Had to blow snow out of the driveway again tonight. My neighbor, who also has a blower and used to do it himself, tells me his is out of commission right now.
I think I made a good investment.
One of our readers sent me a link to the trailer for an animated movie called How to Train Your Dragon, scheduled to come out next month. He asked me what I thought of it. I’m glad he did, because I’d seen it before, and meant to do a rant, but somehow it slipped my mind.
First, the obvious things. It’s supposed to be a movie about Vikings, and they wear horned helmets. If you’ve been reading this blog for any time at all, you surely know that the Vikings didn’t do that. The horned helmets come from Wagnerian opera.
But I can forgive that. It’s a cartoon.
The main character’s name is Hiccup. I’ve been trying to figure that out. Is that supposed to be a play on words? If so, what word? I don’t know of any Viking name that sounds at all like Hiccup.
But here’s my real objection. The movie’s apparently about a kid who discovers that dragons are JUST MISUNDERSTOOD! NOTHING WE KNOW ABOUT THEM IS TRUE!
This is classic contemporary Hollywood. “Let’s do something transgressive! Overturn a long-standing cultural prejudice! Prove that it’s we who are the monsters, not the mythical creatures!”
First of all, this isn’t creative. The sympathetic dragon has been done. And done, and done. It was a fresh idea back when Kenneth Grahame wrote The Reluctant Dragon, but that was in freaking 1898, for pete’s sake.
I haven’t kept count of the sympathetic treatments of dragons I’ve seen in my lifetime, but it’s been enough to make me tired of them.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to write a good sympathetic dragon story. Grahame’s story, as I recall it, is quite good. But it worked because of the surprise element. Nowadays, sympathetic dragons in movies are as surprising as child-molesting priests, hypocritical Christian fundamentalists, and Government Conspiracies at the Highest Level.
Listen—dragons don’t exist in the real world. They’re what scholars call “fabulous creatures”–creatures of fable. They have symbolic meaning, and that meaning is Powerful Evil (Chinese dragons mean something else, but we’re not in China).
Dragons are powerful. They fly; they have big fangs and claws, and they breathe fire. They’re protected by natural armor.
They’re evil. They eat livestock and human beings, and sometimes they demand human sacrifices as extortion payments. Theologically, they represent the devil—the serpent of Eden after millennia of good meals and regular exercise.
Modern movie makers (and many modern writers) don’t like this. They believe that people who say, “Dragons are evil,” are only really saying “I fear dragons because I don’t understand them.” For them, hatred of dragons is a symbol of all the bigotry they think they see in our society.
That might be true if there weren’t actually things in the world that deserve hatred. There are things that are not only frightening, but worth being frightened of. When a human being faces such an evil, an evil that can kill him, he is, metaphorically, facing a dragon. And traditional dragon stories help him find courage in that useful activity.
So the real issue is whether you think evil exists. This appears to be a movie for people who think it doesn’t.
I’m fairly sure that the people who produced this movie don’t live in Iran. Or North Korea. Or Somalia.
Story as dog-training
Interesting that Phil should link to an article about the structure of story today, because I want to talk about the same thing. Only I’d like to concentrate on just one element. I’ve blogged before on how the basic elements of plot mirror the essential truths of human life, and even of theology. Today I want to examine an aspect of human nature that makes classic story form, I think, inevitable and necessary. This is my thesis—that our emotions are like animals. More particularly, like dogs.
This idea was prompted by a discussion I’ve been involved in, in a Facebook group. I wanted to explain my own thinking on the question, “Why is it so hard to change habitual responses, even when we know they’re wrongheaded and counterproductive?” I responded that we have reason, and we have feelings. Reason is, well, reasonable. It can be argued with, and sometimes convinced.
Feelings, on the other hand, aren’t reasonable. They don’t listen to argument. Feelings are trained like dogs, and like dogs you can’t appeal to their good sense. Continue reading Story as dog-training
A Tale of Use Experience
User Experience and Storytelling – En del ett: Common mythic elements and reader or viewer appeals.
Unhappy
Here’s a snicker for you, photos of unhappy people in very nice modern living areas (I can’t say houses, because some may be flats, apartments, or such as that). I can’t decide on a favorite. It could be this poor child trying to escape a life like Eustace Clarence Scrubb’s. Or this one which is thankful for the silence. Or this one: “Even in your company, I feel so alone.”
storySouth Million Writers Award Open
The storySouth Million Writers Award for good writing published online is now open for nominations.
