the ramble dump

And so, like many other things this year, the Harry Potter series has come to an end. I finished Book 7 last night. In many ways, it is my favourite.

As you may have noticed, a lot of hype surrounds the Harry Potter franchise. I got into the series when I was nine or ten or thereabouts, when two, possibly three, of the books were out. It's hard to place where exactly Harry Potter became a phenomenon. It just sort of...happened. The hype has worked in an odd sort of way for me, putting me off slightly as the franchise began to reach public saturation point, but at the same time I wonder if, after all this time, I would have followed the series to the end of it wasn't so culturally prominent.

Elsewhere, hype's had the effect it always has. Something good has been blown out of all reasonable proportion by fans, publishers, journalists and critics alike, reaching fever pitch as Warner Bros get their sticky fingers into it. Insensible amounts of both merchandise and fanfic have been produced. The backlash follows, the slightly peevish detractors hastening to point out that Potter isn't really deserving of quite so much hysteria, but that's the way hype works. Critical scrutiny intensifies, a few start to pull apart and denounce the the books; the screaming mass of young fans reacts, accusing all who dare to utter a word against J.K. Holy as bitter or jealous or both. And so on and so forth.

They are, say I, good books. They're no works of art, and their main virtue is being so very readable, but while some critics have diminished it to being simply 'useful' or 'saleable' prose, I think that unduly discredits the fact that J.K. Rowling can spin a very good story. She strikes a happy medium between descriptive and natural prose with the result of a style that is charming enough to keep us hooked, just like the world she writes about. It might not have the same quaint, stilted and respectfully 'literary' charm as an author like Enid Blyton, but as a coming-of-age story, the more natural approach is probably more meaningful to the modern, non-gingerbeer drinking reader.

Rowling's appeal comes not from her magical world as such, which is only as original as any other magical world, but the fact that she makes it into such a parallel of our own, with the principles behind even the most fantastical elements or the darkest magic grounded firmly in this world (love, greed, power, death etc: problems, experiences and temptations we all have to deal with). Then there's the chocolate frogs with collectible cards, Quidditch, Apparition tests, and a dozen other direct parallels, which, while not especially imaginative, are interesting enough takes on the norm and make the wizards more like real people, and the students like real students. There are times when the similarity to our own world becomes almost bleak and depressing, as with the bureaucratic Ministry of Magic; and it's the older, dustier Hogwartian magic that really holds the interest of the reader and the characters, because that's where the adventures, dangers, twists and turns occur. And all the while, Harry suffers real, teenaged problems too. Which are, truthfully, the less interesting bits for me, but their inclusion is understandable and Rowling usually manages to strike a good balance (although it very nearly tips in Book 5).

One of the best things about the books is Rowling's ability to create warm and fuzzy moments when portraying friends and family, especially with little things like Mrs Weasley and her Christmas jumpers. In a way, these boardingschoolish portrayals do sometimes feel like they're harking back to some cosy, bygone time, but it doesn't make them feel any less genuine. One thing my sister pointed out was how the writing style has changed over the course of the series: in the earlier books, Rowling hadn't quite managed to shake off the tone of traditional children's literature, and some of the dialogue was very Blytonesque, but this helped to add to the charm, novelty and wonder experienced by the characters at that age. As the kids got older, this would probably have started to feel a bit inappropriate, and the writing has accordingly become increasingly natural, increasingly dark and, at times, increasingly soapy.

Sometimes the dark, danger or peril does seem a bit forced, as with the lake of dead people at the end of Book 6 (which distractedly reminded me of a similar scene in The Two Towers anyway), or the death count of significant characters in the final battle for Hogwarts in Book 7, but for the most part Rowling deals with these things with a little more narrative subtlety (despite the extremely irritating 'Someone dies in this book!' promotion that's been used). Rowling also writes some fantastically animated action scenes, one of my favourites being the chaotic Quidditch World Cup match in Book 4, and Book 7 provided a series of brilliantly action-packed excursions to various places. Again, though, that final Hogwarts battle may have benefited from a little more restraint, but having what seemed like every single surviving character returning into the fray was just as awesome as it was ridiculous.

