sistermagpie | Macbeth in the Park and AU HP Heroes

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Playbill

Entry tags:

Macbeth in the Park and AU HP Heroes

petitesoeur and I had great luck last night taking a chance on Shakespeare in the Park We got on the stand-by line after 7 and got tickets--woo-hoo!

Liev Shrieber was doing Macbeth. The production was entertaining, if uneven. In the really important parts the one that was weakest was Macduff--I liked Banquo a lot.

petitesoeur was worried Macduff's stage fighting skills were so bad Macbeth was going to beat that prophecy. I'd only ever seen this play performed one other time that I can remember, when a friend of mine was in a production, so I don't know if they often do this, but I liked that they decided to not show Banquo's ghost at the banquet. Macbeth was just reacting to an empty chair that sometimes had a spotlight on it. It made for, I must say, a funnier scene with Macbeth jumping on the table and spearing the chair with his sword before looking around like, "Oops. I look a little crazy, don't I? Sorry about that."

I'd never thought of it before, but there was a note in the program pointing out that Macbeth is kind of the anti-Hamlet. He's got lots of doubts, but they never keep him from acting. In a way he seems to just be compelled to follow his impulses and then wonder about it. Another friend said she always feels like Macbeth's kind of underrated as a part while Lady Macbeth is a bit over-rated. I admit I do find Lady Macbeth an annoying character, pushing her husband into doing stuff and then going mad herself. I considered making a joke about Shakespeare totally ripping off JKR with that prophecy that only happens because Macbeth acts on it (leaving out the part where JKR seems to undermine that by saying that had Voldemort picked Neville it wouldn't have worked), but instead I'll confess to the dorkier confession that at times I did look at Lady Macbeth and Macbeth and think I might be watching H/G, the later years. Seriously. ("If the king hadn't looked like my father when he was sleeping, I'd have stabbed him myself!")

That just made me think of

Another random HP thought I had yesterday. Someone was making a comment about Dumbledore talking about how he couldn't believe he'd have somebody so great as Harry to deal with. I think the person was contradicting another person's reading of that line as saying that DD had never felt close to someone personally the way he did Harry, and presenting this as a more acceptable reading. What struck me was that I really disagree with the whole idea behind this interpretation, which I think is backed up in canon. There's always all this focus on how great Harry is with his great power for love yadda yadda, and I think there is a suggestion that DD feels what he does for him because he's so personally special.

But that makes me think a lot less of Dumbledore (not that I have all that far to fall there!). I feel like he should have felt that way about any kid he decided to focus on specifically. Like, if he decided to take special interest in Ron Weasley wouldn't Ron have seemed just as great? Or even a kid who's decidedly not great, like Draco? I mean, obviously Draco's not a hero in canon but what I like about his story in HBP is even the little we see of it, imo, sets him up as a legitimate protagonist in his own story who's conflicted enough to hold his own and be worth rooting for. Obviously his being in Harry's role would be a very different story because he'd be going against his own, but I'm talking here just about rooting for him in the story he had.

Really I guess what the comment really did was made me imagine AUs in which other characters were put in Harry's role. I mean, we all know that whoever the hero was would have to win; they'd just have a different path to get there because of their own personalities. Ron would face a lot more confidence issues in the TWT tournament and might have just barely scraped it. Hermione would have more troubles with going too far. Neville would be more about the contrast between his timidity and abilities, and we'd probably get more of a sense that winning wasn't everything.

I don't think it's a flaw that I can imagine other characters in the role. That kind of seems like the point that a kid put in the situation makes good. I just can't help but think of it whenever it's suggested that it couldn't be anyone but Harry.

Threaded | Flat

I'd never thought of it before, but there was a note in the program pointing out that Macbeth is kind of the anti-Hamlet.
I remember at an SF con, somebody talking about Hamlet and Othello in that manner.

From my blog post on the panel:

A fun digression imagining what would happen if Hamlet & Othello switched places:
Othello starring in Hamlet:
"You say Claudius did what!?" <stab>
Hamlet starring in Othello:
"I just don't know. Do you have any more evidence?"
Then things got even sillier, throwing Macbeth into the mix, but I was laughing too hard to take notes.

at times I did look at Lady Macbeth and Macbeth and think I might be watching H/G, the later years.

Was it Lady Mcbeth's ruthlessness that did it or her utter conviction that no one but her husband was worthy of any sort of power?

It's so funny, though. My cousin's a big Star Wars fan and we were talking about it the other day. And he said that his eight-year-old nephew who saw the more recent episodes before he saw the ones made decades ago actually likes Anakin a lot more as a hero than he likes Luke, despite Anakin's ending up on the dark side. And that the only thing that was really special about Luke was that he ended up on the right side.

