and see who has 30 wands.

Then the book finishes with a disturbing suicide fantasy where Harry gets to witness his own funeral in a way, as he's carried up to the castle, another battle and bam, the epilogue. Oh, the epilogue!

All in all it's a good rough draft but a bit pathetic as a final product made to finish off a 7 year run of a hugely successful franchise. One would think that there would have been more attention in the writing and editing of such a book.

And now, a pre-creation of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film!

Lots of camping. Nothing happens. (The Happening)

Classic battle between the clear cut sides of good and evil. (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

Harry's stuck in a train station between life and death. (Matrix Revolutions)

Harry's not dead and he gets to attend his own funeral. Well, how else do you know how much your friends love you until they mourn? (Empire Records)

Classic battle between the clear cut sides of good and evil. Now with 70% more magical creatures! What the hell was this second wave waiting for? For Harry to die and lose? Good job. (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

Who has control of the Elder wand? That's simple. One plus two... plus one... (Clue)

Everyone is happy, all the really important people are still alive and your life will be perfect from now on. How do you feel? (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

EPILOGUE: 19 years later and you're all still friends. In fact, you only seem to be friends with people you knew and your own family. Little creepy, actually. Yay! (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King)

What James Cameron and his vision for movies actually means

With the home release of Avatar I've been coming across a lot of interviews with Cameron and a lot of hate for his "small nation's gross or box office take" fame.  But what no one has yet done is actually said what Cameron has specifically done to cinema.

He has not revolutionized stories.  Everyone knows the story in Avatar and has most likely seen it in at least a few movies before.  He also has not revolutionized directing or writing or anything else that gets a big Oscar.  What he has done is created a new format for storytelling.

It's not as big a shift as that sounds and it will most likely take a while for his process to catch on, though it's already pretty popular for documentaries.  His recessed 3D, virtual camera monitors and exquisite mapping are what he's added.  Notice that none of that is particular to Avatar.  But think of it this way, when e-ink readers started coming out, like the Nook and the Kindle, no reviewed them based on what book they read while testing it.  Similarly I wouldn't make the mistake of confusing Avatar the story for Avatar the movie.  The movie revolution that Cameron promised with Avatar is wrapped up in the production as a process.  It's not the plot nor was it ever supposed to be.

And that's it.  Revolutionize isn't my word and I think it's a bit strong.  It will certainly change movies, well at least big budget movies.  For those of you who like smaller scale films you shouldn't worry.  He's much more likely to be courted by studios for his system than by film makers themselves.

I like my tech like I like my ethics... without a morality clause.

So I just read a short article in which Steve Jobs, in all of his high holy Apple-ness, responded to someone asking about what is and is not approved.  Jobs said:

“we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.”

And that is why I will not buy an Apple product.  Ever.

I like my technology run the way I like my ethics; present but not forced upon others.  People should be ethical.  I prefer the companies I fund to be run in an ethical manner as well.  But I would not want an ethical person to force their cause of ethics on me.  For instance, if someone has a set of ethics founded on religious morality I can appreciate their ethical behavior but will fight them on their religious morality.  I hope companies are run with an ethical code but when they try to instill their morality on me I call it quits.

Jobs and Apple are openly happy pushing their morality down on users.  If they were just ethical in the app store I'd be fine with that.  An ethically run app store would insure that there are no spyware apps, no malware apps, that the programmers get a good cut of profit.  A moral app store will judgments based on what the company sees as truths and values.  A moral apps store would block porn and political opinions expressed in a way they are not comfortable with.

Apple, I don't want your morality and I find your treatment of all customers as moronic children offensive.

“Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.“

And if folks want to be able to exercise personal judgment on  what sort of content should be on their phone they should also choose Android.  Thank you for finally admitting that you want lifetime control over devices that you have sold and therefore no longer own.  And thank you for pointing people to a competing platform that will actually serve their needs.

VERSUS: Belief vs. Observance

Passover is has ended and it has made me think a bit. I recently heard an interview with Judith Shulevitz who wrote a book called "The Sabbath World" about the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest each week. During the course of the interview she said that while she does keep the sabbath she does not actually believe in god. My first reaction was a start of happiness that there is another Jew out there that has a similar practice as myself, of observance without faith. In her case it's keeping the sabbath and in my case it's keeping kosher. The interviewer's immediate response was one that I am very familiar with, to point out that many people would find this contradictory. In fact it's not.

