Thomas McKelvey Cleaver : Remembering Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury in 1982. Photo by Lennox McLendon / AP / Washington Post.
Ray Bradbury remembered:
The librarian told my dad
he was asking for trouble

"Ray Bradbury, a boundlessly imaginative novelist who wrote some of the most popular science-fiction books of all time, including Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, and who transformed the genre of flying saucers and little green men into literature exploring childhood terrors, colonialism and the erosion of individual thought, died June 5 in Los Angeles. He was 91." -- Becky Krystal, The Washington Post

"Bradbury was the perfect author for dreamy kids, kids who can spend hours finding the figures in clouds, or who get lost in reveries about desert islands or space colonies on parched planets... It was as though Bradbury was our secret ally, the first grown-up we ever ran into who broke with the party line and sided with us." -- Malcolm Jones, The Daily Beast

By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver / The Rag Blog / June 13, 2012

I remember well my dad picking out The Martian Chronicles from the paperback section of the Eugene Field Library in Denver's Washington Park in response to my badgering him.

I had recently discovered that the world of science fiction lay just around the corner (literally!) from the boring "juvenile books," and had already discovered Isaac Asimov. But only adults could check out the paperback books, so I convinced Dad to get it.

The librarian told him he was "asking for trouble" if he let me read such books at such an age (how right she was!). What fantastic stuff! And then a year later Dad brought home the new paperback -- Fahrenheit 451. Reading that at age 10, in the midst of what was going on in America at that time, had a lasting effect. I don't think there's anything Ray Bradbury ever wrote that I didn't read and like.

In 1967, while working on draft resistance here in Los Angeles, I was going through the file cards we had of people who had given us money, with the objective of calling them up and asking for more. I found one for an "R. Bradbury" who lived not that far away, over toward the 20th Century Fox lot in Rancho Park.

 I called him up and he said sure, he'd be happy to help some more. But he didn't drive and could I come over and pick up the check? So I did. And when he answered the door I knew it was Him, and when he invited me in it was all I could do not to act like an idiot.

But after talking to him -- and answering his questions about how and why someone who had already served would be working on draft resistance, telling him what I had learned in my service in Vietnam -- I finally couldn't stop myself, and I told him how I knew him, and that reading his books had a lot to do with why I was doing that work. He liked hearing that.

I also remember getting a nice note from him through the Science Fiction Writers of America upon my gaining membership in 1989 for having written The Terror Within, saying he had quite enjoyed the movie and that he remembered from where he knew my name.

Bradbury talked often about being a "graduate of libraries." I am sure I am too (even though I did go to college).

He was one of the best of my teachers there in those libraries. A Professor of Humanity.

[Thomas McKelvey Cleaver is an accidental native Texan, a journalist, and a produced screenwriter. He has written successful horror movies and articles about Second World War aviation, was a major fundraiser for Obama in 2008, and has been an activist on anti-war,  political reform, and environmental issues for almost 50 years. Read more articles by Thomas Cleaver on The Rag Blog.]

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FILM / Ed Felien : Harry Potter Through the Eyes of an Afghan Child

Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, Part Two.
Harry Potter through the
eyes of an Afghan child

Understanding the lesson of Harry Potter is essential to understanding the cultural values that underpin our need for the vindication of war.

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / August 8, 2011

SPOILER ALERT: Read this only if you already know how Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, Part Two and the war in Afghanistan end.

A large part of the charm of Harry Potter is nostalgia for the simple naiveté of childhood. We are willing to believe in supernatural powers because up to the age of four or five we believed we were the center of the universe. We believed we had magical powers. If we didn’t like something we would cry, and Mommy and Daddy would change it.

The pull of this nostalgia in the Harry Potter series is intensified by encapsulating the fantasy in the context of a 1930’s English boarding school. Hogwarts could easily pass for the “playing fields of Eton,” a familiar and archetypical educational experience.

Would any of this make sense to an Afghan child?

Perhaps the reference to the English boarding school might seem confusing, but the magical powers of childhood would seem familiar. But, more than that, the life or death struggle between Harry Potter and Voldemort would seem like current events.

Voldemort (literally, from the French, "theft of death") has achieved a kind of immortality by transferring his soul into material objects called horcruxes. If anything happens to his body, then the material objects into which he has poured his soul can reanimate his corpse.

This must be the way the Afghans see the U.S. occupation of their country. If they defeat U.S. troops at one place, the foreign invader springs up even larger somewhere else. Voldemort has set up a stooge to run Hogwarts in the same way the U.S. has set up a CIA stooge, Karzai, to run Afghanistan.

In the final battle Voldemort sends unmanned magic flying discs to bomb and murder the students and faculty in much the same way the U.S. now sends drones against the Afghan, Pakistan, Yemeni, and Somali populations.

The movie begins with Harry, Ron, and Hermione on a quest to destroy the horcruxes. By using disguises and an invisibility cloak they sneak into Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault at the Wizarding Bank and recover Helga Hufflepuff’s cup. Harry destroys it with the Sword of Godric Gryffindor and then learns another horcrux is hidden in Hogwarts. Ron and Hermione find the Diadem of Ravenclaw and destroy it with the sword.