Another strong point in the series has been the complex plotting and character development through revelations and backstory, which returned spectacularly in Book 7 after a rather linear Book 6. Just like having everyone returning for that last battle, it was a nice touch having obscurely mentioned characters like Grindelwald, Bathilda Bagshot and the Grey Lady suddenly playing significant roles, but again there was the feeling that it was very nearly approaching the line between being neat and being overly convenient. Tie too many things directly into each other and the world starts shrinking.

I think the epilogue is best not mentioned, but other than that, Deathly Hallows was an excellent end to a series that I've now been following for years. And whatever I might feel about the films and the rest of the franchise, Harry Potter is definitely a lot more deserving of its attention than certain other recent literary phenomena.

Labels: harry potter, i am the ramblemaster, literature, rabbit-hole theory, tolkien

# posted by Chris @ 2:39 PM 0 comments

Last month I read Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and mentioned that I'd pick out one or two other interesting points of those that it raises. So here's another:

If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question. [...] A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.

Wilde's tone here, not surprising given the events of his own life, would seem to demonstrate a fair amount of scorn towards the attitudes of the general public. At a first read it might also come across as almost self-important, as no doubt Wilde viewed himself as one of these artists, with his dismissiveness of the idea of criticism. But Wilde makes a good point. In describing 'silly views' and 'foolish prejudices', he is not necessarily being dismissive of all the opinions a member of the public might have, but is identifying that such prejudices do exist.

This got me thinking about the way in which people do approach art: novels or films or paintings or whatever. To be 'receptive', do we have to accept absolutely anything as 'art'? Wilde never suggests that everything and anything can count as art, although for him it only seems to stop being art if it starts catering towards the wants of the population. Surely there's more to it than that, though. Is a person doing their own thing irrespective of the public, whatever it is, enough to qualify something as 'art'?

Wilde would seem to be referring to preconceptions and prejudices that might affect our appreciation of art that we have before we've even experienced it, which leaves it open whether or not he believes any kind of criticism can be applied to art (beyond for whom, or for what reasons, it was created) after the art has been experienced. He talks a lot about authority and how that has no place in matters relating to art, but what exactly does he mean by 'authority'? Does he mean that nobody can have an authoritative opinion on art, nobody can decide what counts or what doesn't, or just that any attempts to control art are unwanted?

We all approach things with our own ideas of what they should be, what it is that makes it good, and so on. For example, one might look with scorn upon the idea of techno or heavy metal as 'good music' because they define it in orchestral terms. One person might think that a good plot or realistic characters are important in a novel, whereas another might view the richness of the language itself as more important. I have a friend who gets set to rant every time Tolkien is even mentioned because it doesn't fulfill his own criteria of what makes a good story. An example Wilde uses is judging all literature by the standard of Shakespeare. We all appreciate different things. But that doesn't mean that other aspects of something, other qualities, aren't still there as something that can be appreciated by someone else. But what exactly counts as a 'quality'? This seems to depend on whether or not a person views a feature as something to appreciate. Is everything potentially something to appreciate?

Take, for example, a painting of a soup can. Or a steaming pile of shit. You might appreciate the simplicity, or maybe you could appreciate the irony of some kind of visual statement it's trying to make. In and of itself, it'd be hard to find a way to consider a pile of shit a work of art, but with context, maybe it could represent or show something else, and that would be its quality as art, whether everybody appreciates the statement made or not.

The point Wilde seems to be trying to make is that we should allow 'art' in all its forms, not seek to control it, not seek to define it in our own prejudiced terms. According to Wilde, it seems, everything is something to potentially appreciate, and what's where being receptive comes in. We should let art flourish, free from control through prejudices, so that we are enabling ourselves to truly recognise those things in art that ought to be appreciated.

But, of course, you can only appreciate something that's really there to appreciate. There's still some vagueness about what qualifies as something to artistically appreciate. How subjective is 'art' under Wilde's definition? Does objective quality come into it at all? Wilde's definition of what doesn't count as art is still hazy beyond his for-the-self/for-the-public distinction. What else might stop something being 'art'?

