On Knowing Good and Evil & Words as an Inexhaustible Source of Magic

With little holding our interest as we lived through the malaise that accompanied our recovery from Omicron, we turned to watching three different book-based movie series. Two centered around epic encounters with darkness and light/good and evil in markedly different fantasy worlds, while the third,  in more realistic present day setting involved a superhero character intent on using his outstanding strength and will “to do the right thing”, solve his brother’s murder and avenge his death.  All three addressed the difficulty of “knowing good and evil” as mentioned in the ancient story recorded by Moses in the book of Genesis.  First up was Lord of the Rings, followed by the new Reacher series on Amazon, based on Lee Child's Killing Floor; and we finished up with the 8th and last of the Harry Potter film releases this past weekend. At one time we’d owned  DVD sets of the Rings and the Potter series, but with our move and subsequent tech changes, they’re no longer with us, requiring rental for another viewing.

Looking back, I realized we’ve paid for the Privilege of Partaking of Potter five times over.  Starting with the first book out in 1997, we bought the print versions, then the audio CD’s played on car trips with the family, followed by costly forays to the cinema to watch (with popcorn) those stories unfold again on the wide screen, with subsequent purchases of the aforementioned DVDs as Christmas gifts, and finally using funds magically sent from our TV screen to Amazon, we purchased another prime viewing experience, allowing us to stop, talk about and start the play at will.  Was it worth it?  All that money and time spent taking them in? Yes. Five times over.  With each run through, in whatever form of media used, something good and relevant was waiting to be received.  Such is the power of story and myth to speak to the moment, link past to present, affirm experience and invite new awareness.   Watching them this time wasn’t about nostalgia so much as engaging with a touchstone.  One that allowed us to encounter and reconsider familiar stories and situations in which truth mattered and made a difference for greater good. As such, they invited us into more awareness of what we’re contending with in life and politics today.

With this last viewing of the Potter series, I finally gained a better understanding of what really put JK Rowling on the NY Times hit list.  Her supposed trans-transgressions (or worse yet, her biological essentialism) appear as the most visible tip of the iceberg of intense dislike (hatred?) and angst currently coming at her.  From my POV, however, the more unspeakable transgression she committed was her willingness to use words and story to reveal truth and convey the value of freedom and choice, the importance of speaking out and standing up for good, and yes even fighting ‘til death, for what matters most.  She provided an accessible model, dressed up as fantasy, that continues to be available and appeal to a broad age range, including children and impressionable adolescents as well as adults.  Through the vehicle of story, she presents a view of what it looks like when those who oppose the tyranny of oppression and evil do so with accountability and compassion.  She also promotes love (the holding of grace and truth) as the highest good.  And that message is not popular with the woke crowd intent on controlling information and narrative along with hearts and minds by squelching the voices of people who value freedom and seek a more balanced approach.  A loving approach that honors freedom and responsibility, allows for the exercise of justice and mercy, and seeks highest good.

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”    Dumbledore

Earlier in the week Instapundit posted this link in response to the posed question of: “WHY DOES THE NEW YORK TIMES HATE WOMEN?   A response to the NYT’s ad unpersoning J.K. Rowling." A few days later, while this post was sitting in my drafts folder, more on that “unpersoning” came up at the motherblog, along with another explanation of why JK Rowling and her writing matter, provided through a link to Simon Even’s column in Spiked on The Erasure of JK Rowling. 

And that tracked back to this, from a Jan 2 post at Insty: Harry Potter Knew the Fake News Media Is the Enemy of the People: The 20th anniversary of the first film is an occasion to recall J.K. Rowling’s inspiring political agenda. “As a fan of the books and films who had not revisited them in quite some time, I had always remembered how unflatteringly Rowling portrayed the government of her fictional world. But I was surprised to rediscover another entity that is absolutely savaged in the Harry Potter universe: the mainstream media. Rewatching the films this month for the first time in years, I was particularly struck by how much fake news was printed in the pages of The Daily Prophet. . . . It is the wizarding world’s version of the mainstream media; it is also an ever-evolving source of lies and propaganda.”  Related: My friend Ben Barton’s Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy.

Behind it all, in addition to Rowling’s current pronouncements being regarded as divisive, and the stinging relevance of her unflattering portrayal of the gov’t and the media in the Potter Series, is this hard to dismiss truth:  her written words continue to perform the magic of offering through story an ongoing invitation to take in and consider what it means to live with the knowledge of good and evil.