Ntuple Indemnity

So many questions, so few answers. How long will the Liberal minority government remain in power? Who killed Mr. Boddy? What have I got in my pocket?

But on a matter of greater urgency, who is the Half Blood Prince – and is there, or is there not a hyphen?

(I say this a lot, but if you have not read the books, stop making excuses and go play catch-up; spoilers follow.)

We can eliminate the following right off the bat: Harry and Voldemort, by J.K. Rowling’s own admission; the entirety of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black (specifically, Draco Malfoy), Neville Longbottom, and the Weasley children on the basis of their being explicitly from the pure-blood wizarding families, not to mention how The Order of the Phoenix reveals that “Weasley Is Our King”, not a prince; and all of the lovely magical ladies, on the grounds that they are not eligible to be princely.

That leaves a heck of a roster still out in the open.

On literary grounds we can deduce that the Half Blood Prince is a character who has already been a presence to some extent in the five existing books, though one should not rule out a brand new introduction along the lines of what is done with the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher every year. From the references to Sirius Black and Mrs. Figg in The Philosopher’s Stone and Mundungus Fletcher in both Chamber and Goblet, it initially seems that this need not be an ‘onstage’ character, let alone a major one. Now, before anyone wets their pants shouting “I knew it – Mark Evans!” (as many have already done in the pertinent thread at The Leaky Cauldron) – keep in mind one other thing we know: the significance of the Prince is somehow related to The Chamber of Secrets to the extent that The Half Blood Prince was its original title. What is at this point indeterminate is the extent to which the role of the Prince was excised from Chamber in preparation for future development. It is, in fact, quite possible that the context of the title had it been used in the second book would clearly refer to Tom Riddle, but is now in reference to someone completely different.

That said, summon the following before the Wizengamot.

Salazar Slytherin – I was half-joking when I mentioned him in the post preceding this one. As clever a parallel as it would be to make him, like his eventual heir, a hypocritical racialist with a loathing for his own lineage, this is logically unsound for a number of reasons, the first among them being that building the Chamber of Secrets as a mechanism by which to purge the impure would be nothing short of ritual suicide. Nevertheless, to quote the Sorting Hat song in Phoenix: “For instance, Slytherin / Took only pure-blood wizards / Of great cunning, just like him.” Rule him right out.

Godric Gryffindor – As the proponent of the magical education of those who were not necessarily of magical birth, he seems like a natural choice; also, there we are with another Potter-Gryffindor parallel. There are a number of flaws with this theory, though. One is that the clear implication in Chamber‘s history of the founding of Hogwarts is that at the time, the status quo was that all wizards were pure-blood, hence the perceived need for change. Gryffindor fighting for the right of those who were not of purely magical lineage to be magically educated would imply that he was himself uneducated. It would also negate his equal-access advocacy as an act of charity.

Rubeus Hagrid – The star candidate, as it were: a wizard for a father, and perceptibly a Prince on his mother’s side – we still know little about Fridwulfa’s significance in the world of the giants. He plays a role in The Chamber of Secrets, and this would make Tom’s astonishment that anybody could plausibly believe Hagrid to be the Heir of Slytherin even greater – though it does make the framing incident too implausible. Regardless, there is something about Hagrid that begs revelation – namely, why he is so firmly on the receiving end of Dumbledore’s trust and protection. This theory is hurt primarily by its being on the obvious side, and that symbolically, his story’s promotion of the theme of injustice by genetic prejudice is already comprehensive enough.

Dean Thomas – Of the Gryffindor boys, he is the one about whom we know the least directly from the books, aside from his fondness for West Ham football. He has a comprehensive backstory that as Rowling said, was written for Chamber but excised upon being determined as tangential. It involves him never knowing that he had a wizard for a biological father, growing up thinking he was a Muggle-born. Not in his favour, though, is that this story arc was entirely scrapped from any development over the course of five books, and that Rowling has revealed as much as she has without worrying about spoiling the plot, something she is so often cautious to avoid. To quote the author: “Now I don’t think his history will ever make it into the books.”

James Potter – This is an excellent theory, but one shot down by a technicality. All the grand storytelling implications of making Harry the son of a Prince should come naturally: we have yet another dimension to Voldemort’s motivations for the murders at Godric’s Hollow, in addition to Trelawney’s prophecy; we have a source of the arrogance James displays in “Snape’s Worst Memory”. However, all signs point to the elder Potter being of a wizarding family. Harry Potter is a half-blood, as established by what Voldemort does to him – “mark him as his equal.” Half, in most languages, is not the same as one quarter, three quarters, or even nine and three quarters. James and Lily are both wizards, yet Harry is not considered of pure magical birth; as Lily is a Muggle-born, it follows that James must comprise that half alone.

Severus Snape – We know too little about him at this stage, particularly what binds him to Dumbledore. This would also continue what we already saw developing in Phoenix: parallels of characterization and circumstances between Snape and Harry. He is a Slytherin, but so was Riddle, no? In any case, there is far, far more to him than what we know so far; making him the titular character of the sixth almost fails to do him justice. Finding out more about him is likely a separate voyage of discovery, and one that will not fully develop until the seventh and final volume. His portrayal as the Draco Malfoy of the older generation is no small minus, as is his calling Lily a Mudblood.

