Ntuple Indemnity

Have you stormed your Bastille today?

In the biggest dung-flinging crossfire of literary criticism in recent memory, Booker-winning author A.S. Byatt wrote this article in the New York Times claiming J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to be “written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons and the exaggerated – more exciting, less threatening – mirror world of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip,” among other things. This has since led to rebuttals and counter-rebuttals across the vast expanse of the Internet, such as Charles Taylor’s response at Salon.com, an eloquently written variation on the standard snobbery-jealousy defence. Both sides are surprisingly well-represented in readers’ letters here and here, and there is a wealth of responses from the general Potter readership at The Leaky Cauldron. There is also a fierce debate going on at Crooked Timber that is worth a look.

I will gloss over my redundant agreements with what has already been said. Some have already pointed out the irony of Rowling prognosticating exactly this line of criticism by demonizing the regulation of curricula in The Order of the Phoenix. Few would neglect to mention how especially interesting it is that Byatt cites Tolkien as an exemplar of what she would rather see as representative of the fantastic realm, considering that her criticism of Rowling bears uncanny resemblance to the anti-Tolkien material Tom Shippey spent an entire chapter tearing to pieces in Author of the Century.

One wonders how she would respond if she actually came across the real trash on fantasy shelves today. Byatt compares Potter’s appeal to “soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip,” but she is picking on about as wrong a target as possible; one wonders if she would drown in her tears should she come across the endless fluff and drivel to which Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time has sunk, those hundreds of pages detailing the dress senses of never-before-introduced characters with indistinguishible names and no perceptible relevance to the story other than to flesh things out a little. As far as soapiness goes, the suds are bubbling around the mass-produced franchise trash of brand-name fiction such as the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, which largely concern themselves with self-contradictory plot convolutions and make thematically negligent attempts at filling in all of the ambiguity that made the movies such tightly-paced tales of wonder.

Harry Potter has insofar possessed none of these traits. The saga shows an irrefutable curve of exposition and development, and a conclusion is in sight; structurally, it is hardly the model of an overly marketable infinite series. Rowling spends remarkably little time dealing with the baser complications of meaningless trivia and who’s dating whom, reserving such tangents to the briefest of passing mentions or cooping them within separate volumes entirely, as in the case of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through The Ages (I still await Charm Your Own Cheese).

I refuse to advocate the accusations of snobbery, as elitism is a practice I relish myself over caviar and herbal tea, and on a regular basis at that. In many cases, professional criticism is necessary to keep the forces of marketing from polluting Barnes & Noble warehouses with wastepaper. Byatt’s problem is more of a critical misfire more than anything, an ill-advised stab at what is erroneously purported to be children’s-only literature based solely on said erroneous assumption.

But now on to the far more serious claim that lies at the core of this entire debate: the notion of Harry Potter being a derivative, juvenile, and – most atrociously – “cartoonish” series.

The standard counter-argument is that adults read Potter because it’s fun. I would go as far as to say that they – or we, rather – read Potter because, whether or not we realize it, it’s funny.

Ersatz magic, thou sayest? Derivative of the traditional archetypes of witchcraft and wizardry? Why, certainly – that is precisely the point! J.K. Rowling is doing to the traditional stereotypical bastions of fantasy precisely what The Avengers did to the James Bond spy image: spoofing them conceptually, yet wrapping a serious story around it all. One becomes so absorbed in the books that it is easy to forget the inherent absurdity with which she treats bureaucracy in true Pythonian fashion, with the convoluted machinations of the Ministry of Magic; or alternatively, the deft satire of fanatical football culture in the ridiculous game of Quidditch. The apparent aura of childishness is a direct result of this reliance on archetype, something that Rowling mocks relentlessly in her comical dissection of the traditional expectations of numinous literature.

