Into the Potterverse

I was hoping to never cover this again…

 

I have a love-hate relationship with the Harry Potter franchise. On one hand, I recognize its importance growing up in the 90’s and early-2000’s. On the other hand, JK Rowling, who wrote the books, has revealed herself as a bigot. The latter makes it hard to appreciate her work retroactively, especially knowing the harm she’s causing on Twitter. I’ve covered this on The Whitly-Verse in greater detail, but it’s worth mentioning again because it won’t disappear. Case in point: HBO Max is making a live-action Harry Potter series.

FYI, I don’t have HBO Max. Not only is it too expensive, $15 US a month, but it isn’t available in Canada. This should be a step up, as I don’t have to worry about contributing to this. Yet even with it being out of reach, I’m concerned because I have compassion. It’s also inevitable that Rowling will have oversight on the project. And that includes input into what does and doesn’t get approved.

I know what some of you are thinking: “Wait, a live-action Harry Potter adaptation? Didn’t we already get that?” Yes, we did. We had 8 films, as well as a spin-off series that quickly went downhill qualitatively. But this is a TV series akin to A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. Considering how that went, it’d make sense to try it with books so dense the films couldn’t properly do them justice. It’s also a good way to make money.

A part of me should be happy. As enjoyable as the Harry Potter movies were, I was disappointed that parts of the books didn’t make the final cuts. Scenes like Harry’s visit to Neville’s parents, the final conversation Harry had with Lupin before the battle at Hogwarts, or Dumbledore’s backstory come to mind. These were details that the films couldn’t fit into their runtimes, so a streaming format could, theoretically, be a solid compromise.

Unfortunately, I’m not pleased. Not only is it double-dipping, it also gives Rowling money. And seeing how she’s retconned story points for cheap social justice points, all the while attacking trans people, in recent years, I don’t want to support that. I’d feel guilty for doing so.

It’s especially troubling in light of details from her books that rub me the wrong way now. Details like the references to slavery with house elves, or goblins being stand-ins for greedy Jews, or even werewolves being coded as gay pedophiles, all make me feel ill. Yes, some of these are commented on in the books. And yes, the books have strong themes of challenging authority figures. But the good is overshadowed by the questionable and the bad, and that’s a problem. Especially in-light of the author’s personal views.

I might be jumping the gun. I know little about this series. I also don’t know how involved Rowling will be. It’s even possible that the series could be better than the movies, who knows? But I don’t feel comfortable anyway. That doesn’t alleviate my concerns.

It wouldn’t be as bad if Rowling weren’t actively pernicious. But she’s always attacking people who don’t agree with her and refusing to admit to her mistakes. This is the woman who initially praised Stephen King for coming to her aid, only to cease communication with him when he defended trans people. This is the same woman who coasted on the Jeremy Corbyn controversy to hide her bigotry. And this is also the same woman who’s degraded Asians and Native Americans in order to shamelessly expand Harry Potter’s lore. I can’t respect someone who does any of those, let-alone all three.

It’s especially troubling because she does this regularly. Remember, JK Rowling’s still alive. It’d be one issue if she were dead like Roald Dahl or H.P. Lovecraft, since their work’s been reclaimed by those groups that they hated. But that’s not the case here. By being both alive and active in the public sphere, Rowling continues exerting her influence.

That’s the real issue. That’s what bugs me. And that’s why I don’t want to support future Harry Potter endeavours that she’s involved in. Because by supporting them, I help contribute to the hate. I’d rather not.

I know this is a hard line to walk. Toxic people inhabit all spaces in art, and some aren’t as easy to spot or segregate. It’s hard, and I’m not always successful. But I need to put my foot down here. Rowling’s bigotry isn’t only indefensible, it’s blatant. And no amount of writing in Harper’s Magazine can change that.

And the series itself? Who knows? I know it’s not confirmed, and I don’t begrudge those who might be excited for legitimate reasons. Why should I ruin your fun? My personal views on the matter are that, and they shouldn’t restrict yours.

But I digress.

