A HogPro in California wrote me last week about his trip to see the Half-Blood Prince movie and the consequent discussion he had with his wife about whether alchemical story elements can translate from page to screen and survive in such a way to have the signature cathartic effect such things have on readers. He said “No way” but the wife disagrees. He submits the question here for discussion, even arbitration.
First, the letter about the movie:
Last night the wife and I saw Half-Blood Prince in Imax. The way they rearranged story elements to fit [it all] into a 150-minute movie was clever in many cases. We never got the “Harry learns it was Snape who told Voldemort” scene, which changes the crisis event significantly. There is one wholly new scene with significant implications – I’d be very curious to know the reasons behind it, beyond a chance for another action sequence.
But watchers of the films still have no idea that Bill Weasley exists, so it’s hard to see how we can have the wedding in the next movie. I can think of three possibilities:
1 – Fleur marries Charlie, whose name has at least been *mentioned* back in the first film.
2 – Fleur marries Fred or George – lucky boy, marrying a gorgeous older woman!
3 – Lupin and Tonks take their place as the alchemical couple. This loses the red king/white queen aspect, but these two are the couple that produces the orphan. That’s a separation that Rowling had already made, and such a move would reunite them.
On the other hand, there was a report somewhere that the young actress who played Gabrielle Delacour will appear in Deathly Hallows, which would only make sense if there’s a wedding with Fleur.
This whole topic led to a discussion over dinner on which [my wife and I] disagreed – can an alchemical tale be portrayed sufficiently in a movie? I think the answer is no, because it seems that it depends very much on the words that the author chooses to describe elements of the story, as well as *which* elements the author chooses to mention. The audience member may not catch the significance of a red sunset or a golden dawn that appears on screen, but when the author guides our attention there, that’s a signal. When everything is audio/visual, much of the impression can be limited by the viewer’s vocabulary.
[My wife], though, thinks that visuals and dialog can convey the elements. Of course, she hasn’t read your stuff on alchemy, so she may be less aware of just what goes into telling an alchemical tale.
So what do you think – might this be worthy of a topic for the AllPros to have a go at?
It certainly is.
My answer is in two parts, “no” and then, “well, maybe.”
The “no” comes from my thinking that the power of literary alchemy is in the Primary Imagination which, if I remember Coleridge correctly, is the echo in the ephemeral of the eternal and Divine “I am.” Movies just leave too little to the imagination for an anagogical experience, right? There is nothing in the visual intake of a film, as far as I know or recall, that engages a creative quality of mind that echoes anything, not to mention that faculty in us “continuous with the unity of existence.” It’s not the sunset per se and the colors, which can be created much more vividly on screen than in our mind generated versions from text, but the internal experience of a sunset we create via the images called up in us by that text. Identification with hero/heroine and catharsis work alchemically to re-shape us, I’m suggesting, because of the activity of the imagination. Passive witness, sitting in a theatre or at home in front of the teevee, cannot be that active internal imaginative experience.
My “well, maybe…” is the obvious objection to that theory — and an objection to which I do not have a great answer — namely, staged drama, the origin of alchemy in English letters. Wouldn’t alchemy not work on the stage for the reasons I’m saying it doesn’t work on screen?
But, duh, it does work on stage.
My not quite satisfying response to this objection would be that watching a play differs dramatically (sic) from viewing film because, no matter how involved the stage setting, a play requires a tremendous suspension of disbelief and work of imagination to believe the story is really happening.
Your thoughts?
You are right — Harry didn’t find out that Snape was the evesdropper. I totally forgot. That said, in a way it turned out okay for me as Snape’s film “shush” to Harry under the Tower wouldn’t have happened. That “shush” ended up being my favorite HP film revisionism to date. It struck me as very intimate — Harry instantly decides to trust Snape. Rickman’s performance at that moment is brilliant (as usual) and he actually brings something *new* to his character at that particular moment (in my opinion). And I found it very shrewd of Kloves (for a change). No alchemy commentary from me, but I am sure John will be able to weave it in the direction.