The claim that Harry Potter is a cartoon is correct in the sense that it is written in cartoonish prose, but that is more of a descriptor than a fault. Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is essentially a comic book, yet that does not preclude it from treating anti-Semitism and the Second World War with respect and decorum. The argument that the accessibility of Rowling’s prose makes it somehow improper for anyone old enough to have a driver’s license is along the same line of consciousness that animation is an inherently childish medium of film, or that caricature is an immature and illegitimate form of illustration. One would sooner fault Hemingway for being the pioneer of discarding grandiloquence, or Douglas Adams for his cliché-ridden portrayal of Vogons as green, blobby space aliens bent on destroying the Earth.

With every reference to a purportedly superior author, Byatt digs her hole a little deeper. She cites Susan Cooper, whose The Dark is Rising cycle is a revisionary update of Arthurian legend, and Terry Pratchett, whose works are conceptually traditional but written with hilarious levity. Yet Rowling’s work is a marriage of modernization and humour that produces a distinctly original product, one that naturally seems derivative on the outside precisely as intended by the author.

The completely predictable misunderstandings of Rowling’s critics serve only to highlight her greatest triumph. The Harry Potter novels are so clearly intended to take established fantasy paradigms and precepts and spin them out of control, they are literary mousetraps of intricate design, litmus tests of whether or not adults still know how to read.

There is a sizable controversy on CGP right now concerning the latest revision of Merriam Webster, one of the primary sources used by the NSA’s Dictionary Committee. The discussion was primarily sparked by the Eleventh Edition’s redefinition of “CPU” as a lowercase noun rather than an uppercase acronym, which would imply that it is fair game for inclusion in the next edition of the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary.

The main argument in favour of CPU’s inclusion – other than a rejection of all common sense, that is – is that it would be a double standard to not include it, yet allow words of clearly acronymic origin (LASER, SCUBA, MODEM), still in acronymic form (EMF, AMU) and questionable legitimacy (QWERTY). However, consider the following: a) “laser” and “scuba” have come into common lowercase usage as words of their own; b) “emf” and “amu” are by scientific convention, never spelt as all-uppercase acronyms, whereas I have yet to see one reputable technical source that uses CPU in the same manner; and c) QWERTY is pretty darn questionable in the first place, even though with an S tacked on the end, it makes the second-coolest bingo in the game (ZLOTYCH will always be dearer to my heart).

In summary: English is a weird language.

I walked into Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl expecting to criticize it mercilessly for the omission of the classic “Yo ho, yo ho / A pirate’s life for me” drinking song from the Disney theme park attraction on which it is based. The film not only opens with a lovely and subtle rendition of said song, but proceeds to make the right cinematic choices from that point onwards.

Pirates can hardly be faulted for being such a direct stab at being a definitive portrayal of the swashbuckling high-seas adventure archetype that it ventures into the realm of caricature. The reason for excusing its nature as a formula flick is that for all its cartoonish glory, it is remarkably well-drawn. It is a visually stylish period film, exuberantly designed in much the same manner as the ride that is its source, and colourfully photographed under daylight and moonlight to produce an immersive atmosphere and later serve as a plot device.

The content of the film itself is more like a two-hour version of the Treasure Island stunt spectacular in Las Vegas than anything, full of clanging swords and cannon fire, swinging from ropes and ladders, and bursting with all of the traditional pirate-story elements: the damsel in distress walking the plank, the climactic naval battle with Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, the rum-drenched pirate shanty town, the irresistible treasure chest that turns out to be the Aztec equivalent of Pandora’s Box. Pirates unashamedly aims for cliché, but does such a good job in the presentation that its well-established roots should hardly preclude one from enjoying it.

It is hardly all style and no substance, either. The lifeblood of the movie is pumped by the four lead characters, each with a fierce personality. Johnny Depp boards the movie and steals it as Captain Jack Sparrow, a clever and enigmatic bandito who can unquestionably be elevated to the ranks of the great adventure movie characters. This is the standout performance of this summer’s crop of mainstream action flicks. Orlando Bloom, at his current pace, seems to be on course to becoming recognized as the closest thing this generation has to an Errol Flynn. In his role as the pirate-hating poor-boy blacksmith who naturally has an affinity with the high-born governor’s daughter, he does tend to enunciate everything in the same intense and worried tone in such a manner that is almost irritating, but it suits the character. Keira Knightley has a convincing level of spunk in portraying the aforementioned high-born governor’s daughter Elizabeth Swann; Geoffrey Rush plays a villain who truly shines in his scenes with Sparrow, pun entirely intended.

