On A Lazy Saturday With the Hammer Hanging

This should not be taken as a re-appearnce of myself on the site in any regular fashion - as the title indicates, I am in that time of spring semester when 20-30 page papers loom large, to be written in the long, dark, caffeine-riddled nights of the soul. But Paul forwarded me a link today, sent to him by Mike Aquilina, of a guy attacking the Potter series as a neo-pagan enterprise that simply pretends to add some new fluff to the plight of the modern world. The original piece by Joe Woodard can be read here. The following is the full text of what I wrote in an email to the editor: Dear Editor, I was recently reading a piece on your site - well, I should say, a piece copy-and-pasted from your site into a word document so I could actually have the font large enough to read. The piece I was reading was Joe Woodard's article on the 7th Harry Potter book: "The tragedy to be unveiled in the last Harry Potter is a mirror for our age." As a student in the field I must honestly question how much of the theological, philosophical and cultural tradition of the West Mr Woodard has actually read and digested, or whether he has simply "read up" on things in the likes of Copplestone's summaries and fit everything into the conclusions he already wanted to see. I would be interested to know his credentials, other than having edited a conservative magazine (I have personally worked as an editorial assistant for a conservative publication and know exactly how myopically mindless such editors can be when they get something in their heads, and how little qualification it takes to get a readership that was already ardently interested in being in the constituency of a pundit who thinks a certain way). Does he even have a BA? Where does he teach in Calgary - an accredited institution capable of confering at least a BA ... or a small Christian school in a church basement? (I attended such a Christian school and my father taught highschool math at that school, which is an absolutley fine way ... but for public debate creditials he would have listed his Master's degree in mathematics and the fact that he adequately taught computer sciences as part of the faculty of an accredited college). To begin with, the 7th book has not hit the shelf and the death of the protagonist is not a known factor, unless Mr Woodard himself has been keeping a sheep-pin himself and practicing a little back-yard divination (or done some high-technology/magical burglary into the vaults of the publishers and has actually read the now completed, but not yet publicly released 7th book). In the online circles there are legitimate debates that clearly acknowledge the possibility of Harry's death as one possible logical ending to the tale on the grounds of the first six books. There are also those in such debates who, while admitting a certain logic to Harry's death, argue for a greater logic and internal consistency to Harry surviving. Until book 7 is in the hands of the public the issue of whether Harry is more likely to die or to survive is only a legitimately debatable point, and not a known fact. Therefore the parts of Mr Woodard's piece that argue for Harry's death as indicative of a certain amount of "back-peddling" must be discounted as radically deficient argumentation (although some of his language attains such a pejorative level that I have to include sheer hubris and beligerent arragonce in the charge). Secondly, I am aware that JK Rowling has likened the magic of the "potterverse" (as it is called in some online circles of debate) to technology. I myslef would have to review that statement in particular before speaking "conclusively" but I am aware that she has used the analogy in public forum (it would have been nice if, like a responsible journalist, Mr Woodard had provided such bibliographic information in his piece. It actually woudl have helped his argument, at least with the uninformed reader, to have said "she actually compared the magic to technology ... I'm not just making that up"). Analogies can be used in different ways. They can be used as strict allegories - as in "this thing has a one to one correspondance, in my work, to X in the real world because that is one of the things my work is mainly about is making a distinct statement about this thing." On Mr Woodard's reading JK Rowling seems to be saying "technology is really cool and is pretty much our savior ... oh yeah, I forgot, it hasn't solved our death thing yet, so I better wrap that up with a pretty bow somehow." Analogy may also be used as a sort of "guide" in explaining something - as in "it's sort of like this ... sort of ... but not totally because it is also sort of like this other thing." In the case of magic in Rowling's work, I think there is a bit of both of these ways, or uses, of analogy in her statement of magic being like technology - but NONE of Mr Woodard's fallacious reading. Magic functions in the works like technology, much in the same way many German philosophers had to come to view science in the wake of the First World War. Tehcnology and science can produce some good effects (having lost my father to cancer last year, I can say that, while it was still living hell with morphine, it would have been exponentially greater hell for him without it and I am therefore thankful for the development of painkillers such as morphine ... If Mr Woodard wishes to press such issues he should "step to the plate" himself and prove his point by dying of cancer himself without the aid of morphine). But Science and technology are also capable of being used for attrocities that we had scarcely imagined before that War. We had always known attrocitious death tolls in wars, but never to the level of concrete grotesqueness as science now afforded us. These uses of technology are, in short, the "dark arts" in the potterverse, and to accuse Rowling of being in favor of them, or even to be so irresponsibly ambiguous in one's statement as to leave it open to the possibility of such accusation against her, is, to me, a great injustice to her and evidence of