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Should Dark Lords be Rationed? Evil in Fantasy - Part 2 · Mythmakers

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  Welcome to Mythmakers, Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creators
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  brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. And you're joining us for part two of the
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  discussion I had that's Julia Golding with Jacob Renica about the nature of evil in fantasy.
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  We're about to move from a quote by the poet Orden to look at the nature of evil in the
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  world of Harry Potter. Orden, who also is a philosopher, he says, good can imagine evil,
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  but evil cannot imagine good. And here we can link I think to the world of Harry Potter
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  because what you see in the sort of Voldemort world, the death eater world, is that they have cut
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  themselves off to the point where they do not conceive of the value of the good. And Harry can
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  and others and Dumbledore can feel what it's like to be evil. They recognise that in themselves
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  and they can empathise with Voldemort. When we hear about Voldemort's background, it's clear
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  that Dumbledore feels sorry for the Tom Riddle character and his upbringing. And Harry sympathises
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  with creature, the house elf who seems very hostile. So they can imagine and of course creature
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  is an enslaved house elf. So again, he's a bit like an orc, he hasn't had the chance to sort of
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  be different at that point. So I think you do get a Dark Lord in Harry Potter and he's also
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  called the Dark Lord. But there is also the story of how the Dark Lord isn't made. So
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  while Harry Potter, it does seem a bit odd that you choose to be in Slytherin. And you choose to
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  go that way if you've come from a not from a sort of more neutral, less evil background, you know,
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  when you get off the train, oh right, I'm going to take a real dark turn here. But yeah, there is
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  an attempt within the way the stories are written to give more shading to how you get to be that.
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  And it's about power really. So I think where as we've said that evil in
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  is a moral evil that's a driver in sort of Narnia and Lord of the Rings and others.
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  But they also share this idea that it's about taking power over others. And that's I think that
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  in a non religious context, because I don't think Harry Potter has a religious framework is the
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  element that's carried over into the Harry Potter world. But what's your view on evil in Harry Potter?
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  Yeah, it's yeah, that's really interesting. Or I think in part for plot purposes, you have
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  evil as an external struggle where you have these clearly delineated lines where,
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  you know, the Dumbledores explicitly referring to Voldemort as evil that this then. And you can
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  see based on their actions, right? So you have torture, right? It's like killing, torturing certain
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  spells are unfricivable because they're categorically framed as evil. But
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  within individuals, it's again, I think you're talking about that kind of like the internal frame
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  of reference. So is, is, is Snape an obsessive lover? Or is he a hero, right? Depending on
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  what is he from his perspective, depending on how you're seeing his story, you could see him as
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  either one of those. How does he see himself given what he experienced? Then there's indications
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  of both there, right? That it's not cut and dried for him. So he's a fascinating study.
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  Dumbledore even, right? So you have him as, oh, you know, this wise loving figure, but sometimes
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  he seems to be like really calculating and unemotional in some places and just kind of like
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  setting gears, turning and using, and using, and using, and using Harry. Right? No, exactly.
