Darkness and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I enjoyed the lat­est Harry Pot­ter film last night — and it is the first in the series I am gen­uinely able to say that about. The rest have been frus­trat­ing for a vari­ety of rea­sons. Some are tech­ni­cally poor, oth­ers are merely vic­tims of ter­ri­ble direc­tion and script work.

The lat­est, how­ever, has been remarked upon by var­i­ous review­ers as tak­ing a sig­nif­i­cantly darker turn — reflected both in (gen­er­ally) well-done dig­i­tal colour grad­ing as well as the­mat­i­cally. The idea of “dark­ness” in this film is intrigu­ing, par­tic­u­larly in light of the acknowl­edge­ment of Dum­b­le­dore as one of the great­est wiz­ards of all time and the con­tin­u­ing strug­gle and dichotomy between forces of good and evil in the film.

The demise of Dum­b­le­dore (oh, yeah, spoiler alert — but you’ve already read the books, right?), that great force for good, rep­re­sents a notable set­back for this cause. I men­tion him par­tic­u­larly because he is, until this moment in the saga, the char­ac­ter with the most com­plete view of the sit­u­a­tion. He is wis­est and most pow­er­ful. How­ever, as he enters the cave con­tain­ing a hor­crux with Harry, I was frus­trated with their col­lec­tive inabil­ity to illu­mi­nate the room.

Cry lumos as loudly as they may, even Dumbledore’s cast­ing of bea­cons of light across the cave fails to sig­nif­i­cantly brighten the envi­ron­ment. I was reminded of the tri­umph over dark­ness that God has given us in Jesus, so absolute that fic­tion does not even approach its con­quest. The Bible speaks of a future, renewed cre­ation where God’s holy city has no need of a moon, or a sun, for it is so illu­mi­nated by the glory of His pres­ence. (Rev­e­la­tion 21:23 – 24)

This is not fic­tion, and there is no bat­tle that has not already been won by Jesus Christ the liv­ing king of all.

God has deliv­ered us from the domain of dark­ness and trans­ferred us to the king­dom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemp­tion, the for­give­ness of sins.
 – Colos­sians 1:13 – 14

…that you may pro­claim the excel­len­cies of Him who called you out of dark­ness into His mar­velous light.
 – 1 Peter 2:9

# by Josh on July 18th, 2009 Tags: , , , , , , ,
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WALL•E and idealisation of labour

We watched WALL•E at a Jam movie night tonight. It was notable not for its cute char­ac­ters or the bizarre char­ac­ter devel­op­ment of robots with AI who fol­low orders, against the back­drop of recent dystopian visions of AI as spawn­ing Skynet-like futures, but rather in its por­trayal of a future human­ity wherein con­sumer cul­ture and obesity/space-induced osteope­nia have led to an overly pam­pered human­ity, locked in rep­e­ti­tious existence.

Yet, despite this, the Cap­tain comes to a real­i­sa­tion that human­ity has a duty to care for the earth, regard­less of whether or not that is a pleas­ant propo­si­tion. It would, the ship’s com­puter says, be much eas­ier to leave things as they are… but that, to the Cap­tain, is not the point. Humanity’s duty to sub­due the earth (Gen­e­sis 1:28 – 31) is almost in accord with this idea that it is our respon­si­bil­ity to care for the earth because that’s what God has given to us as our duty. That was in very-good cre­ation before our world was even remotely sin­ful. How­ever, we see the curse of sin at work as our rebel­lion against God leads to hard work: “By the sweat of your face will you eat bread, till you return to the ground” (Gen­e­sis 3:19)

“Return to the ground” there means death, by the way — it’s not talk­ing about a return from inter­galac­tic exile! Wikipedia informs us that, in 2007 screen­ings, “Stan­ton (lead writer) felt half the audi­ence at the screen­ing believed the humans would be unable to cope with liv­ing on Earth and died out after the film’s end.” Cer­tainly the opti­mism at grow­ing “pizza plants” is mis­guided and such illu­sions are likely to be quickly reme­died! How­ever, the right state of human­ity, accord­ing to the the first instruc­tion received, is to ‘sub­due’ the earth and depend upon it for our sus­te­nance. Even rebel­lion against God, the one who gives all life on earth, does not change this intrin­sic human need for work.

It is not enough to exist as con­sump­tive, pas­sive beings. We are made for work. Indeed, we are made for wor­ship, which is a kind of work (and all work, rightly enacted, serves also as wor­ship of the Cre­ator and King of the world). To sug­gest that utopia is per­sonal trans­porta­tion, liq­uid meals, rapidly change­able fash­ions, per­sonal ser­vants, and even the abo­li­tion of eco­nomic con­cerns, is to ignore an impor­tant part of our nature as humans. Sin has cor­rupted this, and we now idol­ize work to the detri­ment of other things more impor­tant, and embrace lazi­ness (not rest) as a social norm and even an aspi­ra­tion. The earth, upon which we were set as care­tak­ers, groans under the curse of our rebel­lion (Gen­e­sis 3:17), and yet still the hunger of bil­lions is not satisfied.

Thank God that because of Jesus we can hope for a future that is much greater than space travel, liq­uid lunches, free­dom from finan­cial con­cerns, and robotic assis­tants and per­son­al­i­ties! Because of what Jesus has done on the Cross, we’re able to come freely to our cre­ator, sus­tainer, and king, with­out fear and with a hope for eternity.

# by Josh on June 26th, 2009 Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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