What have we wrought? (Part 3)

This is slightly delayed (ahem!) but I am finally getting around to it.

When I left off Part 2, I said "Next, Phantom of the Opera and the absurdity of Christine/Erik shipping."

The Phantom of the Opera

This should be subtitled "Attack of the Gerry Butler fangirls". As I have said before, Gerald Butler is just far too good looking for the role of the movie Phantom. Predictably, we now have a bunch of females fantasising about the sex-god Gerry Butler and completely forgetting about the murderous sociopath that is the Phantom. Fine, be a fangirl about Butler. He's a fine actor and rather pleasant on the eye. But fangirling Butler should have nothing to do with fangirling the Phantom and twisting the POTO story and characters beyond recognition.

Because the movie had a good looking Phantom, the fangirls want Christine to choose him over Raoul. I understand this; I often want things to happen the opposite of how they are written; I want Mimi to live at the end of La Boheme, Guinevere not to have betrayed Arthur, poor Romeo and Juliette not to have been so stupid and my most wishful thought: for Ingrid Bergman to stay with Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca. But I accept the way things have been written, however much I wish they were different.

Erik/Christine shipping is incomprehensible to me personally because I just don't see a functional relationship as a possibility for these two characters. On the other hand, I do not deny that it is as valid a ship as any that has been sailed in fandoms, canonical or otherwise. After all, people have different experiences and diffferent ways of perceiving relationships. The innocent ingenue / murderous sociopath dynamic does work for some people. And I don't really have a problem with that, as long as nobody is making any claims that this is what Leroux or Lloyd Webber/Hart had in mind all along.

Where I do have a problem with Erik/Christine shipping is the (unfortunately sizeable) rabid element that is hell-bent on distorting canon and insisting that
a) of course Christine is REALLY in love with the Phantom, as she realises after she shares that soul-shattering kiss with hi,; and/or
b) what REALLY happens is that the Phantom and Christine do end up sharing a lifetime of love.

The slight problem here is getting the inconvenience which is Raoul, out of the way. At very least, Raoul's role in the book and musical as to be reinterpreted imaginatively. This has been accomplished, to varying degrees of incredulity on my part, in multiple fanfiction stories, essays, movie deconstructions and message board posts. In all these gigabytes on the Internet, Leroux himself is rarely mentioned as a reference point.

For the purposes of shipping, I suppose it is not fair to refer to Leroux as a source; many people are probably shipping E/C based purely on the movie. Well, fine. Let's not look to Leroux then (but more on that later). Let's look to the actual source material for the movie - the POTO musical (music AND libretto).

There have been different degrees of canon denial, ranging from the merely unlikely to the downright unthinkable. It's always easier to get warmed up with the stuff that at least does not make me think "WTF?", so let me begin with the milder forms of creative reimagining. The canon denial scenarios follow.

a) In which Christine marries Raoul and lives with him till her death but is secretly truly in love with the Phantom

I will say this much: at least this scenario accepts what is implied in the musical and what is explicitly spelt out in the movie. The older Raoul introduced in the Prologue has obviously had a long-standing relationship with Christine (a relationship shown in the movie specifically as marriage).

Sign #1 of E/C true love:
Christine looking back at the Phantom as she leaves with Raoul on the boat. This is supposed to be a last look, laden with a deep regret that she will feel for the rest of her life.

It's almost plausible to interpret that short glance this way. But at the same time, Christine is singing a reprise of "All I Ask of You" with Raoul. This would make her a massive hypocrite, not to mention directly contradicting her own words. And I don't buy it that she is actually singing the words to the Phantom. (One phrase she sings is "Say the word and I will follow you". I suppose it is conceivable that she is asking the Phantom to tell her to go with him on his fugitive's flee. It is conceivable but also a very tortuous and contorted reading of the book, when the simple explanation is also the obvious: she is singing with Raoul (at one point they even sing together) and the song has been established as Raoul's and Christine's love song.

Sign #2 of E/C true love:
Raoul sings to the music box monkey in the prologue that "She often spoke of you, my friend." This indicates that Christine never lets go of her experiences with the Phantom in his lair. She speaks of the monkey continuously to Raoul, a seemingly strange thing to do if she was in a truly happy marriage with a man who had rescued her from the lair. There is only one explanation: speaking of the monkey is code for pining for a lost true love.

Sigh, sigh, sigh. Stretching and scraping, anyone? The entire segment with the monkey is nothing more than a plot contrivance to segue into the introduction of the chandelier. But even if the words were more than just a throw-away line (the libretto is FILLED with these), how does Christine speaking of a monkey indicate an unhappy marriage? If anything, the fact that she could confide details of her ordeal/ experience to her husband indicates a strong relationship, not one shadowed by a secret yearning for another man.