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  Yes. It is a fat and pig or something at one stage, which is really shocking. You know,
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  you're just fattening him out like a pig. And I think you need that so that he, so that it's not too
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  saccharine. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. In the, the goods. Right. And even, even for Voldemort back to that,
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  you know, with Tom, you know, Tom Riddle, like how is he raised? I think you definitely have
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  Harry and Tom Riddle being set as kind of foils for each other, right? But both having
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  been, you know, disadvantaged as children without, you know, natural family being raised in conditions,
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  forced conditions of squalor or like oppression, but then seeing one chooses one way, one chooses
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  the other way. But even then, with Tom Riddle, like how do we see Voldemort when we see him in
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  that kind of, you know, in between it's as like this little, it's a, it's a baby. So is, is,
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  is Voldemort really this, like, personification of evil? Like, yes, we do see that. But is he also
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  just like a stymied little baby soul who hasn't learned how to grow up? Uh, yeah. Right. And
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  that hasn't been able to grow past that kind of like infantile state of the ego and me and just
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  like thinking of everything in terms of them. Um, so I think we do get a glimpse of that. Uh,
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  they're in, uh, in Deathly Hallows of a different way to be able to see Voldemort will,
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  will not dismissing the evils and, you know, you know, uh, I'm saying genocide, but like just,
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  you know, just kind of, uh, clearly, you know, it's, it's, you know, a madgicide, uh, of,
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  of wiping out certain individuals. Here's the psychopath who's taken over, isn't he? Which
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  we, you know, you see that in, uh, sort of dictators, the psychopathic personality who manages to
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  get their hooks into people and take over. But within, um, Voldemort, you've got the added thing
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  that because he's abusing magic, which is like a kind of drug equivalent that it starts to strip
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  away his humanity in a real physical way within the rules of that magic world. So he is denatured,
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  he does become more snake-like and, um, in a, in a way, by the time we meet Voldemort in his
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  adult form, I think he's much less interesting as an evil character than some of her other evil
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  characters. I'm particularly fond of Dolores Umbridge, who is a complete monster. But she,
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  is the strongest character you've ever had. Yeah. I mean, I think as she's just a wonderful
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  original character, actually, and she does remind me of the Hannah Arendt, um, she's the,
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  she's the philosopher who said about art, the new and bird trials, the banality,
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  that you can see Dolores Umbridge as that kind of bureaucratic person, it's excusing bad deeds
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  for some sort of strange logic of their own, and it's all very banal. It's rules and regulations
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  and cutting down on anything lovely or beautiful or free or self-expressive. Um, I think she's a
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  particularly great evil character. Um, yeah, then, yeah, Umbridge is good. And like,
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  so I kind of on the flip side of that, like, the dursleys are the dursleys evil.
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  So, like, depending on right, or is it just the, or is that banality? Is it the, um, are
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  these systems of power that are actually what are creating the evil itself and individuals
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  are either kind of like implicitly acquiescing to them. And it's the larger structural issues,
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  like we were saying with, with aren't, um, with Hannah aren't a study of, uh, of Nazis,
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  and how people were acting within that system, it wasn't that they, that some of these people weren't
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  all in on, uh, you know, racial supremacy, but it was rather that it was within a system that
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  they were following orders, and it was just them acquiescing to larger structures of power,
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  and it was those larger structures of power that were the actual evil, not just kind of like
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  active generative evil within some of those individuals who were the drivers of vehicles between
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  death camps. So I think, yeah, so, but, but Umbridge gives an example of somebody who's acting
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  within a system of power, and certainly you see her kind of like personal, she's able to
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  use that system of power to fulfill certain needs that she has to exercise power over individuals
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  that certainly fills her and actually gives her some sort of generative evil capital to be able to
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  use within the system. Um, yeah, I think the, the, the does needs to be treated separately. So I think
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  Vernon does and he is monstrous is a kind of cruel but stepfather figure type, you know, almost
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  fairy tale like, um, no self-awareness. Um, what's her name? Pregnant, not Pregnella, um,
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  Petunia. Uh, Petunia, she, that is rooted in her, her being scarred by seeing what's happened to her
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  sister. So there's an element of jealousy, but there's also an element of fear, and of course her
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  sister is killed as a result of a magic battle. So there's obviously it's starring, you know,
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  no wonder she wants nothing to do with magic. And but then you've got Dudley, who actually changes.
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  So if you remember, he becomes after Harry saves him, he actually has a sort of he's not so bad
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  after all. So he's not, he's definitely not evil, is he is a bully who has learned a bit
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  and not to be a bully by the end. So he's on a more redemptive journey. But just before we leave
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  Harry Potter, I was thinking that, um, the way that creatures are dealt with there, that the
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  dementors who are, uh, external manifestations of our internal struggles and depression,
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  I think they're fascinating. They're not exactly evil, but they are because they don't seem to have
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  a self. You know, they're, they're sort of like like spirits of some sort of, it's hard to
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  classify them, but they are attracted to the evil. So they, they attach themselves to the
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  Older Morts side in the same way as the Warks in Tolkien sort of attach themselves to Orcs,
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  rather than being like the man's best friend in the house, you know, they, they go, their nature
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  suits them to be the tools or part of that world. So yeah, it's, they, I wouldn't say that
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  dementors are evil though, because they are something we produce. I don't know, what do you think?
