Hello! Am here by way of Mistful's journal, actually, which I'm sure makes me something of a stalker, but I have come across your essays/rambles/long paragraphs of startling genius before, and I am bored at work.
And so, suddenly, I find myself commenting. Strange how that works out.
I've read your posts on Draco/Snape/Sytherins and their glory/humiliation/imminent downfall/impending redemption and I've always been inspired, but for some reason, this was the post I felt driven to talk about. Because I'm weird like that.
And, because, like I said, you're a genius. For so long I've read Rowling and pondered over the idea that there seems to be some intangible aim, some unreachable goal, behind the work, and I think it might be an issue that is commonplace for fictional/fantasy writers. She is in an author's version of the classic Catch 22 scenario: writing about fictional wizards in a fictional world full of fictional beasts and fictional situations, but at the same time making them everymen and women. Keep it too real and you lose the fantastical element, making all the wand-waving and incantation-saying silly; keep it beyond the reach of normalcy, and kids wont get as attached to the characters. Harry himself is inside everyone and no one at all, simultaneously the speccy kid at school with two friends to his name and the awesome force of nature who can destroy oppressive regimes and defy invasive governments (and, now, make the ladies swoon in the hallways). It's the bridge that almost every author has to cross to reach their readers: either I am making you care about these people and their lives because you relate and connect (Harry feels awkward with Cho, Harry feels stupid in Potions), or the story is so wildly different from your experience that you are fascinated regardless of the unquestionable distance between the character's lives and your own (I know I've never faced a Basilisk wtf this is so weird I cannot put it down).
Movies make that gap a lot easier. I don't have to suspend reality quite as much when the image of Harry waving a wand and something exploding is right in front of me- we have cut out the middle man that is my personal interpretation of events. Conversely, I can identify directly with the wee eleven year old Harry on screen because I can see for myself that he is an underfed orphan that elicits my pity/ needs a hug. Maybe I needed a hug once too, and so I care about him.
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Greetings and...yes.
Date: 2006-12-13 09:24 pm (UTC)And so, suddenly, I find myself commenting. Strange how that works out.
I've read your posts on Draco/Snape/Sytherins and their glory/humiliation/imminent downfall/impending redemption and I've always been inspired, but for some reason, this was the post I felt driven to talk about. Because I'm weird like that.
And, because, like I said, you're a genius. For so long I've read Rowling and pondered over the idea that there seems to be some intangible aim, some unreachable goal, behind the work, and I think it might be an issue that is commonplace for fictional/fantasy writers. She is in an author's version of the classic Catch 22 scenario: writing about fictional wizards in a fictional world full of fictional beasts and fictional situations, but at the same time making them everymen and women. Keep it too real and you lose the fantastical element, making all the wand-waving and incantation-saying silly; keep it beyond the reach of normalcy, and kids wont get as attached to the characters. Harry himself is inside everyone and no one at all, simultaneously the speccy kid at school with two friends to his name and the awesome force of nature who can destroy oppressive regimes and defy invasive governments (and, now, make the ladies swoon in the hallways). It's the bridge that almost every author has to cross to reach their readers: either I am making you care about these people and their lives because you relate and connect (Harry feels awkward with Cho, Harry feels stupid in Potions), or the story is so wildly different from your experience that you are fascinated regardless of the unquestionable distance between the character's lives and your own (I know I've never faced a Basilisk wtf this is so weird I cannot put it down).
Movies make that gap a lot easier. I don't have to suspend reality quite as much when the image of Harry waving a wand and something exploding is right in front of me- we have cut out the middle man that is my personal interpretation of events. Conversely, I can identify directly with the wee eleven year old Harry on screen because I can see for myself that he is an underfed orphan that elicits my pity/ needs a hug. Maybe I needed a hug once too, and so I care about him.