Physics envy (Kiddiefic monster post... the debate rages on! (whirdy winces))

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 32643

whirdy:
> So unless there is some great new insight or revelation, can we loose the 
Three Fates on this thread?

Now, now.  When some of us (including our listmother) are enjoying it so much?  I'm sure for all long-term listmembers there are Threads which we would dearly love to burn out of the sky with dragons (Anne McCaffrey reference).  They unravel eventually.  Patience, patience, this too shall pass...

Luke (arguing with me):
Tabouli <tabouli at u...> wrote:
> Voldemort hardly seems up to much as a foe in encounters to date,
> on-stage he's a comic book villain, another marker which
> says "children's series" to me

>> Though it pains me to have to argue with one of my fellow Staunch 
Defenders of the Merits of Children's Literature, I must take issue 
with this statement as well.  The nature of the villain is a flawed 
determinator for the age range of a book.  If it were not, the entire 
James Bond series would be designed for children.  There's no 
inherency here that I am aware of.<<

Indeed not, but who was arguing for inherency?  Not me.  And not several of the others argued with, I'll wager.  Reading Luke's essay, this thought came up several times, reminding me inescapably of my third year metapsychology lectures... (the sound of a thousand horrified delete keys rings around the globe)... in which my worthy lecturer raised the sorry subject of Physics Envy.

Literary analysis, like psychology (says Tabouli to her small remaining audience), is of the social domain, not the physical domain.  Now.  In the educated, middle-class West, "Science" has carved out quite a reputation for itself.  It cures previously fatal diseases, it enables us to participate in Harry Potter mailing lists, it flies us around the world... all very impressive.  These are the sort of things most people think of when you mention science.  Even our moisturisers are promoted as Scientifically Proven to Stop Ageing!

As the term is "physics envy", let's consider physics.  Now there's a Science for us... they've come up with *laws* which describe how things work and do it accurately and unquestionably under all normal human circumstances!  (let's not get into obscure hypothetical situations and exceptions to the rule at this point: I don't know *that* much about physics).  A law of gravity!  The laws of motion!  Nuclear power, aerodynamics, electricity, astronomy, travel to the moon... you have to admit, physicists have quite a track record in impressive accomplishments known to most of humanity.  And how did they do it?  Controlled experiments, leading to laws, which can then be used to develop fairground rides and Gameboys and all the rest.  They've more or less laid down the line in what science is and how scientific enquiry should be conducted.

In the physical domain, this works very well.  The physical sciences deal with quantities and forces that can be observed and measured easily, objectively and exactly, like length, and mass, and velocity, and gravity.  This makes conducting scientific inquiry a lot easier, because when you can measure something accurately, you can control its role in your experiments.  You can make nice exact laws, like the rate of acceleration due to gravity on the Earth's surface at sea level is 9.8m/s/s (or whatever it is), or E=mc squared, and it's all nice and clear.  There are absolute right and wrong answers.

In the social domain, this doesn't work very well at all.  A lot of what social scientists (and even literary analysts) are dealing with is subjective, culturally determined, can't be directly observed and is very difficult to quantify, like "personality", "intelligence", and even "level of belonging to the category of children's literature".  You can't measure these things and come up with a nice simple law like "all books with simplistic villains belong to the CL category" the way you can come up with a law of gravity.  Nonetheless, because science and the empirical scientific method of inquiry is so well respected and established, and because nice simplistic laws are so much more seductive than vague tendencies and probabilities, a lot of social scientists try to do it anyway, and invent things like IQ tests and personality tests and predictive models and cultural affiliation scales.  Then get all hurt and indignant when the physical scientists laugh at them (Engineering students vs Psychology students... nasty, nasty, nasty).  Physics envy, you see.

The point (yes I do have one!) is that we can argue on this list and bring in example after counter-example until 2010 and we will never come up with a nice "If book has a+b+c then book=children's literature" law a la E=mc squared.  We're just not working within those sort of parameters.  It's like all the cross-cultural types I know trying to find a foolproof measure of "Chineseness"... "If person = fluent Chinese speaker + respects parents' opinions + celebrates Chinese New Year (etc.)  then person=culturally Chinese".  And then fall over themselves trying to defend themselves against accusations of stereotyping when people come up with the inevitable objections and exceptions.  The best we're ever going to get is a list of characteristics which typically differ between adult and children's literature, a sort of template, against which we can place Harry Potter and other series for assessment.

Which is a very long-winded way of defending my "comic book villain" comment as a characteristic I'd put on this list, together with:

- Simplistic good/evil distinction
- School series
- Children as protagonists (esp. as heros saving day while adults blunder and patronise ineffectually)
- Discreet and low-key handling of sex
- Simplification of consequences of serious events
- Accessible language
- Happy, tidy endings

and so on (oh yes, chuck in Luke's list as well).  None of these characteristics are exclusive to children's books, none of them in themselves make a book "inherently" a children's book, and I'm sure all of you could come up with examples of adult books with one or more, and examples of children's books which exclude several (as I can).  All the same, how many adults' books have *all* of these?  Very few. 

Then there are other complicating subjectivity factors in developing the list and "measuring" HP against it.  Just look at the demographics alone:

Era: what was considered appropriate for children 10, 20, 50 years ago was quite different from today (hence the age of the listmember judging the series may influence his/her list of characteristics and decision).

Country of origin: HP is very English, and of a sub-genre (boarding school series) popular in the mid twentieth century for children's books (hence English listmembers may judge differently from American listmembers and so on).

And so on.  And so on.  A clear-cut objective definition of "children's book" which we can use to categorise HP without argument just ain't gonna happen, any more than some psychologist will come up with a foolproof way of measuring how Chinese someone is on a 100 point scale and use this to predict their management style.  But hey - it's still fun to argue about it!

Tabouli (getting carried away as usual... did anyone make it to the end?)


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