Fiction Friday, R.I.P. Ralph McInerny
The Culture Alliance’s (subscribers’ only) Friday Fiction e-newsletter focused on me today—very flatteringly, and I’m grateful. You can read most of it yourself here at S. T. Karnick’s The American Culture blog.
With all due regard to the passing of J. D. Salinger, my own reading universe has been far more powerfully impacted today by the death of Ralph McInerny, who passed away this morning. (Thanks to Southern Appeal for the heads up.)
McInerny was a noted Catholic religious scholar and University of Notre Dame institution, as well as being a highly successful mystery writer. His Father Dowling mysteries (not—I repeat, not—to be confused with the awful television series starring Tom Bosley which purported to be based on them), along with his Roger and Philip Knight books, set at Notre Dame, formed only the tip of his fictional iceberg, much of which consisted of books written under pseudonyms.
Although I am far from being a Catholic, I always found McInerny an author whose faith and principles I could identify with. I don’t think anyone would call his books sentimental or naïve in their depiction of the real world, but they breathed out an atmosphere of spiritual peace and rationality that must have been generated by a rare spirit. I wish I’d had the chance to meet him.
Winter Day Games
It’s snowy in Chattanooga, the perfect excuse for some of us to stay inside and do what we normally do. I drove home carefully a couple hours ago. I’m glad I did not pass any cars in the ditch, though I did see some parked at the entrance to hilly neighborhoods.
If you are looking for a way to pass your time today, you might try these Shakespeare Games from Bantam. If you want to prepare for future snow days or family nights or the Bar’s Out of Beer nights, you might try one of these games, including the Shakespeare’s Quips, Cusses, and Curses Quiz Deck, hours of fun for you and anyone within the sound of your voice.
A Golden Ticket
About two years ago, author and critic Jeffrey Overstreet wrote about how his very good fantasy novel Auralia’s Colors was accepted for publication. “In short: Somebody dropped out of the sky and gave me a golden ticket.” It was an answer to prayer.
The state of the groundhog
(Not from the movie)
It probably won’t surprise you much when I inform you that I passed up the opportunity to listen to my president’s State of the Union address last night.
Instead I popped my DVD of Groundhog Day into the player, and watched it for the eleventy-second time. It was almost shorter than the president’s speech, and definitely less repetitious, from what I’ve read.
And it’s the right time of year.
I think Groundhog Day is my It’s a Wonderful Life. As I’ve mentioned before, IaWL just depresses me. The only message I get from it is “George Bailey has a wonderful life, BUT YOU’RE NOT GEORGE BAILEY!”
Groundhog Day, on the other hand, presents a lesson I can agree with—“If I had the chance to do my life over about a million times, I might eventually figure something out.”
I understand the original script was written by a Buddhist, and that the filmmakers cut out some of the more explicitly Buddhist elements. I suppose, to be consistent with myself, I ought to reject the film for the merest taint of Buddhism.
But what kind of theology does It’s a Wonderful Life present? Salvation by good works and self-esteem. “You may think you’re a miserable sinner, George Bailey, but they think very highly of you in heaven!” Not exactly Christian law and gospel.
What I like about Groundhog Day is the non-theological material—the simple moral journey of a man who does actually come to realize that he’s a sinner, and then works to become somebody whose life contributes. It’s not a saving knowledge, but it’s a good thing for the people who have to live with him.
To a large degree, it’s about humility. I could name some prominent people who seem to think that humility is for their country, but not for them as individuals. Such people need to wake up and see their own shadows.
(Crossposted at Mere Comments)
J.D. Salinger, 91, Is Dead
The author of The Catcher in the Rye is dead. Obit Magazine has yet to post their take, but the journalist Hillel Italie gives us a bit of nastiness in his AP story.
Salinger’s alleged adoration of children apparently did not extend to his own. In 2000, daughter Margaret Salinger’s “Dreamcatcher” portrayed the writer as an unpleasant recluse who drank his own urine and spoke in tongues.
Ms. Salinger said she wrote the book because she was “absolutely determined not to repeat with my son what had been done with me.”
Have mercy.