An Afghan child would immediately recognize and identify with the seemingly impossible pursuit of trying to destroy the material objects that embody the soul of their oppressor. When material objects multiply simply by touching them, how would it be possible to destroy them all?

Yet, they persist. Whether with a Sword of Godric Gryffindor in Harry Potter or an I.E.D. in Afghanistan, they blow up the material objects that have been used as an instrument of their oppression. Their only hope is to exhaust their power and drain their treasury.

By the final battle, there is but one horcrux left to Voldemort, his trained killer python, Nagini. But there is one other horcrux protecting Voldemort of which he is unaware. When he murdered Harry Potter’s parents, he tried unsuccessfully to murder Harry as well, but he only scarred his forehead. In his effort to murder Harry he poured part of his soul into him, and, so, Harry Potter is himself a horcrux for Voldemort. Which means, as long as Harry is alive, Voldemort cannot die. Voldemort does not know this and continues trying to kill him.

After an epic battle that has left many dead and wounded and Hogwarts in ruins reminiscent of the Church of St. Luke in Liverpool after the Blitz in World War II, Voldemort calls for a truce and issues an ultimatum. He will spare the remains of Hogwarts if he can have Harry Potter.

Harry has no choice. The suffering of his friends and the destruction of his school are too much for him, and he alone knows that Voldemort will never die as long as he lives. So he sacrifices himself.

Voldemort issues the killing curse: “Avada Kedavra,” which means instant death for Harry. Harry goes to a limbo-like place that looks like the waiting room in a train station. His deceased headmaster, Dumbledore, is there and explains that Voldemort couldn’t kill him. When he drained the blood out of him he became invulnerable to Voldemort’s curse, and when Voldemort attacked him he drained him of the horcrux that protected Voldemort.

Meanwhile, back at Hogwarts, Voldemort is insisting that all the remaining students and faculty swear allegiance to him. Neville Longbottom tries to rally the students to resist. Voldemort places the Sorting Witch’s hat on Neville’s head and causes it to burst into flames. Neville pulls the Sword of Godric Gryffindor out of the burning hat and slays Nagini, the last remaining horcrux protecting Voldemort.

At this point Harry comes back to life and battles once again with Voldemort. This time they are both mortal, and this time Harry wins and peace is restored.

What would an Afghan child think of this?

Wouldn’t he identify with Harry in his quest to try to destroy the material objects that are destroying his country and killing his friends? Wouldn’t he understand Harry’s sacrifice of himself as the only way to stop the destruction? And wouldn’t the afterlife, the final battle between virtue and evil and the ultimate triumph of goodness seem real to an innocent and religious child?

Understanding the lesson of Harry Potter is essential to understanding the cultural values that underpin our need for the vindication of war and for understanding how every culture uses those values to justify murder and suicide bombers.

Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing,
For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,
And it makes us all part of the patriot game.

-- Dominic Behan

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog]

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Avatar : Contradictions of Cameron's Animation Masterpiece

The contradictions of capital-intensive history:
James Cameron's animation masterpiece

The stunning experience of nature, culture, and politics does achieve an important spiritual reversal of the Cowboys and Indians plot.

By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / December 28, 2009

"I'll sell it to you for $12 what I paid," she says to a man holding a pale sign that says "Needed, 1 ticket." Cheery thankyous move the long line forward, one step closer to Avatar on the last day of this box-office- busting Christmas weekend.

Inside the IMAX theater, just before the house lights come down there will be two more tickets to exchange. Mother and son pay cash at the door to strangers and locate a small, impromptu space where they can sit together against the wall, giving the rest of us the chance to see what we look like with our 3-D glasses on.

The one and only preview belongs to the Disney-branded Tim Burton edition of Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp. Everything about it looks brilliant in IMAX 3-D. The Mad Hatter does not fail to chuckle. Imagine seeing all of us from his point of view, looking like a wall of human flies on flypaper, all bug-eyed.

As for the main feature, which opened Dec. 18, 2009 worldwide, it is true what the fan said who chased in vain after James Cameron's grumpy autograph at LAX: "The plot is so simple a three-year-old could follow it." Yes, okay, the formula of colonial imperialism is a cosmology that every preschooler can comprehend. It used to go by the name Cowboys and Indians.

Something about Cameron's capital-intensive mythology is laudable for a Hollywood Blockbuster. The stunning experience of nature, culture, and politics does achieve an important spiritual reversal of the Cowboys and Indians plot. The audience is skillfully maneuvered into anti-imperialist sympathies so that we can tearfully commit to an improbable reversal of the kind of history that any three-year-old knows.

I came away thinking that I might like to try the Xbox version of the Avatar adventure, with opportunities to win battles of liberation using fantastic weapons upon exotic landscapes. Of course, I realized as I was pulling out my car key that a more effective spiritual reversal would have me renouncing all my capital-intensive desires and the battles they advance.

