Modred versus Launcelot

I became interested in Camelot sometime in my early teens. I read the play about a thousand times. I don't know why it enthralled me. I don't particularly like the actual musical; I never cared much for T.H. White's The Once and Future King; I didn't like the Walt Disney movie. And I never read Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I have read parts of Malory.

But for some reason, the possible reality of the Arthurian legend fascinated me. I don't mean the feminist-druid stuff which I think is stupid; I mean, the real Dark Ages stuff with that wacky monk, Gildas proclaiming doom all over the place only nobody is listening, and there's all these Saxons moving in and, really, there probably weren't any major wars, just a few skirmishes, and it's very possible that the skirmishes were the Celts fighting each other, NOT fighting the Saxons. Because the Romans have left by this point, so the Saxons basically have free-loader rights to that "green and scepter'd isle." And boy, I just love that stuff.

(Now that I think about it, it's books which use parts of the Arthurian myth to create a separate fantasy that I like--like Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series. And C.S. Lewis.)

Then, as an undergraduate, I developed a real liking for the other (older) Arthurian legends: Gawain and the Green Knight and Gawain and the Loathly Lady (Wife of Bath stuff).

But of course, if you read anything about King Arthur (or Artos) or the Round Table, you are going to run into Galahad and Monty Python and the grail and Launcelot.

I developed a distaste for Launcelot early on. It isn't just that he has an affair with Guinevere; it's that he whines about it. The whole Lady of Shalott fiasco is Launcelot feeling sorry for himself all over the place. He forgets who he is and falls in love with this other chick (the Lady) and then remembers who he is and decides to go back to the (married) woman, Guinevere, and then the Lady kills herself and instead of Launcelot saying, "Them's the breaks" or "Boy, I was a jerk," he gets all mopey and goes off to try to redeem himself and really, it is exactly like Leonardo on the Titanic and you, the audience, wishing desperately that Billy Zane would shoot him.

I much prefer Mordred. And interestingly enough, I'm not alone. A lot of YA books have been written in favor of Mordred or from Mordred's point of view: the Book of Mordred by Vivian Vande Velde; The Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein, for example.

I think there are two reasons Mordred fascinates us Mordredites:

(1) Mordred is much more ambiguous than any of the other Camelot/Arthurian legend characters. And he is placed, plot-wise, in the position of being the character who outs the well-liked but corrupt "good" guys.

Basically, Mordred is Spike.

And ambiguity is interesting. I think it is no error of human nature that the most popular Star Trek characters are those characters who are struggling to define themselves: Data, Seven of Nine, the Doctor. (House from House.) We are more interested in people who haven't figure themselves out completely yet than people who have because most of us fall into category one rather than category two.

(2) If you root for Mordred, you inevitably don't root (that much) for Launcelot, and Launcelot is such a great guy to hate. Launcelot is the quintessential spoiled kid who goes off to college or prep school or wherever and gets into trouble with some other spoiled kids. He may even be the ringleader, but it will never be clear; he will never own responsibility. And then they all get into trouble, and the other kids may even get expelled, but Launcelot goes and cries and says how SORRY he is and how he never meant it to get out of hand and isn't it too awful and it wouldn't have gone so badly if it hadn't been for that other guy (who told on them).

I've written two Mordred stories myself. In both, he is not dissimilar to Vivian Vande Velde's portrayal of Mordred as extremely tight-lipped. (My Mordred is less heroic.) If I remember correctly, Wein's Mordred is seriously dysfunctional and kidnaps his half-brother. But he is still the protagonist.

So reason #3 for being a Mordredite must be: he supplies so much great material!

BOOKS

The Non Either/Or of C.S. Lewis

Recently, Philip Pullman made a series of negative statements (or someone said he made a series of negative statements), about Christians and C.S. Lewis, and people have been forming camps.

I'm not going to talk about that.

However, you can read my brother Eugene's insightful analysis of the issue on his blog.

Since C.S. Lewis' name has been bandied about during this kerfuffle (not really a kerfluffle, but I like the word), I decided to post about C.S. Lewis.

Based on the plethora of books I have read by Lewis and about Lewis, you might imagine me a no-holds-barred Lewis aficionado. And, well, yeah, I kind of am. But over the years, I've also formed the conclusion that Lewis was not someone I would enjoy having over for lunch. For that matter, I don't think Lewis would have enjoyed coming over to lunch at my place. As Eugene says on his blog, "I also have the feeling that the eccentric Lewis was in person--like Einstein--a less agreeable person than his hagiographies make him out to be."

And I can't say that I even agree with all of what Lewis wrote. In fact, if you parse it out, you might discover that I disagree with over 1/3 of what the guy actually said.

So why IS he one of my favorite writers?

