Notes on Literary uses of magic in Terabithia, Pan's Labyrinth and Harry Potter

[tbernhard2000]

No: HPFGUIDX 167950

I've been thinking about magic and it's literary uses in Katherine
Paterson's very popular Bridge to Terabithia (with special reference
to the wonderful, recent movie version), Guillermo del Toro's Pan's
Labyrinth (an original work of cinematic art), and the Harry Potter
universe. 

Terabithia is a place wholly imaginary - we are never told otherwise,
we never suspect otherwise, there is no boundary, and hence, nothing
can cross over from the magical world to the real world. Except that,
well, here's something the movie showed clearly - art, imagination,
discovery (especially as represented by Da Vinci) is forever THE
essential element of anything that makes life better, that transforms
things, that expands us. A parachute - a Da Vinci design! - lets
people fall great distances without hurting themselves - we see this
at the museum, while, in another part of the world, Leslie dies in a
fall. The same theme is stronger in the very central act of building
the bridge - it will prevent further rope tragedies, it symbolizes
Jess's compromise with his father the hardware store employee by an
act that is at the same time a claiming of his friend's talent, and it
represents the bridge between the ideal and the practise. This sense
of the literary operation of magic is very practical – and indeed, the
book was written for a very specific, practical purpose – to help her
son deal with the death of his friend. Such a wonderful motif and such
a wonderful movie – and in it's telling lies a potent truth about
magic in all its literary guises – it is fundamentally useful, even
necessary, although some, those outside the charmed circle, the
muggles, as it were, won't get it.

Terabithia is entirely play, between two friends, a partnership of
outsiders against what is unfair in the world. They know, however,
that what they find unfair is something that others often experience
even more deeply - Janice Avery is an older kid, a bully, whose father
hits her, and when police are called and the abuse becomes public, she
is humiliated and scared - perhaps close to despairing. In Rowling,
the DA is a group of kids who tackle unfairness in an entirely more
organized, more practical and political manner.

The Dark Master in Terabithia is, I suggest, despair. It is art and
imagination that helps us live, but the essential core is compassion,
is love, without which, the greatest art becomes just a drawing, and
the deepest meanings in life are inaccessible to it. Leslie's chat
with Janice is the kind of gesture that is . The sad part is that,
whatever Jess does for Leslie is lost when she dies, but we suspect he
knows. The movie is entirely a non sexual love story, by the way, and
when it's time to grieve, it's overwhelming. 

Does despair exist in Rowling, and if so, where, to what degree? I say
the idea of despair is very problematic in Rowling – no good character
has ever come close to it. There is terrible, shaking fear, yes, Molly
at the boggart, there is sadness, when Cedric or Sirius dies, there is
pain, Harry in the atrium. Sirius in Azkaban – he could not despair,
or if he did, it is well shielded from us. Luna has nothing of it – we
are given no hint of anything close to it underneath that persona, nor
do we find it in Neville. In no character on the good side has there
been a hint of despair. On the evil side, it appears only in one case,
in Merope, after Tom leaves her. If it is mitigated by the sense the
woman had to get help, in her pregnancy, it is nonetheless apparent
and, we have it in writing, fatal. If Merope is the most despairing
character in the books, she is also the most powerless figure in the
books. Here I think Rowling is in agreement with Paterson (and
Tolkien!) – despair is the darkest master.

Pan's Labyrinth posits a much greater subversion of reality by the
operation of imagination - here it isn't two individual's creating a
world of the mind together, and it isn't some other part of the world
artificially separate, peopled with humans just like us, but with
extra tools, but a girl who lives within a tradition of fairy tales
become real, on one hand, and a cruel, war torn world on the other.
The imagery in this movie is too complex to go into detail here, but
let's take three examples from the narrative that indicate the way
magic operates as a literary device. Only one thing in the movie
completely and utterly depends on the faun and the magic world for
it's existence in the world of 1944 Spain - a mandrake root given to
Ofelia to put under her pregnant mother's bed in a bowl of milk, and
to give two drops of blood to every morning, to make her well. This
the faun gives her as an aside - the three tasks are his main concern.
But for Ofelia, the root is key. We saw the milk in a bowl earlier,
and the doctor prescribed two drops of opium to help Ofelia's mother
sleep - so the ritual has indicators - but what of the mandrake root?
The narrative says the faun gave Ofelia a magic root - you have to
contradict this narrative to defeat the suggestion of magic it holds -
in other words, you must actively refuse the film maker's words. When
the evil Captain finds the root, and when the mother tosses it into
the fire, bringing on her horrifying, deadly labor, we are to
understand that in the world of 1944 Spain, and even if it works,
magic is anathema. (You cannot but think of persecution against
witches during the mandrake scene.) The ungrateful world spurning the
efficacy of magic is a potent theme in fairytales, and it is certainly
a theme in Rowling. The mandrake, says the faun, is a plant that
dreamed of being human.