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  I think, I think, dementors have the expectation. Yeah. Yeah, because they don't. Yeah, they,
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  they don't, well, but I guess I think that that goes back to that Hannah R. and, uh,
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  right kind of philosophical idea that evil exists in structures, right? So if dementors aren't
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  kind of this active generative evil, but they're merely complicit in the system and the system
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  is using these for their evil ends, then by virtue of the fact that they're, they're functioning
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  within that and they're not opting out of it, then I guess it's, it's kind of a tacit
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  evil rather than something that is a more active, yeah, generative, um,
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  causative evil. So yeah, that's it. You remember the Ministry of Magic are using dementors as
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  prison guards, right, right, right, right. When they're supposedly good before the takeover. So
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  the mystery, well, I don't, I don't think Daky Rallinger suggests the Ministry of Magic is
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  good because they've always had a problem with Dumbledore and others, but you can tell that
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  they are definitely in the shades of gray area because they are using these incredibly unpleasant
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  creatures in order to keep down dangerous people. I mean, I think this is the area where I find
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  approach to evil far more interesting and nuanced and just Voldemort himself who, yeah,
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  I wouldn't want to join Voldemort's team. There's no temptation for me to join his team. You don't
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  get anything really other than being a minion. I do. Yeah, well, unless you want to be a minion,
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  I mean, but that's another, that's another conversation. So moving on from, we're not going
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  to be able to cover all fantasy evil, but another large area which we haven't yet dealt with.
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  So if anyone out there is thinking of how do I tackle evil, we've done the sort of
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  evil around power very much exhibited in Harry Potter, but there is the fairy tale Folk Tale
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  Evil, which belongs to all of us. And looking at thinking of the fairy tales, we tell the sort of
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  Hansel and Gretel style fairy tales. Evil, there is often a version of criminal behavior.
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  So Bluebeard, for example, that story is a wife abuser.
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  Hansel and Gretel is what we would call a pedophile of sorts, or Hannibal. I mean,
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  obviously, luring children for it with her sort of house made of sweets for nefarious purposes,
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  they're sort of fractures. It's like you're taking horrible human behavior, putting them through
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  a fairy tale lens to make a story which is both a warning and something entertaining so that we
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  can identify the criminal behavior amongst us. Have you got a fairy favorite evil within a fairy
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  folktale context? Well, see, I don't know. What do you think of evil stepmothers as
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  across the crossbreed tales? How would you see the fairy stepmother trope that appears in
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  several fairy tales? How would you see that as commenting on worse societal evil there?
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  I think that links to the wit. I think it's the same figure. And the wit is the
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  the female power that you don't like. But it's also the intergenerational,
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  you know, the younger model coming along, taking over from the older, I mean, there's a sort of
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  jealousy aspect there. It's like, it's lots of mirrors with reflections in fairy tales, of course.
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  The wicked stepmother is that reflection of all the bad, all the bad sides of female power.
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  And you kind of separate it off rather than keeping it within one character. You put one lot
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  over in a wicked stepmother. And being stepmother means that you don't have to own it because you're
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  not a blood relation. And you keep all the wall that's good and pure in your heroine. So it's no
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  white. And I think that's how it handled it. It's a way of having fun. But you can obviously see
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  behaviors where there have been second wives who come in and abuse their children of the first
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  marriage. So it's yeah, I think that that kind of evil because it's not referring
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  having said that there are fairy tales like within the hands Christian Anderson,
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  well, which are religious tales. I mean, they are Christian fairy tales. But mostly in the sort
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  of world of fairy tales, as we think of it, it's outside of that kind of framework. So I feel as
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  though it's reflecting on crime and punishment, really, because there's a lot about punishment in
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  fairy tales. Right. Right. Yeah. Anyway, that's probably the easiest one, I think, because it does
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  appear so much in fairy tales that that's pretty brightening the image that that figure holds
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  I don't know what that says about me, but I hold a particular particularly pernicious
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  evil there that seems so yeah, malicious, malevolent. That is something that you're expecting,
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  I guess the difference between the expectations of something that might be more nurturing and
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  that it's actually turned to in some cases, torture rather than flooring, you know, we go causing
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  to flourish a more, yeah, like a tamping down a just complete ruin, a grinding down. And just
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  I don't know if yeah, the difference between the expectation and what is actually given there
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  that reversal that just seems to create that yeah, the sense of like visceral evil that I think
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  is easy for step does a wicked step mothers to evoke. Yeah, and I think there's also the other
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  the other strand which I came to mind when I was thinking about this is the the promise that you
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  can overcome evil, but sometimes with dubious behavior, so I'm thinking of Jack and the beanstalk.
