Transcript
[0:03] Welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. And you're joining us for part two of the discussion I had, that's Julia Golding, with Jacob Rennaker about the nature of evil in fantasy. We're about to move from a quote by the poet Auden to look at the nature of evil in the world of Harry Potter.
[0:34] Auden, who also is a philosopher, he says, good can imagine evil, but evil cannot imagine good. And here we can link, I think, to the world of Harry Potter, because what you see in the Voldemort world, the Death Eater world, is that they have cut themselves off to the point where they do not conceive of the value of the good.
[1:08] And Harry can, and others, and Dumbledore can, feel what it's like to be evil. They recognize that in themselves, and they can empathize with Voldemort. When we hear about Voldemort's background, it's clear that Dumbledore feels sorry for the Tom Riddle character and his upbringing and harry um sympathizes with creature the the house elf who seems very hostile so they can imagine and of course creature is an in um in an enslaved, house elf so again he's a bit like an orc he hasn't had the chance to sort of be different um at that point so i think you do get a dark lord in harry potter and he also he's also called the dark lord but there is also the story of how the dark lord is made so while harry potter, it does seem a bit odd that you choose to be in slytherin and you choose to go that way if you've come from a not from a sort of more neutral less evil background you know when you get off the train oh right i'm gonna take a real real dark turn here but um.
[2:29] Yeah, there is an attempt within the way the stories are written to give more shading to how you get to be that. And it's about power, really. So I think, whereas we said that evil is sort of a moral evil that's the driver in sort of Narnia and Lord of the Rings and others. But they also share this idea that it's about taking power over others. I think that in a non-religious context, because I don't think Harry Potter has a religious framework, is the element that's carried over into the Harry Potter world. What's your view on evil in Harry Potter? Yeah, that's really interesting. I think in part for plot purposes, you have evil as an external struggle, where you have these clearly delineated lines where, Dumbledore is explicitly referring to Voldemort as evil, and you can see based on their actions, right, so you have torture, right, it's like killing, torturing, certain spells are... Racism. Unforgivable, because they're categorically framed as evil.
[3:48] Within individuals, it's again, I think you're talking about that kind of like the internal frame of reference. So is Snape an obsessive lover or is he a hero, right? Depending on what is he from his perspective, depending on how you're seeing his story, you could see him as either one of those. How does he see himself given what he experienced? um and then there's indications of of both there right that it's not cut and dried for for him so he's a fascinating study um uh dumbledore even right so you have him as oh you know this wise loving figure but sometimes he seems to be count like really calculating and unemotional in some places and just kind of like setting gears turning and using and using state and using harry right no No, no, exactly. So he's a fattened pig or something at one stage, which is really shocking. You know, you're just fattening him up like a pig. And I think you need that so that it's not too saccharine.
[4:56] You've got to question the goods. Right. And even for Voldemort, back to that, you know, with Tom Riddle, like how was he raised? And I think you definitely have Harry and Tom Riddle being set as kind of foils for each other, right? Both having been disadvantaged as children without a natural family, being raised in forced conditions of squalor or oppression, but then seeing one chooses one way, one chooses the other way. But even then, with Tom Riddle, how do we see...
[5:30] Voldemort when we see him in that kind of you know in between it's as like this little it's a it's a baby so is voldemort really this like personification of evil like yes we do see that but is he also just like a stymied uh little baby soul who hasn't learned how to grow up uh yeah right and that hasn't been able to grow past that kind of like infantile state of the ego go and me and just like thinking of everything in terms of them um so i think we do get a glimpse of that uh there in uh in deathly hallows of a different way to be able to see voldemort well not dismissing the evils and you know you know uh i don't say genocide but like just you know this kind of uh cleanly you know it's it's you know a magicide uh of of wiping out certain individuals he's the psychopath who's taken over isn't he which we you know you see that in uh sort of dictators the psychopathic personality who manages to get their hooks into people and take over but within um voldemort you've got the added thing that because he's abusing magic which is like a kind of drug equivalent that it starts to strip away his humanity in a real physical way within the rules of that magic world so he is denatured he does become more snake-like and right um in a in a way by the.
[6:59] Time we meet voldemort in his adult form i think he's much less interesting as an evil character than some of her other evil characters so i'm particularly fond of delores umbridge who is a complete monster but she is the sweetest character you'd ever yeah i mean i think she's just a wonderful original character actually And she does remind me of the Hannah Arendt.