Rowling's uses of fairy tales is powerfully circumscribed by practical
concerns - there are references to healing draughts and potions and so
forth, all very sensible and practical. And if something is need, a
truth potion, Rowling will invent it - any good wizard would, we
think. Not only does magic remove the banal in Rowling, it supplies
new, inventive methods for knowing the world.

The second example from Pan's involves a piece of chalk (a tool of the
most innocent, transient art). Ofelia, discovered to be a maquis
sympathizer, in her way, is locked in her room, preventing her from
performing the last task. The faun appears and gives her a piece of
chalk. We do not see her leave the room with the chalk, we see her in
the Captain's room with the chalk, and later we see outline she drew
in her room with the chalk. We do not see the door being locked, we do
not see her going through the chalk door. The narrative does not say
Ofelia's door is locked, Ofelia says it is. This is, I guess, the
second level of assent - do we accept Ofelia's statement about that
particular reality, as valid? We don't have to invent something like a
witch among the staff who gave Ofelia the mandrake root in order to
deny Ofelia's claim that the door was locked, or to decide she drew
the door but actually went out the normal, unlocked door.

In any case, we are to understand that this kind of art is the most
powerful - equivalent to the incantations in Rowling - words are
literally power. When Ofelia's mom tells her to call the Captain
father, we understand that for Ofelia, to say the word would be a deep
betrayal of her own power. Copperfield biting Murdstone's hand is
exactly the same kind of saving stubborness. Copperfield would have
been worth nothing if he hadn't done it. Ofelia would have been
defeated at the start if she'd called him father. And Harry would have
 lost if he'd given in to Umbridge in his detentions.

The movie is full of magic elements of the third rank - one's seen
only by Ofelia and the magical creatures, but by no one else, and that
relate solely to the magic narrative, even when, and especially when,
the actions of Ofelia in the magical narrative collide with Spain
1944. The faun says bring your brother, and Ofelia does so. A previous
monster in the film, who references Goya's Saturn chowing down on his
kids, the holocaust, and church propaganda about satanic rituals, is
nothing compared to the horror that follows Ofelia into the labyrinth.
Do we believe the faun? Did she have to bring the boy? We are left to
ponder this with Ofelia herself, but we don't have time, in fact. The
faun seems to be suggesting something evil at the end - a kind of
ritualistic sacrifice. How to respond to this suggestion is, of
course, the final test itself. Will you fall prey to idealism, to
rituals, to orders, to past hurts, to self-interest? del Toro at the
end says - magic just is, your decisions, your choices, bear the same
consequences, without regard to whether they involve magic or not. In
this last task, above all else, del Toro is in entire agreement with
Rowling – their thematic handling of the ethical parameters of magic
and its uses is identical.

Rowling's magic shares a little in common with both these works. While
most ritualistic when it's most evil, more often then not, it is
pedestrian, or quotidian - an easier way to cook, a rapid transit
system, a matter of convenience, a common sense. Terabithia sees magic
as a form of imaginary play wherein real world obstacles can be
tested, can be overcome symbolically - an exercise for the REAL work
of making the world better. It is accepted as such by people. Pan's
Labyrith sees magic as a lived literary tradition, a tool for
educating people on how to make the right choices, but a reality with
it's own sense as well. There are things that cannot be talked about
BUT in the form of fairy tales, or, presumably, any highly metaphoric
language – like psychoanalysis, say. It is, however, carefully
separated off by society, it is given only so much space, and not a
bit more. In Rowling, the magical world is a part of ours artificially
separated off. 

Magic in Rowling inheres in people in a Calvanistic way - one is born
with it (written in the book). This is somewhat like the special
personal characteristics of Jess and Leslie in Terabithia. They have
separated themselves, they are stigmatized. In Pan's Labyrinth, the
princess Moanna (Ofelia) is lost in our world from her own underground
kingdom, to which her soul seeks return. She is marked by birth.

What is the function of this separating off of certain people in Rowling?

We know Rowling doesn't believe in magic, and she always comes across
exceeding pragmatic in her interviews. No surprise magic is a used
very pragmatically indeed in Rowling's Harry Potter books – it
eliminates the need to, cook, clean, and do all sorts of household,
garden, work-a-day chores. The magic device in Rowling, at this level,
removes, to some extent, the banal from existence – allowing witches
and wizards more time to focus on important things. If domestic life
in the witchwizard world looks suspiciously suburban, something for
which Rowling has been called reactionary, perhaps that is part of the
sugary delivery mechanism for her other thesis, which is far more
radical. Magic presents circumstances equivalent to real world
circumstances in Rowling, so that Rowling can present, with some
degree of safety from reactionism, a leftist, probably anarchist message.

More thoughts in a bit.

dan