Cursing the Darkness

Thoughts on Women in Fantasy

2006-03-22T10:47:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been reading a long, not particularly well written Fantasy novel called The Baker's Boy. It's utterly generic fantasy fare, with an eeeevil sorcerer, and a disgraced knight, and an unlikely hero, and of course a spunky noblewoman who certainly doesn't want to be forced into an arranged marriage.

It's this spunky young noblewoman that disturbs me the most. Because she seems to exist solely to get molested, whipped, beaten, forced into prostitution, nearly raped, and generally have a rotten time of it. Now it's the easiest thing in the world to accuse a Fantasy writer of mysoginy, and normally I wouldn't even bother, but it's got me thinking.

The Baker's Boy, like the vast majority of the Fantasy genre is set in a world that looks almost but not quite like medieval Europe. Because it's (I suppose) "low" fantasy rather than "high" fantasy[1] the world is quite dark[2]. As a result, part of me says "give the guy a break, this is a medieval society, and being a woman in a medieval society sucked."

Then I realised two things.

Firstly, if you're going to write a book set in a society where being a woman sucks, for pity's sake don't have a spunky princess as one of your main characters. Because all she can do is fail at stuff, and that's not particularly compelling reading (at least, not unless you're George R.R. Martin).

But... you know... I can ignore this point. It's the second thing that really got me thinking.

Yes, women in the middle ages had no rights, no power, and basically no chance. But neither did anybody else. If you didn't have either a title or a sword, you were basically screwed. What bothers me about The Baker's Boy, and a lot of other things like it, is that it's only women whosuffer as a result of this "historical realism."

To take an example from the book in question, fairly early on Jack (the Baker's Boy who - guess what - has unexplained and uncontrollable mystical powers) and Melliandra (the spunky princess) run away into the woods, where they get accosted by mercenaries working for Baralis, the eeeeeevil sorcerer.

Melliandra is caught, beaten, nearly raped, escapes at the last minute because the mercenaries are interrupted by another group of armed men, runs away to a nearby village, gets tricked into being a prostitute, is nearly raped again, gets convicted for assault and theft, is pelted with rotten vegetables in a dark pit, then gets stripped, whipped, saved from whipping by being captured again by the same mercenaries who nearly raped her the first time. This time they are under strict orders not to nearly rape her, so they instead just leave her to die.

Jack meanwhile escapes from the Mercenaries unharmed. Then he wanders around the woods, gets lost, passes out under a tree, and gets rescued by a kindly druid. The kindly druid treats him really really well for no good reason, and tells him that he is all important and special and that he should go and have adventures. Then he leaves the kindly druid and runs around being happy and carefree. He is eventually captured by the same Mercenaries that have taken Melliandra, they do not hurt him in any way, and indeed admire his spirit. At no point is he nearly raped by anybody.

Now maybe I'm wrong, but I think there's a double standard here. The Spunky Princess gets whores, whips and historically accurate rape gangs, while the Unlikely Hero gets a pep talk from a mysterious old man. Maybe I'm wrong about the guy, maybe JV Jones has no issues whatsoever, and in no way gets off of having his heroine tied up and whipped (hell he might even be a woman, I haven't checked what "JV" actually stands for), I'd be more inclined to believe that if it wasn't for one thing: the repeated near rapes.

If you are a conscientious writer, who genuinely admires and respects women, and sincerely wants to write a scathing portrayal of the disempowerment of womankind throughout the centuries, then you might well have your heroine raped. What I don't think you would do is have her almost raped, so that you can write enthusiastic descriptions about rough hands and young breasts, and then ... for want of a better term ... pull out at the last minute so as to avoid having to actually deal with any of the consequences. It's that which I think I find most distasteful, the idea that sexual assault, so long as there is no actual penetration, is basically just a standard bit of high adventure, like hanging onto a broken rope bridge or fighting a two headed lizard.

Sometimes I wonder why I still read this genre.

[1] For the uninitiated, the difference between "low" and "high" fantasy is that low fantasy contains far more mud.

[2] "Dark" in this case meaning "people talk about sex, and there's mud"

Insert "Allegory" Pun Here

2005-12-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

Something interesting has occurred to me.

Contrary to popular belief, the Chronicles of Narnia are not technically "allegories". Aslan doesn't "represent" Jesus, rather he literally is the Son of God. However, if you wanted to build an allegory out of Aslan's death and resurrection on the Stone Table, you could probably do it. Aslan is Jesus, Edmund is Man, and so on.

However it occurs to me that actually, a slightly better "allegory" casts Aslan not as Jesus, but as God. In this interpretation, Edmund is you, the reader, personally. The role of Jesus in this interpretation of events is filled by Narnia itself. When Aslan dies, he takes the last hope of beating the Witch with him, so essentially he sacrifices the whole of Narnia for Edmund.

But that's not what really interested me.

What really interested me was the fact that although the books aren't, technically speaking, allegory, the movie actually is. Aslan in the film isn't particularly significant in and of himself. He is essentially representative of wider themes - Love, Sacrifice, and all that jazz. Indeed, when the Witch kills Aslan on the stone table, she actually says "so much for love". It's almost as if the film-makers knew Aslan had to be important, but couldn't stomach the idea of his being personally more important than the Pevensies, so they made a clumsy attempt to have him represent the cosy secular virtues that formed the moral centre of the film. So Movie Aslan, the embodiment of Cosy Family Niceness, sacrifices himself not for Edmund, but for Narnia - saving the fourth of the Prophesied Kings, in order that his "Family" can have their protectors.

... the Witch and the Wardrobe

2005-12-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

I have not updated this log in some time, and naturally the thing that has shaken me out of my doldrums is a desire to rant about something.