Sign #3 of E/C true love:
She kisses the Phantom once, is overwhelmed by passion and dives in for a second kiss. True Love!

That damned double kiss has made for the worst sort of fandom fodder. I think it was Joel Schumacher trying to sex things up and completely misjudging the balance between acted gestures and the scripted libretto.

Moments before the kiss, Christine sings "Angel of Music, you deceived me, I gave my mind blindly." She goes on to call him "Pitiful creature of darkness". The point leading up to the kiss is one of Christine realising that she must make a sacrifice to save Raoul and that she can make herself do it because she has reconciled her horror of the Phantom with genuine pity. She regards him as a pathetic figure, one that she hopes to save from himself with her self-sacrifice. Hardly the stuff of heady romance.


b) In which Christine is abused by her husband Raoul and realises that it is the Phantom who truly loves her and whom she truly loves. And in which the Phantom is NOT a twisted sociopath.

Rapist! Raoul and Wife-hitter! Raoul are two fandom constructs that have absolutely no foundation in canon, whether it be Leroux or Lloyd Webber/Black. He is a bit of a fop, young and impetuous and probably shallow. How do any of these traits translate into future abusiveness?

If anything, it is the Phantom that shows the tendency for violence (well, in the musical, he murders a couple of people , so "tendency" is putting it mildly. One thing that angered me about the movie is the soft-pedalling of the Phantom's crimes, the soft option to make him more sympathetic). I think the E/C shippers realise a basic love-triangle dynamic: cruel, obsessive lover on the one hand; ardent, self-sacrificing lover on the other; and the maiden caught between them. See, canon already provided the characters for these specific roles. There was never a need to swap Raoul for the Phantom.

I think one thing that cannot be in doubt from the musical is that Raoul does love Christine. His actions and words in the final lair are proof enough of this. It doesn't make sense to turn him into some uncaring monster (at least, not without a huge amount of backstory to explain such a tremendous emotional and personality transition).

I think there can also be no doubt from the musical that the Phantom is a seriously disturbed man. Apart from the murders, he plays mind games with Firmin and Andre, is sadistically cruel to Carlotta and Piangi and invades Christine's mind! Look, the man might be a genius, but he is mentally unstable. Christine herself said, "It's in your sould that the true distortion lies". Now, that might not be entirely his fault and therefore it might not be fair to demonise him for something he could not help, but an in-character Phantom is a twisted, very scary man whom no mother would trust with her 16 year old daughter.



c) In which Christine and the Phantom has been carrying on a love affair throughout her marriage to Raoul

In the movie, there is an added epilogue scene in which Raoul visits Christine's grave and sees a ring and rose left there by a not-so-mystery person. I read a passionately argued theory that this was the Phantom's subtle way of telling Raoul about the super-secret love affair. The sadness in Raoul's eyes during this scene was not the mourning of a beloved wife (not my words, but those engraved on the headstone) but grief at discovering Christine's infidelity. There are no words.

Of course, this leads to the conclusion that Christine's children (again, a movie invention, with the headstone saying "beloved wife and mother") are in fact fathered by the Phantom. Oh well, as outlandish ideas go, this is somewhat better than the rapist! Raoul one. And don't get me started on the published sequels that assume this plot development (just because they have official ISBN's do not make them official canon).


Back to Leroux. For POTO, Leroux should be regarded as canon. The musical is based on Leroux, and despite the many changes, is fully faithful to authorial intent. The characters in the musical are clearly the characters in Leroux (although Raoul is much less developed and Christine is slightly more naive). Most importantly, the emotional relationships between the three lead characters are portrayed in the musical as they were written in the book. So, you know what? Leroux should be the point of reference for E/C shipping based on the POTO movie.

If people understood who canon Phantom and canon Christine are, I doubt E/C shipping would be as rabid as it is. I have no doubt that there are people who find the canonical Phantom and the canonical Christine to be a perfectly appealing pairing. But how many E/C shippers really ship canon Christine with canon Erik?

Recently Rewatched: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Ahead of the release of GoF, HBO gifted us with the TV premiere of PoA last weekend.

I had seen this only once last year, and found it enjoyable enough and visually gorgeous, but a letdown compared to the general excellence of the book.

The movie does not really improve upon a second viewing. In fact, if anything, I find myself being less forgiving of the liberties taken with the screenplay and the elements that they chose to excise. They made a good action-fantasy movie, but a poor adaptation of a Harry Potter book regarded by many fans as the best in the series.

The good things are quite wonderful.