We might consider some so-called 'art' to be pretentious. If a supposed work of art is produced just to promote the artist's superficial image, for example, or if all the talk of irony or representation or whatever is really just about shocking the audience or being controversial in order to get a bit of attention, then maybe pretence is all that's there. While it isn't exactly catering to what the public wants, the art is still relying on the reaction of the public, in which case, according to Wilde, it ceases to be art.

So maybe, looking at it like that, Wilde's distinction is all that's needed in art's definition. Rather than including it in any kind of definition, however, maybe this distinction is put better simply in terms of avoiding anything that can affect our receptivity: for as long as we're attending to the public, more likely than not we're also attending to its prejudices and therefore restricting ourselves. Maybe art is mostly undefinable, or at least defining it is very difficult. There's a whole load of possible subjective and objective reasons for why a person might look at or experience a piece of art and find certain appreciable qualities in it. There's no reason why it has to be either-or. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to define it. The point Wilde is driving at with receptivity, and one that perhaps overrides all discussion of objectivity versus subjectivity, is that we need to be able to keep an open mind to truly appreciate anything.

The moment [the spectator] seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of Art and of himself. Art does not mind. It is he who suffers.

Labels: censorship, i am the ramblemaster, morality, oscar wilde, philosophy, shakespeare, tolkien

# posted by Chris @ 6:52 PM 0 comments

The Aberration Chapter 7.

Amelia really does have that many notebooks. I've never seen them myself, but she has mentioned them more than once. She has lots for all different kinds of things and thoughts and ideas. I wonder if you could assemble all the contents of her brain with those notebooks, like a sort of psychological biography with a split personality. I know that the black one is for Starcustard. I am sure at least one of them contains a list of the children she has yet to eat.

She is not here right now, so I can get away with saying these things for at least another eighteen months.

Underneath that Sherlock Holmes reference is a considerable amount of truth. I lack the notebooks of both fictional and factual Amelias, but the same sort of process goes on in my brain when I'm trying to write a story. Things like sciencing and philosophising and most probably detectiving too all require very analytical approaches to be of much use. Storytelling, however, is the opposite. You can get ideas from all over the place, and while they might all share the same theme or have something in common, you're still left with the task of making something coherent out of what is essentially arbitrary. Whatever reason you might have for including something, whether as a plot device or to represent something or just because you thought it'd be cool to throw in, they're still only there because you put them there.¹ There is therefore a great deal of Detective Muse's making stuff up as you go along.

As I've mentioned before, The Aberration has been a continuous struggle to try and achieve this. I started off with a couple of Halo parody characters, included a few more things just because I thought they were interesting enough, and then over the years the story has repeatedly run out of steam as I've tried to figure out where to go next or what relation any of it has to anything else. Its current form is very different from its earlier iterations, in which the aim was basically just to fill it with weird things, because I've got stuck and had to go back and change things constantly.

I've finally mapped out something that's a bit more coherent than it used to be, by mentally rearranging and adding to and editing the thing until it's formed something I can actually go somewhere with. But does all this arbitrariness, the fact that everything included is ultimately an arbitrary decision, mean that stories are empty? Well, as tA has shown, there's actually a limit to how arbitrary everything can be before it falls apart. It has to have some coherence, and even if the story works by its own internal logic or requires some suspension of disbelief, the logic still has to be there, and any kind of sustainable logic has to be based at least in part on reality.

Fictional stories are, for the most part, contrived. And creating the illusion that these things aren't arbitrary is all part of the craft. But reality plays its part, and the further a story drifts from it, the less believable it will be. This doesn't mean you can't include fantastical elements in your world's internal logic, and as Holmes points out and Detective Muse echoes in this chapter, improbability is not the same thing as impossibility. But that internal logic needs to be solid.