The two concepts at play  here are belief and observance. For some reason most people seem to think that the latter requires the former and that simply is not true. The reason for this assumption is most people think that their motivation for observance is the motivation for observance. Most Jews that keep the sabbath do so because the god in the Hebrew bible commands it. Likewise, most Jews that keep kosher do so because their holy book says that it must be done. For some reason when it comes to religion, people for the most part work with the supposition that actions and motivations are of a 1:1 relationship; each single action has a single motivation behind it. If you look at any other sort of action this is never the standard. People save money for greed, prudent investments in the future or to donate to charity. People murder out of anger or jealousy or psychosis. People take prescription drugs in order to fix a disease, treat a natural condition or to simply get high, maybe even to kill themselves. A single action can have a number of reasons behind it ranging from healing to hurting. Why would religious practices differ?

The obvious answer is because they are religious actions and therefore are motivated by religion. Mystery solved. But there's more to it than that. If the human reaction to religious texts was that simple then no one would have a different interpretation or reaction to religion; Christians would never have schismed from Jews, no religion would have different sects and everyone would follow their religion in what people now think of as a traditional or fundamental manner. But religion is much more complicated than that, as it's both a combination of mythology and philosophy. It's that mix that creates a strange allure of magic, answers and sometimes even introspection. It's my practice, and I now know that I'm not alone, to use practice to exercise introspection without the handicap of magic and superstition or the presumption of predetermined answers.

Judging by the interview it seems that Shulevitz and I are observant for similar reasons. We have chosen to practice something traditional in order to set apart a certain time within our lives in order to break up a pattern that could form monotony and habit. I know this is true for me, that performing a practice that is non-intuitive and a little unnatural breaks up my day and forces me to think in a situation where I would normally act without thought. In my case that is eating. How many people actually think before every item they eat? How many people end up putting food in their mouths out of habit? For Shulevitz, she and her family try to limit their control and manipulation over the world on the Sabbath. She avoids the phone, TV and driving as much as she can. But it's not an act of leisure. It's an act of willful limiting of one's self, a forced break in the pattern of normal life.  Meditative asceticism.

I would even argue that the secular observance can be more meaningful than a religious one.  Not always, but can be. When religious Jews keep the sabbath or rules of kosher eating their thought process may kick in but it stops one step in, that the reason for it is god. Done. In a secular mindset the thought process doesn't drop the responsibility of practice on anyone or anything other than the practitioner. I don't keep kosher because I think a god will punish me if I eat pork. I do it as an ascetic practice that makes me consider my actions. And since the path of thought stemming from this observance leads to me then I must follow it, every time, to evaluate myself. Since I always have the freedom to stop my practice and eat normally I must reevaluate the value of the observance every time. I think self-analyzing every day of life is a bit more productive than a simple “god said so”.

I'm betting that keeping the sabbath, for Shulevitz, is similar. Each Saturday she and her family get together and change how they live for an entire day. What they do for entertainment as well as weekend productivity changes drastically and it's not because it's something they should do. It's because it's something they make themselves do.

I've studied a number of philosophies and religions and this sort of practice independent of belief is not nearly as common as I would have expected. Buddhism comes close but doesn't quite fit. While it technically does not necessitate belief in any gods Buddhism does have a lot of celestial superstition to go along with its philosophy. I also find the ideal of balanced karma cringe inducing, as to be done right positive karma is to be avoided just as much as negative karma. Both are traditionally “bad” and no impact in the world at all is the ideal. While avoiding any bad or good impact without the belief in the karmic system of reincarnation (the standard superstitious motive) is possible I think avoiding actions to help people would be difficult if one did not think that this was the way to improve their cosmic standing.

As far as institutionalized secular observance goes, the only one I've that comes close is Taoism. Taoism is the secular, philosophical half of Taoism/Confucianism. While Confucianism focuses on ordering your life around pleasing dead relatives Taoism is a a series of mental practices for expanding understanding. In fact, there's a whole branch of Taoist practices that revolve around breaking down sense and motivation in order to carve out new interpretations. It's an ancient and traditional set of practices engineered to break down dogmatic repetition. To top it off, there's not mystical revelation behind it. The incentive isn't to embrace an established “truth” but to find truth through one's self. There's no god to appease, no prescribed dogma to adhere to for the sake of dogma.The fact that it is usually tied with a system of superstition such as Buddhism or Confucianism is relevant but since that's not actually essential to Taoism it isn't a negating factor here.