I’ll end with a quote I once heard a Harry Potter fan say about JK Rowling: “It’s like she sees herself as Professor McGonagall, when she’s really Dolores Umbrage”. I know it’s not a 1:1 comparison, especially since Rowling’s views were always there, but I think it works. Because while she might’ve started with an intent to criticize the dangers of blindly accepting the will of authority, I never thought that’d include her too. I guess the irony’s too poetic to ignore, huh?

Mario Teaches Draftsmanship

I’ve taken up numerous side-hobbies during the pandemic. Last Spring and Summer I took a novel writing course and finished a first-draft manuscript. I’ve also done cooking, and my skill around the kitchen’s now decent. And I’ve been doing lots of writing. Like, a lot. But the one constant has been me designing levels on Super Mario Maker 2, which I upload and get feedback for online. 

What’s Super Mario Maker 2? Well, it’s the sequel to the Wii U game Super Mario Maker. Taking what made that game successful and expanding on it, it asks the obvious question: what if you, the player, could design Mario levels? Using the tools at your disposal, you have the ability to design Mario levels from scratch, test them and upload them online. It’s a simple concept, but it’s brilliant. It doesn’t even matter that Super Smash Bros. Brawl did that first in 2008.

I never thought a game about building Mario courses would be so addicting! For one, I didn’t go to OCADU. I majored in English and Jewish Studies, not graphic design. And that’s because I understood those subjects a lot more. Essentially, my field of interest didn’t translate to building.

Two, I’d been growing out of video games for years when this game launched. Sure, I owned a Wii U, but I bought it late in the console’s lifespan. Additionally, I bought it second-hand. My Wii U, while functional, had internal loading issues, making playing games somewhat of a chore. Factor in that the Wii U’s lineup of good titles was small, and I was left with something I didn’t use frequently. 

Three, Super Mario Maker confused me. It was fun, but building courses with the Wii U’s bulky tablet was a chore. The controller was like an enlarged iPad, except even more awkward. The game’s controls, therefore, weren’t user-friendly. Add in how bare-bones some features were, and it wasn’t conducive to easy level building. That, and I had limited access to online functionality.

And four, I wasn’t in much of a building mood at the time. Ignoring personal issues, I wasn’t interested in a game where I had to design everything from scratch. I wasn’t an Alpha gamer, the kind who built stuff. No, I was a Beta gamer, the kind who tested what already existed. I was too interested in working with what was finished. So, naturally, I got bored and moved on.

All of this made me uncertain about Super Mario Maker 2. And why wouldn’t it? It was more of the same, right? It was easy to be on the fence about Super Mario Maker 2. Sure, the new features intrigued me, especially the inclusion of Super Mario 3D World mechanics, but I get excited when any Nintendo game’s announced. There was no way I’d shell out $90 Canadian for something that’d only captivate me for a few days, right? Right?! 

Wrong.

Despite any skepticism, my morbid curiosity got the best of me. It began with watching play-throughs of Super Mario Maker levels on YouTube. Shortly after that, I looked up details of the game’s mechanics. Then I started repeatedly watching the trailer for Super Mario Maker 2. Then I began looking up new developments. And when I’d exhausted everything else, I played the original game again. By the time I saw Super Mario Maker 2 at my local EB Games, I ended up buying it.

There was one feature that made the sequel an instant upgrade over the first entry: an actual Story Mode. This was something the first game lacked. Sure, it wasn’t elaborate, you had to rebuild Princess Peach’s castle, but it was an excellent tutorial. All good too, because the actual tutorial was long, drone-like and not terribly helpful. Plus, completing certain objectives in Story Mode unlocked new features to build with.

The real test, obviously, was the “Make” feature. It felt daunting initially, especially with all the options available, but this feature was quite simple. You didn’t need to be a master designer, you simply needed to know how to place items. No need to worry about mistakes, you could erase or undo them if necessary. And if an idea was too hard? That’s what Beta Testing was for. It helped that you couldn’t upload a level without first clearing it yourself, too. 

I learned a valuable lesson this way. So what if the tools were daunting? I simply had to build. So what if I had no experience designing? I simply had to build. And so what if my levels sucked? I’m sure you know my answer to this too.

