Macbeth in the Park and AU HP Heroes

[sistermagpie]

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.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

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.

I admit that's often the way it comes across to me--and maybe it's why the books are so attractive to fanfic etc. I remember it was OotP especially that made me feel like characterization was always in the service of plot, and these things tie into that as well. The characters sometimes feel jerked from one point to the next instead of as if there's a continuous flow of development, and that goes with Harry as well as the other characters. Rather than getting the sense of Harry growing into something Dumbledore didn't expect, it's like Harry is a series of blocks that stand for scenes, and in some scenes he's got the chance to act like more of an individual, but eventually he always has to come back to the standard blocks where he's doing the soldier thing and agreeing with Dumbledore.

So he never has personal issues really overrunning his standard hero plot. I didn't need to have Harry mourning for Sirius in a way that was central to the book, but I do think people have a case for saying he didn't mourn him at all. That is, the book simply handled the mourning by having him say he would be going forward without him and then gave him a few moments when there would be a reason to think about Sirius. What we didn't get was a Harry profoundly effected by what happened to Sirius in a way that made him really think about what he was doing, who he was, life and death and all that.

I was talking to someone about Draco the other day, for instance, and said that while it may again be an accident of plot I loved the fact that there was emphasis put on Lucius being happy to be safe in prison in HBP because it suggested to me that Draco had reason to feel somewhat betrayed--in ways that this thread reminds me that Harry is not so much allowed to be. Lucius has not only turned out to be less than all-powerful but willing to save his own skin over heroics or possibly even saving his family. Draco has good reason to seriously question his father figures and what they taught, as has Percy and Barty Crouch, for instance. Harry really never has to do this. Sure he's disgusted with his father personally in OotP, but he doesn't have to rethink his own beliefs, just as his anger at Dumbledore never makes him question their shared beliefs. And yet this is so expected than even when Harry has that horrible scene in the bathroom with Sectumsempra he just moves on to the next order of business: Quidditch and dating. I would at least hope that Draco had some more interesting thoughts while he knew he was dying.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

The characters sometimes feel jerked from one point to the next instead of as if there's a continuous flow of development . . . it's like Harry is a series of blocks that stand for scenes, and in some scenes he's got the chance to act like more of an individual, but eventually he always has to come back to the standard blocks

I really like the way you put this. I think we've both circled around this point before -- how the "micro" level character analysis doesn't necessarily connect with the "macro" level plot developments, how the alleged "love over evil" theme doesn't really seem convincingly illustrated in detail. But I really like your formula of the blocks. I kind of picture them as boxes or fences, where JKR is coming up with a tool to discipline her own rowdily productive imagination -- the characters can wander this far, but no farther, from the pre-ordained path dictated by the abstract plot.

Draco has good reason to seriously question his father figures and what they taught, as has Percy and Barty Crouch, for instance. Harry really never has to do this.

That's a really powerful point of comparison between them. And I've grown wary of my own habit of over-psychologizing, but it suggests an interesting take on Harry. He's never had to confront or defy a father figure, because death and distance have always held his father figures safely apart from his actual, concrete day to day life. So he can cut and shape them to his own imagination and needs. Even when he defies ordinary authority, he can always imagine his father would have been there, cheering him on.

I wonder if this is at the root of some of his less likeable traits -- his disinclination for self-examination, etc. I mean it's a tricky point to say he's never had to take a stand, because in some ways he does nothing but take one contrarian stand after another. But he's never had to take a stand against a background of radical self-doubt, which might give him empathy for other people's choices; on the contrary, circumstances have compelled him again and again to assert himself on his own immediate and instinctive terms against people (the Dursleys, Voldemort) who pretty much want to annihilate him as a personality. So for both reasons he's never been forced to question how he sees himself -- or if you want to look at it the other way, maybe he's never had the luxury of questioning himself.