I've decided that even though I'm not as pessimistic or as Anglican or as wacky Edwardian as Lewis, underneath all that stuff, we share a fundamental viewpoint. It is a viewpoint missing from academic discourse. And occasionally religious discourse. And well, just about everywhere, if I'm honest. The best summary of this viewpoint comes from (yet another) book I'm reading about Lewis:

Everything he desired was an object of imagination; everything he believed was an object of reason. (Cunningham, 68).*

Lewis was both a logical Englishman and a dreamy, romantic Celt (his own generalizations, not mine.) And he reached a point in his life where he allowed both facets of his personality to exist simultaneously.

To me, this kind of approach is like finding a safe harbor. I sit in classes, I tutor online, I go to church, and I feel like I'm surrounded by people saying, "You must be one or the other!"

"You must accept jargon and touchy-feelingness as evidence or you must be an advocate of dead-white patriarchal males." "You must advocate rules and structure, or you must advocate creative, out-of-the-box thinking." "You must be an hoity-toity intellectual, or you must be spiritual."

I can always find people in these environments willing to give up the either/or. (And I personally believe that Mormons, whether they want it or not, find themselves at the smack-dab center of these either/or tensions. Stick grace, works, agency, democratic ideals, a heirarchal church and final judgement, continual progression, Joseph Smith, salvation of the dead, the temple, and, hey, the Protestant work/education ethic into one mix and viable either/ors just don't last that long.)

Nevertheless, there seems to be a strong human proclivity towards either/ors, or maybe it is just easier to discuss human behavior in those terms. I don't know. But I do know that Lewis is a huge comfort to me. Behind everything that he writes, no matter how daft, is this mind that won't reduce everything to logic or to gushy feelings or to jargon and politics or to relative experiences. He just won't give it all up to one side or the other. It's such a relief!

I also admire Lewis as a writer, which is kind of a different issue. I have this fall-down-on-my-face-oops-not-suppose-to-worship-idols response to writers who can communicate as easily as Lewis. I find Lewis' writing superhumanly fresh. I know he can be didactic, but I never notice because, golly, the writing just flows. I think a lot of us desperate writers start with ideas and images in our heads, and we then struggle to get them out in ways that sound right. Although Lewis states that he started his Narnia books with images, I think the man thought in words. Language wasn't a tool for him; it was the way his synapses worked.

He also had an uncanny ability to understand human fallibility. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he creates and explains Edmund's betrayal in a way that underscores the humanness of Edmund's betrayal (and he does it so easily, you hardly notice). Edmund isn't being evil or wicked or demonic or beyond the pale. He is being human and petty and prideful and self-protective (the part where he lies about being in Narnia with Lucy is heart-stabbing and yet, and yet, it goes on every day in your average Junior High). Edmund's petty, spiteful, self-absorbed behaviors have horrendous consequences. Maybe, they wouldn't have quite the degree of horrendous consequence in the material world (instead Edmund would grow up and turn into a horrible, self-serving manager whose co-workers detested him), but in the world of myth, a hero's behaviors must have horrendous consequences, and Lewis believed (as I do) that the end game of earthly religion is myth come alive.

*The book is C.S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith by Richard B. Cunningham. It is about C.S. Lewis as an apologist. Don't be mislead by the title. It is not about Lewis' contributions to Christianity. Instead, it is a fearfully academic book about apologetics--I get through about three pages every Sunday.

BOOKS

Near Miss

I'm always fascinated by near misses, movies that almost become huge artistic or cultural successes but don't. I consider The Illusionist to be a near miss, and I've been trying to figure out why. It has all the right ingredients: a love story, a mystery, adequate acting on the part of Norton and Biel and very good acting indeed by Giamatti. Wonderful atmosphere. Great effects. So why did it leave me cold? And why, although people tend to prefer it to the Prestige, did it not take off in a big way?

WARNING: SPOILERS:

I think the main reason is that the movie asks us to sympathize with the lovers (Norton and Biel). I think this was a huge mistake. If the story had remained Giamatti's completely (as I think the short story must be), the film might have been artistically, if not popularly, acclaimed. Most of the story is Giamatti's but the powers-that-be couldn't stop themselves from giving us the lovers' point of view and hoping we would commiserate.

Well, I didn't. I'm sorry; I don't care how horrible the prince was supposed to be (and I never got any real proof of his horribleness), setting up a guy to take the blame for something he didn't do is still, well, setting up a guy to take the blame for something he didn't do. It was, in fact, a murder plot worthy of Agatha Christie since if the prince didn't kill himself, his father or the people would.

Yuck. I couldn't feel any sympathy for the lovers. I didn't care. I hoped she would die of consumption within a year--take that, you mindless, self-indulgent, murdering jerks.