Super Mario Maker 2 officially got me to overcome my anxiety about level design. And all it took was putting down that first brick in a level that, in hindsight, wasn’t even as bad as I initially thought. It was all uphill from there, with my skillset only improving as time went on. They say the best teacher’s practice, so it makes sense that that’s how I’d become better. Especially by the 15th level.

I’m forgetting something, however. That something is watching my levels get played on Twitch. Twitch enables user interaction, and it’s exploded in popularity since the pandemic started. One of the popular favourites has been Super Mario Maker 2 levels, and having already made a Twitch account, I took advantage of the opportunity. I simply had to type in “!add” to a streamer’s chat, followed by my level code, and everything would fall into place. The only hiccup was waiting until the wee hours of the night for my entry to be called, to which I’d hope and pray that I wasn’t too tired. 

If there’s one word that I can boil down my Super Mario Maker 2 experience to, it’d be “interaction”. The game prides itself on the Switch’s online community to make it worthwhile. It also allows for an exchange of feedback and ideas, which the game takes advantage of. You can play the level, but you can also leave comments. And you can see where people commonly fail. You can even see the fastest Clear Time, giving you an incentive to do better. All of this is to the game’s optimization.

Which presents a weird dichotomy. Like Disney, Nintendo has a history of horrid corporate practices, many bordering on unethical. They also, like Disney, piss people off frequently. But, like Disney, they make marketable products with actual longevity. Super Mario Maker 2’s no exception.

That longevity’s what keeps drawing people back. It’s what also justifies its steep price of $90 Canadian, even long after sales start slowing. And it’s what makes the updates of the game, which add lots of new content, give it extra boosts in sales. If that doesn’t scream “instant classic”, I’ll eat my plumber’s overalls. Lord knows they’re tasty!

The "Empty" Spectacle

I know what you’re all thinking: “Empty spectacle? Isn’t spectacle, by its nature, empty? Are you only saying this to sound pretentious? Because you’re succeeding.” Yeah…but hear me out anyway. 

I recently thought about my piece on The Mandalorian. More-specifically, and I apologize for spoilers, I thought about that scene where Luke Skywalker defeats an army of Darktroopers on his way to Grogu, and how it was thematically empty despite being really cool. In some ways, the scene echoes the Darth Vader moment from Star Wars: Rogue One, where he plows through rebel soldiers to retrieve the stolen Death Star plans. The parallels are so obvious that there are YouTube videos showing them back-to-back. Which makes sense, as they’re both laden with tension and look awesome.

I feel conflicted about knocking these scenes down. On one hand, they’re cool to witness firsthand. These are Darth Vader, Star Wars’ biggest baddie, and Luke Skywalker, Star Wars’ biggest hero, at their peak, reminding the audience why we loved them. They also have clear objectives, as Vader’s is about retrieving the Death Star plans and Luke’s is about saving Grogu for the Darktroopers. I happen to like them too, if we’re being honest.

On the other hand, they don’t add much to these characters. We don’t need to witness Vader plow through rebels, we’ve already seen his intimidating presence in other films. We also don’t need to witness Luke plow through Darktroopers, we’ve already witnessed how capable a fighter he is. These might give fans what they “want”, but I don’t think they give them what they “need”. 

Let me explain.

There’s been a growing trend in action entertainment to rely on bigger, flashier action set-pieces to keep audiences entertained. To be fair, it’s not a new phenomenon-there’ve always been action spectacles like this in the history of action spectacles. There’s a certain dopamine rush that comes from seeing them, and moviemakers are aware of this. It’s to be expected.

The difference is that whereas the tendency to be loud and vapid would’ve been kept to the sidelines for decades, especially given limited technology, modern filmmaking has made this increasingly possible on a grand scale. And it’s exciting, honestly. For the longest time, if you wanted a big set-piece, you had to settle for a few minutes only. The bigger fights ate into the budget, so they were usually saved for the climax. Nowadays, though, it’s easy to film a big action scene and sculpt the story around it, such that there are people who specialize in them.

