Abuse of parentheses

[mrissa]

Amber and Em have been and gone, and timprov was well enough to see Amber, albeit not well enough to get up and go see Em downstairs as well. (He knows Amber much, much better, since we lived in exile California at the same time, without anybody else from college around the Bay Area. We all miss the Amber and are working with the Emily to try to get her to move here.)

I have been on the phone trying to get things figured out for timprov and am still waiting for a call back. I am exhausted, though not particularly by the phone or Amber and Em. (I'm still trying to refer to them in that order, because in college it was always "EmmanAmber," because they are that kind of best friends, and then Em went and married Aaron, so now it's "EmmanAmb--err, Aaron." And I think putting Em second is the solution to this.) (gaaldine and I were a good deal more like Janet and Molly: close, but with distinct nomenclature throughout. And also we sometimes left out a third person without meaning to, freshman year, which is why I thought of Janet and Molly in the first place.) (I think this might make me Molly. This thought pleases me. I would cheerfully whack things with a stick if given the chance -- maybe with just a wee nap first.) (But then, so would gaaldine, so that really gets us nowhere, as distinguishing features go.)

Do you know what has been upsetting me lately? (Among the things I haven't mentioned, I mean. Except I think in a couple of e-mails.) The trope that pure hearts win the day. Bah. Bah, I tell you! It's a pernicious lie, and it's particularly common in books aimed at children, and it's even worse to tell children, because they have less experience to see that it's a lie. I was glad to see Terry Pratchett take it on with Tiffany in one of her books. The things I'm doing against it seem to all be more indirect and mostly for grown-ups. (And why am I writing for grown-ups anyway? Elephino. Because something broke my brain in that direction, don't know what.) The focus on the power of purity of heart and purity of love in the latest (sixth) Harry Potter book made me roll my eyes halfway out of their sockets. Love is a very powerful thing, but so is knowing what the hell you are doing.

Three things, then: any similar messages driving you disproportionately nuts? Any thoughts on pure hearts? And anyone who was powerfully affected by the deaths in the HP books: can you explain to me why they mattered to you in the context of the series? Why they were important and either surprising or powerful beyond need for a surprise? Because they did not hit me right at all, and I know they did hit some people in the solar plexus, and I'm trying to get a handle on why.

Comments

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

You know my feelings on "Pure hearts win the day". I'm convinced that myths and lies of that type are far from harmless when spoonfed to an audience that doesn't know any better. God knows I believed that crap for far longer than I had any reason to.

This isn't to say that there's no value in altruism or good deeds, but we can't *expect* them to be rewarded. This isn't physics, where actions result in equal and opposite reactions. As rosefox noted above, it doesn't work that way.

There's no justice in this life, except insofar as we create it ourselves.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. When adults say to children, "Life isn't fair," my response is always, "But sometimes we can be."

It looks to me like our culture has been shying away from the idea that good deeds can have negative consequences for the doer, over the last fifty years or so. The people who were civilly disobedient in the Civil Rights Movement expected to be jailed. They expected ungentle police and/or security guards. Many of them knew they were risking their very lives. They did not trust in their purity of heart to save them because they didn't expect to be saved from the likely consequences of their actions -- bad and unjust as well as good and just. Sometimes enduring the bad and the unjust is the only way to get to the good and the just, and if we count on pure hearts to save us from harm, we won't get there from here.

In the movie version of "The Black Cauldron," Gurgi jumps into the cauldron to break it instead, and comes out alive because his heart is pure. Even as a kid, I was outraged at the horrible mess that made of the story. Bleh.

[rosefox]

Wait, wait, what?

I'm so glad I never saw that movie. How utterly appalling.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was a travesty. Disney just went ahead and butchered the ending.

I still recall the Cauldron-born being scary as all get-out, but I think I was seven the last time I saw that movie.

[rosefox]

Next you'll tell me that when the current Narnia movie crew get to "The Silver Chair", the elderly Caspian will stay alive long enough to give the kids some helpful pointers. Bah!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The kids made a lot fewer small mistakes in the movie LW&W than in the book. When Lucy saves Edmund with her cordial, for example, Aslan doesn't have to chide her to go save others -- she just trots around all sunny-like after she sees him blow on a statue-beast. So who knows. Sigh.

[rosefox]

That pissed me off more than anything except Father Christmas snubbing the Beavers. (Liam Neeson sounding like he was reading off a teleprompter annoyed me, but not on the same level.) I was Really Not Happy with that movie.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Beaver Christmas presents had better be in the extended edition.

I don't think I'm buying it either way. But they'd better be there.

And Liam Neeson sounded like the guy who does the movie trailer voiceovers: "In a world where winter reigned...he was a faun who knew too much...." Also, Aslan should have been a bass, dammit! In addition to not being Movie Trailer Man!

[rosefox]

Thank you! Just about everyone else I know has been squeeing over how he was The Perfect Aslan. Pfeh, not by a long shot!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

timprov and I did not think he was Aslan at all. Possibly a donkey in a lionskin. We're not sure.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think I was 7 when I saw it. So you may have been as young as 6.

I was scared of the Cauldron-born, too, but I thought I knew how the story went, so that buoyed me up a bit, and then I was terrified when they started changing stuff, because who knew what else they'd change, and how?

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Yes. When adults say to children, "Life isn't fair," my response is always, "But sometimes we can be."

Yes.

Life isn't fair. But that doesn't give people permission to be jerks.