Curious potterings

One of the things on my list of holiday activities is to reread the Harry Potter series.  I’d noticed a couple of quite sophisticated ways in which they are all linked together, and wanted to read them all once more to fully appreciate it.

I’ve only just started, but it occurs to me that, from one point of view, the plot set-up for the series is not too dissimilar to an episode from X-Men: A radically different group of humans, with their own world, who are on the one hand reviled by some ‘normal’ humans (eg. The Dursleys), who cannot stand the weirdness of the others.  On the other hand, there are in turn those among the differing group who not only wish to  purify their own group, but have ambitions to rule all groups, (eg. Voldemort, Magneto).  Obvious shades of holocaust and World War II.

Not surprising, really; it’s not an uncommon plot.  Let’s call it the ‘difference’ plot.  Two extreme reactions to different groupings of humans, with a sometimes difficult but nonetheless important compromise between them, somewhat akin to liberal democracy, right?

But all of Harry Potter doesn’t reduce to just this, of course.

A second thought is just how threatening the idea of another, secret, world really is.  It is an amazingly powerful idea.  The Narnia series, and The Matrix trilogy both used it well.  Harry Potter has that same English schoolboy feel that Narnia does, but by posing that other world right in this one, (rather than accessed through some portal world or gateway), it is far more threatening in a way.  Suddenly, all of the masterful uses to which the ‘muggles’ employ their economics, technology and science not only are shown to be limited and useless in the face of a different power, but are, in actual fact, incapable of seeing what is beneath their noses.  If knowledge is power, then in the Harry Potter series, this puts the muggles at a serious disadvantage. The wizarding community, when considered in this light, is surprisingly peaceful, and, almost unreally so, not given to abusing such superiority.

But, if we are supposed to recall the infamously literal witch-hunts of the middle-ages, then this ignorance would almost seem self-imposed, and the advantage is not necessarily one way.  The muggles simply refuse to believe that such things exist, and are given a little help when their incredulity is a little stretched.  Theirs is a disenchanted world, as is said so often about our own.  “There are more things in heaven and earth” said Hamlet, “than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

Filed under: Harry Potter, books, literature , books, Harry Potter, Narnia, other worlds, political allegory, The Matrix, X Men

Victims of Comfort

Keb’ Mo’ (1994)

Some thoughtful lyrics:

No rocket’s gonna fly that high
There’s no escaping the enemy he’s you and I
We poison up our water, we’re chokin’ on the air
Last stop before it gets too late or is it already too late?
Is it already too late
For the victims of comfort?
Got no one else to blame
We’re just the victims of comfort
We cannot soothe the pain

And it’s a technological merry-go-round
Dangerous solutions buried under the ground
And everyone likes a party
But no-one wants to clean
Well I’d like to see a change somehow and I believe we’re busy right now
Just a little busy right now
I am just a victim of comfort
I got no one else to blame
I’m just a victim of comfort
Cryin’ shame

Boy what have we got to lose? Everything
Yes and what do we stand to gain? Everything, so let’s
Try together before we have to cry together
It’s too soon to die together
I’m just a victim of comfort
Got no one else to blame
I’m just a victim of comfort
Got to soothe the pain
Be the victims of comfort
Got no one else to blame
I am just a victim of comfort
Cryin’ shame

Filed under: links, literature, music , blues, Keb Mo, lyrics, music, Poetry

Poetry Friday

Ali has a poetry Friday post that she does.  Seeing as I’ve already observed a link between poetry and blogging, I think it’s not a bad idea.  Don’t worry… I won’t subject you to my own poetry.  At least not yet anyway.  And, if poetry is for life, we just might learn something along the way.

You might have heard this following one before.  It’s in Four Weddings and a Funeral, where John Hannah recites it (at the funeral).  I also read it out at a friends recent party, a night for red wine and sad songs.  My wife loves this poem.

Twelve Songs – IX

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos with a muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Filed under: literature, quotations , Poetry, Poetry Friday, sad songs, W.H. Auden