Which is why I think it's hard for me to get behind Harry sometimes. Because he's so instinctively good, there's never really any sort of moral struggle for him. He knows what he has to do, he knows what's right and, viola, in the end, it generally turns out to be. The thing he has that Voldemort doesn't know is something he got naturally, not something he had to really work for or earn. Literally, he's The Chosen One, you're supposed to get behind him because he's inherently special, not because he's an ordinary boy who's been pushed. Like you named all those struggles up there for characters and it's hard for me to think of one for Harry. Except maybe for his tendency to see things in black-and-white where there should be grays but even that's downplayed. And so, yeah, I suppose that's why I'm so behind Draco because what he's struggling against always seems so much harder just because he doesn't really have many special gifts. And yeah, Dumbledore's picking out Harry for special treatment because he's special kind of strikes a wrong chord with me, too.

But that makes me think a lot less of Dumbledore (not that I have all that far to fall there!).
Hahaha! Me either.

So far as imagining AUs in which the other HP kids are put into Harry's role... The one who interests me the most is Draco, because he is already so clearly on his own hero's path. His is the opposite of Harry's, of course. If Harry is the hero in a typical coming-of-age/adventure story, Draco is the hero in the horror story version of the same tale. He is sort of 'the last great hope' of his ancient, noble magical people who is being groomed to fight the good fight against on onslaught of invading barbarians who would completely pervert and destroy the glorious Ancien Regime. All good... except that when it finally comes time for him to confront and slay the Big Bad (Dumbledore) he realizes to his horror that he has been groomed to be nothing more than a common murderer. Harry Potter gets to skylark about in a cool fantasy adventure, but Draco is stuck in an existential horror story, and he's smart enough to know it, too. Poor young man. What will he do now, I wonder.

I wonder how his treatment of Harry's contrasts with his treatment of Tom.

What if he'd been grooming Tom to make a stand against Grindenwald? Is that possible? Would it color how he treats Harry?

I like Harry more or less(particularly in fanfic) but fighting Voldemort and the DEs in a way is too easy for him; its all just a matter of luck, horcruxes and raw power. There is no internal conflict for him. Those are the bad guys; kill them. What makes Draco's storyline more interesting is that even after he sees once and for all what life as a DE truly is, the fact will remain that his father and other people he's known and looked up to were real deatheaters which makes everything a little greyer. I think my greatest wish in regard to HP is that JKR had used multiple POVs like George RR Martin in his Song of Ice and Fire series.

Ooh, I'm definitely of a mind with you on the issue of substituting someone else into Harry's not-so-great shoes - that's really the driving force behind my major WiP, to be honest. Only it has Neville in Harry's place and Harry as sort of a nobody in Slytherin that doesn't know he is/was Harry Potter, and all the good stuff in between :D

I still sort of like Harry, I suppose - though it's probably more a product of reading fanfic than the real books, to be honest. I mean, Harry in the books, like (I think) you and others have said, is just so - so good. It's nauseating the way Dumbledore goes on and on about his greatness of heart - greatness that I, to be quite frank, don't really see him exhibiting to anyone other than those who agree with him - and even his capacity for love, and so on and so forth. All I can wonder is what might have happened if Dumbledore had tried to help Tom or Severus before they became the Big Baddies of HP instead of standing around twiddling his fingers and going ga-ga over Harry when he came round.

Harry's an understandably interesting, tragic figure, as well as a classic case for attracting sympathetic adult attention, but dammit, so's Neville. And so are Snape and Voldemort and Draco and countless others, down to all those resentful students that leave Hogwarts feeling like second- or third-class citizens just because they didn't catch the eye of someone in power. That's really why I write, to be honest - to see those stories, even through Harry's prejudiced eyes, and to explore them beyond the superficial layer of black and white and the imperfectly smudged, tiny area of grey in between.

"There's always all this focus on how great Harry is with his great power for love yadda yadda, and I think there is a suggestion that DD feels what he does for him because he's so personally special."

Particularly since apart from his lack of willingness to *control* his emotions, Harry shows no evidence whatsoever of being a particularly loving child.

I just had an uncomfortable flash there to the most uncomfortable (and autobiographical) of Diana Wynne Jones's novels "The Time of the Ghost".

Jones and her sisters were not brought up in a normal household and Jones has stated that it took her years to realize that and to deal with it. In Time of the Ghost, the mother of the (criminally negleted) four sisters makes up for her lack of involvement in her daughters' lives by making up glorious futures for each of them and convincing them that this is what their lives are destined to be.

In fact the children are left to inexpertly raise themselves and their mother's glorious imaginary futures are about the only thing they have of her. And these futures become as much a prison as a hope. The story, as I say, is extremely uncomfortable, but ends well.

