Category: books

All Things Philosophical on Harry Potter

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 18 Comments

current film: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

I’ve been reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and it is a really charming read. Delightful prose, interesting characters, and a magical world that should guarantee that any Buffyverse fan also become a Harry Potter fan (alas, if only the reverse were true as well!)

So as I’m reading the book and walking down the sidewalk simultaneously, I find myself veering over to the video store to rent the movie. The US version of the movie, of course, with its repeated references to the “Sorcerer’s Stone”, because we are woefully ignorant and have never heard of the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone. After all, if it aint practical, it’s just worthless nonsense. And why do philosopher’s need stones, anyway? They’re up there in their ivory towers sucking up student tuition and the working man’s taxes contributing nothing to the economy.

Anyway, I digress. This is only the third time I’ve seen the movie, and I rented the VHS tape from the corner video store instead of netflix ’cause you can’t video tape the feed from a DVD. Ssssh! Don’t tell anyone. It’s not like I’m going to sell copies or anything. I want it for my private collection.

I’m still digressing. OK, so towards the end of the movie, Harry is confronted by Professor Quirrell/Voldemort, who is looking for the aforementioned stone. He is trying to persuade Harry to help him get it, and he thinks Harry is warming up to doing just that. Pleased, he says,

“There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”

This pricks up my ears. Now, I’m only on page 126 of the book, but I sneak ahead to the end and check to see how the scene goes there. Sure enough, these are Rowling’s words as well. Well, words she puts in the mouth of Quirrell/Voldemort.

And it’s interesting. Any Buffyverse fan worth two shakes of philosopher’s salt would recognize that statement. It’s almost word for word what the First Evil says to a trembling, half-crazed souled Spike in “Lessons”:

“It’s not about right. Not about wrong. It’s about power.”

But this isn’t the first time Mutant Enemy has put such words in the mouth of their Big Bads. Jasmine-in-Cordelia or “The Beast’s Master” says the same thing in Season 4 of Angel:

“What does that mean, really? Being good? Doing the right thing? By who’s judgment? Good, evil–they’re just words, Connor. Concepts of morality they forced around your neck to yank you wherever they please. You’re with me now. You don’t have to live by their rules. You remember why?”

Connor: “‘Cause we’re special.”

It was behind Faith’s infamous words in Season 3 of BtVS:

“Want, take, have.”

And her belief that Slayers could do whatever they want by virtue of being stronger than others and saving them from unspeakable demons.

Holland Manners of Wolfram and Hart has a similar philosophy in Season 1 of Angel:

“I’m talking about that sharp, clear sense of self a man gains once he’s truly found his place in the world. It’s no mean feat, since most men are cowards and just move with the crowd. Very few make their own destinies. They have the courage of their convictions, and they know how to behave in a crisis.”

Observing the actions of Wolfram and Hart over the years and the rationalizations they give for them, this is indeed the governing philosophy of the “evil” law firm:

The world is designed for those who know how to use it, those who can control themselves and others. You must find your role in the scheme of things–you are either the user or the used. “Good” and “evil” are mere constructs invented by the losers to feel better about their lot in life. But the weak deserve their lot because they lack of courage to do what they want and take what they want.

One of the reasons Mutant Enemy and Joss provide us with such intelligent shows is because their “evil” characters aren’t running around hurting people for no apparent reason. This is the problem with a lot of books/shows/movies. Trying to figure out the motivations of the bad guy. A lot of two-dimensional bad guys have to be finally just called “megalomaniac evil over-lords” because their actions lack the courage of any convictions.

But this philosophy I’ve been quoting is so compelling as a way of demarcating “bad guys” because it has a certain rational ring to it. Ultimately, this philosophy comes down to self-interest, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to serve your own. Indeed, many would not call this a “philosophy” at all, they’d call it “Reality. That’s just the way things are.”

Who says there’s any “Good” or “Evil”? These are social constructs that every society defines differently, by the way. Look around at nature and at human life, and all you see are plants, animals and people pursuing their self-interest, even these so-called “heroes” who believe in “Good”.

If you want to use such an outlook on life as a way of demarcating the bad guys from the good guys, it becomes a very rational way to tempt the morally upright, law-abiding hero into doing things s/he’s been taught are wrong. Especially if they use “any means necessary” to accomplish ends they think are “good”.

And so Faith tempts Buffy.
Voldemort tempts Harry (you were wondering when I’d get back to Harry Potter, right?)

And the fact that both Rowling and Mutant Enemy have seized on this philosophy as a way of explaining their “bad guys” outlook makes me think their Hero’s struggle is also the struggle of western society at large.