I've just come back from seeing the new film: The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. It's a pretty good adventure movie, and of course it makes a certain number of concessions to the cinematic medium - there's a lot more action in the film than in the book, and that's no bad thing. After all the Pevensies hiking across the snow for two hours wouldn't be a terribly entertaining film.

One of the major decisions the directors and producers made was to downplay the Christian elements of the stories. This seems a rather strange choice, since most films are positively falling over themselves to include Christian and messianic imagery since the runaway success of the Matrix.

Of course taking the Christian symbolism out of Narnia would seem to be impossible. Aslan is ritually sacrificed and then reborn, bringing with him conquest over death and salvation for Narnia. The only way one could possibly take the Christian symbolism out of Narnia is by removing Aslan from it.

Which is, in fact, precisely what the film does.

Oh he's in the film, of course. There is a lion by the name of Aslan who is, apparently, extremely important. But he's not got any real presence. This is partly down to Liam Neeson's voice, which is alright, but lacking the sheer impact that the Great Lion should have. It is mostly down to the fact that the writers scrupulously removed anything that might imply that Aslan, in and of himself, is important.

When Aslan is first mentioned in the Film, the Pevensies are told "Aslan is at the Stone Table, where he has gathered an army for you." And that's more or less it. He isn't God, or the Word or the Son of God. He's just the guy that has the Army that the Pevensies need to fight the Witch and rescue Edmund.

It goes on in this vein. The power of the Witch does not weaken because "Aslan is on the move", it weakens because (according to Father Christmas) of "the hope which [the Pevensies] have brought to Narnia." It is Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy who are destined to overthrow the White Witch, the big old lion is just there to give them some pointers.

This, of course, changes the character of Aslan's death on the Stone Table completely. In the BBC adaptation, the impression given is that if Aslan dies, Narnia loses its last hope - victory is handed to the witch. It's actually that as much as the sacrifice of his life, which gives the event its impact. Aslan not only lays down his own life, but with it the very hope of Narnia, all for one little boy. In the film, Aslan isn't important, and by sacrificing himself he essentially protects one of the Four Mystical Kings - it becomes in fact a sensible utilitarian decision. Aslan dies, Edmund is saved, and Peter has to learn to Trust In Himself.

Essentially, Aslan winds up turning into Obi Wan Kenobi. He provides the heroes with their weapons (or, in this case, their army), spouts some vanilla waffle about being true to yourself and looking after your family, and then gets killed at an appropriate juncture.

Post In Which I May Be Casually Rude About Roleplayers

2005-08-05T03:31:00.000-07:00

[Post may contain spoilers for A Song of Ice and Fire]

Worst. Review. Evar.

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9661.phtml

Well, actually, it isn't. It's more than two lines long, and has proper spelling, but it completely misses the damned point. And utterly contradicts its self.

For those who can't be bothered to read it, the review basically goes "Game of Thrones is a rubbish book. It's really cliche, and it doesn't make sense. There's characters in it are supposed to be evil, but if you think about it using critical thinking that I learned from David Brin at his website, their actions are actually justifiable from their point of view. How stupid is that? And the Good King, he's not even a particularly good king!"

The cliches he points out are:

1) Barbarians.
2) A Lord from the north, out of his depth amongst politically savvy southerners.
3) Zombies.

Point one doesn't even bear answering. It's medieval fantasy, you might as well say it's cliche because it's got knights and kings.

Point two similarly. "A stranger comes to town? That's so cliche"

Point three particularly bothers me, because it always makes me furious when roleplayers assume that everything works like D&D. The Others in A Song of Ice and Fire are not zombies. And before anybody says anything about walking like ducks (a) there are such things as geese and (b) "duck" isn't an overused bit of terminology, that has been propogated through second rate fiction and third rate RPGs, to the extent that it has rendered a really fucking scary idea completely risible.

The Others are a damned good stab at making "the undead" (another sodding awful piece of terminology) cool again. They're sinister, and they do bad shit with corpses. Unfortunately somewhere deep in the brain of the geek the auto-categoriser immediately says "walking corpse = zombie = 1HD monster/brain-eating plague victim," robbing the image of any power whatsoever.

What annoys me the most, however, is the guy's obsession with "critical thinking."

There are some people who Pride Themselves On Their Critical Thinking. These sorts of people will routinely dismiss any book that doesn't have a drug addict in it as "morally simplistic." (Brin's article on LotR is awful - he seems to think it is somehow controversial to say "in Tolkein's world, there is an objective standard of good and evil, but real life isn't like that"). It's a common geek fallacy - the idea that once you have identified a Fact, that any conclusion you draw from that Fact must be the result of sound critical analysis, because it is based on Facts. The reviewer observes that there are elements in ASoIaF which have appeared in other sources, and so it becomes "cliche" - and this conclusion is the result of critical thinking.

Another thing that depresses me is that he does have some good points, sarcastically delievered as they are. Martin's characterisations can sometimes be unsubtle - Circe isn't just a bit dubious, she's an incestuous, adulterous, baby-killing, altar-shagging bitch. Jaime Lannister's first on-screen action is to throw a small child out of a window, and when his reasons for betraying the old king are revealed, it's not that he was insane and the Kingdom was better off without him, but that he was completely screamingly insane and going to blow up the entire freaking city. The moral complexity of the story is sometimes undermined by such easy options. "Would you kill the man who you were sworn to protect, if he descended into madness" is a morally difficult question, "would you kill the man who you were sworn to protect, if you knew for a fact it was the only way to stop him blowing up hundreds of thousands of innocent people" isn't particularly.

It occurs to me, that this leads neatly back to the subject of the Met and their Shoot-to-Kill policy, but I'll leave that one alone for now.

Dungeons and Stations

2005-08-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

Recently, on some masochistic impulse, I read Raymond E Feist's seminal work, Magician. It was a whole load of sub-D&D tat, but it didn't really pretend to be anything else. And of course, I use the term "sub D&D" advisedly - Feist is famously a ex-roleplayer, and the influences in his work are obvious.

More recently, I have been reading Perdido Street Station. Its author, China Mieville, is another famous ex-roleplayer. The book is about four hundred and twelve times better than Magician, and it certainly doesn't fall back on the elves-n-dwarves cliches of Feist. On the other hand, I've heard terms like "genius" thrown about, and I don't think they're particularly applicable either.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think Perdido Street Station is a brilliant book, it presents a weird world with compelling characters and an only-slightly-cliched plot. It's a bit overlong of course, but this is fantasy, brevity went out of style in the fifties and never came back. But it still all feels far more familiar than it should.

It's true that the nonhuman races are khepri and vodyanoi, instead of elves and orcs, but they're still ultimately just hyphen-people (insect-people, frog-people, cactus-people, bird-people). It's not quite as overdone as Orcs and Elves, but neither is it quite the startling breath of fresh air that it seems to be being billed as. New Crozubon is a far cry from the pseudo-europe of most fantasy worlds, but it's closer than it seems at first. Things like "bio-thaumaturges" and "the Torque" are really just wizards and wild magic, just like you'd see anywhere.

Mieville has a boundless imagination, within certain boundaries. The spectacle of New Crozubon is genuinely amazing, and the Gormenghastian grotesquery really does take your breath away for a while. After the first three hundred pages, however, it begins to get a little wearing. Yes, the Remade are cool, but when you're having dog-legged whores thrust their pudendas in my face, you're trying a little bit too hard.

Indeed there's a sense in which New Crozubon, even more than Feist's world of Crydee, feels like a D&D setting. Indeed it even has "adventurers" (although these are almost certainly a throwaway gag on Mieville's part, they're described as "glorfied tomb robbers" who will do "anything for gold and experience."). It has a multitude of playable races, various sorts of magic (all of which seem to boil down to doing incantations and making gestures, just like every other spellcaster you've seen), a large variety of weapons in use at once (machetes, rapiers, longbows and flintlocks all crop up in the book, as do the obligatory exotic weapons, like the Khepri stingbox, and the Cacati reive-bow).

I absolutely don't mean to disparage Mieville's achievement. It's a great book, and the setting really is unlike anything you've ever seen. The closer you look, however, the more familiar it all starts to seem.

Ten Minutes Hate

2005-08-03T00:46:00.000-07:00

The number of hate crimes against Muslims is up 600% following the bombings.

Personally, I'm waiting for Ken Livingstone to announce that these people who are being assaulted, insulted, and having their property destroyed are "more innocent victims of the terrorists."

Our anti-terror measures are costing 500,000 a day. I'm also waiting for people to start saying this is too much money. We'll surrender all the civil liberties you want, but perish the thought that we might actually have to pay taxes.

Still Harping on about Menezes

2005-08-01T02:20:00.000-07:00

Joseph Stalin observed that "one death is a tragedy, one thousand deaths is a statistic." Even he, however, failed to realise that this relationship could be extrapolated in both directions. Recent events, however, have demonstrated that many people consider "no deaths at all" to be an insurmountable catastrophe.

Nobody died as a result of Jean Charles de Menezes' actions. He wasn't a terrorist, and he didn't have a bomb. This means that we are free to speculate all we like about the amount of damage he could have done if he had been a terrorist. The Brazilian electrician has - in the minds of the public - become the most deadly potential killer there ever was. He could have had a bomb, he could have killed hundreds of people (of course, I'm not sure how many people actually would have been on the tube at Stokenchurh at that time on a Friday).

Since the real damage was nil, the potential damage was therefore unlimited, and therefore any measures taken to prevent such horrific potential damage are justified.

Isn't It Illegal Already

2005-07-29T01:19:00.000-07:00

Government is talking about "strong new anti terror legislation." One of the more common responses to this (although depressingly less common than "good idea, and deport all the arabs while you're at it") is "hang on - surely things like 'conspiracy to commit murder,' 'possession of explosives' and the like are all illegal anyway - why do you need new legislation?"

Of course the answer is that new legislation would create new crimes, for which the normal complications that stand in the way of justice - evidence, trials, that sort of thing - are conveniently dispensed with. A lot of people seem to be fully behind this, and I'm doing my best to understand why.

A few months ago, I was arguing with somebody online, and I found myself having to use the phrase "but the fact is, some accusaitions of rape are false." Typing it, I felt rather like a mysoginistic bastard. I couldn't shake the feeling that, somewhere out there, there was a poor traumatised woman who I was indirectly calling a liar. Actually, of course, I was just making a totally non-controversial statement about crime. If somebody is accused of a crime, they might still be innocent of it. This is, after all, why we have trials. However there is some part of me that, when somebody is found not guilty of rape immediatley thinks "the bastard got away with it" instead of "oh good, British justice has once again freed an innocent man, that he can go about his life with narry a stain on his character." Essentially, there is some part of my psyche that considers rape to be so unspeakably bad that failure to secure a conviction will always qualify as an injustice, despite the real possibility that the accused was innocent.

It strikes me that this is much the attitude that many people have towards terrorism.

Essentially, it's a basic human reaction: the more serious the crime, the less likely we are to give a suspect the benefit of the doubt. I suspect that this is because, with serious crimes, it is the crime its self that occupies the mind, and the suspect is merely an adjunct to that. If you only know of somebody as "suspected terrorist" then it's hard to think of them as innocent - their entire identity is defined by the crime of which they are accused. If they're not guilty, then what are they for?

This is a perfectly understandable way for people, who are after all finite, emotional beings, to react to serious crimes and stressful situations. When it starts to become enshrined in law, it starts to become worrying. The idea that we should make "being a suspected terrorist" a crime in and of its self is a deeply sinister one.

Hollywood Law

2005-07-27T00:32:00.000-07:00

In the sweltering heat of a London summer, in the stifling air of the Underground, a cold-eyed arab grins wickedly, as he fingers the detonator for his rucksack-bomb. All around him, innocent commuters mill, oblivious to the danger that stands so close to them. The train doors are about to close...

...suddenly, from nowhere, a muscular, square jawed man bursts onto the platform. Sweat glistens from his brow as he dives towards the soon-to-be-departing train. He sees the bomber, vile and malicious, sees his wicked, broken toothed grin.

"Nooooooooo..." he screams, in slow motion, as he draws the automatic pistol from his shoulder holster. Falling flat on the ground he fires half-blind into the packed carriage.

The wicked terrorist calls backwards, struck in the chest. Mercilessly, he reaches for the trigger, that will blow the carriage to pieces.

Another bullet strikes him, full in the head this time, and he slumps, his evil work unfinished.

The policeman scrambles to his feet, where he is met by the beautiful young journalist. "You did it," she says "you... you saved us all."

This, I think, is the image that a lot of people seem to have in their heads when they think about the Shoot to Kill policy. The daring rescue, the life-or-death decision, the world made safe once more by a quick thinking man with a Glock 17. If the world really worked like that, I would be all in favour of the policy. But it doesn't, and I'm not.

Recieved wisdom has it that the possibility of another bombing is so unimaginably bad that the mere possibility that Jean Charles de Menezes might have been carrying a bomb justified shooting him. It's one life for many, they say.

Except it isn't.

Human life isn't a counting cost. You can't say "two deaths are twice as bad as one death," or "a fifty percent chance of preventing ten deaths is worth five deaths." And even if it was, the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes did not, in fact, prevent any deaths at all. Not only that, but the policy which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes had not prevented any deaths at all. It isn't one life for many, it's one life for none. But people don't like to admit that, they go on insisting that the police did the right thing, because The Risks Are Too Great. The risk that if he was a terrorist, if he had a bomb, if it went off it might have killed maybe a dozen people, was enough to justify his death. Better kill an innocent man, than run the risk of innocent men being killed.

Andrew Rilstone (www.andrewrilstone.blogspot.com and www.aslan.demon.co.uk) talks about this sort of thing in terms of ritual human sacrifice. People support this sort of policy because they believe, in some nebulous way, that if people are being killed, it must be doing some good. I think he may be half right. To my mind, it all comes down to the illusion of safety.

When something terrible happens, the one thing upon which everybody can agree is that Something Must Be Done. Nobody, of course, has the slightest idea what that "something" should be - terrorism is a hugely complex business, and it is far beyond the wit of your average Mail reader or weblog author to come up with an effective plan to fight it.

Policemen shooting people, however, has the unmistakable look of Something Being Done. At last London is Fighting Back. We all know from movies and TV that there is no problem that cannot be solved, if only you can find the right people and shoot them. Sometimes, of course, they will shoot the wrong people, but that doesn't really matter, because whilst terrorists attacks can strike anyone at any time, police shootings are definitely the sorts of things that only happen to Other People.

This, I think, is why people are so hung up on the question "why did he run from the Police?": So long as we can convince ourselves that Jean Charles de Menezes in some way brought his death upon himself, then we can make everything simple. He was acting like a terrorist, so the police were right to shoot him. You and I would never act like a terrorist, because you and I are honest people. Thus can we feel safe, knowing that Bruce Willis is out there with a gun, ready to shoot the bad men that want to hurt us.

If in Doubt, Hang Somebody

2005-07-25T04:47:00.000-07:00

I might be more enthusiastic about the "shoot to kill" policy if it didn't smack so much of "Something Must Be Done."

There seems to be a prevailing attitude that because a Shoot to Kill policy is obviously Very Big And Important, that it must therefore be A Powerful Weapon Against Terrorism.

I'm frankly not convinced that it is.

If you pull a gun on somebody and shout "stop: Police!" then they may react in a number of ways. They might freeze, they might run, they might ignore you completely.

If they're a terrorist, they might also blow themselves up.

The whole basis of the Shoot to Kill policy is that it does not give the subject time to act. If it did, then they could let off a bomb, if they were carrying one. As a result, it is bound to wind up killing innocent people. Furthermore, it is likely to wind up killing as many innocent people as it does terrorists.

Eight bombs have been set off in London in the past month. Four failed to detonate, and the remainder killed 48 people, excluding the terrorists. This averages out at about six casualties per bomb. Now, don't get me wrong, any death is a tragedy, but that's sort of my point. To my mind, if you want to justify shooting a man dead, then you need a really overwhelming reason to do it, and frankly "he might have a bomb that, if he does have it, and if it actually works, might, if he's lucky, kill maybe a dozen people" does not constitute an overwhelming reason. Human life isn't just a counting cost, you actually can't just say "if we kill these six innocent people in order to save these twelve innocent people, it's all for the best." The world is more complicated than that.

Besides, it's not like every station is going to have an armed policeman standing outside it. Chances are, if there's another real bombing, there won't be an armed policeman in sight.

An alarming number of people seem to think that the problems of terrorism can be overcome by simplistic, usually violent, methods. 'Nuke 'em seems to be a common cry (I can only presume they mean "nuke Yorkshire"), as does "shoot the fuckers." And that's probably what scares me most about the idea of Shoot to Kill. It taps into this idea that you can just shoot the baddies and make everything okay, and real life just doesn't work like that.

Fear Its Self, Part Two

2005-07-25T00:44:00.000-07:00

The wonderful thing about the internet is the way it balances its self out.

A week or two ago, I drew your attention to the admirable-yet-nauseating www.werenotafraid.com with attendant ramblings about whether it was any good or not.

Shortly afterwards, the internet being what it is, I was directed to www.iamfuckingterrified.com, which I rather prefer. For all the reasons they lay out here: http://www.iamfuckingterrified.com/why.

On Friday, the police shot an innocent man. This is bad enough in and of its self, but they're also saying that (a) the shoot to kill policy will remain in place and that (b) it is probable that more innocent people will be shot, but that this is an unfortunate necessity.

Now, these are complex, weighty matters, not to be dismissed lightly. But for fuck's sake. I mean really for fuck's sake we are talking here about the police shooting innocent people. Shouldn't there at least be some sort of national debate? Shouldn't there be somebody, just somebody standing up and saying "hang on a second, is't it a bit off for the police to shoot innocent people on the off chance they might be terrorists." I am quite willing to accept that we live in dangerous times, and drastic measures may need to be taken. I am not willing to accept that times are so dangerous that nobody can even question any policy that comes with the "anti terrorist" stamp on it.

The "shit-faced little weasel" award goes, of all people, to Ken Livingstone for his statement that: "This tragedy has added another victim to the toll of deaths for which the terrorists bear responsibility."

It's bullshit.

The moderate left, following the bombings, were all very careful to say that, whatever the root causes of the London attacks, ultimate responsibility lay with the men that actually detonated the devices. When a crime is committed, no matter what the extenuating circumstances, ultimate responsibility lies with the perpetrator. The bombers bear ultimate responsibility for the bombings, and the shooters bear ultimate responsibility for the shootings.

More from the New Dictionary of Rhetorical Terminology

2005-07-20T00:59:00.000-07:00

explain
verb
To condone, discuss, excuse or perpetrate.

The skilled rhetoritician understands that all of the above terms are synonyms. To say "Western foreign policy, as regards the Middle East, may have created a climate which fosters extremism" is, to those who understand the proper construction of an argument, the same as saying "The London bombings were the fault of the British" and indeed the same as actually going and bombing London yourself.

More From The New Dictionary of Rhetorical Terminology

2005-07-19T01:49:00.000-07:00

From the New Dictionary of Rhetorical Terminology, still to be found all over the internet, and in the House of Commons.

increase
verb
To create, entirely, and from whole cloth. To bring into being that which previously did not exist.

Those ignorant of the proper use of rhetorical terminology can easily find themselves misusing this word, and this leads to their making preposterous statements. For example, the statement:

"Britain's involvement in the war on Iraq may have increased the likelihood of a terrorist attack against the British mainland"

Is, to one who understands the proper use of rhetorical terminology, manifestly nonsensical. Terrorism and extremism have always existed, and they existed before the invasion of Iraq. It is obvious, therefore, that the threat of terrorism cannot have increased (by the proper definition of the term) as a result of the war.

Be sure to correct your friends should you find them misusing this term. If somebody suggests, for example, that pouring petrol on a fire will increase the intensity of the flames, you should immediately inform them that this cannot be the case, because the flames already existed before the petrol was added.

Harry Potter and the Reason to Give a Damn

2005-07-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

Like roughly seventy percent of the literate population of the planet, I have just finished reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. You might want to watch this post for Spoilers, although I'm not planning on giving away any crucial plot details.

Like roughly forty-three percent of the literate population of the planet, I have spent about six months speculating about the possible identity of the Half-Blood-Prince himself (or, as Hermione regularly points out throughout the book - is it herself).

My theories had been wild and speculative, but the best I could produce given the information. My theory was that it would be Hagrid, that he would prove do be descended from some form of Giant nobility, and that perhaps the Half-Blood Prince plotline would allow Potter and co to sway the Giants away from Voldemort's influence. My backup theory was that the Half-Blood Prince would be a new character who Harry would encounter who, once again, would have some importance when it came to defeating Voldemort. My extreme backup theory was that the Half Blood Price would be Buckbeak, a hippogriff being half-horse-half-griffin, being the ultimate Half Blood. The true nature of the Half Blood Prince took me utterly by surprise, because it was the one thing I had not expected.

I had not expected the Half Blood Prince to be completely, utterly irrelavent.

The Half Blood Prince is introduced in (I believe) chapter Six, and it is giving very little away to say that he (or is it she, said Hermione, looking up from her Arithmancy homework and pile of SPEW leaflets) is not Prince of anything, and is not actually related to anything to do with the plot. "The Half Blood Prince" is just a name, there is absolutely no textual reason for us to care who he (or she) actually is. "Who is the Half-Blood Prince" has been the question on every Potter reader's lips for the best part of a year, and the actual appearance of the Half-Blood Prince in the book doesn't change the character of the question at all.

I said, in my last post, that the Potter Phenomenon was self-sustaining, and that when you read the books, you were experiencing the Phenomenon as much as the story. What I had not quite realised is how far JK Rowling seems to have embraced this fact. She no longer writes books, she writes codices of Information About Harry Potter. Instead of telling us a story about a boy wizard and his friends at school, she tells us laboriously What Happened During Harry Potter's Sixth Year At Hogwarts, even though an awful lot of it just isn't remotely important. She also devotes an awful lot of time to the personal history of Tom "Voldemort" Riddle, in which we learn (spoiler alert) that shock horror Tom Riddle had an unhappy childhood, and as a boy he was cruel and arrogant.

An awful lot of HP&tHBP (as I am sure it will become known) is just setting up for the final book. This wouldn't be so bad if it was the first time Rowling had done such a thing, but it isn't. HP&tOotP was mostly just setting up for the sixth book, and HP&tGoF was mostly just setting up for the fifth. Increasingly, the Potter series has become characterised by buildups without payoffs (and occasionally payoffs without buildups - take, for example, the random shipping at the end of Half-Blood Prince).

There is nothing that happens in HP&tHBP that could not have happened two books ago, and little that could not have been dispensed with entirely. But of course it was planned as a seven-book series, and so Harry has to cool his heels until he reaches the ripe old age of eighteen, at which point he will confront Vader - sorry, Voldemort - in a climactic showdown that will probably consist of Harry and Chums battling the Death Eaters just like they always do, with the jinxes they learned in their second year duelling class.

The Phenomenon Phenomenon

2005-07-15T01:18:00.000-07:00

Not that long ago - this week I think, possibly the week before - there were celebrations held for the sixtieth anniversery of VE day. If you missed them, don't worry, so did everybody else. They were shortly after the London bombings, and were at any rate a quiet and dignified affair.

This evening, the world celebrates the release of a slightly-above-average children's book, and it does so with bacchinalean intensity.

Of course I by no means wish to imply that there is anything dysfunctional about this. Or rather, I seek to imply it - otherwise I wouldn't have mentionned the war thing at all - but I know it isn't true, so I say "I by no means wish to imply..." in order to let myself off the hook.

Harry Potter is a phenomenon. People get rather silly about phenomena. Many people get swept up in them, and camp outside bookstores because they absolutely can't wait one second more to read that slightly-above-average children's book. That, however, is not the most foolish reaction to a phenomenon. That distinction is reserved for people who try to explain them. Potter-enthusiasts say "the popularity of the books is because JK Rowling is a master storyteller who as created an utterly captivating world full of brilliant characters..." while Potter-bashers say "the popularity of the books is because our society is in irrevocable decay, and adults-reading-children's-books is a sign of the juvenilisation of society..."

My personal belief is that they are both wrong. And I can prove it with science.

JK Rowling is pretty much the biggest selling author alive. Probably the biggest selling author ever. She accounts for something like forty percent of Bloomsbury's income. There is no quality in her books that is not also in hundreds of other similar titles. Other authors have produced books with consistent worlds, with magic and mystery, with convincing primary characters. These qualities do not set Potter apart. Similarly there are a great many books out there which are bland, inoffensive, and reassuring, so the popularity of Potter can't be solely due to dumbing down either.

Ironically (or perhaps I should say "ironically," since it isn't actually particularly ironic at all) the true reason for the popularity of the Potter books can be found in the books themselves. In The Order of the Phoenix is is revealed that there was a Prophecy concerning Voldemort, and the one who could defeat him, which could have been either Neville or Harry. By trying to kill Harry, Voldemort inadvertantly sealed his own fate, so essentially Harry Potter's unique position in the Wizarding World is the result of a completely arbitrary choice.

So it is with the books.

Sometimes phenomena just happen, and when they do, people want to be part of them. The reason the Potter books is so compelling is because, when you read one, you know that fifteen million other people are reading it at the same time. The reason the characters feel so real is because everybody knows who they are. The simple fact that people in the real world talk about the characters contributes more to their believability than any amount of skilled writing could.

People who don't see what all the fuss is about are kind of missing the point. The fuss is about the fuss.

Whether the "phenomenality" of Potter is a good, bad, or indifferent thing is rather questionable. The age old argument is that Anything Which Gets Children To Read Is A Good Thing. I'm actually not sure about this. If children read the Potter books, and do not then go on to read anything else, I actually don't think it does a blind bit of good, at least in terms of literacy. Worse, I'm wondering if the Potter Phenomenon hasn't actually completely eclipsed the books themselves.

For example, I was talking to a co-worker about Potter a couple of weeks ago, and he said that his girlfriend would probably buy the book at midnight on the Friday, and that she and her friends would all read it in one sitting overnight. He went on to say that he would then probably borrow the book, read it slowly, over the course of a couple of weeks, and then point out to her all the bits that she'd missed. Of course he may have been being flippant, but I do think that there is a genuine risk here.

When you read Potter, you plug yourself into this tremendous global phenomenon. Reading the books is almost a formality, the price of admission to the Harry Potter Club. If children experience the Potter Books in this way, then the books are not really "encouraging children to read," they are just encouraging children to Read Harry Potter - an activity similar, but not identical to, actual reading.

That Other Burning Issue of the Day

2005-07-14T00:57:00.000-07:00

It always feels a little odd going from talk of something deeply important, to talk of something deeply trivial. I've spent the last week talking about the London bombings, so it's rather shamefacedly that I now go on to talk about Harry Potter. That's the internet for you - isn't it a wonderful place.

It seems that a lot of my posts are turning out to be reactions against stuff on the BBC website. This post is no exception. Robert Winder, in a column on the BBC website today ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4679657.stm ) gives his various reasons for disliking the Potter books (or rather, his various reasons for disliking the Potter phenomenon - he says precious little about the actual books.) Most of his arguments are very much the same-old same-old: "blah blah, commercial, blah blah, merchandising" we've heard it all before, and I frankly refuse to get drawn into the trap of assuming that just because popularity does not necessarily equal merit, it must therefore equal worthlessness.

He does raise the rather frightening point that: he has "heard parents often complain that their children harass them to buy the book - but that it is left unread on the shelves while the kids get back to their computer games. " If this is true (and it is worth noting that, presented here, it becomes something that I have heard that somebody else has heard that some parents might have said at some point) it certainly takes the sheen off of Potter's image as the salvation of youth literacy.

The other point he raises is one that I have often brough up myself: Harry Potter is essentially set in the fifties. It's all - if you'll pardon the expression - jolly broomsticks. Even the rising darkness (oh how I hate the word "darkness" when used to describe stories - possibly, I think, because people always assume that it's a virtue) of the later books doesn't change that. People might die, Hogwarts might become a horrible place (as, certainly, fifties boarding schools could be horrible places) but the Dark Lord is still essentially a spoiled public school boy, the school bully writ large.

Winder, however, takes this point rather too far, suggesting that "the series paints an unrealistic picture of Britain in 2005" and going on to suggest that "My Harry Potter would certainly not be a part of this world. He'd be more of an urban Harry for 2005. He might hang round bus-stops late at night wearing a baseball cap and drinking cider. He might harass the neighbours with his magic powers and end up with an Asbo. My Harry Potter would probably sell about three copies, though."

Now okay, he's being flippant, but for pity's sake, this man works for the BBC. "Harry Potter Gets an ASBO" is the kind of gag you might see on a photoshopped picture on somebody's weblog.

Furthermore, there is a very real possibility that he isn't being flippant, that he is - as Al Franken would put it - kidding on the square. Sure "my Harry Potter would hang around bust stops drinking cider" is obviously a joke, but it's a joke that stems from one of the most common and most annoying assumptions about books in general, and childrens books in particular. Namely that in order to be "relavent" they have to "deal" with "issues."

Harry Potter is set in an idealised, 1950s version of Britain, but so what? Can children not relate to characters that don't live exactly the same sort of lifestyle as they do themselves? And even if they could, why is it suddenly the case that all children grew up on council estates? As a child, I read Enid Blyton, and the fact that the stories were set in a world I had never experienced didn't spoil my enjoyment of them. For that matter when I was a little bit older I read Romeo and Juliet, and enjoyed it despite the fact that I had never been to seventeenth century Verona.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am quite willing to believe that the reason the Potter books are more popular than Serious Books About People Growing Up On Council Estates is because they're a good deal lighter, and a good deal more fun (fun being another taboo concept in the annals of serious literature - if you actually enjoy reading about somebody, then clearly they are an unrealistic wish-fulfillment fantasy.) It is also possible, however, that the Potter books are more popular than Serious Books About People Growing Up On Council Estates because they deal with more universal themes. Everybody has gone to school, had friends, and felt at times like they didn't fit in. Everybody has been picked on. If Voldemort is the school bully writ large, then that is an image that is universally recognisable. On the other hand I have never hung out at a bus stop drinking cider, and neither - I dare say - have an awful lot of other people.

The New Dictionary of Rhetorical Terminology

2005-07-13T03:42:00.000-07:00

From The New Dictionary of Rhetorical Terminology available online, everywhere:

naive:

1. Holding an opinion which, when presented in grossly simplistic terms, seems grossly simplistic.
2. Holding an opinion which contradicts the opinion of another, where the contrary opinion is more cynical or more judgemental than your own.

The Liberal Democrat Leader, Charles Kennedy, has been lambasted in the commons today for suggesting that the Prime Minister "should not be surprised" if people drew connections between the war in Iraq and last Thursday's bombings. This despite the fact that he also clearly said that he was in no way suggesting that there was a direct causal link.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister responded thus: "it is naive frankly to believe that you can say that that kind of terrorism is due to the Iraq war."

Remember what I said last week, about things being technically true?

It is indeed naive to believe that you can say that "that kind of terrorism" is due to the Iraq war. Which is of course why nobody is saying that, nobody ever has said that, and nobody ever will say that. With the possible exception of George Galloway. If Mister Kennedy had stood up and said "If we hadn't invaded Iraq, there would never have been any terrorist attacks anywhere in the world," then he would obviously have been talking nonsense, and the Prime Minister's response would have been relevant. He didn't, and it wasn't.

What always interests me about the word "naive" as used in the modern world, is that it is almost always used by people who are themselves pursuing an utterly naive argument. It is apparently "naive" to say that the War in Iraq increased the risk of a terrorist attack on this country, and "naive" to point out that the Islamist website that linked the attacks to al Quaeda in the first place specifically cited the War in Iraq as a contributory factor. The Joint Intelligence Committee must also be composed of singularly naive people. On the other hand it is the height of sophistication and political realism to say "These attacks were carried out by evil people that hate freedom."

It is also noteworthy that they have now identified the four bombers. They were, apparently, all British. They seem, prior to the attacks, to have been ordinary members of their communities. While this is chilling in and of its self, I do not entirely see how it is consistent with the idea that the terrorists are "evil fanatics" who "hate freedom."

There are two possible responses to this news, unfortunately neither one is actually more compelling or more obviously sensible than the other. Either you can say "the bombers were ordinary British citizens, obviously the Evil Fantatics are more cunning than ever we thought, if they can convert ordinary brits to their cause" alternatively you can say "the bombers were ordinary British citizens, perhaps something is driving ordinary people into the hands of fantatics."

Of course, I may just be naive.

Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

2005-07-13T01:07:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it is my deep and abiding cynicism, or perhaps it is the fact that I was watching The Empire Strikes Back a couple of days ago, but my first reaction to the website www.werenotafraid.com was "You will be... you will be."

Comedy, they say, is tragedy plus time. "They" can take comfort in the fact that, less than a week after the London Bombings, I am already resorting to lame Star Wars jokes.

I am, however, very much in two minds about the site. The sentimental side of me says that this is a wonderful, heartwarming display of spirit and solidarity in the face of adversity. The cynic in me says that getting people from all over the internet to adopt a catchy tagline and photoshop it into a picture is - as a great man once said - about as difficult as putting on a hat. Looking through the galleries on the site, I can't help but notice that an awful lot of the pictures involve bog standard internet tropes - cute kittens, photoshopped light effects, Darth Vader - there's something about it that unsettles me.

If you repeat something often enough, it becomes meaningless. Actually, that isn't true, but if you repeat something often enough, you start to forget why you were originally saying it, and other people join in with you, and you don't really mind if they mean what you mean, so long as you're all saying the same words.

Some of the images in the galleries have slightly more than just "We Are Not Afraid" on them, and it is these that I think highlight the vastly different things a simple tagline can mean. Compare, for example, these two:

http://www.werenotafraid.com/images/003/janz.jpg
http://www.werenotafraid.com/images/005/tim_ireland.jpg

The first, frankly, offends me. It strikes me as the worst sort of jingoism. Bravely declaring that you are not afraid is one thing, insulting those who are willing to admit that they are is quite another. The second, on the other hand, neatly summarises my own personal fears - and indeed the points I ramble about in my previous post - Not Being Afraid means Not Immediately Giving The Police Loads Of New Powers.

The internet has made protest very easy. I, of course, am as guilty as the next man, sitting behind my keyboard, holding forth on the great issues of the day without actually trying to do anything remotely constructive. It is very easy to be unafraid when you're picking the right font in Adobe Photoshop. It is far harder to be unafraid when you are actually taking the tube to work in the morning, or when somebody is offering you the promise of security, in return for a few tiny little stop-and-search powers. Perhaps my biggst objection to the site, then, stems from a more general principle: if you're going to do something, do it, don't talk about it.

The people of London have shown tremendous courage in the past few days. They have shown their courage by their refusal to panic when the original blasts took place, by their orderly response to events, and by their returning to work as normal the monday after a tremendous terrorist attack. Those of us who live further afield, however, have not shown courage, because we have had no need to. My hometown is in no particular danger of attack, and I am taking no greater risk coming to work today as I did last Wednesday.

It is a cliche, but a truism, that true courage is when you are afraid, but carry on as if you were not. Those who are truly Not Afraid are probably also Not In Any Particular Danger. For those who actually travel via Liverpool Street, fear is a natural and sensible reaction.

Of course: "We Are Afraid But We Choose Not To Allow It To Interfere With Our Daily Lives" doesn't look as good on a teeshirt...

Whys and Wherefores

2005-07-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

Charles Clarke, the British Home Secretary has declared that there is "no evidence that [the attacks] had anything to do with the Iraq war."

This is, in the strictest sense, true. The fact that an Islamist website claiming responsibility for the attacks specifically said that it was in retaliation to the Iraq war does not constitute evidence, or at least not conclusive evidence.

However, Mister Clarke cannot have it both ways. If we make our judgements solely on the conclusive evidence this attack was carried out by parties as yet unknown, but probably Islamist, for reasons unknown. It is nonsensical for Mister Clarke to say, in the same breath "there is no evidence to suggest that [it] had anything to do with the Iraq war" and "The fact is that the people who make these kind of attacks are about destroying the very essence of our society: our democracy, our media, our multicultural society." You can't dismiss the theories that criticise you as speculation, and laud the ones that don't as facts.

Only a fool would genuinely believe that the Iraq war did not contribute to the likelihood of an Islamist militant attack on Britain. Only a fool would genuinely believe that, had we not gone to war in Iraq, no Islamist group would ever pose a threat to Britain.

George Galloway, of course, is the latter sort of fool. According to him: "Londoners have now paid the price" of the government's failure to heed his warnings.

Once again, this is technically true. Whenever a government makes a decision, somebody pays a price. When it is a really big, important decision, people frequently die as a result (if only an indirect result) of decisions made at the highest levels.

Essentially Galloway and Clarke are both making the same mistake (or, if you're feeling cynical, trying to pull the same stunt for cheap political points). They are trying to simplify an extremely complicated situation.

It is very easy to say "these men are evil, and they hate us because they hate freedom and justice," but it simply isn't true. That sort of simplistic logic belongs in Middle Earth, not the Middle East.

It is also very easy to say "these attacks are all Tony Blair's fault, if we hadn't attacked Iraq this would never have happened." This also oversimplifies a complex situation. It is clear that al Quaeda does, in fact, object to the West on principle. They may not hate "freedom" but I would hazard that a lot of them actually do hate things like the secularisation of society and the various sorts of immorality that are tolerated in a liberal democracy.

If we are to stand any chance at all of solving the problem international terrorism, we have to start by understanding that there it does not have a single solution.

Remaining Resolute in the face of Terror

2005-07-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a series of explosions struck the public transport system in London. The newspapers, television, and internet are full of serious looking politicians talking about how important it is that we remain resolute in the face of this attack on our way of life.

A little while ago, there was something of a furore about proposed anti-terrorist legislation that would, in effect, have allowed the British government to place British citizens under indefinite house arrest, without trial. Some people were opposed to this idea, and some were in favour of it. Some wooly thinking liberals like me thought that there were compelling arguments on both sides, but ultimately came down on the side of civil liberty as more important than national security.

At the time, a lot of people who thought that national security was more important than civil liberty (the Prime Minister among them) said things like, "you say that now, but how will you feel if there's a terrorist attack on London."

There has now been a terrorist attack on London. I for one will heed the words of our leaders, and remain resolute in the face of these attacks. The events of yesterday morning will not make me abandon my belief in freedom, and the institutions of freedom. Institutions like the presumption of innocence, and the right to trial by a jury of one's peers.