So where does this leave the meaningfulness of a story, beyond its entertainment value or simple emotional engagement? That internal logic, however sustainable or believable it might be, could still be considered arbitrary. Can you use a story to analyse or demonstrate something? Can you show, say, the personal, social or political consequences of certain circumstances being brought about? Or present a moral lesson or a warning? You can't scientifically analyse a work of fiction any more than you can analyse a dream (albeit a slightly more focused dream). But if the logic behind the story is reasonable enough, you can suggest. You, as the author, can throw light on an alternative interpretation; your interpretation. Conclusions drawn from a writer's own fictional world -- by the writer and reader -- can never be truly objective, but they can offer some balance of thoughts and ideas. In the end, you can't really conclude anything with a story. They can only offer questions. They can offer a new perspective, one that will always be open to criticism but is not necessarily without its worth. That, to me, is part of what it's all about.

And, as in the case of tA, things like fat men in tweed or talking microwaves or a man dressed in a mutated sort of rabbit costume, even if they were included out of complete arbitrariness to start with, can still become something suggestive or figurative in the context of their function in the story. And who knows, maybe there was already some subconscious significance to them.

So Detective Muse has a point, even if Mr Holmes might disagree that it applies in entirely the same way to his profession. Don't diss the improbable, don't diss the ridiculous, and don't be too quick to diss the arbitrary.

¹ Which is why allegory can seem so manipulative.

Labels: allegory, fat men in tweed, halo, i am the ramblemaster, science, starcustard, the aberration

# posted by Chris @ 12:31 PM 0 comments

Last night I saw At World's End. I liked it. Now that I've seen all three films, I thought I'd post a big, fat review of the trilogy as a whole.

To start with, the reason I like all the Pirates films is because they're complete escapism. This is seen by some as exactly what's wrong with them: they're empty of anything but silliness and special effects. But other than the above being well executed, there's something else that made the films so enjoyable for me, and that is that underlying all three films is the aspect of pure storytelling.

Curses, krakens and sea goddesses are all fantastical ideas; they're not especially original coming from the pens of the filmmakers, but are all based on myths and legends that have in the past been the kind of thing that the minds of men have conjured up and convinced themselves of while on such boaty voyages, whether founded on superstition, or to add some mystery or romance to their lives, or just because they liked a good story as much as we do. It might all be imaginative nonsense (why can Davy Jones, for example, only set foot on land every ten years? No reason other than to create a plot device for the story and tragic circumstances for the character). But we can still find ourselves immersed. The film embraces all this kind of thing, while at the same time, through characters like Mr Gibbs, lightly poking fun at the tendency for superstition and melodrama and never taking itself too seriously. There might be no real moral or any direct relevance or usefulness, but irrespective of this, the Pirates films demonstrate with vigour the power and the charm of a good story.

That's not to say that the films were all perfect, but I thought they were all pretty damn good. Here's a breakdown of each:

The Curse of the Black Pearl, by virtue of being the first, is probably the most well-rounded and well-balanced of the three films. It's got equal measures of action, adventure, comedy and romance, and it doesn't suffer from the filmmakers deciding to shovel in overthetop amounts of everything we liked best. It manages to be epic and sprawling without being convoluted, and as a whole is probably the best one.

Dead Man's Chest lives up to the first in most respects. The action is satisfying when it comes around. There's a feeling of a lack of direction when the main story pauses for the characters to engage in hilarious hijinks with cannibals or big rolling wheels; the slapstick is almost overbearing at times and some of the humour seems a bit forced, but it's never unbearable and remains mostly entertaining, if a bit overindulgent. As the series of multiple endings shows, a lot of it is just setting up the next film, but it has enough story to be satisfying in its own right.

At World's End was, to me, an excellent final instalment. It provides at least some sort of conclusion for every story so far presented in the trilogy while still having enough that's fresh. This definitely made it complicated at times, but it never felt overly convoluted like some of the Dead Man segments. I just about managed to follow the constant switching of allegiances, which wasn't so much confusing in itself as made harder to follow by the fact that it happens in such rapid succession.