a thoroughly reprehensible arrogance and academic dereliction of duty and responsibility. (Aside Note: If Mr Woodard or yourself or others would like an actual education in the nature of strict allegory and distinction of it from something like properly symbolist literature, I would suggest Dr John Granger's treatment of it in The Hidden Key to Harry Potter [Zossima Press] ... certain discussion of it can also be found in the work of Melito, bishop of Sardis, [d. 180 CE/AD]) A Key instance here is Mr Woodard's obvious un-familiarity with the concrete details of Rowling's actual works. He claims that the students at Hogwarts study, among other subjects, dark arts. This is technically a flatly false statement, and at best a case of, given what actually is in text, ambiguity to a level that reveals at best an extremely superficial reading and at worst not reading the texts he criticizes at all before "laying into" them. In point of fact, at Hogwarts only defence against the darks arts is taught. Now, had one not read the texts or not read them carefully, one might think this a trifling distinction. In text, however, it is precisely mentioned as a sticking point for Dumbledore. He disagrees with the approach of the school called Durmstrang, which actually teaches on the dark arts themselves, under the thought that this is the best way to know how to defend against them. I do not say "under the pretense" of this thought because the headmaster of that school seems to have proven himself not a closet death eater by refusing to return to Lord Voldemort's fold, from which he had reformed, to the extent that he was later found murdered in a shack by death eaters. Karkaroff (Durmstrang) to have been trully reformed and genuinely a good guy now, but Dumbledore seriously takes issue with his philosophy that the best way to teach defence against dark arts is to teach how the arts themselves work. The matter has also been noted by those on the "bad" side: Draco Malfoy relates that his father Lucius would rather have sent his son to Durmstrang than Hogwarts, and Draco specifically praises the dark arts aspects of Durmstrang. Does this materail sound like a whole-hearted rally cry on the part of Rowling for an unequivocal "technological imperative?" Even in the dimension of magic in her world where, as an image, it connects with the issue of power and, further, specifically technological power (and there are many other dimensions to this image than simply these), the thought cannot be taken as ubiquetous praise for the wonders of technology, and only a mind dominated by American-style politically pragmatic polemics rather than by beauty, like Mr Woodard's, could seriously make that charge (some days I wonder if some of my neighbors to the north have not neurotically out-stripped even the American politicians of our heydays like the cold war, at techniques such as mudslinging, which is quite a feet in itself because those boys know how to fight dirty). In short, Mr Woodard's statements reveal no less than the same materialism he would accuse the "technologically minded" of our age (in this case such an accusation against them would be accurate, for the most part, as it would be, by and large, against Enlightment rationalism, but it would also be an accurate charge against Mr Woodard and him making the charge is a bit like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black, and, in my mulitple readings of Rowling's work as well as a great deal of pre-modern, modern and post-modern theology, philosophy and literature, the one place the charge would be inaccurate is against Rowling's work). What percentage of his article there was that actually focussed on the Potter works (which was a small percentage and much more time seemed devoted to Mr Woodard's "waxing eloquent" formulations of the dire plight of the modern world) were a simplistic and facile dismissal of the works based in the mere material presence of certain elements in the texts and in Rowling's statements in interview, with no real consideration of the nuances or what was actually being said. I find your publishing of his work to be a serious black mark on your own professional credibility as an editor. Sincerely, M. Brett Kendall PhD Candidate, Theology, Fordham University Editorial Note: In regards to my speculation on whether Mr Woodard is a clandestine sheep farmer, The reading of sheep entrails was a common form of divination in the ancient world, and one that can be found as an image even in modern movies. The Life of Daivd Gayle starring Kevin Spacey (which I am not necessarily recommending by using it here, simply that I have seen the movie and recognize the use of the motif in it. Although I am opposed to the death penalty myself, I think the argument provided against it in the movie is a faulty one and some parts of the movie at least approach the level of the simply gratuitous ... but not the sheep entrails part, as will be described shortly, there is neither an actual sheep nor any actual entrails in the movie, it is a latent motif) has Spacey, as Gayle, sending something to a reporter whom he has been allowing to talk to him as he sits on death row, such that she receives it after his execution. It is a mid-sized stuffed sheep/lamb doll that had been the property of his child, with a note attached reading "salvation lies within." And within is a video tape that proves that he did not commit the murder he was excetuted for and how the "evidence" that had been taken as conclusive that he did was set up by himself (basically Gayle set the whole thing up himself, in concert with the victim, who was already dying of a terminal disease, as a polemic against the death penalty, which they both actively and publisly opposed. But his complicity in staging it, precisely because he becomes the accused, serioulsy compromises the conclusions that can be drawn from the results, namely that the death penalty results in the execution of people who are actually innocent.) As you can see, reading the "entrails" supposedly provides the key to seeing things aright, to the truth.