[7:26] She's the philosopher who said about the Nuremberg trials, the banality of it, that you can see Dolores Umbridge as that kind of bureaucratic person who's excusing bad deeds for some sort of strange logic of their own. and it's all very banal. It's rules and regulations and cutting down on anything lovely or beautiful or free or self-expressive. I think she's a particularly great evil character.
[8:03] Yeah, Umbridge is good. And on the flip side of that, the Dursleys are the Dursleys' evil. So, like, depending on, right, or is it just, or is it that banality? Is it the, are these systems of power that are actually, what are creating the evil itself and individuals are either kind of, like, implicitly acquiescing to them, and it's the larger structural issues, like we were saying with Arendt, with Hannah Arendt, a study of.
[8:34] Uh of nazis and how people were acting within that system it wasn't that they that some of these people weren't all in on uh you know racial supremacy but it was rather that it was within a system that they were following orders and it was just them acquiescing to larger structures of power and it was those larger structures of power that were the actual evil not this kind of of like active generative evil within some of those individuals who are the drivers of vehicles between uh death camps so i think yeah so but but umbridge gives an example of somebody who's acting within a system of power and certainly you see her kind of like personal she's able to use that system of power to fulfill certain needs that she has to exercise power over individuals that certainly fills her and actually gives her some sort of generative evil capital to be able to use uh within the system um yeah i think that the dursleys need to be treated separately so i think vernon dursley is monstrous he's a kind of cruel stepfather figure type you know almost fairy tale like um no self-awareness um what's her name pruna not prunella um petunia uh petunia she.
[10:01] That is rooted in her being scarred by seeing what's happened to her sister. So there's an element of jealousy, but there's also an element of fear. And of course, her sister is killed as a result of a magic battle. So there's obviously scarring. No wonder she wants nothing to do with magic. But then you've got Dudley, who actually changes. So Dudley actually, if you remember, he becomes, after Harry saves him, he actually has a sort of he's not so bad after all so he's not he's definitely not evil is he is he's a bully who has learned a bit and not to be a bully by the end and so he's on a more, redemptive journey but just before we leave harry potter i was thinking that um the way that creatures are dealt with there that the dementors who are uh
[10:52] external manifestations of our internal struggles and depression. I think they're fascinating. They're not exactly evil, but they are because they don't seem to have a self.
[11:07] They're sort of like spirits of some sort. It's hard to classify them, but they are attracted to the evil. So they attach themselves to the Voldemort side in the same way as the wargs in Tolkien sort of attach themselves to orcs rather than being like the man's best friend in the house you know they go their nature suits them to be the tools or part of that world, so yeah it's I wouldn't say that Dementors are evil though because they are something we produce I don't know what do you think I think Dementors yeah yeah, yeah because they don't yeah they don't well but that i guess i i think that that goes back to that hannah aren't uh right kind of philosophical uh idea that evil exists in structures right so if dementors aren't kind of this active generative evil but they're merely complicit in the system and the system is using these for their evil ends then by virtue of the fact that they're.
[12:16] They're functioning within that and they're not opting out of it then i guess it's it's kind of a, tacit evil rather than something that is a more uh active yeah generative um causative evil so, yeah that's it you remember the ministry of magic are using dementors as prison guards Right, right, right, right. When they're supposedly good before the takeover. So the Ministry of Magic, well, I don't think J.K. Rowling ever suggests the Ministry of Magic is good, because they've always had a problem with Dumbledore and others. But you can tell that they are definitely in the Shades of Grey area, because they are using these incredibly unpleasant creatures in order to keep down dangerous people. I mean, this is the area where I find an approach to evil far more interesting and nuanced than just Voldemort himself, who, yeah, I wouldn't want to join
[13:18] Voldemort's team. There's no temptation for me to join his team. You don't get anything, really, other than being a minion. I do.
[13:27] Well, unless you want to be a minion. I mean, but that's another conversation.
[13:32] So moving on from, we're not going to be able to cover all fantasy evil, but another Another large area which we haven't yet dealt with, so if anyone out there is thinking of how do I tackle evil, we've done the sort of evil around power very much exhibited in Harry Potter, but there is the fairy tale, folk tale evil, which belongs to all of us. And thinking of the fairy tales we tell, the sort of Hansel and Gretel style fairy tales, evil there is often a version of criminal behavior so bluebeard for example that story is a wife abuser uh hansel and gretel is what we would call a pedophile of sorts or cannibal i mean obviously luring children for it with her sort of um house made of sweets for nefarious purposes They're sort of fractures. It's like you're taking horrible human behavior, putting them through a fairy tale lens to make a story which is both a warning and something entertaining so that we can identify that.