Interesting question. I don’t think the alchemy works as well in Harry Potter as it should, but that isn’t because it’s a movie. That’s because the screenwriter and director apparently don’t understand that it’s in the books or they have chosen to ignore it. Some of the things are there, but they always seem to back away from really nailing any of the HP books. Perhaps Rowling should have given them a quick lesson in alchemy and pointed out things, from the first movies, that needed to be included. But she was a bit busy back then, and I think she probably has just made peace with the movies not being the books. Wish the rest of us could, but I doubt that we ever will be.
The reason I think it can (alchemy) work on the screen is that I watched a movie on TV and have watched it since, just to make sure I was seeing all kinds of alchemical symbols in the movie. The movie isn’t a particularly good one, and it’s not the sort I even like. But I was bored one afternoon, and wanted to see what Liam Neeson would do with the movie.
The movie was “The Haunting”, which is a remake of the one done in 1963. I didn’t ever see that one, as I don’t like horror movies, and never watched them back then. So what this version had was all the alchemical colors in the right places attached to appropriate characters. I think Neeson was usually in black, one character wore white, especially towards the end of the movie, and one woman was in red. But the thing that really stood out were the scenes at the end where the cupids were gold.
Whether or not the director got it right, I couldn’t say. I don’t remember the story that well. But it was the use of color that struck me. So the visual use of alchemy can work. And I’ve seen it in other movies. Just can’t think of any off the top of my head.
I think there is quite a bit of it in Harry Potter, but where it falls short is that the parts of the story that go with the colors or symbols are changed or left out. For instance, there was the use of the fire and water in the Cave, but the nasty drink was grey instead of green. When Harry yelled at Snape at the end and Snape blocked him and kept Bellatrix from attacking Harry, there was no Buckbeak, the hippogriff, to rescue Harry.
But at the end of the movie, when they are talking, the sky has a gold to it that isn’t in the rest of the movie, and then we see one of my favorite red/gold symbols as one of the last images on the screen when Fawkes circles around the Tower. Nice.
I wonder sometimes, in movies, if directors use alchemical colors for characters or scenes because they just work and they know that black, white, red or gold will convey a certain feeling in the viewer, but that the director doesn’t really understand why it works. It’s tradition, like people accepting that if a character is dressed in black the viewer is supposed to be suspicious of that character; someone in white is probably good. Gold is a good color that makes everyone feel good. Think of how they now use all the filters to make a movie darker without filming it in the dark, but then if things have a positive ending, the color palette is in shades of gold by the end of the movie.
Those are subtle things that don’t necessarily say that alchemy was intentionally used, but I think it does show that it works when we watch, even on the big screen.
I’d like to see a movie where the writer/director understand the usefulness of alchemy and see if it would come across the way we read it. It think if it’s done right, it would – or at least, it could.
Pat
Very good comments, both Pat & professor mum. I was thinking just briefly on this. I too thought, no, they probably couldn’t sufficiently translate literary alchemy into screen alchemy. Two very different mediums & all. But they can translate quite a few elements & there are elements that work both as literary devices & film devices, certain colors & imagery, for example. The birds Draco uses in the vanishing cabinet for instance.
Alchemy probably works best, though, in film if it’s written for the screen specifically rather than adapted from a book. But I suppose it depends on the skill of the screenwriter.
How’s that for a waffling post? 🙂
My specialty is Renaissance drama, so here’s some food for thought.
Renaissance drama, including Shakespeare, is largely a theater of words. People did not say they were going to “see” a play; they said they were going to “hear” a play, which survives in our word “audience.” Audiences were accustomed to listening to very long, complex sermons on a regular basis, and they were quite engaged and active: if you attend a performance at the Blackfriars or the Globe–visible in *HBP*!–you will see this still in action. Some even believe that the Globe was built on alchemical principles, though I am very, very dubious about that (read: think this is a lot of hooey.) Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s theater is one where the space and the visual elements are arranged symbolically and consistently: an audience member who listened carefully would be able to interpret abstract concepts fairly well. In fact, Ben Jonson’s play *The Alchemist* makes fun of fake alchemists and that would be hard to do with an audience who didn’t understand anything about alchemy.
Movies, however, are “moving pictures.” They tell their stories almost entirely visually. If they were transmitting any kind of alchemical allegory, it would be similar to those purely visual books intended for adepts that ended with a man and a woman holding their fingers to their lips: you would have to know the concepts going in.