Unfortunately, this comes with a downside. It might even be two downsides. The first is that the action scene might drag on and lose the audience’s attention. Like any dopamine rush to the brain, the high is temporary and doesn’t last forever. And like any moment where there’s an initial high and then a crash, you crave more. Eventually you become numb to the highs in your quest to obtain bigger ones, forcing the highs to lose their meaning. This is actually how addictions work, but I’d rather not delve into that. 

The second issue is losing the intent of the scene. I remember watching a video essay (which I can’t find anymore) that expanded on this, but the best action scenes progress the story in addition to being flashy. An action scene’s still a scene, and it should reflect that. By making the spectacle too lengthy, you risk the story being drowned out by the bang and boom. And that’s a problem.

I bring this up because the Vader and Luke fights tread the tightrope of issue number 2. They’re not long, they’re both a little over 2 minutes, but they don’t add to their respective stories all that much. The main events of Star Wars: Rogue One are practically wrapped up after the Death Star’s fired in the third-act, so this fight’s an excuse to add to the body count before awkward-looking Leia CGI says the final line. The battle with Luke’s cool, and it also ends on awkward CGI, but while it feels more in-line with everything than the Vader fight, it also only adds to the carnage count.

Basically, neither moment is “necessary”. It’s cool seeing Darth Vader being awesome, but that end-shot of him staring at the Rebel Cruiser could’ve sold us on the tension in less time. And with Luke’s fight, I can think of several possibilities that’d be equally as fitting. But I guess that wasn’t the intent, so… 

I’m also numb to Star Wars doing fan-service like this because it’s been done already. We’ve even had a trilogy of films dedicated to it with a question that could’ve been answered with one movie. Sure, I liked those films, but what did they really do other than pad content? Especially the first one, which feels so detached from the rest of the franchise? If we were getting empty spectacle in 1999, then why does Star Wars keep doing it?

I’m not against this kind of spectacle. I like The MCU, despite most of it being spectacle. Even the Star Wars franchise has upped the game with Luke facing Kylo Ren, a scene that I thought was brilliant. But that’s exactly it: it had actual moments of character progression. It also came back to an earlier moment in the movie, it tied up Luke’s inner-conflict, it served a purpose in the story, it was unexpected, it wasn’t overly-long and it ended on a cool twist that progressed the franchise’s in a positive direction. I felt that more was accomplished with that one moment than most lightsaber battles in the entire franchise. And I liked most of those lightsaber battles!

A part of me feels like I’m becoming the “cynical, old coot” I hate, so I’ll say this: whatever issues I may have with these moments, I don’t begrudge people for liking them. I also recognize that Star Wars has done these fan-service-heavy spectacles well before, even dedicating an entire movie to fan-service. These moments are no exception, and I’m glad that they resonate with fans. So who am I to detract from that? What kind of person would I be to laugh at the enjoyment, especially when I did too? 

Nevertheless, I wish this wasn’t the only kind of spectacle that gets praised nowadays. Because I want more innovative and weighty action scenes. And I want these scenes to generate discussion beyond “This is cool!”. While the cool sequences might hit an immediate dopamine rush, the thematically-weighty ones stick with me more long-term. That’s what I desperately crave these days.

The Emptiness of "Imagine"

A short time ago, YouTube channel Now You See It posted a piece on how wealth controls the conversation about classism. A picture of Gal Gadot from her “Imagine” video was used for the thumbnail. This resurfaced some incredibly-traumatic memories, both of the video itself and the Antisemitic ire lobbed at Gadot. But it also resurfaced the disdain I have for “Imagine”. Because ignoring the New Year’s Eve ritual of listening to it in Times Square, I think it’s a terrible song. I’ve thought so since high school. 

“Imagine” is a 1971 song from John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Yes, that John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Written a year after The Beatles disbanded, it was intended as an anti-war, anti-religion and anti-possession (amongst other “antis”) song meant to appeal to human decency. It’s since been covered and misunderstood so frequently that, decades after Lennon’s assassination, that’s overshadowed its questionable content.