The morning read

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 12 Comments

I’ve realized that keeping a blog-style journal is a very healthy thing. When you write only those things you’d allow other people to see, it turns out (in my case, anyway), it really only eliminate the self-indulgent whining. Everything else becomes an open book. Well, mostly… ; )

Speaking of books, I did go to the library Tues evening and made myself a new find. The writer’s name is Neal Schusterman. He seems to write teenaged-reader books in the fantasy genre. I checked out two books by him. The one I am reading now is called “The Dark Side of Nowhere”. It starts out with a teen-aged boy in a small town living a life that Lorne on AtS would call, metaphorically, of course, the life of “the last feisty wife in Stepford”. Everyone else is so niiiice. Complacent. Boring. He hates it there.

Teen-aged boy and his newly acquired girlfriend, not uncoincidentally the new girl in town and hence not Stepfordy, suspect something is very wrong in their town. The book takes on an X-Files demeanor as they try to figure it out. But it has a very unexpected twist that then twists again twenty pages later.

Hopefully, it’ll keep on doing the twist until the end. So far, so good.

Quotage: “Your head’s a mess and you don’t know why.”

Update: turns the classic teen-aged boredom-angst story on its ear. Everyone else is so niiiice. Complacent. Boring. He hates it there. Be careful what you wish for.

OK, this is making me a little ticked….

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 12 Comments

Items Ordered :

1 of: Harry Potter Adult Edition Box Set: Four Volumes in Paperback [Paperback]
   By: J.K. Rowling

Order Placed: 14 July 2003 at 20:52 BST    

     – Availability: Usually dispatched within 7 to 10 days

Dispatch estimate: Aug 6, 2003 – Aug 20, 2003
Delivery estimate: Aug 13, 2003 – Aug 29, 2003

OK, so first of all, they didn’t dispatch within 7 to 10 days. And second of all, their actual dispatch estimate range has been ticking away for six days now, and they still haven’t dispatched my books.

In the mean time, I’ve run out of things to read because I finished the Lioness series and just could not get through “American Gods”. So it’s back to the library for me. I can’t even check out Harry Potter there because the English language editions are always checked out. I could reserve them, I suppose, but this is something I’d rather have on my shelf. I’m sure amazon.com has the US versions, but ewww.

And so I wait. By the time I get the first four books, “Order of the Phoenix” should be out in paperback, and will look nifty on the shelf next to its companions.

I need book recommendations!

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 10 Comments

So I’m headed off to the library tonight to return my books, but I forgot to include my list of books I want to check out in my back-pack (for some reason I was very distracted this morning as I got ready for work).

I have the last Tamora Pierce Lioness book on my list to check out, and I jotted down a note to look for Gaiman’s “American Gods” even though most likely all the copies will be completely checked out and I’ll have to reserve a copy.

Harry Potter vols 1-4 are on order with amazon.co.uk, and there aren’t any English language copies available at the libraray anyway (American or British).

So that leaves me with just one Pierce book to come home with. I would like to expand my reading list now that I’ve discovered The Place with the Free Books, but I’m drawing a blank about what to do next. My taste in books is generally: fiction, sci-fi/fantasy. The books I like should have at least some connection to the real world and/or the human race. In general, I am turned off by books that take place entirely on another planet/fantasy place with a completely alien race and no humans.

Exceptions to this are Star Wars, in which for some inexplicable reason the human-looking characters refer to themselves as “human” even though they live in a galaxy far, far away, and Lord of the Rings, even though I spent countless exacerbated hours trying to figure out exactly where “Middle Earth” was on Earth.

It’s not so much that I am conventional when it comes to my reading tastes, as I am looking for something very specific in my sci-fi/fantasy: the illusion that this could be real. If it’s happening to Earth-humans (say, like Star Trek, in the future), I can imagine that this could really be our future. If it’s happening on our Earth in the present day, I can imagine its real no matter how fantastic it actually is (BtVS and AtS are good examples of this, since they continue to cling to the idea that this is taking place on our Earth, and most people are ridiculously ignorant of the demons and magic around them).

So generally speaking, I don’t like alternate dimension stuff unless people cross over to our world from there or to there from our world. Same for complete alien society stuff (I don’t get much into the “this is metaphorically about the human race” stuff. I’m rather literal).

All those caveats aside, any suggestions? I need a good distraction……

Books

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 12 Comments

So I was busily using this keen LJ feature called “Memories” to categorize and quick-link all my LJ entries on movies, TV shows, writing, books, etc, etc, when I realized I haven’t written much about books. It’s not that I haven’t been reading them, I have–what else is there to do while you’re walking down the sidewalk in San Francisco?

I did get to the library and checked out some books, as I mentioned previously, mostly out of the juvenile reading section. This may be part of my summer fluff-mode thing. I’m just not up for serious movies, or adult reading.

I’ve been writing journal entries about what I’ve read, I just haven’t been writing them in my LJ. I think it’s because every time I’m moved to write about what I’m reading, I’m somewhere like deep in the forest hiking or up 30,000 feet in a plane. And then I’m too lazy to transcribe what I’ve written long hand onto the computer. Books I read and wrote about elsewhere: “The Fancy Dancer” by Patricia Nell Warren and “Dive” by Stacey Donovan.

“The Fancy Dancer” is a book I’ve owned for 20 years and have read many times in that span, but I got something totally new out of reading it while I was in Guernville in May. It’s about a priest in Montana who has an affair with a half-breed mechanic. It explores some controversial issues around using sexual metaphors in religion (an example of such a metaphor would be “the bride of Christ”, but in this case the metaphor is homoerotic).

“Dive” I read on the plane heading down to Arizona. It was about a 15-year old girl who’s father is dying of a rare blood disease. It has the most beautiful use of similes I’ve ever read, used to get across this anxiety-laden, claustrophobic feeling of having a family member dying (and in case you’re wondering how that fits into my “fluff mode”, I checked it out because it was supposedly a teen lesbian romance. The love interest doesn’t even appear until 150 pages into the book!)

I more recently discovered a fun little teen book series by Tamora Pierce called The Song of the Lioness series, which tells the story of a young girl growing up in a mythical land not unlike Medieval Europe. She and her brother are each being sent off to school, her to learn magic and him to earn knighthood. But each wants to do what the other sibling is being sent to do, so they trade places. She pretends to be a boy and goes to the palace to learn how to be a knight. I’m not usually into historical fantasy, but with a spirited little cross-dressing tomboy, how could I resist?

I’ve decided that libraries are a Good Thing. However, bookstores are also a good thing. I ordered the four-volume set of the Harry Potter books from amazon.co.uk. My friend Gloria was supposed to buy me “Philospher’s Stone” when she was in England. Then she comes home with two copies of “Order of the Phoenix”. I assumed one was for me, and then she gives me this weird look and says she bought the other copy for her ex-girlfriend.

Whatever. As soon as I get through the first four books, I’ll buy my own friggin’ copy of “Phoenix”. Who can resist a story about a cranky, morally ambiguous teen-aged boy?

The joys of borrowing and renting

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 7 Comments

Somewhere along the line after I became a Grown Up, I stopped going to the library and decided I had to buy books that I wanted to read. I’m not sure when this happened. I was always library-girl in grade school. My first part-time job was in the public library.

In fact, I decided that the public library had gone the way of the dinosaur, because it had in many towns I lived in as an adult. Or you couldn’t find anything there worth checking out. Or if you did, it sat on your desk until its due-date and you had to take it back unread.

Plus, I decided that if I was going to go to the trouble of reading a book, I wanted to have it on my shelf like a trophy for All To See. “See, I read this.” Problem is, I got books on my shelf that I bought and then never read. Most of them are gone now, I sold them for a quarter of the price I bought them for when I realized I’d never read them.

So all this talk of Harry Potter and other book recommendations on the board and here in LJ land got me itching to read. That, and I have NOTHING on my shelves anymore that I haven’t read or actually really intend to read. It makes riding the bus abysmally dull. But I go to amazon.com and hesitate to put anything into my shopping cart; after all, what if I buy this and don’t read it, too? Or what if I buy it and don’t like it?

Honestly, when did I cave in to the international capitalist conspiracy to make me part with my hard-earned money? Hey, you corporate suck-pigs, it’s mine and you can’t have it!!

So yesterday I snuck out of work early and went to get myself a library card. They do have functioning public libraries in San Francisco. Makes sense; this is the last bastion of liberalism-isn’t-a-dirty-word in the United States. Or perhaps the last bastion of home-grown socialism. Pass the bean sprouts while I tighten the straps on my faded Birkenstocks.

I didn’t actually find any books at the library yesterday. By the time I got my card, the library was closing. They can’t have decent hours anymore because everybody else in this country doesn’t want to give their money to the government. Well, maybe for bombs, but not for books.

Well, fuck ’em all, this is the age of the internet, and I just spend a glorious hour in the on-line catalog for the library seeing what they had in science fiction and fantasy and gay and lesbian fiction. Yee haw! Books, books, books. I’ve noticed, however, that everything that interests me is in the “Teen Center”. OK, so my idea of entertainment shows that I am permanently stuck in adolescence because I never really had one. I was a big fat no-life nerd in High School. OK, not fat. Why do you think “Buffy” interested me when it first came out?

So now I have my library card and a list of books to locate before I go on vacation. Is it horribly risky to take library books with you on a plane to another state? ‘Cause I’m thinking of hauling my netflix DVDs there, too.

