It's been a little more than half a year since we started this show, and in that time,
we've slowly become aware of something about you guys: a lot of you are super
into fantasy. Which is great, 'cause we are too. So how then, when J.K. Rowling
writes the screenplay for a new film after almost a decade, could we possibly justify
not making a video about it? This is just the perfect opportunity to talk about one
of the most influential woks of fantasy ever written: Harry Potter.
But before we do, there's something we'd like to just stick in your head. A quick
story. It involves a young wizard (because of course it does) a mysterious labyrinth,
and a spell to heal all wounds. Desperate to save a dying friend, our young
mage sets off into the maze, knowing the incantation lies in wait at the end. Along the way, she
meets other wizards traveling the opposite direction. One by one, they each tell her
the same story: that they've been to the maze's end, and the whole thing's no more
than a legend. There is no all-healing spell. Bereft but unable to think of an alternative,
she forges ahead to see for herself. She only pauses when she comes across an enormous,
wilting flower, which has gone unloved for so long that cobwebs have begun to form between
its petals. Feeling some pity for the sad sight, she conjures some water into its vase
before continuing on her way. When she arrives at the maze's end, she
discovers that the other wizards were telling the truth. There is no scroll or inscription
waiting there; only a spiral staircase leading up and up to vantage far above the labyrinth.
A lovely view, but not what she came for. However, just as she's turning to leave,
she catches sight of something none of the other wizards had: an overgrown section of
maze, walls green with foliage, all sprouting from that single dying plant. Looking it from
so far away, she notices that the walls from a strange shape; words.
The incantation she'd been after. It's probably pretty obvious right off the
bat that this is an allegory; a very symbolic story, which, when interpreted, bears meaning
deeper than the literal object and events within the story. What you might not have
gathered was that we wrote it to be an allegory about allegory. Sounds redundant, but trust
me. This'll come in handy. Now, with that in tow, on to the main event:
Harry Potter. For those of you who have yet to read the
books, see the films, or to see the new film, caution: spoilers start here.
After selling more than 500 million books, raking in more than $8,000,000,000 (eight
billion dollars) at the box office, and receiving a truly absurd multiplicity of awards, the
Harry potter series hardly needs and introduction. It's become even more ubiquitous to genre
literature than the work of Tolkien, which is... wow. Just saying that feels strange.
"More ubiquitous than Tolkein." What a feat.
The secrets to Rowling's success are, of course, manifold. She's done a great many
things right with her opus. But one thing in particular stood out to us as we were discussing
this episode: the magic. Not like, "Wingardium Leviosa, swish and flick!"—not that stuff.
More... the overall sense of wonder which pervades the entire body of work.
What Rowling's created here is more than a fantasy world; it's a juxtaposition.
She makes a clear distinction between the magical and the mundane right in the first
chapter of the first book. The entire series actually begins with perhaps the least magical
thing ever conceived: the Dursleys. However, in the same chapter, we also have Albus Dumbledore,
basically the epitome of magical prowess. We follow the Dursleys through that first
day as they try to ignore the faint presence of magic in their world, but once night rolls
around it's shape-shifters and flying motorbikes and light-putter-outers. For all the chocolate
frogs and wizard duels, the magic in these stories is not taken for granted. The writing
and the presentation of it are overtly whimsical, and doubly so when paired so blatantly against
the bland world Harry comes from. That is to say... our world.
And it's this veneer of fantastical intrigue—the sense that everything about this world is
somehow more magical than ours—which makes Harry potter such a good context for allegorical
storytelling. Here: let me explain... using allegory.
That story I told at the beginning; there were three major symbols in it. The wizard,
which would be you, the audience; the labyrinth, which would be the story in question; and
the wilting flower, which would be the symbols within the story. Moving through the Harry
Potter series, it's extremely difficult for one not to focus on the magic. In this
way, you become "lost in the labyrinth", so to speak, concerned first and foremost
with the literal aspects of the story. Plot progression, character arcs, setting, etc.
At the same time, you're also interacting with symbols and making surface-level connections
without even knowing it. And once you finally arrive at the maze's end—when you emerge
back into reality—you find yourself at a vantage from which you can look back out over
the fiction and see its symbols laid bare. This might just sounds like typical allegory
to some of you—hardly a foreign concept—but in his book "The Anatomy of Criticism",
Northrop Frye alludes to the concept of a "sliding scale of allegory". At one end,
we have stories which are purely literal, concerned mostly with the unfolding of events.
At the opposite end, we have continuous allegory, which is symbolic from start to finish. And
then, somewhere in the middle, we have works which marry the two, Harry Potter being perhaps
the best example in modern fantasy... Right behind Fantastic Beasts and Where to
Find Them. With this film, Rowling's taken a magnifying
glass to that magical quality of Harry Potter we were talking about. In this story, the
magic exists not only as a catalyst for the conflict, but at the heart of it as well.
You can see this pretty clearly in Credence Barebone; arguably the movie's "secret
main character". He's a young man possessed of profound, latent, magical abilities, but
who's also flanked on all sides by differing perspectives on what this means. Of course
there's his mother—part of the "Second Salem" movement—who guilts and shames
him into repressing that part of himself. There's also Graves (or, y'know,
Johnny Grindeldepp) who advocates for rebellion and seeks to control Credence. And
then, finally, we have the man of the hour: Newt Scamander, who shows us through his relationship
with the titular fantastic beasts how he believes that even the most misunderstood magic deserves
tolerance and respect. Now, in this specific scenario, you can connect
"magic" to a ton of different things—dreams, aspirations, individuality—and poof! The
whole thing is suddenly super poignant. This is just one of the many very impressive allegorical
frameworks the film sets up, not the least of which are Jacob Kowalski's obliviation
and the whole no-maj segregation thing. But we find this one especially ingenious because
it pulls double duty, simultaneously drawing us in to the labyrinth and also making a symbol
out of it. It's an allegory hidden in plain sight; right there, in the most prominent
part of the fiction: the magic. So, now that we've seen this type of allegory
in action and spent so much time talking about it, we really just wanna give it a try ourselves.
That's why this month, our challenge (and yours) is going to be to write a short fantasy
story that has an allegory hidden away in the most prevalent aspect of the piece, be
it setting, characters, magic, whatever. You can join us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook,
or Wordpress if you wanna brainstorm with us. We'll be posting prompts and starting
discussions about this all month long. For now though, that's all we've got.
Thanks for watching, and keep making stuff up! Well' see you... next week.
Bye!