But I'm suddenly seeing far too much resemblance between Phylis's glorious futures for her children and Albus's faith in Harry's power of Love™.

I couldn't get tickets. :*(

Macbeth in the Park? Oh. Wow. I am completely resolved to come back and visit NYC one day at the right time to do this. (Give me a decade or so to save the airfares, though. :-( )

One of the impressions I never gained from HP was that Harry was in any way truly special to DD. Nor that he was particularly gifted in his capacity to love in return. The deal is that he has been protected by his mother’s love, isn’t it, which forms a kind of shield around him? He, himself, could be the most worthless little ratbag, but he still had that literal gift of Having Been Loved.

…at times I did look at Lady Macbeth and Macbeth and think I might be watching H/G, the later years
*hee*

And the exchange between strangemuses and yourself is beautiful in its precision, and has me jumping up and saying ‘yes!’ (to the confusion of everyone around me).

I think there is a suggestion that DD feels what he does for him because he's so personally special . . . [but] if he decided to take special interest in Ron Weasley wouldn't Ron have seemed just as great?

I think you put your finger on what makes Harry such a frustrating hero. From the perspective of the big epic plot, his "specialness" and Dumbledore's focus on him have very little to do with his personal qualities, and everything to do with circumstances determined by his mother (the lurve thing and mysterious immunity to V) and Voldemort (the self-fulfilling prophecy and artificially created rivalry.) Dumbledore, I think, simply takes Harry as he finds him, first and foremost as a tool in the war against Voldemort, and manages/bonds with/flatters/manipulates him accordingly, all in the service of defeating Voldemort. It's true that if he treated Ron more specially, Ron would probably get some advantage from that and be a more confident person. But through no fault of his own, Ron doesn't come with a pre-assigned role in the fight against Voldemort.

Now where the story potentially gets more interesting is when Harry shows some signs, some personal force of character, that make him more than merely a counter in the game. This also has the potential to be interesting if it throws off Dumbledore's calculations a little bit. And I think there are definitely some signs of this happening in the series. One of the reasons Harry is so attractive a character, at least in the earlier books, is his resilience, the fact that he shows signs of strength, of craving for normalcy and health, despite being "damaged" by the Dursleys. Harry's battle between damage and health is, I think, a more interesting human story than whether he gets to chop Voldemort in half with his jedi sword or whatever. In the same way, part of me would like to believe DD in OOTP (though I really don't, completely) when he says he was taken by surprise by how much he ended up loving and caring about Harry. I would really like to believe that because it would make the story much more twisty and interesting.

The problem is, I don't think JKR does enough with these possibilities. She raises them as kind of interesting directions the story might take, but then it's as if she can't spare the time and energy for them because they might undermine the overarching Dumbledore/Voldemort contest, which is the only thing holding her epic together. So Harry, after making some interesting human-like gestures here and there, eventually slots into his pre-ordained role as a soldier in the war, and we forego the more emotionally interesting story that is potentially there under the surface. In almost the same way, as we talked about once before, the "operatic" Black family story might have made a more interesting set of books than boring old Harry. Or, as you and strangemuses talk about above, Draco's story could be even more compelling than Harry's because it's more about choice, and struggle, and self-awareness.

I'm just not sure what to make of those choices, except that maybe JKR didn't know what to do with these alternative stories when she came up with them along the way, but found them too interesting to suppress entirely. It's a tribute to the power of her imagination, though perhaps not to her ability to craft large-scale stories.

Thank you for the birthday wish and visual drink dear! :) And the sentiment (though you know I consider you the main source of sanity in the HP fandom).

I'm just jumping in here without reading anyone's comments (which is probably a big mistake) but I'm jumping in because I've been thinking about Dumbledore and love over the last day or two - because of

hbpspork, I think.

For all his talk of love I don't think DD feels (really feels) it a great deal. It's all a bit theoretical and academic with him. I get the feeling that Lily's sacrifice may have been as much of a surprise to him as it was to LV. HBP spork has just done the chapter where DD first encounters Tom, and everyone is cross about DD's ineptitude. Well, I think the long and short of it may be that he didn't care. Back then (it was 50 odd years earlier) he hadn't discovered love yet. You can see him as a bit of an ivory tower prof, working with Flamel on alchemy etc, can't you? Even now, DD is rather remote. He seems to understand people, and value them, but he's not close to anyone. He's able to get the measure of people and, if not to manipulate them, to manage them. In the interests of good, of course! So, what Lily did demonstrated the power of love to him. Then Harry totally floored him; DD actually felt love. It's not that Harry is powerful, it's that he's unmanageable. He's himself. DD didn't have the measure of him, Harry surprised him. DD was amazed to discover he loved Harry, and the love was beyond his control.

Threaded | Flat

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject