Perhaps “inactive” might be a better word for things. I don’t think we’re that far apart on the core point (though I have my share of disagreements with your details). I mean that Harry Potter (particularly in Goblet of Fire but this is a common thing throughout the series) takes no action to move the plot forward; he is ridden by events rather than the other way around.
That can still work in fiction but Rowling is clearly writing heroic fantasy where we are supposed to latch onto the protagonist as the “hero”. For the hero to not have an effect on the plot is a problem in that situation.
I think you are reading more into it than Rowling put in and I disagree with your assessment though a detailed argument would require that I reread the series and I’m not doing that ;). For every person or situation that Harry learns that he is wrong about there’s ten his snap decision was exactly right. And even when Harry learns that he was wrong about something often he was right originally in some vital aspect. It undercuts the theme that you found.
I’m more inclined to just look at those aspects of the books as children’s book morality tales. The kind where you can almost read “MORAL” printed in big block text over the page where the characters learn a very important lesson and a more sophisticated reader can recognize that the author undercut their moral in other aspects of the book.
And Frodo is far from inactive like Harry Potter; right from the start his decisions drive the plot and do so through the end. Events happen as a consequence to his actions and he reacts to them but Frodo chooses to take the ring, to delay his departure, to destroy the ring, to go through Moria, to leave the Fellowship, to try to help Smeagol, and in the end to keep the ring. Frodo moves the story while Harry reacts to it.
Gosh, sorry I was focusing on a Harry Potter book in a discussion about Harry Potter books.
*Sure, this example is a deus ex machina. It’s also unlike anything that happens in Goblet of Fire.
*The help Harry gets in Goblet of Fire never comes out of nowhere. It’s always based on established aspects of the characters involved, and most of these characters were well-known to readers from earlier books. Hagrid doesn’t just suddenly develop an interest in dragons when it becomes convenient, he was rather excessively interested in dragons way back in the first book. Neville’s strength in school was already said to be herbology. Cedric only offers Harry help to repay him for helping Cedric earlier in the book. Both Harry and the reader know all these things in advance, which is why Harry doesn’t suspect he’s being manipulated. Dobby running up at the last minute to literally hand Harry the solution to a puzzle is the most improbable help he receives, but even then there had been earlier clues about the usefulness of gillyweed and Dobby was introduced back in the second book as a character who overheard useful information and went out of his way to help Harry.
More importantly, the help Harry receives only leads to bigger problems. I don’t know why you’re having such difficulty grasping this point, but plot devices that make things WORSE for the hero aren’t deus ex machina. They may be contrived, but they aren’t deus ex machina. If those eagles had rescued the hobbits from a cliff only to deliver them to Saruman that wouldn’t have been a deus ex machina, it would have been the heroes falling victim to a clever plan of the villain.
I think it was in one of Terry Rossio’s Wordplay columns (although I can’t find the right one now) that he said the only time it was forgivable to give your hero a spot of luck to get him out of a tricky situation was if this turned out to lead to even bigger problems. That’s just the case with all the help Harry receives while competing in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Winning the Tri-Wizard Tournament led directly to Voldemort’s resurrection, which is just about the biggest problem possible for Harry at that point.
Goblet of Fire is not a book where external forces conveniently appear to solve all the hero’s problems, and for you to claim that it is proves you totally failed to understand it. In Goblet of Fire NOTHING works out for the hero, while the villain accomplishes nearly everything he set out to do. Harry doesn’t get the girl, he doesn’t prevent Voldemort’s resurrection or even seriously disrupt his plans, his attempt to be noble at the end of the tournament leads to the death of an innocent boy, and even his warning about Voldemort’s return isn’t taken seriously by the Minister of Magic. Harry’s apparent victories in the tournament are only due to the manipulations of the villains, are trivial in the scheme of things and lead to no real gain for Harry, and ultimately serve to make things much, much worse for him and everyone he cares about.
As somebody who doesn’t love Harry Potter but knows many fine people who do, and who is by no means depressed by its success, I thought I’d point out that Wolf_Man, the OP, hasn’t returned to his thread.
Perhaps he isn’t up to defending that somewhat dicey list of heroic fantasy he included…
In defense of Rowling, she would agree with a lot of the criticisms being listed about Goblet of Fire. I remember reading an interview with her where she talked about how hard GoF was to write because she was under a strict deadline, and she was unhappy with the book as it ended up…she knew it needed pruning and polishing. That’s why there was such a big gap between the releases of *GoF *and Phoenix–she refused to work under a deadline like that again.
I didn’t read the books until recently and found them progressively soap opera-ish. The first movie was perfect in every way but the movies that followed did not stick with the book nor were they consistent in topography. I can’t criticize the author for writing successful books for teenagers but I find fault with her lack of literary control of the movies.
You can’t really blame Rowling for not having control of the movies. Authors never have control of the movies. Even if the original author also writes the screenplay the producers or director can order changes or even have the whole thing rewritten by someone else. The massive popularity of the books meant that Rowling was granted more input than is usual for novelists whose books are being adapted for the screen, the usual amount being “none”, but even so her influence would have been limited to what the filmmakers were willing to put up with. Rowling had enough clout to demand certain concessions as a part of the movie deal (she wanted all the leads to be British/Irish actors, not Americans faking English accents), but she wouldn’t have had any legal right to prevent changes not specified in the contract.
#3 is Wheel of Time, which became hack writing of the very worst sort.
#7 is the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which is boring, depressing and barely fantasy. And poorly written.
Of his top ten, I have only enjoyed A Game of Thrones (too dark for me, and too slowly written, however) and of course LotR. The fact that he puts LotR last of 10 after several hack writers is proof this guy has no taste and his list is crap.
I disagree. Authors can retain control over content by writing that into the contract. They swapped out the character Neville and inserted Dobby in the scene about the hidden room. They completely changed the school between movies so there is no official layout. These are simple things to control and should have been dealt with from day one.
Well, A Game of Thrones really is quite good. Also, and I’ll defend it in your carious teeth, Thomas Covenant. You have to throw out the whole list when the words “wheel” and “time” come within six words of one another, though.
Someone HAS to write that fanfic now. mr. jp – actually, you have to be up by a certain number of points to catch the Snitch. You can, in theory, catch it, and STILL lose the game – IF the other team is ahead enough that the 250 points doesn’t matter.
As for the rest, Birdmonster, eleanorigby, Lamia, Sleeps With Butterflies and CyclopticXander have said most of what I wanted to.
Maybe, but it can be argued that the layout of Hogwarts actually DOES tend to change – it’s mentioned in the book that rooms aren’t always were they were the last time.
actually, you have that backwards–they inserted Neville re the Room of Requirement. Neville seems to be a handy stand in for Dobby. Luna looks to be a handy stand in for Tonks in HP6.
Your second point is one that bothers me as well, but I don’t blame Rowling for it. It is an error of the production and continuity team; the author of the material has no say in it whatsoever.
Books and film, being completely different media, cannot possibly be treated as equivalents. IMO, a fan is lucky if the spirit or soul (if you will) of a work translates onto the screen (examples are Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind ,LOTR and HP). Having bought the rights to the material, the producer can do as he or she pleases in order to make the film he or she thinks will be the best product. Hollywood being what it is, the best product usually means the most marketable and profit making, not a Work of Art Faithful to The Work That Inspired the Deal.
Then again, Guin may well have a point: why not have the grounds change a bit? It’s a magical place, afterall. PS-Guin, catching the Snitch is worth 150, not 250 points.
I think Rowling very much did intend it to be a theme that Harry would discover that people are not exactly who he thought they were. He grows up over the course of the books and learns to see people as being more complex than he thought. Heroes can be very flawed (Dumbledore), and villains can be noble (Snape). Everyone has a story, and a reason why they are they way they are. When the books start, Harry is too young to grasp that, reacting only to the parts of people he seems and experiences, but as he matures, he comes to realize that usually there’s more to people than meets the eye. That is something that all kids go through, the quintessence of a romansbildung, if you want me to get all grad school on you.
I wish you could give an example of “ten snap decisions about people that Harry made that were exactly right.” I can’t think of any, actually. All of his initial impressions were deepened and made more complex, even when he ultimately decided that a person was, in fact, truly a right bastard (Malfoy).
I came to the series late, and read them all straight through after the last one came out. All of my students were reading them, so I felt I ought to. They were enjoyable and in no way harmful to kids, so what’s the problem? It got a lot of indifferent readers interested in books, which I hope will carry over into other reading. Nothing whatsoever to be depressed about IMO.
If the author demands a contract that gives them total creative control then there isn’t going to be any contract.
*Come on. J.K. Rowling was supposed to include demands like use of the same sets from one movie to the next in her contract? Since she has no background in filmmaking I doubt this would even have occurred to her, and it would have been a pretty wacky demand for a novelist to make. In 1998, when she sold the movie rights to the first four books, J.K. Rowling was the bestselling author of two children’s books but she was not yet the bestselling author EVER. Several studios wanted the movie rights to the HP series, but not so badly that they’d have signed a deal granting the author the power to micromanage the production. I doubt that even now she’d have that kind of clout. That’s just not the way moviemaking works.
If you don’t like the way the movies turned out then blame the filmmakers.
Not I. I loved the books and I love the movies. SWMBO and I have already been to see Half-Blood Prince and we are probably going to go again next weekend.
Well, I guess I am purposefully guilty of drive-by posting because I decided I would make my anti-Rowlings post, then give it three days before I come back to avoid any quick response meltdown.
After three days I have to say, I got lazy and picked a really shitty alternative list. It had menus and covers and matched a few lookups, and it was shitty, and I beg Mea Culpa for that. But I still stand by my OP. Reading shit is not better than watching quality.
That’s actually a common thread among people I’ve met who have loved HP - they read them while going through a tough time. I read them while living alone in a very isolated place, my mother read them while caring for her dying mother, another friend read them while her husband was deployed in Iraq… For people who like them, there’s something about them that consumes your attention so fully that they can really take you away from daily life. I think that one thing that Rowling does well is create a character you care about in only a few words, so you feel like you’re surrounded by a large cast of friends when you read them, and it’s comforting.
Of course, as others have mentioned, it’s a mistake to read them and expect classical fantasy - that’s not the genre to which they belong. I don’t like LOTR-style fantasy at all, so I don’t miss any features of those books. To each his or her own!
You didn’t stand “by” your OP so much as stand at a significant distance from it. I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan but am hardly “depressed” by its success.
Are you depressed that it’s taking attention away from more worthy works? If so, perhaps you could type out a list of stuff you, personally, like better. I’m not shy about promoting favorite books & authors, but usually do so in threads where people are asking for recommendations.
Not to mention he completely ignored seminal works like Amber (okay it’s 25th-whoopie), Elric, and stuff from Fritz Leiber (who, to be fair, generally strung novellas and short stories together, as the concept of the multinovel “series” didn’t really exist back then).
That was Dumbledor referring to the room that shows up as needed. It bothers me that there is no true layout of the school. I had trouble visualizing it as I read the books and the movies made it worse. I was expecting LOTR faithfulness to the books and that was done without the author. Given the pile of money she made on the books (starting with the first) she was in a clear position to dictate how they would be translated.