[14:51] The criminal behavior amongst us have you got a fairy a favorite evil within a fairy folktale, context well see i don't know what what do you think of evil stepmothers as, uh cross cross fairy tales like how yeah how would you see the fairy stepmother trope that appears in several fairy tales how would how would you see that as commenting on more societal uh evil there i think that links to the wit i think it's the same figure and the witch is the um.
[15:30] The female power that you don't like but it's also the intergenerational um you know the younger model coming along taking over from the older i mean there's a sort of jealousy aspect there it's It's like, it's lots of mirrors with reflections in fairy tales, of course. The wicked stepmother is that reflection of all the bad sides of female power. And you kind of separate it off rather than keeping it within one character. You put one lot over in a wicked stepmother. And being stepmother means that you don't have to own it because you're not a blood relation. And you keep all that's good and pure in your heroine. So Snow White. And i think that's how i handle it it's a way of um i mean they're having fun but you can obviously see behaviors where there have been second wives who come in and abuse their children of the you know the first marriage so it's it's yeah i i think that that kind of evil because it's not referring having said that there are fairy tales like within the hands christian Anderson world which are religious tales I mean they are Christian fairy tales but mostly in the sort of world of fairy tales as we think of it it's outside of that kind of framework so I feel as though it's reflecting on crime and punishment really.
[16:57] Because there's a lot about punishment in fairy tales. Right. Right. Yeah. Anyway, that's probably... That's the easiest one, I think, because it does appear so much in fairy tales that that's for brightening the image that that figure holds. I don't know what that says about me, but it holds a particularly pernicious evil there that seems so yeah malicious malevolent that is something that you're you're expecting i guess you know the difference between the expectations of something that might be more nurturing and it's actually turned to in some cases you know torture rather than flooring you know floor we go causing to flourish uh a more yeah like a tamping down a just complete ruin a grinding down uh and just i don't know if it's yeah the the difference between the expectation.
[17:59] And what is actually given there that reversal that just seems to create that uh yeah the the sense of like visceral evil that i think is ed4 step does uh wicked stepmothers to to evoke, yeah and i think there's also the other the other strand which i came to mind when i was thinking about this is the promise that you can overcome evil, but sometimes with dubious behavior. So I'm thinking of Jack and the Beanstalk. So if you actually think about it from the point of view of the giant, Jack is a thief. He comes and nicks all his best stuff and escapes and then kills him by cutting down the beanstalk. So Jack is a murderer as well, but that's not the way the tale is normally told um the the giant is imagined as a sort of threat and a danger, that the clever folk hero outwits and kills it's they overcome the monster but i think you know it would be if you're going to use this in a sort of um fantasy novel context you'd probably want to actually think about it more from the point of view of the giant these days because that's the more original way of looking at it. Okay, so the last area before we complete our roundup of evil in fantasy I wanted
[19:21] to think about was in science fiction context. Of course, there are many, many ways of thinking about evil.
[19:28] But one perennial since Frankenstein is the idea of the scientist as the overreacher. So again, it may have a...
[19:43] So Oppenheimer, I've become a destroyer of worlds religious context to it, that you're seizing too much power for yourself. Prometheus, in fact, let's go back to the Greeks. But it can be seen in a purely humanistic terms without any sort of religious or belief in anything beyond our human experience world. And that evil scientist figure is pretty prevalent. If you actually go to Frankenstein, of course, Frankenstein isn't evil. The result of what he does is evil, but he himself is not evil. Nor is the creature. So it's a very ambivalent world in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. But then we get things like The Island of Dr. Morrow, which is the H.G. Wells story, which is a vivisectionist, horrible scientist. Actually, H.G. Wells, of course, with his projection of the future, is also a fascinating person to think about in treating of good and evil. But anyway, this evil scientist idea is definitely something you see within science fiction. Have you got a favorite evil scientist? The overreacher?
[21:01] Yeah, so you mentioned two really good ones there with Dr. Moreau, who's just trying to twist twist creation twist twist animals into something different right to kind of pull them unwillingly out of their kind of sphere of existence and being to make them into something else but with with mary shelley's frankenstein dr frankenstein that so it's not again like it's.