John wrote:
Well, I’m not prepared to buy this. I don’t think the imagination/experiential quality you’re describing is absent from film as a form; it’s just absent from most movies.
The biggest difference I see between books and movies involve the ways audiences participate with the medium itself. Reading is, in some ways, a necessarily analytical exercise that presents discrete bits of information in somewhat logical, sequential ways that ask the reader to piece it all together. Hence, reading can be a slow and methodical process, especially of a complex work. As a visual medium, film often works to tell a sequentially ordered story via moving imagery. Visual media typically present the viewer with composite information, experienced “all at once.” And films hit the viewer with one visual composite after another. Thus, unpacking a film is a radically different process than doing so with a book — especially when you experience it in a theater for the first time.
So, I don’t think “watching” is necessarily a more “passive” experience than reading. Most popular movies don’t ask much of their audiences, but neither do many popular books. In my research into games and narrative, I stumbled into a well-known film scholar, Torben Grodal. He has pieced together a different concept of narrative that doesn’t emphasize coherent storylines and plot-arcs, but re-imagines the story experience as a cognitive one constructed around a fairly primal set of responses. The audience perceives a stimulus, undergoes an emotional response, makes a decision based on that emotion, and then works to enact that decision. As structures generally built around crises and conflict then, stories in any media utilize this model to engender an experience wherein the audience invests themselves into the plot.
All this is to say that I sometimes wonder if we don’t over-theorize a particular form, rather than see it as a particular set of tools that can convey a pretty basic experience common to many people. The argument that film can’t convey complexity the way a novel can isn’t that far removed from the earlier argument that prose novels weren’t as edifying and complex as epic poetry. And the Greeks/Romans both carried on a fairly similar debate about written versus oral rhetoric.
One thing should be taken into account here when dealing with audiences: The argument could be made that most movie audiences are illiterate when it comes to films (and, to a bigger extent than I care to admit, I would count myself among them). I’ve become more and more fascinated/concerned by the fact that we do extremely little (in all truth, it is virtually nothing) to teach basic film and media literacy in public schools when the visual has become the primary form of communication in modern industrialized nations. Even some third-world populations have better access to the Internet than they have to a library.
Thank you all for sharing these thoughts.
DTLW: I wasn’t talking about the “unpacking” of a movie (and, as I have said here before, count me among those unable to “read” a film at any depth) or its alchemical components. The post was supposed to be about the experience of alchemical meaning and transformation in stories we enter into via film. The difference, I think, between what I’m talking about and that you discussed is being hit with a hammer and thinking during and after being hit about how we think and feel about being hit. Alchemy in story isn’t “got” by understanding it but by its penetration to a part of the person that is not conscious. I don’t think that happens in movies for the reasons I stated.
MoonyProf: You know, of course, that no less an authority on Medieval and Renaissance hermeticism than Frances Yates argues that the Globe is an alchemical structure in support of the plays performed there delivering transformative, even occultic meaning. I’d love to read why you think the venerable Yates is spewing “hooey” in her ‘On Memory.’ Other than that tick, your point about a play’s “audience” versus movie “viewers” really helped me with that objection to my denial of a film alchemy.
RevGeorge: Your waffle, I think, is appropriate (as usual). If there is a film alchemy, I think it will have to be film specific according to the means to effects in that medium rather than the tit-for-tat translation of colors frok a book to screen. Which I think takes us back to DTLW’s point about the need for a film literacy that differs from book literacy for film viewers and, more important (?), for film makers. Where is the Shakespeare or Dickens of movie makers whose works affirm our best qualities and cleans of our failings?
Eeyore: I don’t dispute that alchemical texts can be translated mechanically to the screen. I just disagree that this carries the effect in film that the reader gets in his engagement with those colors, symbols, and character-ciphers s/he gets in poetry, plays, or novels.
MoonyProf: You know, of course, that no less an authority on Medieval and Renaissance hermeticism than Frances Yates argues that the Globe is an alchemical structure in support of the plays performed there delivering transformative, even occultic meaning. I’d love to read why you think the venerable Yayes is spewing “hooey” in her ‘On Memory.’–
For very, very good reasons.
I was not referring to Yates, whose work I own, read, and enjoy. She shows a good grasp of theater history. I was referring to more recent “scholarship” concerning the building of the Globe.