BUT if the story had remained Giamatti's entirely--if the whole object had been the chief inspector's reaction to the illusion; if, that is, the audience had not been asked to care whether the lovers got away or not but only if the chief inspector came through with his dignity, I think the movie would have been far more creatively satisfying.

This approach could have worked since Giamatti and Sewell (the prince) played very well off each other. (And with the new approach, the chief inspector and the prince would have become the core of the story.) Sewell is one of those scene-chewing actors, and Giamatti handled the scene-chewing with aplomb. In fact, the final scene between them before Sewell kills himself was so awesome, I sat there going, "Why couldn't we get more of this? It isn't Sewell's fault he can outact everyone in sight!" (Although, in fairness, I think the acting, Giamatti apart, was fairly even; Biel may be the weakest link, but she's lovely enough that it doesn't matter, and Norton isn't so outrageously talented that he looks odd next to her. I realized, after the movie started, that I'd gotten Norton confused with Jeremy Northam, who probably would have outacted Biel. I don't require great acting in my movies, but I do require balance.)

Lady in the Water had its own near-miss problems, but at least Shyamalan let Giamatti carry the story. Point of view really is everything.

MOVIES

One of the Dumber Arguments I've Heard

At the risk of being radically misunderstood, I must comment on an argument that I have run across many times regarding homosexuality.

The radically misunderstood part is that my comments have nothing to do with homosexuality itself. I don't intend to address homosexuality per se at all on this blog. If you want to witness people calling each other names go to some political pundit's blog.

But I am an English teacher, and I get tired--oh, so tired--of illogical arguments. And I consider this particular argument to be illogical.

So, here we go: I recently picked up Neal Boortz's book Somebody's Gotta Say It. He's a libertarian. I'm a libertarian. Why not? I became rapidly disenchanted. There's a few too many assumptions floating about the book, which is probably why I don't read books by pundits in the first place.

This particular assumption goes something like this: Homosexuality is not a choice (this is the claim part of the argument; it can be refuted or supported) because no one would choose to be ostracized by society (this is the silly part of the argument).

No one would choose to be ostracized by society.

Really?

Oh, yeah?

This is not the first time I have encountered this argument; it always astonishes me. Even when I was in my 20's and supposedly more naive than I am now, I never could give credence to this argument or take seriously the people who proposed it.

My first thought is always, Uh, what about the history of, I don't know, the human race?

The fact is people have been making choices that ostracize them from their societies, families, cultures, and planet earth since, well, since the first scientist made a claim that annoyed his government and the first hippie went over the proverbial wall and the first artist sat around going, "I'm not going to hunt bison. I'm going to paint them."

The Impressionists ostracized themselves from the powers that be in the arts--until they singlehandedly created the picture postcard industry. (Okay, not really.) Thomas Hardy ostracized himself from British society when he published Jude the Obscure (although it could have just been Hardy's personality; he ostracized himself from his wife as well). Tons of religious leaders (including Joseph Smith) ostracized themselves from 19th century American society with their unique sexual practices. And then there's all those people who have changed their political parties or their religious affiliations or, gosh, their dietary habits and ostracized themselves from their families/friends/societies.

According to the "No one chooses to be ostracized" argument, the chick from My Big Fat Greek Wedding would never have even contemplated marrying a non-Greek since the moment she did WHAM! possible ostracisim.

Now, you could argue that the chick from My Big Fat Greek Wedding didn't suffer very long from her decision but what's the rule here? If people don't suffer long, it must be choice, but if they do suffer long, it isn't?

The second possible refutation would be, "But, Kate, most of your examples are edgy, culture-changing personalities. What about ordinary people who just wish to live within the status quo?"

Well, I believe that even ordinary people who want to live within the status quo are desirous of an identity. You don't have to be a teenager or Picasso to define yourself by what you are not or by what will meet your desires.

Again, I am not going to argue here whether homosexuality is right/wrong, choice/non-choice. I simply don't believe that since people don't like negatives, every negative effect in their lives is therefore not the result of a personal choice. I realize that many people don't anticipate negative effects. But there are still many, many people in this world who anticipate the negative and still make the choice.(For several years after breaking with the Catholic Church, Martin Luther suffered intense psychological depression; he believed he was hounded by the devil--how's that for a negative effect?)

To go to the furthest extreme of this argument, let's take drug or gambling addicts. They ruin their healths, go into debt, lose their jobs, disappoint their families, and, possibly, undermine the fabric of society, yadda, yadda, yadda, and what, you think they did it because they didn't get a buzz? It just kind of happened to them?

Here's my stance: I think discussions about human nature would go a lot better (meaning, from my perspective, make more sense) if all arguments would start from the proposition that culture is not the final determinant for how a human being will behave: destructively or not.

FARES, FESTIVALS & OTHER FROLICS