I don’t think it’s the worst song ever. I don’t even think it’s the worst post-Beatles song from Lennon-that honour belongs to “War Is Over”-but it’s definitely sparked more ire personally. Because while “War Is Over” was also thematically empty, it had its heart in the right place by focusing on the American government’s invasion of Vietnam. “Imagine” takes more general swipes, hence being so frustrating. Let me explain.

Let’s look at how the song approaches its targets. Each stanza begins with “imagine”, followed by blanketing a hot-button topic. Whether it’s Heaven, country borders, or religious beliefs, Lennon has no shame calling them out. He even makes it seem like it isn’t hard to do, all while asking people to join together as one. It’s him trying to get you to think, and it works. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for the right reasons. For one, Lennon gives no practical solutions to his imagines. He doesn’t explain what’s wrong with them, what the solution is, or how to achieve an alternative. He simply speaks about them and moves on. Like that. In a condescending manner.

And two, these points ring hollow because Lennon implies nothing about them. When he asks people to imagine no Heaven, he doesn’t say why Heaven’s an issue for those who’d be excluded from certain faiths’ understanding of the concept. When he asks people to imagine no more borders, he doesn’t talk about colonialism and geopolitical conflicts. And when he asks people to imagine no religion, he ignores, perhaps offensively, both why many people have left it and why many haven’t. He doesn’t expand on any of these, he merely says they’re a problem and moves on.

This is what bugs me the most. Ignoring how I’m a religious person, hence I see value in religion, making blanketed statements without backing them up isn’t only faulty logic, it’s bad-faith arguing. It’s something I’ve learned time and time again, and it’s worth repeating because Lennon knew this. Or, at least, I’d hope he did. Especially since he understood what he was conveying more than those who didn’t. 

This also isn’t that hard to remedy. Lennon and Ono could’ve added in a brief explanation of why they considered these to be issues in the first place. Perhaps with Heaven, they could’ve talked about the problems some people have over who gets in or not, and the violence that’s caused. With borders, they could’ve mentioned centuries of imperialism and eugenics, both of which made developing nations become exploited. And with religion, they had a goldmine of topics, including how people commit atrocities in the name of God. This is all pretty basic, too.

Honestly, “Imagine” wouldn’t bug me as much if it weren’t for how catchy it is. Like “War Is Over”, the song stays with you because of its repetition and pleasantries. It doesn’t even register how bland and empty it is until you’ve thought about it, and by then it’s too late. Because you’ve already consumed an annoying song. Congratulations!

If it feels like I’m being unfair, many people have already spilled ink over “Imagine”. I’m not the first to call it empty, and I won’t be the last. I also recognize that it’s a popular and uplifting song about the challenge to overcome issues and work together for the betterment of everyone. On New Year’s Eve, after the devastation of conflict and loss, that’s inspiring. Doubly so in New York City, where Lennon spent the remaining years of his life. 

Still, I can’t suddenly pretend that I like it. Plenty of inspirational works of art have been misguided, and that inspiration doesn’t help. “Imagine” simply happens to be a lovey-dovey, feel-good ditty that doesn’t address what it mentions. It’s a 3rd-Grader’s understanding of the world, one without the effort that comes with maturity. It’s also vain and naïve. And those are bad qualities for a song addressing systemic injustice.

I also think one of those topics, religion, gets too much flak. Can it be abused? Yes. Has it done lots of harm throughout history? Yes. But it’s a tool, and tools are as effective as those who harness them. If we’re going to discuss its harm, we should also address its power to heal. Are we going to ignore Mother Theresa because of Charlemagne? Is that how this works?

A while back, I wrote a piece on “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, its questionable lyrics, and how we should learn from it instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. I feel the same about “Imagine”. Except, this time, I also think it deserves acknowledging for how hollow it is. Its place in history’s important, and I can think of far worse songs, but it’s time to let it go. It’s time to imagine that “Imagine” isn’t the best New Year’s Eve song, irrespective of how good or bad a rendition was. 

Also, that celebrity mashup was terrible. Seriously, talk about tone-deaf!