Harry Potter and the Redundant Exposition

Before I get into this, a couple of qualifiers: Firstly, I realise that I am not the target demographic for this series, and haven't been for a little over two decades; and secondly, I acknowledge these books were designed to be read with about a year between each, rather than hammering through the entire series in a couple of months.

However, them's the circumstances, so the best I can do is make you aware of that from the off.

And them's being the circumstances, my quick caption review of the original Harry Potter saga is...*pausefordramaticeffect*... It's alright.

In brief:

1. Philosopher's Stone is good, but the ending sucks
2. Chamber of Secrets is better, but only by merit of being Philosopher's Stone with a better ending
3. Prisoner of Azkaban is the same again with a smattering of character development
4. Goblet of Fire is the same again, only now stretched out to twice the length and with some forced character conflict.  Though it does have some awesome bits
5. Order of the Phoenix is where we're finally given something kinda new within the same old setting, but it is still just the same old setting, and things are really becoming a slog
6. Half Blood Prince is, again, far too long, but it does feel like the over-arching plot is finally going somewhere, and the climax is fantastic
7. Deathly Hallows wastes the awesome climax of Half Blood Prince by turning into a tedious camping trip for over half of its excessive length, but eventually turns the former's ending up to 11...irritatingly broken up with acres of exposition, then dying a death with a rubbish epilogue

A big issue I have with this entire series is the repetitiveness.  While the over-arching plots in each book are different - and actually very interesting in their own right - their connective tissue is exactly the same for the first four volumes: Harry's having a shitty time with the Dursleys until he goes to Hogwarts; Malfoy's a stereotypical cartoon bully; Snape's a petty prick; Dumbledore's unnecessarily ambiguous; there's a bit of quidditch, some holiday celebrations, someone says Expelliarmus, Harry faces down a big bad, and everyone goes home for the summer.

Even Order of the Phoenix, despite the introduction of Delores Umbridge, can't help settling into the same old beats once she's established.

Each book reminds me of an American TV show: intriguing plots marred by tedious and repetitive sub-plots there purely for the sake of dragging out proceedings.  In the first four books especially, there is maybe enough plot for two.

The characters are also problematic, mostly there to fill specific roles and enjoying zero development throughout the series.  The elder Dursleys are a perfect example of this: introduced from the off as reluctant and abusive guardians, they fulfil exactly the same role in exactly the same way throughout the entire series.  Dudley is the only one to enjoy any kind of development, but he gets so little page time, and is ejected from the story so abruptly, it's rendered moot.

Not all characters require development - McGonagall, for example, never wavers from her role as austere matriarch, but we're given enough glimpses of her underlying personality (especially during exchanges with Umbridge) that keep her interesting - but there are key characters throughout who supposedly have a huge impact on proceedings, but remain paper-thin.

Take James Potter: school bully, turned hero of The Order of the Phoenix.  Why the personality shift?  'He grew out of it'.  How'd he win over Lily?  'She saw something in him'.  What did he do that was so heroic?  'Stuff'.

For those who do get a spot of fleshing out, any 'development' or back-story is generally withheld for Dumbledore's annual exposition dump in the final act, when we're asked to retroactively sympathise with and/or be horrified by a character's behaviour.

I feel none suffer this more than Snape.  It's no spoiler at this point to say he risks life, limb and sanity in the course of spying on Voldemort for Dumbledore, attempting to atone for the guilt he feels over Lily Potter's death.  Noble as that may be, it doesn't change the fact that he's a prick.  For all his supposed love for Lily, it's evidently nothing compared to his loathing for her husband; a loathing so deep he projects it onto Harry, grudgingly protecting him when he has to, but otherwise going out of his way to make Lily's orphaned child's life a misery for six years.

That's not to say the character's necessarily bad - in fact he's quite entertaining, in a pantomime villain sort of way - I just struggle to reconcile the sympathy we're supposed to feel for him with the wilful arseholeishness he consistently demonstrates.  Heroic as he may ultimately prove to be, for the most part he's a petty, prissy and vindictive man-child.

Though when it comes to unsympathetic characters, few hold a candle to Harry himself.  Though he starts out wide-eyed and innocent, and his consistent mistakes can easily be put down to child-like naivety, by the time of Goblet of Fire it becomes apparent that he is immune to learning from his mistakes, and come Order of the Phoenix, it's difficult to see him as anything more than a thin-skinned, belligerent twat.  And this is no way helped by the praise constantly being heaped upon him by half the Order, insisting he's intuitive, intelligent and brave, while he's acting like a prickly, ignorant, highly-strung dipshit.  It might make for an accurate representation of a hormonal teenager, but a likeable protagonist he is not.

It would justify Snape's attitude towards him if Snape wasn't so petty in his attacks.