The Scottish scenery is wondrous and shot on film like a tribute to beauty. (A related aside: I was in Edinburgh last year and saw the building upon which JKR allegedly based Hogwarts. The film captures that great blend of grandeur and intimacy that makes Scotland so rewarding on the eye.) The outdoor shots are so lovely, you feel like packing your bags for the Highlands.

The acting from the adult actors was top-notch, as one has come to expect of British-cast films. Emma Thompson is one of my favourite people-I-don't-actually-know in the world. She is tremendously funny, touching and irritating all at the same time as Professor Trelawney. Michael Gambon assumes the role of Dumbledore after the passing of Richard Harris and the transition is flawless. He brings dignity and a sense of fun to the role. David Thewliss is physically so different from the Lupin that I expected to see, but he is a fine and subtle actor who overcomes this handicap (which is not inconsiderable in a visual medium). Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are their usual quietly excellent selfs.

Note on the child actors playing the Trio: They are improving, particularly young Daniel Radcliffe. All three are still given to moments of over-acting, but Cuaron's darker, more meandering style seems to have dampened those tendencies.

Barring the werewolf (too thin, too hairless and not at all wolf-like), the effects were convincing and suitably awe-inspiring. The dementors were especially inspired; truly bone-chillingly scary. Buckbeak was also a much better effect than Fawkes had been in Chamber of Secrets, so things definitely looked up in the birds department.


And now the not-so-good.

First and foremost, the complete absence of any exposition about Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs is just mind-boggling. The fact that the four of them knew each other was mentioned in passing but not the fact that these were four great friends. Even James Potter's and Sirius Black's very close friendship was not ever made explicitly clear. There was nothing that explained that the creators of the Marauder's Map were also Harry's father and his friends. The fact that three of them became animagus because of Lupin was not mentioned. The fact that James Potter was a stag in animagus form was never connected to Harry's patronus (if a viewer had not read the book, the stag-shaped shimmer of light would have been nothing more than a rather cool effect). An entire emotional layer was lost by this screenwriting choice. Worse, by omitting this, the film-makers seemed to have missed quite a lot of the point of PoA: the link to Harry's past, the events of the first war and the dynamics of friendship and betrayal as it played out between the four friends.

I understand that a movie cannot adapt every event in the book and excisions are necessary. Much as I bemoaned the loss of the Quidditch matches and the Scabbers and Crookshanks side plot, I understand why they could not fit into a 120+ minute movie. But why drop plot points and elements that are central to the original story? It would not even have taken much more screentime to accomplish; a couple of sentences from Lupin and Black would have managed it just fine.

If I had not read the book before, so many things would have seemed out of the blue, with no narrative motivation. Why did three boys become animagi for no apparent reason? (Or were we supposed to assume that turning into animals is rather normal in the wizarding world?) Why the vague stag-like shape of Harry's patronus? Why did Lupin hug Black when he learnt he was not the traitor (the movie never drove home the friendships of the MWPP foursome)? How did Lupin know how to work the Marauder's Map? Why did Snape bear so much animosity towards both Lupin and Black (and no, it was not enough to simply say that Snape never much likes anyone anyway)?

The movie also downplayed the foreboding that permeated the book. The sights of the Grim and Trelawney's many predictions of Harry's impending doom were not used to any effect at all. In fact, the cloud Grim was a complete misfire; it would have made so much more sense for Harry to actually see a black dog, rather than just a dog-shaped cloud! There was an ongoing thread in the book about Harry's paranoia, fear and anger. These barely registered in the movie. Harry's character development suffers as a result.

And while on the topic of character development, Ron in the movies is annoyingly one-dimensional, played for comic relief and nothing more. The film-makers seem intent to make him seem stupid, which is not how JKR writes him at all. It is a disservice to the character. Hermione, on the other hand, is annoyingly and boringly competent and smart and brave. Definitely a case of "positive role model" gone wrong. A smart know-it-all, action super-heroine is just not very interesting. Again, Hermione is not like that at all in the books.

While I loved the look of the film's sets and scenery, the costuming drove me out of mind. Just not wizard-y enough! The Harry Potter series is about fantasy; I expect to see everyone floating around in robes, whether they be flowing, billowing or flapping. All those practical clothes were just too colourless, dull and uninteresting.

On the whole, there was something that seemed off about the pacing and tone of the film. I can't quite put my finger on it - there was an overall unevenness to the whole enterprise. It seemed all at once too rushed and yet too leisurely, too dark and yet not weighty enough, too sombre and yet too flippant, too melancholic and yet too uplifting.

Despite my gripes, I would watch it again, if only to see the gorgeous scenery again and to watch a bunch of British actors at the top of their game.

Overall rating: 6.5 out of 10.