“Yer a wizard, Harry.” These words, snarled in Rubeus Hagrid’s West Country drawl, have achieved life beyond their franchised origins. They confirm for one stir-crazy London pre-teen that his beige suburban life isn’t inevitable, that he could, simply by embracing it, become destiny. Like the X-Men or Ender Wiggin, Harry’s revelation echoes the desires of countless drab childhoods, acknowledging that their greatness merely hasn’t been recognized yet.
But it’s always made me uncomfortable. Hagrid doesn’t promise Harry, “Ye’ve got magic in ye, Harry;” wizard isn’t something he becomes. Rather, it’s a pre-emergent state, something Harry already is, without his consent or awareness. Like discovering you’ve always been White, or middle-class, the condition doesn’t require his awareness; it’s part of his essential being. “You’re already a wizard, Harry,” Hagrid basically says, “so decide how to use that fact.”
Author JK Rowling has latterly achieved internet notoriety for her inability to shut up about gender issues. Rowling believes one’s gender corresponds, one-to-one, with one’s genital anatomy, existing from birth, and any deviation is aberrant. Scholars call this position “gender essentialism”; I consider that title a misnomer, but that’s another discussion. What matters, for our purposes, is that Rowling believes gender precedes conscious awareness.
Many fantasy novelists use some concept of “the gift” or other euphemism for pre-emergent magical identity. Maybe this reflects Sir Thomas Malory, who depicted Merlin as a human-demon hybrid, or Tolkein, who presented wizards as ageless emissaries of God. Either way, wizards aren’t like us plebians; they have a nature that makes magic available. No amount of practicing or education will close this gulf; wizardry isn’t like golf, or playing the guitar.
This perhaps makes sense with Rowling. As a Scottish Presbyterian, Rowling has some familiarity with Calvinist doctrines of predestination: God already knows the roster of the saved. To the Calvinist, we indeed have pre-emergent natures. As this conundrum fermented with me, however, I realized I’d spotted this elsewhere: Rowling’s wizards, like George Lucas’ Jedi, can never emerge from pedestrian bloodlines like ours.
Lucas’ original Star Wars, latterly retitled A New Hope, presented Luke Skywalker as mastering the Force through self-discipline and mindfulness, but also through genetics. From the beginning, Obi-Wan Kenobi clearly considered Luke an apprentice, and wanted him to reconcile ancestral transgressions. Luke is one of us, but not really. This sense of inherited responsibility became only more glaring in Lucas’ prequel trilogies, with the introduction of midi-chlorians.
Calvinist predestination becomes especially pointed because Luke Skywalker, like Harry Potter, is a child of prophecy. Like Katniss Everdeen, Aragorn, or Neo, these promised Messiahs come at pre-ordained intervals to deliver humanity from thinly coded Nazis. Individually, these stories seem hopeful, leading benighted humans into liberty. Together, a pattern emerges: the Nazis were necessary to purge senescent society, and now the Messiah will restore the balance.
Who, then, are these predestined Messiahs saving humanity from? The tyrannical Empire, Ministry of Magic, Panem, or machines? Or are they saving us from the doddering human dominion that let the tyrants in? Are we fortunate enough to receive these Messiahs’ salvation exclusively because we were born after the necessary cleansing? And therefore, does the Messiah’s existence loom as a threat, that we, too, might get cleansed next?
Predestination might make sense in an environment with a literal God. As a Christian myself, Calvinist predestination has always made me uncomfortable, since it implies God has already cut some people loose; it’s a short leap to assuming that God approves discrimination. But in science fiction and fantasy environments, where transcendence is, at best, murky, the potential for misuse becomes glaring. As Rowling has tragically discovered.
Yet such abuse seems implicit if humans have a pre-emergent nature. If being a wizard, or mystic space samurai, or techno-Jesus, is something somebody just innately is, then it follows that it’s also something everyone else innately isn’t. Even if the muggles and non-Jedi aren’t explicitly inferior, that potential is implicit. Observe when the unwashed masses submit themselves to Jedi judgement, or wizards alter muggle memories to protect their secrets.
Like millions of audience members, Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker propelled me along their narratives when they were new. Like in real life, we don’t have time to ruminate upon the moral implications during the action. Only later, in quiet recollection, do the story’s moral contradictions suddenly intrude upon our appreciation. But the fact that we needed years to recognize the contradictions, doesn’t make them less real.
A world with real wizards is just too depressing to contemplate.
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