This netflix thing is also big fun. I do feel guilty about not patronizing my corner Mom-and-Pop video store. But for $3.80 for every rental, it was bleeding me dry! I figure with netflix, I have to rent 5 movies a month to make it as expensive as the corner store, but through the magic of DVD, I am discovering TV shows I’m too cheap, er, I mean frugal to spring for digital cable to see: Queer as Folk, Six Feet Under, Oz. I’m catching up on shows I don’t get around to watching on cable because they come on every friggin’ day and they never are at episode 1 season 1 when you need them to be: Dark Shadows, Babylon 5. Ooh, and reliving Space: 1999!

So this is fun. And when I get a life in the Real World, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Schmoozing

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 7 Comments

So last night’s big fun was going down to the Castro theater and seeing “Laughing Matters” at the G&L film festival. Lynn is friends with the producer and her L.A. contingent, and invited me to the before-screening party, but Gloria and I were shoveling down dinner at Fuzio’s and by the time we got to the theater, they wouldn’t let us inside.

So we stood out in that blasting arctic wind for 45 minutes waiting for the previous movie to get out. I hate winter. Oh, right! It’s June! Don’t let deevalish fool you with stories about how pleasant the weather is in this town. It has been friggin’ freezing lately. I have this theory that the true cause of global warming is that all the cold air everywhere in the world has concentrated off shore above Ocean Beach and is now blowing through the streets of San Francisco.

Anyway, we finally get into the movie, which is actually a pair of shorter documentary films about lesbian comedians, both cracking-up funny. Then I meet up with Lynn to go to this after-screening party at a downtown hotel.

Lots of schmoozing with the L.A. types–producers, a couple of the actual comedians featured in the film, their entourage(s), and of course a few local San Francisco movers and shakers. Free cocktails. But of course it’s Sunday night, a work night, and there isn’t going to be any late-night partying for me.

Gloria didn’t go to the after-screening party, she had to catch a plane to New York this morning to go on her QE2 cruise to England. She asked me if I wanted a copy of the “adult cover” version of the latest Harry Potter while she was in London. I told her I’d rather have the first book (seeing as I haven’t read any of them), and that I wouldn’t mind having a copy that says “Philosopher’s Stone” instead of “Sorcerer’s Stone”. Americans are such peasants!

Movies and books

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 2 Comments

Finished “The Man Who Fell to Earth” this morning. A little depressing. It’s heralded as one of the few “realistic” attempts to write about what it might be like to be an alien from outer space living on this planet. The alien comes here intending to build a ship to help the few survivors on his home planet come to Earth, but after five years actually living on Earth, he decides it’s better if all his friends and relatives back home die off and he himself becomes a pathetic drunk.

I’m sure there’s lots of themey goodness here about alienation, loneliness, the wretchedness of human nature and blah blah blibbitey blah, but I don’t get this whole it’s-only-realistic-if-it’s-depressing-and-pessimistic thing. Honestly, the human race has survived for milennia, and sometimes we’ve even had fun!

Which brings me to “Tuck Everlasting”. This was a little nugget. A tightly-plotted fantasy gem with uplifting themes like embracing life and the joy of family and you know, the kind of movie where the greedy snively little guy bites it at the end. Plus gorgeous forest scenery and wonderful prose that is probably from some original book it was based on.

I watch movies like this and after I’m done being misty-eyed at the end, think, “Why can’t I plot my stories like this?” It has the pensive, beautiful introduction to the main character and her basic conflict, the build up of tension with the whole we-might-be-discovered story line, the lazy, happy middle with the romance between Jesse and Winifred, and then the climax as the forces building up throughout the movie all come together–the greedy guy hunting down the Tucks, Winifred’s father actually suceeding in finding his lost daughter, the arrest of the Tucks and Winifred helping to free them. And in the process of knowing them, freeing herself. Well, freeing herself as much as an early-20th century woman could ever be free.

I think the climax in my own story happens in the middle of the novel and then things just sort of slide to a finish for the second half of the book. Hmmm. Hard to say with as many story lines as I’ve got.

The other movie I rented was a film-festival debut called “Under One Roof” about a gay man who rents an apartment in the home of a Chinese-American family in San Francisco. Of course, the Chinese son is gay himself, but living a closeted life with his mother and grandmother, who are trying to marry him off. This movie had some awkward production values and some mediocre acting, but it was very, very, sweet. The film-maker was obviously a professional, but on a very slim budget. It seemed as if he just got his neighborhood buddies together and said, “help me make a movie”.

But that was part of the appeal. You definitely felt like you’d stepped into somebody’s house and were just watching them live their lives. Had almost a “reality tv” feel for it, except with an actual plot and a homey warmth and genuineness to it you don’t get in those exhibitionist reality shows.

Give you hope that just showing people struggling to make things work–and succeeding for the most part–will still sell tickets. Or books.