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  So if you actually think about it from the point of view of the giant, Jack is a thief who comes
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  and nicks all his best stuff and escapes and then kills him by knocking by cutting down the beanstalk.
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  So Jack is a murderer as well, but that's not the way the the tale is normally told.
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  The the giant is imagined as a sort of threat and a danger that the clever folk hero outwits and kills.
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  It's they go overcome the monster, but I think it would be if you're going to use it in a sort of
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  fantasy novel context, you probably want to actually think about it more from the point of view of
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  the giant these days because of that original way of looking at it. Okay, so the last area before we
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  we've complete our our round round up of evil in fantasy that I wanted to think about was in
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  science fiction context. Of course, there are many, many ways of thinking about evil, but one
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  perennial since Frankenstein is the idea of the scientist as the overreacher. So again, it doesn't
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  it may have a so often heimer, I've become a destroyer of worlds religious context to it
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  that you're seizing too much power for yourself. Prometheus, in fact, let's go back to the greets,
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  but it can be seen in a purely humanistic terms without any sort of religious or belief in anything
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  beyond our human experience. Well, and that evil scientist figure is it's pretty prevalent.
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  If you actually go to Frankenstein, of course, Frankenstein isn't evil. The result of what he
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  does is evil, but he himself is not evil. It's more so, yeah, and nor is the creature. So it's a very
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  ambivalent world in my shell is Frankenstein. But then we get things like the island of Dr. Morro,
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  which is the H.G. Wells story, which is a sort of vivisectionist, horrible scientist.
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  Actually, H.G. Wells, of course, with his projection of the future is also a fascinating person to
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  think about and to treating of good and evil. But anyway, this evil scientist idea is definitely
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  something you see within science fiction. Have you got a favorite evil scientist, the overreacher?
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  Yeah, so you mentioned two really good ones there with the Dr. Morro, who's just trying to twist
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  the creation, twist, twist animals into something different. I'm going to pull them unwillingly
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  out of their end of sphere of existence and being to make them into something else. But with Mary
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  Shelley's Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein, that so it's not, again, it's not that he's actively
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  evil doing this, cackling, right? He's just like, he's experimenting. He wants to understand life.
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  And he just like, really, this drive for knowledge to understand what is it that sparks life and
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  and allows for life to exist. He wants to unlock that. So it's this kind of, you know, this,
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  it's not quite foul. It's a, it's fastening in the sense that it's, it's a drive for complete
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  knowledge, you know, unequivocal knowledge of the largest secrets of life, the universe, and
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  everything. But it's also there. What he does afterwards is then he just runs, right? Once this
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  life is created, he doesn't know what to do with it, doesn't want to continue to follow.
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  That's a big responsibility. Yeah. And so like, so he's evil in the sense, like his physical
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  absence from the creature's life that he is this type of evil that just there is a type of
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  evil that will do something, set something up, create something for others, and then just leave
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  without just, you know, abandoning all sense of responsibility, like moral responsibility for
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  a life that you created, that leaving. And then he's just bleeding. And in the monster,
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  the creature, who the, who Dr. Frankenstein sees as a monster, and who certain other people
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  see as a monster, but one of the interesting things there is you see the creature's internal
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  life, right? That they're just, they're, they're not evil because they're just the blanks,
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  they were just called into existence. And then when they're interacting with this little girl
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  in the woods that he is, you know, he's reading, you know, Paradise Lost, he's, he's actually learning
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  growing and he's, he's, he's in, in these ways is becoming a much more moral figure than his own
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  creator. And, but then the fact that he, it does not, is left utterly alone when the doctor has
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  the ability to, in theory, create a companion for this creature to be able to share that kind of
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  similar type of existence, but the doctor starts doing it. Dr. Frankenstein starts assembling it,
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  but then decides he can't do that again. And then just like pulls it all apart and ruins it.
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  That's when the creature turns and says like, okay, you're going to leave me alone.
