Hero’s Journey vs Heroine’s Journey: A Sex Based Distinction in Literature

December 13, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Much of postmodern storytelling is predicated on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey ideas and its being applied to women protagonists.

Joshua Lisec argues in this extended twixter thread that this is a mistake, that a woman’s journey differs from a man’s inherently because of the sex-based differences that are innate and immutable.

Read the whole thing.

It is a fascinating read for those who study the work of J. K. Rowling both because of her public defense of “sex-based” reality contra the “transgender” extremists and because of how much of the Strike-Ellacott series turns on sex roles and how much they are biologically inherent and how much they can be bent in light of vocation.

Hat tip to Kelly for the find!

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Rowling’s Pregnancy Traps: Fantastic Beasts, The Ickabog, The Christmas Pig

December 12, 2024 by 2 Comments

This is the last of seven ‘Pregnancy Trap’ posts that explore one of the more curious Golden Threads that run through everything Rowling has written.  The first six can be found at the link above and include deep dives into the Big Four traps that define in some sense the Harry Potter series, Cursed Child, the Cormoran Strike mysteries, and Casual Vacancy. The last two entries in the series have been loving looks at the individual books of the Strike-Ellacott stories, which in addition to being grounded in the Leda Strike-Jonny Rokeby Pregnancy Trap feature novel-specific characters whose lives included some kind of “coercive love;” the first post covered the first four books in the series and the most recent the last three.

Today I close out the survey with a relatively quick look at the Fantastic Beasts screenplays, The Ickabog tale, and The Christmas Pig.  I’ll wrap up this Pregnancy Trap Golden Thread in an article on the Substack page and a ‘Rowling Studies’ podcast for subscribers before moving on to the next Golden Thread ‘common denominator’ in her work.

Book-by-book, then, the Pregnancy Traps or “Coercive Love” to be found in Fantastic Beasts, The Ickabog, and The Christmas Pig!

Fantastic Beasts

I’m not a fan of the Fantastic Beasts films because, as a serious reader of J. K. Rowling, there’s very little certainty about what parts are hers in this collaborative exercise. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a collection of links to articles about the elusive shooting script written by Rowling for a clue about what I’m saying.) That being said, a complete survey of Rowling’s works to list all the Pregnancy Traps wouldn’t be complete without a look at the three Beasts screenplays.

There aren’t any Pregnancy Traps! But there is a lot of “coercive love” of different sorts, all critically important to the ensemble cast’s lives and plot points. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Pregnancy Trap

Hitler Learns that Cuckoo’s Calling Was Written by J. K. Rowling, not ‘Galbraith’

December 11, 2024 by Leave a Comment

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Alan Rickman and Paapa Essiedu: Severus Snape, Past and Future?

December 10, 2024 by 1 Comment

How about a compare and contrast of the late Alan Rickman and the Snape-presumptive Paapa Essiedu?

Here are Rickman’s ‘Greatest Hits,’ though I’m more than a little disappointed that the committee neglected his brilliant Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet…

If you’re like me, Paapa Essiedu is a new face and voice. Here he is talking about his beginnings as an actor in a BAFTA sponsored program for promising British film actors, ‘Breakthrough Brits:’

And how about a soliloquy from Hamlet?

We’ll close with a peek at Rickman in the 1978 BBC Romeo and Juliet I mentioned above:

Please feel free to share links to roles played by Essiedu!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Rowling Silent About ‘Black Severus;’ Still Tweaking Proofs of Hallmarked Man

December 9, 2024 by 3 Comments

Last week the big news in the niche world of Harry Potter fandom and Rowling Studies was the announcement that UK actor Paapa Essiedu has been chosen to play the part of Severus Snape in the Bronte Studios and HBO+ adaptation of the Hogwarts Saga for television. Essiedu is of Ghanian descent, which is to say that he is a black man rather than white, and the subsequent controversy, after the model of ‘Black Hermione’ in Cursed Child, is called ‘Black Severus’ or ‘Black Snape.’

I wrote about the reasons I think this casting choice was casting genius on Thursday, why I thought ‘Black Severus’ differed significantly from the diversity hiring aspect of ‘Black Hermione’ on Friday, and the possibility of a ‘Black Sirius’ (please, let’s not have ‘Black Black’ or ‘Black Squared’) with ‘Black Severus’ to highlight the parallel and inverse lives of those two characters. Comments from HogPro readers came in at 10 to 1 against the casting choice.

What did Rowling say or tweet about this casting choice and controversy? She is the owner of Bronte Studios and an Executive Producer of the adaptation so it is a safe assumption that she had to have been asked to sign off on this decision.

She has said nothing about it, or ‘nothing publicly’ that I know of. The only work-related or Rowling, Inc., themed tweet she has shared has been to say that Hallmarked Man, the eighth Strike-Ellacott novel is still a work in progress:

I’m guessing that the blowback about offering “medical advice” has something to do with Rowling’s common sense position that chemical castration and genital mutilation of children and adolescents is not a good idea, a position she clarified through this re-tweet of a thread on that subject:

The humorous tweet about the effectiveness of co-codamol and whiskey in combination as a pain delivery system for coal miners mystery writers with overdue books was paired with another jab at India Willoughby ( a “jab” in her “lady balls;” Willoughby is a “transgender woman,” which is to say, a biological male). [Read more…]

Filed Under: Twitter