Mark Evans – No. I realize I may wind up eating my words with a side of satay sauce if Mark turns out to be a character at all, but even considering Rowling’s penchant for reintroducing minor name-drops as major players, a disconnected passing mention as late as Phoenix hardly qualifies. Remember that while it was well-known prior to Phoenix that Lily’s maiden name was Evans, in the canon of the five books themselves this is actually not revealed until well after we hear about this Mark kid in the first chapter.

Tom Riddle – That anybody would at this stage still consider him a separate character from a certain other one that Rowling has already eliminated as a possibility is baffling. Riddle is not in contention, barring the circumstance that he actually is different from birth than his alter-ego; perhaps he purged himself of the undesired side of his heritage, which relates to the murder of the Riddles in the first chapter of The Goblet of Fire. Given his experiments with death and resurrection like what he does at the end of that same book, this would not be beyond his abilities. Further information about his fall to evil would have been a natural fit in Chamber that just as naturally may have been saved for a later volume. Still, by his own admission (not to mention some awe-inspiring anagram skills), his transformation into Lord Voldemort was a gradual process involving dual identities at one point or another, with no clear dividing line; Dumbledore still calls him Tom in Phoenix. It follows that regarding the two identities as anything but one and the same is on the wrong track.

The jury, it appears, is still out on this one. The only certainty is that Book Six will retroactively and retrospectively make this whole post look pretty silly.

Screw the election – time for some real news. Book Six: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

And J.K. Rowling says it’s not Voldemort.

There’s more: “I was delighted to see that a hard core of super-bright fans knew that the real title was once, in the long distant past, a possibility for Chamber of Secrets, and from that deduced that it was genuine. Certain crucial pieces of information in book six were originally planned for Chamber of Secrets, but very early on (first draft of Chamber) I realised that this information’s proper home was book six. I have said before now that Chamber holds some very important clues to the ultimate end of the series. Not as many as six, obviously, but there is a link.”

Oh come now, it’s obviously Salazar Slytherin.

Or is it?

The Philosopher’s Stone was a screen test: the characters were cast, the sets were built, and we saw the definition of some design conventions that would guide how J.K. Rowling’s imagination would look on film. The Chamber of Secrets was a exercise in refining the execution, with more attention to visual effects and cinematography, and served as a vehicle for Chris Columbus to develop as a director. But now, at long last, we have Alfonso Cuaron’s The Prisoner of Azkaban: the first real Harry Potter movie.

For the first time, we have a Harry Potter film that not only feels complete, but achieves what made the books the phenomenon they are – a balance of gleeful entertainment and meticulous artistry. Steve Kloves’ adaptation of Rowling’s third novel cuts its losses and accepts that some things only work on paper – something that he did to a lesser extent with the first two films – but the big difference is what Cuaron did and Columbus did not, which is recognize there is a lot of unfulfilled cinematic potential lying in the fact that conversely, some things only work on film. Azkaban actively takes advantage of cinema as a medium of expression, and adds a whole new dimension of what the magic of Potter is all about: imagination.

Take, for example, the way the cutting room tackles the passage of time. Because the Potter novels each last a full academic year in what can be perceived as a rather serial fashion, jumping from summer vacation to the first day of school to Halloween to Christmas, there are some inherent pacing issues to resolve. While the first two films negotiate this with jump-cuts that drop requisite visual clues like holiday decorations and the presence or absence of snow, the seasonal transitions in Azkaban are demarcated by a recurring visual gag involving the Whomping Willow, The effect is not only charming, but also serves the literary function of reminding the audience that the Willow is there, and acting as a framework for structural coherence.

This is not the only indication of how the editing work has matured tremendously. The Prisoner of Azkaban is a textbook example of when and how to execute fade-to-blacks for dramatic effect, as whenever Harry is approached by Dementors and falls unconscious to the sound of a woman screaming. On a more general level, the Dementors are everything that the encounter with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest in The Philosopher’s Stone was supposed to be. Whereas that scene in the first film amounts to all of a cloak floating around a dead unicorn while Harry clutches the lightning scar on his forehead, Cuaron’s vision of the Dementors stops and asks: how is it that one visualizes fear – or soul-sucking, for that matter? Rowling describes the approach of a Dementor as akin to a sinkhole for warmth and happiness; the film conveys this by having these foul creatures freeze everything around them as they pass, with a creeping frost effect very similar to the one in The Day After Tomorrow, only here, it makes sense.