A truly improbable Avatar reversal would produce a global back-to-nature movement liberated from plastic 3-D glasses because something like "real nature" was being returned to its sacred center of attention. "I see you," we would say to all living things. Cameron's deeper vision suggests that all living things would be able to sigh a biologically verifiable response of collective awareness: "And I see you."

At the high point of the plot's arc, a masculine body of "skin" touches the feminine surface of a producer's fantasy. In that very moment, the saturated hues of Avatar’s animation affirm what the plot renounces. Experience moves relentlessly toward the desire to be more immersed in the jungle of technology than we already are.

At any rate, the contradictions of the Hollywood Blockbuster are not proprietary to Cameron. They are the contradictions of capital-intensive history itself. With few exceptions here and there, audiences have not failed to purchase their Avatar tickets in advance.

[Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at gmosesx@gmail.com.]

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It's a Narnia Christmas : A Hodgepodge of History Bound Together by Love

Drawing by Jeffrey Fisher. Copyright 2008 / New York Times.
'Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.'
By Laura Miller / December 18, 2008

Every Christmas, I re-read C .S. Lewis’s novel “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” The holiday seems like the ideal time for an excursion into my imaginative past, and so I return to the paperback boxed set of “The Chronicles of Narnia” that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was 10. For me, Narnia is intimately linked with the season.

I’m not alone. In Britain, stage productions of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” are a holiday staple, for good reason. The book rests on a foundation of Christian imagery; its most famous scene is of a little girl standing under a lamppost in a snowy wood; and Father Christmas himself makes an appearance, after the lion god Aslan frees Narnia from an evil witch who decreed that it be “always winter, and never Christmas.”

That I’m not a Christian doesn’t much hinder my enjoyment of either the holiday or the book, but the presence of Father Christmas bothered many of Lewis’s friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien, whose Middle-earth was free of the legends and religions of our world, objected to Narnia’s hodgepodge of motifs: the fauns and dryads lifted from classic mythology, the Germanic dwarfs and contemporary schoolboy slang lumped in with the obvious Christian symbolism.

But Lewis embraced the Middle Ages’ indiscriminate mixing of stories and motifs from seemingly incompatible sources. The medievals, he once wrote, enthusiastically adopted a habit from late antiquity of “gathering together and harmonizing views of very different origin: building a syncretistic model not only out of Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoical, but out of pagan and Christian elements.”

Christmas as we now know it is much the same sort of conglomeration, and when people call for a return to its pure, authentic roots, they’re missing an essential quality of the holiday. Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.

Complaints about the corruption, dilution or fundamental impiety of Christmas have been made for centuries. The Puritans so mistrusted the holiday that its celebration was outlawed in 17th-century Boston. Around the same time, the German theologian Paul Ernst Jablonski asserted that Christmas amounted to a paganization of the authentic faith because the date, Dec. 25, had been appropriated from a festival for a Roman solar god.

(Some Christian scholars, including the current pope, have actually argued that the appropriation went the other way around, and the solar festival was in fact a heathen bid to co-opt the feast day of an increasingly popular monotheistic cult.)

On the other side, non-Christians who relish the holiday like to point out that many Christmas icons — the decorated tree, the Yule log, mistletoe — were originally sacred to Celtic and Northern European pagans.

Yet even the Yuletide customs that are supposedly pagan holdovers must be taken with a grain of salt. We have no written records of the cultures from which they supposedly derive; everything we know about them comes second- and thirdhand from Roman or Christian writers pursuing their own agendas and relying, for the most part, on oral sources.

For decades, historians and folklorists have understood that oral traditions are not very reliable when they refer to anything reputed to have happened more than 100 years ago. What’s presented as hoary legend is in fact more likely a justification of present conditions than an accurate account of the past.

Druids, for example, have over the years been refashioned as the descendants of Noah, as bardic romantics, even as sexual egalitarians; in fact, much of what people think they know about the ancient beliefs and rites of Northern Europeans was concocted by early 20th-century occultist outfits like the Ancient Druid Order and Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The British historian Ronald Hutton describes this sort of thing as indicative of “the power of literary fiction over fact.” We believe what we choose to believe, and Christmas is no exception.

In recent years, popular histories like “The Battle for Christmas” and “Inventing Christmas,” have shown that many of the holiday’s most hallowed rites, traditions we think of as extending back at least as far as C. S. Lewis’s beloved Middle Ages, were invented less than 200 years ago by such 19th-century literary figures as Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore and, of course, Charles Dickens. More than Christian or pagan, Christmas is a Victorian fabrication.

Is this, though, such a bad thing? The unifying principle of Narnia, unlike the vast complex of invented history behind Middle-earth, isn’t an illusion of authenticity or purity. Rather, what binds all the elements of Lewis’s fantasy together is something more like love. Narnia consists of every story, legend, myth or image — pagan or Christian — that moved the author over the course of his life.

Our contemporary, semi-secular Christmas is similarly a collection of everything yearned for: warmth, plenty, peace, family, conviviality. Like Narnia, the holiday is a fantasy, but there are times when a fantasy is exactly what you need.

[Laura Miller, a staff writer at Salon, is the author of “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia.”]

Source / New York Times

Thanks to Jim Retherford / The Rag Blog

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