And I don't know, maybe those are good traits for a hero to have, if his job as a hero is more important than anything else. And maybe he can even still be all about the "love," if it's enough to love things that are yours, or that are uncomplicatedly gratifying. Maybe it's not necessary for love to overcome hate or forgive fallibility or create understanding across gulfs of experience, as long as it sustains solidarity among your own side. Or, god help us, maybe JKR thinks she is really showing these things already by having Harry love Hermione despite her bossiness and Ron despite his envy and insecurities.

But I'd kind of like to see this "love" business take on some more ambitious challenges. And I think that Draco's development in HBP, and Dumbledore's dying concern for him, both point the way to this kind of greater ambition and complexity for the love theme. I hope this doesn't end up being one more foregone opportunity . . .

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Or, god help us, maybe JKR thinks she is really showing these things already by having Harry love Hermione despite her bossiness and Ron despite his envy and insecurities.

LOL--Yeah, that's the fear. It's just so sadly ironic the way Harry's personality seems so unsuited to his power of "great love." Part of it is sometimes a joke in the way JKR chooses to write about Harry showing affection, but it adds up to Harry being a character who somehow seems the last person to have the power of love. For instance, I remember there's a scene in OotP where Sirius says, I think, that Harry should be told about the "weapon." Harry feels a surge of affection for Sirius.

It's sort of a joke, but the thing is, that's a pretty accurate description. Harry really does seem to feel surges of affection for people when they help him, and that's not love. One doesn't imagine Ron feeling surges of affection for Molly because she sticks up for him, the affection is always there. Unfortunately Harry's relationships so often work like that because everybody works for him. Meanwhile it's other characters who seem to act out of love, even when it hurts them.

When Dumbledore says it's amazing that Harry's retained the ability to love he's correct in that it's amazing Harry has basically no social problems after years of abuse (ironically under DD's orders--wtf?) but take that away and Harry's actually remarkably UNtested when it comes to love. His friends spend far more time focused on his problems than most peoples' friends do, while he takes very little interest in their lives and problems. His parental figures, as you said, are kept at a comfortable idealized distance. He gets the good part of the Weasley family while skipping the bad part. His girlfriend literally always gives him exactly what he needs when he needs it.

Compare that to other boys in his class: Ron's the Weasley who resists attacking Percy. Neville cherishes his mother's meaningless attempts at gifts because he recognizes the attempt. Draco's branded a coward throughout canon yet seems to find courage in his love for his family--not to mention humanity. Are these hints that the book's going for something more subtle? Hopefully.

[savagedamsel10.livejournal.com]

Ron's the Weasley who resists attacking Percy.

Does he? I mean, it's true he doesn't throw parsnip at Percy and that despite wanting to hit Percy at the end of HBP he held back (with a little help from Hermione) but I would hesitate to use the Percy example as a demonstrator of Ron's capability to love (although this might change in Book 7). After all, some (or practically most) of the most vile comments against Percy in the series are spoken by Ron, and once to his face too.

If Ron was already under the belief (calm and deliberate with no crazy moment to spark off his temper) in GoF (Before Fudgegate in OotP) that Percy would willingly throw his family to the Dementors for career advancement (a belief that was already held but expressed differently as early as CoS) despite the fact that in his pompous style Percy has already shown love for his family and ESPECIALLY Ron than eecch, the love was beyond warped and deformed. Ron hasn't yet grasped the startling concept that Percy is capable of love; the one moment that shows Percy in an utterly naked light in GoF where Percy wades into the lake looking younger than normal to hug Ron was abruptly rejected by Ron.

That said, I absolutely love your LJ and love reading your essays. Very interesting and intelligent.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

It's funny--I'm reading that example and thinking...why'd I pick that one about Percy? Ron seems to have lots better examples of forgiving and loving with his family just because there are so many of them and he's not one of the aggressive ones. He feels overlooked, but loves anyway. He does seem to understand the kind of "I hurt you intentionally but I love you" kind of love more than Percy's way of showing love. I think partially because Ron fears he's the most like Percy somehow, maybe because he's always afraid the Twins will accuse him of it. I'm not sure what Ron and Percy much really have in common, but Ron seems to feel something's there.