As for why I chose the laws of kashrut (laws pertaining to being kosher), well, that too has secular philosophical value to me. While I am a secular Jew I still consider myself very Jewish. Picking kosher out of all practices let me do a number of things. The most obvious is feeling a many thousand year old cultural connection every time I eat and that is a powerful feeling. Another reason is that Judaism has an intrinsic element of debate in establishing practice. Since Judaism is a legalistic religion it is more important to follow laws than it is to believe in them.  For example, to be a good Jew it is more important not to worship other peoples' gods than it is to worship the Jewish god as long as you keep the laws.  Every element of Jewish law has a debate behind it consisting of at least two sides. Being kosher is no different and in choosing to be kosher I took it upon myself to research what the different debates were regarding each rule. This let me judge them myself and create a set of laws that I found acceptable. While the practice is not an exercise in logic it is an exercise in taking myself out of the mundane. Knowing not only what my rules for eating are but also why is empowering and adds another lever of awareness to my secular observance.

Does this all make total sense? On one level yes and on another no. I realize that if I had been born into a Christian or Muslim or Hindu household I would have a different practice that I would follow. On that level my observance is completely arbitrary. But like the koans of Zen and Taoism, that illogical and meaningless practice makes me take stock of other things I do and think.  It pushes me to analyze what intrinsic meaning actions really have and what I simply assume them to mean. In that respect the meaningless secular observance gives meaning and sense to the rest of my actions, letting me cast aside what is thoughtless habit, assumption and superstition while embracing what is valid, true and factual. And that gives meaning to my arbitrary practice.

VERSUS: A New Take on 'Science Fiction vs. Fantasy'

Recently I’ve noticed that there’s been a lot of writing regarding science fiction.  As a genre dear to my heart I took notice.  Topics included whether sci-fi and speculative fiction should embrace a post-genre view, rules of reading that differ when it comes to sci-fi and so on.  Some of these articles were wonderful but the tendency was to move away from genre and towards a more inclusive literary view.  Even in the rules of reading sci-fi there were comparisons to using the casual acceptance of certain points and trying that perspective with literary fiction.  That’s all fine.  I have no problem with sci-fi/spec fiction moving away from strong genre and towards a wider audience.  But I want to touch on something that travels in the opposite direction, delving deeper into the genre rifts.

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

How this will diverge from the usual argument of literary value between the two types of writing is that I will address the problems that come up between sci-fi and fantasy audiences, mainly being that I’m seeing more and more people not know the difference.  So here’s a cheat sheet to distinguish the two by way of the worlds created for their settings:

• Science Fiction/Speculative Fiction: If advanced science plays a large part in the world or plot then it is science fiction.
• Fantasy: If magic exists in the world it is fantasy.

NOTE: Fantasy supersedes science fiction.

“Why?” You may ask.  That’s simple.  The reason is that magic is a bigger world shift than advanced science.  The leap between the present and any new technology will be a much smaller, more likely shift than one to magic.  In short, magic is more of a world shift than new science discoveries; the change in worlds between our world and that of Star Trek is more minor and feasible than the change between our world and that of Harry Potter.  While we are 70% of the way to tricorders since the ‘60s and now we are 0% of the way to harnessing magic since, well, ever.  And in case you want to argue that we do have access to magic/vampires/transworld wardrobes then I invite you to write your own essay and support it with real world examples.  I can show you an iPhone, the aforementioned 70% tricorder.

Let’s take a little quiz and see how you do.  Name That Genre:

• Harry Potter – fantasy
• Star Trek – sci-fi
• Chronicles of Narnia – fantasy
• Planet of the Apes – sci-fi
• Star Wars – sci-fi?  WRONG.  This one is fantasy.

And this gets to my point.  Star Wars is fantasy.  You may cry out about hyperspace, fleets of starships, interplanetary commerce, lightsabers!  Cry all you wants but you’re forgetting one thing: The Force.  The force is a mystical energy that permeates all living things (and apparently rocks and robots as well).  You can call it ‘sci-fi fantasy’ but the core of the Star Wars universe, the biggest divergence from our world is this mystical, magical Force.  We can travel to other planets and we may one day create a hyperdrive, or not if it necessitates some fictional but physical element (unobtainium, dilithium, etc) but as of now our world doesn’t seem any closer to divulging evidence of The Force than it was millions of years ago.

To pull in another genre to illustrate the difference between these two, let us look at the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for a moment.  They take place in the past, have pirates, use magic, have sea monsters and zombie/ghost/damned people, Aztec curses.  Are these fantasy movies?  Yes.  Are they historical fiction?  Only by the most liberal definition of historical fiction.  In the same way, Star Wars is very much fantasy and only science fiction by a very generous classification.

