Subject: In an Englishwoman's opinion...
Author:
Posted on: 2016-05-18 10:49:00 UTC
American sandwiches are weird. When I want a sandwich, I imagine a light snack, not the entire lunch menu squashed between two trenchers of bread with the entire grotesque edifice held together by a roofing nail. With a cocktail olive on it.
Cultural context for you, I suppose. =]
School principal: 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings' cause brain damage
And before anyone thinks 'has to be the US, sorry Brit-boarders, this one's one of you lot.
-July, impressed and baffled
I might have a more accurate world-view if I had stuck to reading non-fiction, but even documentaries would have sugar-coated things and not been completely realistic.
My brain came defective. :D
By gum, this is ridiculous. I've read a lot of classics and a lot of modern novels, and it's clear that he has probably just heard some rumors about bestsellers from parents who gave The Hunger Games to their three-year old.
Besides, there has been studies, ACTUAL studies on what books do to the brain, and apparently they are quite good for you.
Clearly, this man has only read the Shakespeare plays they make you read in school... and them not too closely, because Romeo and Juliet talks about sex.
Seriously, I'd like to point this guy to Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare could have written a Saw movie.
Derp.
As others said, plenty of the works by the authors he mentioned have terrible stuff in them too. I think he's just biased against new stories, honestly. I'm particularly bothered by his referring to modern stories as "insensitive," "un-sensitive." Partly because I've mulled those terms over in my head so much now that I'm questioning their very meaning from over-use. (Does he mean not sensitive? Or not sensible? Or . . . senseless? Not making sense? HURRRRRR—) Seriously, compare the Potter series to literally any Shakespeare play. There's far more emotional depth to the Potterverse characters than Shakespeare's. (On the page; I'm not saying actors can't lend the roles emotion on stage.)
Another line that bothered me, not from the principal, but from the other teacher lower down, is "I feel that the darkness of the books is so palpable that it wasn't the sort of thing that we would want to expose young children to in their formative years . . ." No. All of my no. One thing I will never waver on: the real world is less scary when you've fought monsters in your mind. If we refuse children the freedom to encounter villains in fiction, we're only depriving them of the mental strength to work around school bullies, unfair professors and rude bosses later on in life. To learn to handle conflict, they—big surprise!—need to encounter and study conflict.
—doctorlit, gettin' preachy
I have more to say, but now is not the time. I need to proofread what's to come.
Most likely, it's only correlation. It could be the other way around: Brain damage causes fantasy!
Don't ask what fantasy brain damage causes.
Please don't look too deep into The Post.
We'd probably come to the conclusion that everything is evil, and that the only way to save the human race is to lock everyone inside of a small box and bury it, to never be dug up until the sun finally loses its patience and devours the solar system.
Don'tcha know?
The sun creates a subconscious desire to be involved in explosives!
We live in a world where, every morning, our innocent children are exposed to a massive explosion, one which we consider to be normal!
Why, if our great human race wasn't exposed to the sun at all, I doubt we'd have any wars.
Break out the boxes and shovels, lads!
'Is there no-one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?'
So, hS, is there?
I'm curious, now - how are the sandwiches where you are?
British sandwiches are weird. You get a lot of stuff on the lines of cheese and chutney—which is good, for the record, but not the same at all as the meat-cheese-veg-dressing construction of a typical US sandwich.
And of course no one understands peanut butter outside the US.
~Neshomeh
American sandwiches are weird. When I want a sandwich, I imagine a light snack, not the entire lunch menu squashed between two trenchers of bread with the entire grotesque edifice held together by a roofing nail. With a cocktail olive on it.
Cultural context for you, I suppose. =]
Once visited California.
We decided to have a pizza there.
An Australian pizza is worth approximately three slices of a Californian pizza.
Taking the mysterious, greasy sogginess of the pizza into account, by my calculations, a Californian pizza is worth approximately six years closer to type-two diabetes than an Australian pizza.
The flame that burns twice as bright lasts half as long, as they say.
... is an heresy. Italian pizza is the True Pizza, full stop.
As for the Australian one... you actually have pizza down there?
Sergio Turbo, Paladin of the True Italian Pizza
Got food from all across the globe. Multiculturalism, y'know.
The only national dish we don't have is the Australian one.
And Australian plants want you dead.
And Australian EVERYTHING wants you dead.
I have the scars.
Physical and mental.
Pesona learned me this. Mister, you managed to out-stupid these articles.
Congratulations. You're a black hole of stupid.
The Constitution is still in effect.
You will note that this is the kind of miserabilist who has ended up running a private school in rural Oxfordshire after a stint in the British Army; these are not the kind of institutions that encourage or cultivate a rich internal life in their charges. The man is quite clearly demented.
We must send him some Pratchett immediately. =]
The military tends to cultivate a very rich inner life in those who take part in it.
You have to do something to not fall asleep on watch, after all.
If they didn't strangle is creativity, they cannot be that bad... I you forget Montgomery.
Tolkien went through World War One. He went through the Somme. Anyone who can come out of that and go 'hey, this would make a good backdrop for elves' instead of 'In all my dreams, before my helpless sight/He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning' has a heck of a lot of resilience going on.
Actually, WWI produced a lot of war poets. I think there's something in what July said - if you're standing through the night watching for non-existent enemies, or cowering in a bunker against the third day of constant barrage, or trudging up from the rear trenches through a sea of mud, being able to send the better parts of your mind elsewhere for a while might be a major advantage.
hS
The then-official war poets were Jessie Pope and her ilk, who, well...
There's a reason you don't know who Jessie Pope is.
I don't think there's many as would say that the military is good at producing official creative content (given that July's comment was about how not to get bored!); but for some people at least, it seems to be the crucible that fires up their creative engines.
Including Tolkien. Middle-earth was begun when he was on sick leave after the Somme, and it never stopped after that.
hS
There aren't very many jobs in the military that are focused on the creative arts...
But sometimes...
We manage.
(Also Pope was a civilian commissioned as a war poet because this was WWI and women in the Army was noooooo, and she found fame only as the person to whom Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est was dedicated. I admit I only know this because I made versions of them for a Fate-themed RP on a different site. I'm cultured. =] )
I mean, Isengard's image was something that the films got absolutely right, in my book. It looks like the Somme, if it had been fought amidst the "dark Satanic mills" of Jerusalem fame (note that Parry set the words to music in 1916). It's pretty much how I imagined it on long car journeys with the 15-CD complete BBC audio drama version for company, and no you can't nick it, it's technically my mum's.
I don't deny the experiences of those in the military. I was basing my remarks off my own meagre, consummately detested six months in the CCF (Look, I went to private school, alright? That's just sort of what happens if you stand still long enough.), which is like being in the military if it only let in child psychopaths and fat old perverts who enjoy the sight of weeping, mud-slick young boys far more than is socially acceptable. We didn't do a lot of the stuff that normal people do in the military. We just drilled. And I cannot use the words I wish to describe it with on the Board, because the rest of this post will be ellipses thanks to the censoring routine.
So yeah. Hope that covers my reasoning on both accounts.