[21:29] Not that he's actively like evil doing this cackling right he's just like he's experimenting he wants to understand life and he just like really this drive for knowledge to understand what is it that sparks life and and allows for life to exist he wants to unlock that so it's this kind of you know this it's not quite foul it's faustian in the sense that it's uh it's a drive for complete knowledge uh unequivocal knowledge of the largest secrets of of life the universe and everything but it's also there what he does afterwards is then he just runs right once this life is created he doesn't know what to do with it doesn't want to continue to yeah yeah and so like so he's evil in the sense like his physical absence from uh the creature's his life that he is this type of evil that there is a type of evil that will do something, set something up, create something for others, and then just leave without just, you know.
[22:40] Abandoning all sense of responsibility like moral responsibility for a life that you created that leaving and then he's just fleeing and then the monster uh monster the the creature who the who dr frankenstein sees as a monster um and who certain other people see as a monster but one of the interesting things there is you see the creature's internal life right that they're They're not evil because they were just called into existence. And then when they're interacting with this little girl in the woods, he's reading Paradise Lost. He's actually learning, growing, and he, in these ways, is becoming a much more moral figure than his own creator.
[23:32] But then the fact that he is left utterly alone When the doctor has the ability to, in theory, create a companion for this creature to be able to share that kind of similar type of existence, but the doctor starts doing it, Dr. Frankenstein starts assembling it, but then decides he can't do that again, and then just pulls it all apart and ruins it. That's when the creature turns and says like okay you're going to leave me alone you're abandoning me and you're removing any chance i have of actual companionship in this world my now my goal is to take everything you love and hold dear from you and pursue you to the end of the world and by like taking things away from you in your life so there's again that like evil as the absence of good, but this one is like kind of the actively active removal of good from the lives of other people that you kind of see, that as an evil, not that the character was inherently evil, but that the actions that they kind of turn towards are.
[24:40] Are you know kind of increasing evil in that environment yeah it's the sort of idea that we're tabula rasa when we're born and and then it's what's written upon us which makes us evil or good in that case uh so it's the effect of the actions upon others creates the evil in that case um but on the following up the sort of the creation of the scientific version of this the sort of overreach which is where i was thinking about this which is obviously our climate change, runaway climate change problem, which is evil, and we've all contributed to it. I think this is an area where you can see a sort of collectivization of evil. And thinking about it in terms of sci-fi, I was thinking of, there's lots of empires out there who are imagined like this. So the Borg in Star Wars, Star Trek, sorry, Star Trek.
[25:33] But also in In Doctor Who, you've got the Daleks and the Cybermen. They both have this sort of initiation where somebody sets off this, you know, like Davros invents the Daleks and off they go, replicating that. So you've got this idea that there's a scientific evil that sort of you get it going and it runs away. Probably when they were thinking about that, it was much more pre-climate change. It was more to do with nuclear, the arms race or something like that maybe was in the mind of people at that time. But we now have got the power to destroy ourselves many times over, Chewie thought. So it's not surprising that evil's becoming associated with this technological version of it. And I suppose I mentioned Star Wars. So Star Wars does have this.
[26:27] Religious aspect of the force which is conceived of as almost like a spirit but is a spiritual force isn't it so it has that frame but it does also have its clone wars its star fader who's like half machine half person it has its mechanized version of it as well and it sort of marries the two in that world which i think is quite interesting uh it gives more depth to the star wars world as a result yeah stories yeah stories is really interesting especially when you're looking at like the evolution of the storytelling with evil and like so the force has, a dark side as well as the light side right so forces is what permeates uh but definitely you see that there's in the first in the original trilogy there's a setup that you know the empire is evil in alliance with the dark side of this of this of this force in some ways but the empire also is this structural evil that's kind of set on yeah and when power is concentrated in a darth vader in an emperor palpatine that there's kind of an embodiment of evil um that can be fought but when that, isn't present like in the prequels there's kind of a shift in how you're looking at.
[27:53] What is evil so it becomes really the focus is on the political system itself uh in the prequel trilogy that it's really it's not again it's not a character study of a hero's journey fighting an evil empire and vanquishing a head centralized evil it's this showing how this interconnected, network of individuals with different motives most of whom want power for themselves when these individuals want power get in touch with each other and play off of each other then that's where that's creates the foundation for individuals to rise to power and then co-opt the entire system so it's it is really interesting and you see the move then in focusing on rather luke skywalker who never is it doesn't seem to be tempted terribly by the dark side he seems to be you know kind of like uh it's good good he's he's good he's good at heart and he's taking the fight to this empire it's kind of you know david and goliath you know small righteous character who's fighting insurmountable uh evil and conquering it but whereas the prequels focus on this anakin character who spoilers if you're not familiar with star wars becomes darth vader there you see this kind of internal instead of this external struggle it's the internal.