It is extremely annoying to unteach these “theories.” For example, the same group of people who swear that the Globe is built along Rosicrucian lines usually also insist that it was secretly constructed by Queen Elizabeth, Francis Bacon, and the Earl of Oxford in an occult compact, and they also “know” that you must respect every punctuation mark in the First Folio because Shakespeare, I mean Oxford, wanted it that way. They haven’t read the building or financial contracts. They don’t refer to the context of other Renaissance theater companies or buildings. They don’t bother learning that Shakespeare’s company moved to the Globe because they lost the lease on the ground under the Theatre, and don’t realize or care that the First Folio was transcribed partly by Ralph Crane and punctuated by the multiple compositors of the text, who had a fine disregard for consistency.
Because these theorists do not acquaint themselves with basic facts or brush them aside in favor of conspiracy theories on the level of pyramid power, Roswell, or post-mortem appearances of Elvis, most reputable theater historians would indeed characterize these ideas as “hooey,” or they would simply react as Ralph Alan Cohen, the director of the American Shakespeare Center, did. I attended a lecture at the Globe itself purporting to be about acoustics, which ended up being an impassioned speech on the male and female pillars of the stage and how they relate to Tarot cards. When I described it to him later, Ralph’s eyes bugged out, he spat his coffee back in his cup, goggled a moment, and then said, “you’re kidding.”
I really, really wish that people who want to write about the Globe would read at least one basic book on Shakespearean theater. I generally recommend *The Shakespearean Stage,* by Andrew Gurr.
All very interesting but still Dame Yates says it. I don’t care if idiots said it and amended her insights with nonsense. Frances Yates makes mistakes and in some areas we have learned things she could not have known about. But you haven’t persuaded me that her assertion that much of the artistry of the Globe was intentionally hermetic like the plays was a mistake or out-dated idea — certainly not because fools have over-extended what seems almost a common sense observation.
But back to the point of this thread — and let’s try to stay on topic — your point about Renaissance drama I think clears the objection to literary alchemy not working in movies because it worked on stage. As you wrote, I think convincingly, the stage experience, in being primarily an audio event rather than a visual one, is primarily imaginative and hence much more like a book than a movie.
I can think of a recent film that may have had (perhaps unwittingly) both an alchemical story and colors. Iron Man.
In the beginning, Tony Stark wears a black suit, and sells black weaponry his company is also selling to the black-hearted enemy (without his knowledge as he’s too busy being a rich playboy to pay attention). He’s deathly injured while demonstrating a new weapon in Afganistan, and is captured and held in a black cave. In that cave, a fellow prisoner/scientist (a very worthy man) gives Stark a new heart, and they build an iron suit for him to escape, during which escape fellow prisoner sacrificially dies. This has a huge impact on Stark.
Back at his home, Stark goes through inner transformation in his white house with its white lab, where he concocts a better heart, and silvery steel Ironman suit. When the suit’s ready, he’s changed it to red and gold, and he does heroic acts to defeat evil in his own company.
Stark’s film story resonated with adults, not because of it’s big explosions, but because he was a mature adult who repented of his ways and went through transcendent change.
But maybe I’m off the wall, here? No surprise, when it comes to alchemy.
Great stuff, indeed.
One of the things I learned from the HogPro’s “Unlocking Harry Potter” is that while the black/white/red/gold structure is the easiest alchemical aspect for literary dunderheads such as myself to catch, the colors are only one part of the structure. The rest includes all of the “resolution of contraries”, androgynes, hermaphrodytes, and rebises, and other stuff I’m not ready to keep up with properly.
Having said that, the colors may be the visual keys that lead us to the rest. In a movie, the sky is always going to be there, but on the printed page, the sky won’t be described unless the author chooses to describe it. As a result, the author has much greater ability to focus our attention to an aspect of the structure.
It seems that this would make it more difficult for a movie producer to focus our attention, and distinguish between something that just happens to be there, and something that is there for a particular reason.
So how do Shakespeare’s plays fit into this? Well, perhaps I’m a cynic, but in Shakespeare’s time, could it be said that his audiences were likely more literate than modern audiences, and many of them had already *read* the plays in addition to seeing them performed? Or would it be just the opposite – many in his audience didn’t read at all, and so the plays served a function similar to icons in the early church?