That is what sets The Prisoner of Azkaban apart: its embrace of the medium of cinema defines a magical tone and atmosphere that its predecessors did not possess. Because of this, it stands out as an independent work of art in its own right, instead of relying entirely on Rowling’s contributions alone. The Marauder’s Map is far more than just a leaf of parchment with moving labeled dots on it; it unfolds in all manner of directions like Hogwarts itself, movements are traced with tiny pattering footprints, and the labels themselves are stylized to fit a medieval aesthetic. The Invisibility Cloak is no longer just a close-up of Harry traipsing around under a semi-transparent cloak; it does not stop him from leaving revealing footprints in the snow. The climax is bookended by shots that pass out of Hogwarts and back in through the gears of a large and very symbolic clock, and its initiation – when Hermione activates the Time Turner – is without question the single best moment I have seen in any film this year, a shot that trumps its counterparts in even the most legendary movies that involve the manipulation of time.

The casting work deserves a great deal of recognition, in supporting roles big (Gary Oldman as an appropriately scruffy and bonkers Sirius Black) and small (Lee Ingleby as Stan Shunpike), the best of the lot being David Thewlis’ precisely-in-character performance as new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Remus Lupin. The concern of the main and recurring characters outgrowing their roles is not too much of a problem at this stage, but definitely shows through (a fancy way of saying, “Gosh, Neville Longbottom is tall”).

What holds the film back is the difficulty of reconciling a consistent linear structure and pace with the complexity of Rowling’s book. In The Prisoner of Azkaban in particular, Rowling constructs her plots very much in the style of Agatha Christie, dropping seemingly unrelated clues to a grand and sinister mystery for ninety percent of a work, then tying them all together in a singular denouement that answers every lingering question in one fell swoop. Even the 1974 film of Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express discovered that with so many interrelated clues, the adaptation process that leads to a coherent screenplay is a game of pick-up-sticks. The remedy that screenwriter Kloves tries this time around, which peels off a few of the outer layers of the mystery and spreads the rest of it out so as to achieve a relatively even distribution of clues and solutions, is an improvement upon the last two films in the sense that the adaptation work seems considered right from pre-production and not in the cutting room; however, the consequence is a barrage of abrupt revelations and name-dropping that would be an information glut for all but those who have a thorough memory of the original work.

To illustrate some of these concerns, I am now going to discuss a plot-specific adaptation issue, so if you have not read the book, go catch up with the text and come back later.

The biggest omission in the film is a critical one, and sorely missed, which is that the identities of Mooney (sic), Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs are never revealed, and Remus Lupin never explains how it is he knows how to operate the Marauder’s Map, even though Snape’s implicit line about Harry getting it “straight from the manufacturers” (in a perfectly executed staging of the scene where Snape catches the boy wizard out of bed at night) remains intact. It would have taken a minute – just one question from our dear inquiring Harry, and an answer in return. It is only excusably problematic that the details of how the whole matter of betrayal and the Secret Keeper charm are never explained, but an understanding of the roles of Lupin, Pettigrew and Black in relation to James Potter is key to what Azkaban contributes to the grander saga, which is an introduction to the dynamic of the parental generation, as well as a clue to the form of either Potter’s Patronus.

It should be emphasized that we do see individual scenes that go into the various relationships with the elder Potter on a one-on-one level. A delightful chat between Lupin and Harry about the latter’s parents whilst all the other students are at Hogsmeade, a scene not in the book, may well be what Rowling referred to as the unintended clue to Book Six. Still, it would have been nice to see such a vital clue tie it all together. As it stands, the fact that Lupin could read the Marauder’s Map at all is a plot hole; and while tackling the Shrieking Shack as a ten-minute dialogue sequence would not have been feasible, whittling it down does make it look like Harry trusts Black’s side of the story far too quickly.

These complaints aside, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is in every way a superior film compared to its two precursors, and the first one that is not only highly watchable, but a lot of fun. No longer does it feel like the whole affair probably looks a lot better on set than it does on screen; and finally, we see some literacy in the language that is unique to cinema. While The Chamber of Secrets was developing this communicative aptitude with key scenes like Tom Riddle’s diary and the fight with the Basilisk, now we have an entire movie that does J.K. Rowling justice, a movie that captures the dark, yet lively spirit of Harry Potter from beginning to end. It could have been longer without penalty, but that does not stop it from already being a must-see for veteran Potterheads and non-fans alike.

Ideally, Alfonso Cuaron should be invited back for at least one Potter movie. Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) is already working on The Goblet of Fire, and I maintain that there is no better person for The Order of the Phoenix than Terry Gilliam, but Cuaron now has a proven record of knowing how to commit Rowling to film.

Next: some equally belated thoughts on the Calgary Flames’ blaze just short of glory.

From The National Review comes this exclusive gem:

Harry Potter and the Magic Campaign

This proposal is for the next in the series of popular Harry Potter books, in which the intrepid wizard does battle in the terrifying world of California politics.

As you know, since the surprise retirement of series author J. K. Rowling, the books have been crafted by writers as assisted by focus groups and test readers. Here in particular, we understand that some alert readers may detect the shift in locale from Britain to California. Continuity should not suffer, however, for as in past books the main characters will consume exclusively odd British food (“meat pies” e.g.). If our scenario does not test well, the characters can be moved to California through some magical contrivance, or, what may be the least credible option, the recall campaign and election could take place somewhere other than California.

Scary stuff – definitely much darker than what we’re used to. Is this really appropriate for the kiddies? Read on to find out.

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.