And speaking of that shining, mention must be made of the movie’s token visual gimmick, the undead pirates morphing into skeletal form under moonlight. The transitions in and out of this mode are completely seamless, and the skeletons’ movements are so human as to be a fully integrated part of the visual experience instead of sticking out as an effect. This is the capitulation of everything for which Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy aimed, a corporeal bridge between life and death that characters cross on command.

However, Pirates is hardly perfect, though perfection should not be expected in the first place. The plot begins to wander near the end and stretch the running time a bit long, with back-and-forth kidnappings and raids that border on redundancy. There are a few decidedly campy moments, although they are apparently intentional, given how the abundance of conceptual clichés is largely responsible. Some of the comedy is considerably better-written than the rest; the very British banter between two of the guards works, whilst chasing eyeballs down slippery surfaces was already done in Minority Report, and better. But what ultimately saves the film from being thin, in addition to its energetic cast, is that it is never overtly stupid.

What is most commendable about Pirates of the Caribbean is that as a successful translation of a Disneyland boat ride into a fun adventure movie that plays in the same key as Martin Campbell’s The Mask of Zorro, it leads to some admirable implications. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before somebody in Hollywood figures out how to make a tolerable movie of this sort out of a video game, for instance. The real curse has nothing to do with black pearls, but franchise-motivated adaptations; we should applaud Pirates of the Caribbean for breaking it.

Earlier tonight as I was making my way out of the Stampede grounds, I passed by an open-air concert at the Coca-Cola stage featuring some band called Treble Charger. I had probably heard many of their songs before, given that my roommate had a number of their albums playing on repeat last year, but only distinctly recognized one of them. Naturally I refer to “American Psycho”, upon hearing which I thought something along the lines of, “Oh, these guys.”

Given that they are a vanilla rock band that plays at exactly one dynamic level and perhaps even one key, with a somewhat rudimentary chord vocabulary, they were actually pretty good by vanilla rock standards. True, they resorted to jumping up and down on stage to mask the fact that the sounds they produced were sitting. True, their songs were indistinguishable and completely forgettable, minus the one I mentioned earlier, which is a clear demonstration of why people came up with the term “one-hit wonder”. However, one could not fault them for their raw energy and sizzling guitar solos, and the fact that the music they played – however repetitive and unoriginal – was still somewhat within the realm of music, which is more than I could say for much of the contemporary crap on the airwaves.

One has to wonder, however, how bands today don’t understand why music piracy is so rampant, when the answer is rather obvious: their albums are not worth buying because when you’ve heard one signature song, you really have heard them all. Modern poppish-punkish rock still has some sense of melodic-harmonic interplay, which is good, even though rock stopped rolling three decades ago (unless you count rolling in its grave). The problem, however, is variety. The Beatles were brilliant in their Please Please Me era of building on the sounds of their predecessors, but what made them stand out from the rest of the pack was that they went so far beyond that. Anybody can find a favourite Beatles song if they looked hard enough, because they did absolutely everything. There is hardly a band today that is developing like that; and the increasingly experimental ones like Radiohead are perhaps losing musical maturity as they go along, not gaining it as they should.

What rock – mainstream or otherwise – needs nowadays is a powerhouse songwriting team, like Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, without whom Elvis would’ve hardly been an Archduke. Perhaps the one-hit wonder phenomenon can be squarely attributed to the fact that there’s no consistent source of inspiration that can lead bands like Treble Charger to stumble upon a second unique melangé of melody, harmony and incomprehensible lyrics like they did with “American Psycho”, the memorability of which likely has something to do with the existence of a book and film by that name, but furthermore rests on how it isn’t as generic as everything else. Still generic, but not as much.

Stay tuned for a thematically similar review of the generic but well-made Pirates of the Caribbean, which I saw yesterday.