Maybe cinematic alchemy *is* a possibility for the producer who wants to make the effort, but typical audiences just aren’t seen as being interested in it. Certainly the audience that has gone to see “Transformers” and “The Hangover” this summer aren’t looking for tales of transcendent transformation, they’re looking for fun and entertainment. (As Seinfeld might say – “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”)
Nicholas
Actually, that really works, especially because in the nigredo Stark’s problem is revealed to be “heart disease,” which is in essence the key metaphor for the human condition, as fallen creation. Iron Man is about the story of his transformation from dark heart to hero.
Hat’s off to you!
Hooray! Let the confetti fly! I got one!
John,
Taking the cue from the points you made in The Deathly Hallows Lectures about the “smuggling” of much of the alchemical elements into HP in general and DH specifically though subliminal or unconscious means, I would say that it is the kind of thing that movies CAN do well through color schemes and imagery(as others here have noticed), but seem rarely to do with any extended planning, at least in my limited experience. Key scenes are often done extremely well. What we would need is a focus on imagery, tone, even music to reinforce the major stages of transformation over the span of many scenes.
Eeyore wrote:
“Interesting question. I don’t think the alchemy works as well in Harry Potter as it should, but that isn’t because it’s a movie. That’s because the screenwriter and director apparently don’t understand that it’s in the books or they have chosen to ignore it. Some of the things are there, but they always seem to back away from really nailing any of the HP books. Perhaps Rowling should have given them a quick lesson in alchemy and pointed out things, from the first movies, that needed to be included”.
“Bullseye” Pat!
You beat me to this key point!!! Arrrgh!
No doubt, even “if” the screenwriter and director wanted to follow the alchemical lines from each one of the books into a movie script, lets say just from the “trio” alone, it would run the films way beyond the 2 1/2 to 3 hour limit they set for these movies. Keeping in mind they would have to scour 600 to 700 pages of writing for the proper scene to fit each alchemical element acted out in sequence through to the end of the film!
I’m with you John, it won’t work.
I’d love to see it work in the movies, but it’s just not possible to bring the alchemical imaginative “magic” from “reading” the work, letting sink into the depths of the mind and the heart. That can’t be done to the same degree in the celluloid version.
Great observations on this from everyone!
Cigar95: Shakespeare’s audiences couldn’t have read the plays before they were performed for the first time (they weren’t printed). They probably didn’t need to, as they were much more careful listeners and had a cultural context –sermons, other plays–for “reading” them. The plays are meant to be experienced through listening: that’s their primary form. Also, they had actual alchemists, real and fake: Dr. John Dee was employed by Queen Elizabeth. Modern audiences don’t. We have to do more work.
Possibly the difficulty with translating Rowling’s alchemical construct is that it is a transmutation from one form to another. Albus Dumbledore could do it, no doubt, but it shouldn’t be surprising that most attempts end up in a Seamus-Finnegan-like explosion in the face.
Did anyone else catch the History Channel program on the Real Sorcerer’s Stone (a re-run last night). Mostly it was the usual stuff that comes out when there’s a hot new movie (The Real Crystal Skull for Dr. Jones, the real Da Vinci Code, etc. etc.), but I was interested to note that one of the experts in the first bit of the program (it got a little rough for the kiddies, so we switched it off and read another chapter of COS) was actually named Dr. Goldwhite! Do you think that’s his real name? It just seems a little too perfect, like a doctor named Payne or a pastor named Saint. Some nice green lion and hermaphroditic imagery, though, and some mention of Dr. Dee. Speaking of your great comments, Moonyprof,
I think we lunched together at Witching Hour. I did have lunch with a very Shakespeare saavy lupophile!
If the werewolf prof brought her Mom, then it was definitely me.
I don’t have time to look it up, but I understood there were studies out there showing that the brain went into a more passive mode when viewing TV or video. Personally, just by my own experience, I find that books can lead to more reflection & examination of what’s going on. Movies & TV move at a steady, constant pace & if you don’t keep up then you get behind or lose track of what’s going on. You lose to an extent the ability to slow down & mull something over.