Fortunately. there are some strong characters amidst the weak.  Ron and Hermione are a good double act, and despite what Rowling has said on the matter, I thought their relationship developed well.  Ginny enjoys a solid arch from mute, love-struck ten year-old to boisterous, self-assured young woman with an adventurous and mischievous streak.  Even Fred & George - the perennial pranksters - grow from childish japery, to savvy business men.

None, however, see quite the development of Neville Longbottom.  From simpering mouse, to sword-wielding badass.  From frightened little flower with a love of botany, to laughing off torture and attacking people with man-eating off-cuts.  One second he's screaming in fiery anguish, and the next he's decapitating a giant snake.

"You think I've got time to stop and recover from all-consuming agony when there are still bitches to be spanked like an E.L. James heroine?  What do I look like, some kind of girly-girl?  I'm Neville Fucking Longbottom!  I came here to chew bubblegum and to kick ass.  And since I'm all out of bubblegum, the still beating hearts of my fallen enemies will have to do!"

Overall, I find myself frustrated with the series: The over-arching story isn't exactly original, but it is solidly handled in an at-the-time somewhat unique setting; and the plots of each novel are strong, and entertaining, when Rowling finally gets around to them.  Unfortunately, there is far too much chaff to wade through to get properly invested in the stories, the strongest characters are sidelined in favour of unlikable gits, there's far too big a reliance on exposition to fill the gaping holes in the plot, and I haven't seen so slack and unsatisfactory an ending since Bioware's first swing at Mass Effect 3.

I Don't Believe in Gravity...

In a previous post, I suggested the Big Bang may not have been the almighty universe-spawner it’s made out to be (if the universe did expand from a single point, wouldn’t it have done so in a uniform fashion, rather than bits of it clustering together to form galaxies and nebulae and whatnot?).  For the latest episode of Bollocks My Scientifically Illiterate Brain Comes Up With During Its Downtime, I’m going to attempt to explain why I don’t believe in gravity… Buckle up, kids!

As I said previously, such nonsense is not born from - or backed by - any cold, hard scientific knowledge; it is merely how I interpret what little I’ve picked up from what little I’ve read and watched on the subject.  This particular theory spawned from an interview Prof. Brian Cox gave with Robert Lewellyn, when he mentioned massless particles are always moving at the speed of light.  Not from any outside influence (unless one considers the (or a...) Big Bang the initial ‘push’); it’s simply what they do (28m22s):

(the whole thing’s worth watching)

One thing that has long bothered me in physics is how light appears to be affected by gravity.  Light bends around planets, supposedly diverted off course by the planet’s gravitational pull, but if the strength of gravitational attraction is determined by mass, how can something massless be affected by it at all?

It depends on how you view gravity.  The idea of gravity as an attracting force between objects of mass was initially (supposedly) put forward by Newton, and was the established view for centuries.  Then Einstein came along:



So the fact that light is always moving means it isn’t attracted to the object at all; it just follows the curve of the object’s impression in the fabric of space-time.

This also helps answer another query: A black-hole is an object of such dense mass that even light can’t escape its ‘pull’.  However, a black-hole is (at least initially) no more massive than the star that formed it - it’s simply more compact - so why is its gravitational pull apparently so much stronger, to the point that even light can’t escape?  Stars come in a range of sizes, from those smaller than our own sun, to those that could swallow our entire solar system as an appetizer.  And yet, no matter how big, all stars emit light, while, no matter how small, all black-holes swallow it.

Going back to the demonstration above, if you were to compact the weight in the centre of the sheet to a fraction of the size, it would sink just as deeply into the fabric (as it’s no lighter or heavier than it was), but the diameter of its impression would be smaller, and so its sides steeper.  In terms of a black-hole, its mass is packed so tightly that the ‘sides’ of its impression become sheer.  Therefore, regardless of how massive (or not) the core of the black-hole is, the shape of its impression on space-time causes anything caught in its ‘pull’ - no matter the speed it’s travelling, or its angle of approach - to be diverted directly to its centre.

But what about objects of mass themselves?  They certainly appear to be attracted to each other, but are they really?  What if, like light, everything in the universe is moving at its own pace, relative to its mass?

Well, everything is.  Supermassive black-holes drift through the cosmos, orbited by stars, that are orbited by planets, that are orbited by satellites; the smaller objects moving at the speed of the larger, plus their own orbiting speed.

So, if everything from light to black-holes is moving at its own pace, and its path through the universe is only interrupted when it hits the space-time impression of another object, then where does gravity come into it?

It’s like a shadow.  A shadow isn’t a tangible thing; it’s simply the effect of blocked light.  It seems to me that gravity isn’t an attracting force at all; it merely describes an object’s interaction with another object’s space-time impression.

In the next episode: what if light is space-time?