[29:15] Uh vacillation between good evil that you're both have it there and then by the end of the uh the original trilogy then you see kind of this kind of like redemption of darth vader um but it's only seeing it in the context of the prequels that you really see this yeah again this like vacillation this potentiality for both good and evil and then what circumstances that are are structural, that are systemic, that allow for an individual and almost shape an individual.
[29:47] And nudge them toward this dark side path because he's actually doing the reason Darth Vader and Anakin kind of turns to the dark side is, but it was to save his wife, uh, from. I always find that slightly, uh, the prequels I find quite weak in this sort of, the ideas are potentially interesting, but the execution.
[30:09] Yes. Might go with. I do not disagree with you. Yeah. And also, So we're going to have to wind up this chat now, but I can't believe we've got all the way through without talking about Gollum. Because in a way, the role that Darth Vader plays is a bit like Gollum, because he saves the day right at the very end, though he does it through more of a repentance and seeing, whereas Gollum never does. And Gollum, of course, is a wonderful study of those forces within us which are tearing us apart internally um and become schizophrenic in a two-sided not in the medical sense but a two-sided personality as a result that's what evil does it divides us from our true self or, makes us smaller um in all in all sorts of ways so right we've it's been quite a tour and we've missed out game of thrones and all sorts of other things we could have touched on and many many more so i apologize to you if we didn't touch on your favorite, favorite fantasy franchise.
[31:13] Yeah, we haven't even touched Marvel. There's so much more out there. Anyway, we're going to stop there, but I do think we should have some fun at the end because we always have this question, or almost always, where in all the fantasy worlds is it the best to be something? And of course, today, I need to ask you, where in all the fantasy worlds is it best to be a Dark Lord?
[31:35] So this is going to be, this might sound odd, but I would say the world, the fantasy world of Bluey. Okay. The cartoon dogs. And this is what, so. I'm going to have to explain this because I don't know much about this cartoon. I know it's been a big thing for those with small children.
[31:56] Okay, well, I have a small child. There you go. You're out of it. Yeah, so this is right. so so it's.
[32:04] It's it's certainly a world where that would be it would perhaps be the dark lord's greatest challenge to conquer uh in the sense that uh that the individuals you would be trying to lord over uh would i have a certain degree of uh i know there's there there's there's a sense of optimism a sense of um i don't know like honest reckoning with one's and with the one's own feelings and the feelings of others so a dark lord would have to in this world actually face their own feelings and like previous trauma which is something that typically doesn't happen in you're basically going to put your dark lord through therapy that's what you're telling this is essentially it's essentially what you're doing there right the the biggest challenge that a dark lord has is themselves right that's the the darkest challenge is facing her own darkness so to really kind of turn that on its head instead of saying set them on a world to just like conquer and do what they their path of least resistance for a dark lord is pillaging murdering torturing that's easy that's played out right what happens.
[33:17] When you put a dark lord in a world that holds you accountable for your feelings and like requires you to kind of like engage with your own past your own present why you're feeling what you're feeling and requires you to like work through that in some way to face that I think that.
[33:37] Would be the best place for a dark lord from the dark lord's perspective that might not be what they think they want at the beginning but it's really what they need oh yeah screenwriters ranchers not what they want is what they need right i've been thinking about this and um i think we didn't spend did we mention milton um we should have done if we didn't but i think i would go old school on this that the best place to be a dark lord is to be in Milton's Paradise Lost, his poetic version of the sort of Christian story, because you get such great words and you get to be powerful and you get to fall and raise armies and you get great speeches.
[34:26] And you get to set up everybody else's idea of what a proud dark lord byronic sort of hero is that's anachronistic but you know it all comes from that milton satan um so i wouldn't mind stomping around in my cloven feet and you know or whatever just for that would be an imaginatively exciting place to be so you know you're going to be defeated that's the only depressing thing about it um because that's what you know it's going to happen within that context so i'll go in i'll go into paradise lost that's where i'm going.
[35:03] Jacob I endorse that fully yeah thanks so much for your thanks so much for your time and thank you everyone for listening.
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