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  You're abandoning me and you're removing any chance I have of actual companionship in this
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  world. My, now my goal is to take everything you love and hold dear from you and pursue you to
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  the end of the world and by like taking things away from you in your life. So there's again that
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  like evil as the absence of good, but this one is like kind of the actively active removal of good
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  from the lives of other people that you kind of see that as an evil, not that the character was
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  inherently evil, but that the actions that they kind of turn towards are kind of an increasing
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  evil in that environment. Yeah, it's the sort of idea that we're tabular rather when we're born
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  and then it's what's written upon us, which makes us evil or good in that case. So it's the effect
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  of the actions upon others creates the evil in that case. But on the following up, the creation
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  of the scientific version of this is sort of overreach, which is where I was thinking about this,
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  which is obviously our climate change, runaway climate change problem, which is evil and we've
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  sort of all contributed to it. I think this is an area where you can see a sort of collectivisation
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  of evil and thinking about it in terms of sci-fi, I was thinking of there's lots of empires out there
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  who are imagined like this. So the Borg in Star Trek, sorry, Star Trek. But also in Dr Who,
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  you've got the Daleks and the Cybermen. They both have this sort of initiation where somebody
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  sets off this, you know, like Davros in Vence the Daleks and off they go replicating that.
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  So you've got this idea that there's a scientific evil that sort of you get it going and it runs
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  away. Probably when they were thinking about that, it was much more pre-climate change it was more
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  to do with nuclear, you know, the arms race or something like that maybe was in the mind of people
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  at that time. But we now have got the power to destroy ourselves many times over, chewy thought.
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  So, you know, it's not surprising that evil's becoming associated with this sort of technological
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  version of it. And I suppose I mentioned Star Wars. So Star Wars does have this
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  religious aspect of the Force, which is conceived of as almost like a spiritual force, isn't it?
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  So it has that frame, but it does also have its clone wars, its starfader who's like half machine
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  half person. It has its mechanized version of it as well and it sort of marries the two in that
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  world, which I think is quite interesting. It gives more depth to the Star Wars world as a result.
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  Yeah, stories. Yeah, stories is really interesting, especially when you're looking at like the
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  evolution of the story telling with evil and like so the Force has a dark side as well as the
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  light side right. So forces is what permeates. But definitely you see that there's in the first
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  and the original trilogy, there's a setup that the Empire is evil and alliance with the dark side
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  of this of this force in some ways. But the Empire also is this structural evil that's kind of set
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  on. Yeah. And when powers concentrated in a Darth Vader in an emperor and Alpatine,
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  that there's kind of an embodiment of evil that can be fought. But when that isn't present,
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  like in the prequels, there's kind of a shift in how you're looking at what is evil. So it
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  becomes really the focus is on the political system itself in the prequel trilogy that it's
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  really it's not again, it's not a character study of a hero's journey fighting an evil empire
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  and vanquishing a head centralized evil. It's this showing how this interconnected network of
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  individuals with different motives most of whom want power for themselves when these individuals
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  want power. Again, touch with each other and play off of each other. Then that's where that's
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  creates the foundation for individuals to rise to power and then go up the entire system. So
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  it's it is really interesting. And you see the move then in focusing on rather Luke Skywalker,
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  who never is it doesn't seem to be tempted terribly by the dark side seems to be kind of like
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  it's good. Good. He's he's good. He's good. He's good at heart. And he's taking the fight to
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  this empire. It's kind of you know, David and Goliath, you know, a small register character who's