The film gets off to an uncertain start with the whole getting Jack back stuff, and while having multiple Jacks was mildly entertaining (and I liked it when they made a reappearance later on), the problem with trying to be weird and surreal is that it can easily become tedious and unfunny. A bit like being stuck in a room with someone going, 'Lol, I'm so random!' One Jack chickening his way across the deck has to be the worst and most obvious example of this. After that, however, it quickly improves, and the epic battle scenes at the end more than make up for previous shortcomings. I mean like, woah. I thought that how the stage was set with Calypso's maelstrom of uncertainty was cleverly done. Overall, the tone was surprisingly dark at times, with some pretty graphic violence in Singapore, and later Mercer's horrific yet utterly satisfying end with his facial orifices being invaded by tentacles. The films have always had a darker edge to them (or, as Jack says to Tia Dalma, 'an agreeable sense of the macabre'), but At World's End seemed to take it one step further.

For the most part, I think the sequels do add to the franchise, and all in all, I thought At World's End was a satisfying ending to a very satisfying trilogy.

Labels: films, i am the ramblemaster, pirates, rabbit-hole theory

# posted by Chris @ 12:08 PM 0 comments

If this isn't a good selling point for the new Starcustard book, I don't know what is:



Yep, I ordered myself a copy. The official reason is that I'm checking it out to make sure that everything is as it should be. The unofficial reason is more egotistical.

Labels: starcustard

# posted by Chris @ 11:54 PM 0 comments

Labels: starcustard

# posted by Chris @ 7:03 PM 1 comments

The idea of getting to know people on the internet has, in recent years, received a lot of bad press. Once in a while a horror story hits the news about some dangerous person who has pretended to be someone he's not. Both children and adults are, with reason, warned about meeting people they've spoken to online because, after all, with just white space and text, anyone can easily pretend to be someone else. But for those people who are more or less genuine, how well can you get to know them?

Another unrelated area of attack for modern communication in general, whether it be emailing, instant messaging or texting, is the arguable degeneration of language. 'Prescriptivist!' one of my English teachers would cry accusingly. 'You prescriptivist! Language changes, it doesn't degenerate!' So I suppose I have to defend my use of that word. In a wider, more general sense, I don't think text or internet speak has much of a negative effect on the language. All the words that might be mutated and compacted for efficiency (or laziness) in text speak still continue to exist in their complete, grandiose forms elsewhere in other contexts, for the most part. Text speak is more of an offshoot appropriated for the technology that can exist alongside conventional language.

So how is it degenerative? I have a prejudice that dictates that whenever someone uses text or chatspeak to me, their words are mentally framed as those of a five year old child with stunted speech. Even if I already know the person. Maybe it's because I read it phonetically, or maybe it's the degeneration of grammar that goes with it, but something about it makes it read like someone with a very low IQ. And it bugs me.

(I do use 'lol', though. Even though I read it phonetically, it still signifies at least vague amusement and by itself doesn't really contribute to the weird stunted speech thing unless you, say, tack it on to the end of a sentence. Like this lol.)

But all this could be just me being a snob. That doesn't make it degenerative. What makes it degenerative in my experience is that the language you use has other functions during online communication. Clarity, for one. Another reason links back to this thing about getting to know people online. While you're sat typing away to someone on the other side of the world, all they're getting from you is your text. That's you. You might have some kind of avatar, or send the other person photos, and they might contribute to your overall mental picture of that person, but just like it would if you were to meet with someone face to face, personality glares through. When you're instant messaging or posting on a message board, all of this is contained in your text (ignoring people who choose to present their personality through lists of their favourite bands, colours, etc).

You can glean a lot about a person from their text. Even if they form their instant messages pristinely - capitals, punctuation and all - that says something about them. From the words they use and how they use them, and with all the subtleties of both written and spoken language (as well as, of course, what they're talking about), you can build up a pretty comprehensive mental conception. You can pick up a general tone, assign an accent (which may not even be their true accent but contributes to your mental image of them anyway), identify all kinds of subtle and less-than-subtle features of their language. And the more you talk to them, just as would be the case offline, the better you get to know them. Which is why text or chat speak is degenerative. When you're talking online, the person you're talking to consists, for you, of those words appearing on your screen. Which makes words more important than ever, allowing you, for as long as they're being genuine, to really get to know a person. Possibly more so than any other situation.