I’m not expert enough to thoroughly debunk this, at least not at the moment, but I will throw up a “not so fast”:
Why? What makes viewing a film more “passive” than reading a text? To try to clarify my earlier post, I am completely on board with the argument that film and text are different as forms, and radically so. But, why is the imagination of a reader all that more intense or engaged than the imagination of the viewer? Imagination is utilized differently, perhaps, but it is not totally absent. There certainly is an internalization that can take place in film-based story experiences. Getting my students to use their faculties (creative, imaginative, or critical) is just as difficult in both media. I see no definable qualitative difference between the two. And it hints at my belief that the graphic novel should be part of contemporary literature survey courses (I’ve come to always include one on my literature reading lists!).
I will say that I’m open to the possibility, but so far, we’re only begging the question here. Why is this a limitation of film-as-form rather than conventions of modern film making?
Time limits? Only because we’ve reduced most narrative forms to 30 minute, 1 hour, or 2 hour chunks. Our lives now refuse to admit to engaging with filmic narratives that take more than a couple hours of our lives. Even “epic” films have not always been constrained by this. That’s not a limitation of form; it’s a limitation of the audience.
Problems with the visual’s ability to “sink in”? Again, this is a limitation of the audience, and due in large part to the lack of media literacy I mentioned earlier. However, John‘s formulation involves a “subconscious” penetration of meaning into the audience’s “heart.” While I fully agree with subconscious interactions with any media form, I’m sensing a mystical component implied in here that I have yet to discover and can’t stipulate to. The material explanations are more compelling to me at this point. We might just have to agree to disagree on this point…for now! 😉
And that leads back to Grodal’s point re: narrative as a cognitive enterprise. Audience interactions, whether reader, viewer, or listener, involve an emotional experience/reaction that is difficult to predict, and rather impossible to control on the audience’s part. In this model, the alchemical drama needs to have an emotionally affecting element. Rowling embeds in alchemical drama in characters we come to love and in the events that befall them. Film can do this just as well (perhaps better…?) than text.
As to the necessity of imagination — I agree. Whether or not film does too much to subvert its use in the audience, I disagree as a function of audience literacy/participation.
Another wonderful response, Dave.
I think the heart of our disagreement is about the sublime. Both the natural world and the artisan’s creation on stage and in text of a sub-creation that invites the Primary Imagination to act are proven openings to or occasions of experience of a transcendent reality within the human person. I think the best that cinema can offer us is a right ordering of the sentiments and some experience of beauty. Nothing noetic.
And, if the end of art is this experience, movies are just potentially edifying sense experience rather than art.
Harsh, but I think that is the logical conclusion of my argument. If you read Manders’ ‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,’ the argument is expressed from a different angle and comes to an even harsher conclusion about the value of screened images of any kind.
For here, though, I’m happy to leave it at our agreement to disagree, the difference being my positing a spiritual faculty of perception and intellect in the human person that is of the same quality or theomorphic substance as the principle or unity of existence. You don’t think there is one; I think it is the only explanation of how we know anything, most obviously, though, how we recognize the true, good, beautiful, and the sublime.
Fair?
John, that’s perfectly fair to me! We’ve reached a point in which we disagree on a fundamental assertion, and I don’t have the rhetorical or philosophical capacity to move beyond it. Perhaps you do!
This whole discussion is bringing me back to the English Romantics, though. How I do love some William Blake and John Keats!
There is no moving beyond this epistemological and cosmological impasse, Dave, because one of us believes “the universe is mental” and that “the inside is bigger than the outside” while the other doesn’t. But if we meet in the love of Blake, Keats, and Coleridge (not to mention Rowling), you have largely ceded the field and your denial is just an empty nominalism.
Would that ‘Lyrical Ballads’ were as popular as ‘Deathly Hallows’!
I had a thought regarding Iron Man. Does Tony revealing, at the end of his heroic deed, that he is Iron Man have anything to do with eye-dentity?
You know the answer, Arabella, no? The runedo is the revelation of the work of the purifying and resolving albedo in a crucible of eucatastrophe.
I’m joining this a little late, but I would suggest several other films as possibilities for alchemical transformation in movies. The 90s BBC versions of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Persuasion,” and “The Lake House” with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves.
All three are well done, and incorporate alchemy as a means of transformation. I’d love to hear your take on it’s effectiveness in those films.