Aladdin vs Harry Potter

I'm a Christian, and if you've got a problem with that you may want to stick around because I'm going to complain about some Christians.


Think back to when the Harry Potter stories came out. He was a witch and he went to a school for witchcraft.

You may know that Christians take a dim view on witchcraft. And for good reason. How can you go about building a technological society when you're fussing with toads and newts? Witchcraft is not real and it does not work. Take your most fervent wiccan and she'll take her kids to soccer practice in a car, not a broom. It is the denial of reality that's at the root of Christianity's conflict with the elder religions termed pagan. There is no spirit in the tree that keeps it evergreen and no reason to bring it into your house so that this spirit might protect you.

Christians also take a dim view of the Devil. You may have heard that he was once an angel and he led a revolt of other angels, and these other angels are now what we call demons. Christians take a VERY dim view of consorting with demons.

Though Christians take a dim view of witchcraft, we have no problem with technology. Isaac Newton figured out the law of gravity and tied calculus to it, and gave us a better explanation for planetary motion than angels pushing them about. Christianity and Science will butt heads from time to time, but never about whether something works or not. Do all those funky things with relativity or quantum mechanics bother Christians? No.

With this in mind let's consider Harry Potter. He goes to school and he learns the rules of how magic works. He's a magic technologist. Brooms fly in Harry Potter's world because there's some force he can control that overcomes gravity. Not much different from science fiction, except it's a "science" that doesn't exist. There's not a lot for a Christian to object to in that sort of magic-technology.

Contrast that with the Aladdin story. I didn't hear any Christians whining when Disney made the Aladdin movies. Or decades ago before Larry Hagman became J. R. Ewing and he Dreamed of Jeannie.

What is a genie anyway? If he's a djinn, he's a demon. And if she's a djinni, she's a lady demon. So, Aladdin and Larry Hagman are consorting with demons. They get magic things done by making a deal with the demon and demonic forces are employed by the demon as he wants.

As you may recall I am a Whig, and the greatest Whig was Daniel Webster who had his own dealings with the devil. Mr. Webster argued in court for the soul of the unfortunate Jabez Stone who'd sold his soul to the devil.

The only difference between Jabez Stone and Aladdin or Larry Hagman are the terms of the deal they make with the demonic.

Happily, these are all fictions and we can sleep easy knowing that the devil's not going to come down to Georgia lookin' for some soul to steal. Nor is there any imp in the bottle.

But there are Christians who gets their knickers in a knot. If they're all mad about Harry Potter, point them to the much bigger problem they should have with Aladdin and Barbara Eden.

Truth And Pornography

I'm going to blog about politics. Rational, coherent discussion of politics in the US is impossible: There are just too many cannibals and whores filling both parties. I'm going to try to say nothing at all on any political topic during an election year. And I will fail. Nevertheless, this is why I'll try.

Reading classics is a Good Idea. The political axe grinding of Pliny can be ignored because it is irrelevant today. Let's suppose you're a Whig Party faithful. While I'm discussing demonology, I make a snarky comment about Daniel Webster--the Whig statesman of two centuries ago. You will NOT BE thinking about the things I write about the Devil because you're thinking about what I said about Daniel Webster.

Now, substitute the word Whig with Democrat or Republican, and replace the name Daniel Webster with whoever the other party's leaders are demonizing this week. This is why I don't want to say anything at all about anyone except Whigs this election year.

I believe that Art tells the Truth.

The truth is complicated. There are aspects of the truth that support or undermine any partisan political camp. If you make any assertion, and you keep looking, you'll find exceptions to that proposition. 2+2 is 4? Yes, but what if you're working in a mathematical context called Galois Field 4? Then 2+2=0. OK, that's an exception.

In anything non-trivial there are exceptions to exceptions--like the turtles that hold up the world, there are turtles all the way down.  The Mandlebrot set has little balls sticking off the sides that in turn have smaller balls sticking off the sides of the little balls. And tiny balls sticking off the sides of the smaller balls. The truth is complicated like the Mandlebrot set is complicated because of those exceptions to exceptions.

People are more complicated than mathematical objects. And this means that in every person you'll find a mix of good and evil. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil passes through the heart of every person. This means your protagonist must have a dark side, and your antagonist must have some redeeming qualities. If you fail to do that, you aren't telling the truth about a realistic character.

Fail to give your hero that dark side, and you'll probably be accused of creating a Mary Sue character. Your most convincing antagonists will be good people who are pursuing good ends that just happen to have evil means. E.g. "Terribly sorry, Mr. Hero, but I must stick a knife in your back for the greater good." You can't tell the truth about people without relating their flaws.

Ayn Rand would disagree. If you've got a hero with a wart on the nose, don't show the wart or else all the good of the hero will be undermined by the wart. Because that wart will be taken out of proportion. She has a point. When young Hugh Hefner published photographs of Marylin Monroe, he airbrushed them. We're not talking about Eleanor Rigby, he airbrushed Marylin Monroe!

The truth is that the girl is not the Platonic ideal feminine form, but a realization of that form in an Aristotelian world of particulars. You can always find something wrong with the girl if you look close enough. (If you're in a relationship right now, it's wise not to look too closely for that person's faults.)

I believe that Pornography is Airbrushed.

Pornographers airbrush the parts of the truth that are complicated--the parts of the truth that undermine the message they're sending. For Mr. Hefner, that message was "here is feminine perfection." For Ms. Rand, that message was "here is objectivist heroism." I'll let others critique Ayn Rand's writing, except to note that John Galt and Dagney Taggart never evinced self-doubt or uncertainty such as is common to all mankind.

A filmmaker recently said that the subject of his biography--a politician--had no flaws. Really? Pliny's Panegyricus Traiani finds no flaws in the Emperor Trajan, but many flaws in former-Emperor Domitian. The truth is that both men were imperfect leaders who succeeded and failed in mixed measure as do we all. Airbrushing failures off of Trajan and on to Domitian is just as pornographic as Playboy magazine. Corollary: All propaganda is in this sense pornographic.

I advise that you write the truth--warts and all. If you're a Whig writing about a Whig protagonist, then you'll know some facts that support and some facts that undermine the Whig platform. A pornographer/propagandist will write only those things that support and make a strawman of what undermines the party platform.

I happen to have a political viewpoint that you can determine, but I believe I have an obligation to write the things that undermine both partisan positions--particularly my own.