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, language

# posted by Chris @ 5:01 PM 0 comments

Today I had a farewell drink at the West Kirby Ring O' Bells with my philosophy teacher and a few other people from our philosophy classes.

Two years ago, I had to decide which subjects I wanted to take on for my A-Levels. English was a definite (although I foolishly took English Language), French and History were picked because they were strong subjects (at least, they were back then), and that left me with one other.

I already had a very vague interest in philosophy. Two years before that I'd chosen to do a Religious Studies GCSE because the kind of deep questions it discussed seemed interesting, although in reality it was a pretty dull, shallow course that only ever offered politically correct textbook questions. (I seem to have a knack for picking nothingness subjects based on interesting syllabus outlines, but fortunately philosophy proved to be different.) I'd also glanced at a few things on the internet during that summer, and a couple of articles on the school website, and although I didn't really understand them, something in their nature piqued my interest. What clinched it, however, was probably its section in the Sixth Form prospectus, in which it said: 'If you have a sense of the strangeness of life then you may well find Philosophy interesting.'

The course itself, as we've done it, has covered moral philosophy, theory of knowledge (epistemology), political philosophy and the texts of Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche. By virtue of being based on an exam-orientated syllabus like any other subject, there was only so much we could go into any of the above, but the intellectual engagement needed to review them at all properly (i.e. not just throwing around vague R.S.-type questions) requires you to reshape, reorganise and clarify your thinking. However much my parents might accuse philosophy of being a wishy-washy subject (not that they ever tried to persuade me against it), and however broad the questions might get, philosophy requires a precise, analytical approach if you actually want to get anywhere. It's been enough to slowly take apart my brain and at least partially reassemble it. It's dusted off many of my previous assumptions and preconceptions and revealed them to be confused. Before I did philosophy, concepts like democracy and equality, for example, had been unquestionably good things. Now, I question everything.

And it's affected everything. Everything I read, everything I see, everything I do. I find myself trying to determine meaning in all my activities - if not to find importance, then at least to try and explain why I do these things, why I like the things I like, what exactly it is that I get out of them. Inevitably for me, this has encroached on writing and storytelling: the art, the aesthetics, the simple appeal of being emersed in a story, the deeper meaning of the subject in what it is I'm writing, reading or watching.

In many cases I've found that I'm able to connect and find some apparent coherence in the conscious and sometimes subconscious things I do in a way that I hadn't previously considered. These might themselves later prove to be fallacies. Philosophy throws everything up in the air, and in some things it's left me more confused than ever. But at least I know that I'm confused about it and not living my life under some illusion. I can't claim to be completely free of illusion, or enlightened or the fountain of all knowledge after taking philosophy, but it's still had a massive effect on me. I wouldn't have expected that from a school subject.

But then it's not just a school subject. The school subject of 'Philosophy' was just a small window into that whole swirling everything. And I think the fact that I got so much out of it also has a lot to do with the person who taught me. While I've had some very thorough and efficient teachers who will get me through the exams (which to many might be what matters) and who are not without their knowledge and enthusiasm, Mr B has treated the subject as it should be: a genuine appreciation of the subject matter, at the same time enthusing and thoughtful, not just dictating a stream of knowledge bites. While there's a lot more room for open discussion in Philosophy than there is in more straightforward subjects like English Language or History, Mr B could still have limited himself to the syllabus and given us a much more restricted overview, but in forsaking efficiency for occasional discussions of interest that might not be directly relevant (or, it has to be said, are often not relevant at all), he's made it a worthwhile subject, even if these meanderings are only the accidental result of a very philosophical mind. He's been often brutally honest and talked to us, not down to us. He's been a character. I personally really appreciate that.

So we had a lunchtime drink, all ten or so of us crowded around a small table in the beer garden. I had two pints of Guinness like the man I am. It started raining, Mr B had to get back to that pesky thing they call teaching, and the rest of us went home. Philosophy class is definitely something I'll miss.

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, philosophy

# posted by Chris @ 2:56 PM 0 comments