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  fighting insurmountable evil and conquering it. But whereas the prequels focus on this Anakin character
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  who spoilers if you're not familiar with Star Wars becomes Darth Vader, there you see this kind of
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  internal. Instead of this external struggle, it's the internal basilation between good evil that
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  you're both have it there. And then by the end of the the original trilogy, then you see kind of
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  this kind of like redemption of Darth Vader. But it's only seeing it in the context of the prequels
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  that you really see this, yeah, I get this like vacillation, this potentiality for both good
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  and evil and then what circumstances that are structural that are systemic that allow for an
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  individual and almost shape an individual and nudge them toward this dark side path because
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  he's actually doing the reason Darth Vader and Anakin kind of turns to the dark side is it was
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  to save his wife. From the prequels I find quite weak in this sort of the ideas are potentially
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  interesting, but the execution I go with. Yeah, and also we're going to have to wind up this
• 30:18
  chat now. But I can't believe we've got all the way through without talking about Gollum
• 30:23
  because in a way the the role that Darth Vader plays is a bit like Gollum because he saves the
• 30:29
  day right at the very end though he does it through more of a repentance and seeing where
• 30:34
  Gollum never does and Gollum of course as a as is a wonderful study of those forces within us
• 30:42
  which are tearing us apart internally and becomes schizophrenic in a two not in the medical
• 30:49
  sense, but a two-sided personality as a result that's what evil does it divides us from our true
• 30:55
  self or makes us smaller in all sorts of ways. So right, we've it's been quite a tour and we've
• 31:04
  missed out game of phones and all sorts of other things we could have touched on. I'm many many more
• 31:09
  so I apologise to you if we didn't touch on your favourite fantasy franchise. Yeah, we haven't
• 31:15
  even touched Marvel. There's so much more out there. Anyway, we're going to stop there, but I do
• 31:20
  think we should have some fun at the end because we always have this question or almost always
• 31:25
  wearing all the fantasy worlds as it the best to be something and of course today I need to ask you
• 31:32
  where in all the fantasy worlds is it best to be a dark lord. So this is going to be this is this
• 31:39
  this might sound odd, but I would say the world the fantasy world of bluey. Okay. The cartoon
• 31:48
  I cartoon dogs and this is why so I don't know much about this cartoon. I know it's been a big
• 31:56
  thing. Those are small children. Okay, well, I have a small child and you're out
• 32:02
  so so this is right. So so it's it's it's it's certainly a world where
• 32:10
  that would be it would perhaps be the dark lord's greatest challenge to conquer
• 32:15
  in the sense that the individuals who would be trying to lord over would I have a certain degree
• 32:28
  of I don't know if there's there's there's there's some of optimism a sense of I don't know like
• 32:34
  honest reckoning with ones with with the ones own feelings and the feelings of others. So a dark
• 32:42
  lord would have to in this world actually base their own feelings and like previous trauma
• 32:48
  which is something that typically doesn't happen in other places. You're basically going to put your
• 32:52
  dot little three therapy. That's what you'll tell this is essentially it's essentially what you
• 32:55
  do you have to do either right. The the biggest challenge that dark lord has is themselves right
• 32:59
  that's the the darkest challenge is facing here of a darkness. So to really kind of turn that
• 33:04
  on its ends of things set them on a world to just like conquer and do what they they're path
• 33:11
  at least resistance for a dark lord is pillaging murdering torturing that's easy that's played out
• 33:17
  right. What happens when you put a dark lord in a world that holds you accountable for your feelings
• 33:24
  and like requires you to kind of like engage with your own past your own present while you're
• 33:32
  feeling what you're feeling and requires you to like work through that in some way to face that
• 33:38
  I think that would be the best place for a dark lord from the dark lords perspective. They might
• 33:47
  not be what they think they want at the beginning but it's really what they need. Oh yeah.
• 33:51
  SS screenwriters ranchers not what they want is what they need. I think I've been thinking about this
• 33:57
  and I think we didn't spend do we mention Milton we should have done if we didn't but I think I
• 34:06
  would go old school on this that the best place to be a dark lord is to be in Milton's paradise
• 34:12
  lost his version his poetic version of the sort of Christian story because you get such great words
• 34:20
  and you get to be powerful when you get to fall and raise armors and you get great speeches
• 34:28
  so in terms of and you get to set up everybody else's idea of what a proud dark lord byronic
• 34:34
  sort of hero is that's anachronistic but you know it all comes from that Milton Satan
• 34:40
  so I wouldn't mind stomping around in my cloven feet and you know right or whatever just for that
• 34:48
  would be an imaginatively exciting place to be so you know you're going to be defeated that's
• 34:53
  the only depressing thing about it because that's what you know it's going to happen within that
• 34:59
  context so I'll go I'll go into paradise lost that's where I'm going.
• 35:05
  Jason thanks so much for your thanks so much for your time and thank you everyone for listening
• 35:12
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• 35:24
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• 35:31
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