All of this started to form in my mind when one of my friends saw the Shane Acker film 9.  He said he felt betrayed because the whole film established for him a science fiction world and then at the end (SPOILERS) the story suddenly focuses on the existence of a fantasy element, a soul.  The problem I had with that criticism is the rag doll characters are animated in these burlap bodies without any sort of mechanical elements to move them.  From the beginning I saw 9 as a fantasy film, and indeed the plot seemed like a mini version of Lord of the Rings.

What I took from this perceived betrayal was the importance of discerning the two genres.  I realize that a lot of people must have the same confusion at times.  It’s evident as even in book stores the two types of books get lumped into one section despite the fact that there’s the easy test one can put to any item to figure out its proper classification.

There are a few  other instances of this confusion that has led to issues with the audience between these two genres.  One is the famous Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate.  There are many aspects of the two that can be debated, respectively: character vs. plot, romance vs. drama, archetypes vs. contemporary cultural and political deconstruction.  The one that people don’t really look at this in light of, but should, is fantasy vs. science fiction.  People sometimes get a little bothered when you say that one of these franchises is better than the other (by people I mean nerds and geeks).  You don’t really find the same irritation if you claim either fantasy or sci-fi to be better than the other.  Instead you usually get either agreement or simple disagreement, but the divide on that preference is so large and fundamental (magic vs. science) that it rarely goes any farther than agreement or acknowledgment.  The irritation really comes when people feel that Star Wars vs. Star Trek is a value judgment  within a treasured genre and it’s not.

The other example where this creates trouble, and this one has perhaps come to eclipse the Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate, is the Star Wars vs. Star Wars debate.  I’m talking about the Original Trilogy verse the prequels.  IV-VI vs. 1-3.  The same problem occurs here as it does in the previous example because a false dichotomy is created; people start arguing about the value of two genres without realizing it.  The original movies have The Force, a mystical energy that flows through all living things and binds them together.  Jedis and Sith are warring factions of an ancient religion.  When we get to the prequels the force is actually a manifestation of blood parasites called midichlorians.  These are measured and studied by the Jedi Council, a political collective that is fighting against the totalitarian Sith.  Arguing between the originals and the prequels isn’t like arguing between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  In the latter the argument is within the same fantasy setting, but told differently.  In the former the argument is really between two nearly unrelated worlds where one is a fantasy adventure and the other a political science-fiction drama.  A lot of the points people clash actually puts them on the same side; both sides saying the weakest aspect is the awkward connecting of these two barely related trilogies.

More recently Battlestar Galactica has suffered from this muddled distinction.  I was lucky enough to start the show after it completed its full run, with only the half-spoiler that the finale didn’t fit the hard science fiction of the previous episodes.

(For readers not familiar with ‘hard sci-fi’ it is a sub-genre recognized but a focus on realistic and usually well explained speculative scientific developments.  The lack of lasers and realistic plotting of battles, along with the lack of multiple faster than light travel speeds pushed this series closer towards ‘hard sci-fi’ than most television.  The lack of sound in space in the show Firefly is another example of this realistic approach.)

I went in knowing that it was like Star Wars, a fantasy world full of technology.  Knowing this the finale of the show was much more in line with the world I perceived the series to take place in.  While religious beliefs were often a discussion point in the show knowing that the actual religion played a part in their reality helped ground my watching in something somewhat closer to their “reality” and farther from the “reality” that people expecting science fiction assumed to be true.

I’m not coming out to say that between fantasy and science fiction there is a better genre, though I do have my preference.  The point I want to make is that even recognizing the difference between the two is an oft missed aspect in the genre debates.  And seeing this split early on simplifies a great deal when looking at these two uncomfortable siblings.  Being aware of the fundamental differences can even help outside of head to head issues.  Take the current Steampunk trend.  The reason I think it’s so widespread among both sets of fans is that a fictionalized Victorian setting has the potential to grow into either, or both) genres.  Coal powered automatons have just as much potential to exists as do the Ancient Ones, perhaps even to both show up and battle.  In addition, the science of brass pressure tanks and steam power have already been surpassed so any retroactively advanced technology becomes just as indistinguishable from magic as sufficiently advanced technology would.  The suspension of disbelief required for Steampunk is much more akin to that required for fantasy than science fiction.  Could a Terminator ever be built?  Possibly, and that’s science fiction.  Could a steam-powered Terminator be built?  Infeasible and it is closer in likelihood to a Golem than a cyborg, thus pushing closer to the realm of fantasy.