wisdomeagle | moments of otp

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moments of otp

By the end of the lesson, only Hermione Granger had made any difference to her match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Hermione a rare smile. - HPSS/PS page something or other.

++++

Not really unrelatedly, in Matilda the movie, I really think Miss Honey/Matilda reads more as, well, Miss Honey slash Matilda than as a mother-daughter thing. Here's why:

Because I'm a big perv. But really, honestly, here's why:

1) The scene where Miss Honey finds out Matilda's brilliant. She asks Matilda what she likes to read, and Matilda says she's reading Dickens. "I could read Dickens all day."

Miss Honey says, in a hush, "So could I."

That scene to me feels romantic. It feels like two people discovering a shared interest, and for both of them, the rest of the world evaporates and it's just that, a spark of friendship. They're kindred spirits, the race that knows Joseph. There's nothing teacher-studently in that moment; they're connecting to each other on the same level - and because of her intelligence, Matilda can do that.

2) Miss Honey telling Matilda the story of her life feels very un-teacherly to me. It also feels unmaternal, but that might just be reflective of my own relationship with my own mother. But still - it's a big confidence, and Miss Honey is treating Matilda like an adult. Partially she sees herself reflected in Matilda ("it's wonderful that you feel so powerful; many people don't"), but she's also just confiding in someone, near as we know for the first time, about her own life.

3) Matilda doesn't treat Miss Honey as an authority figure. Now, partially, there are only four adults in the movie (slashy ~~FBI agents~~ speedboat salesmen aside) - the Wormwoods, Miss Honey, and Miss Trunchbull - and of course Matilda doesn't treat Miss Honey the way she treats the others, since Miss Honey is actually attractive and intelligent and not actually batshit crazy. So the way Matilda treats authority figures - ignoring them and punishing them, mostly - is completely inappropriate for Miss Honey.

But at the same time, she doesn't exactly respect Miss Honey. While it's Miss Honey who asks Matilda to tea, it's Matilda who initiates the first trip to Trunchbull's house, and it's Matilda who speeds ahead while Miss Honey follows. Matilda is playfully disobedient and Miss Honey seems to revel in it, yes, but she Matilda is not following directives.

There's nothing in their relationship that smacks of authority. Miss Honey has nothing to teach Matilda, and she makes no rules for her. Theirs is an economy of promises - "Don't go in the Trunchbull's house again." "I won't, I promise."

And later, "Everything will be okay, I promise."

"You promised you wouldn't go back in her house!"

"I didn't! I did it with my mind!"

These promises are just that - promises. They're based in trust, not obedience, and they are again decidedly unpaternal.

Even at movie's end, there's no sign of Miss Honey disciplining Matilda in any way. Matilda is by no means a perfect child, and because she's so clever she gets away with a lot of imperfection, but Miss Honey does nothing to temper that.

4) There are moments when Miss Honey does try to be motherly/teacherly/wisdom-dispense-y -- for instance, when Matilda thinks she can move things with her mind but can't demonstrate it, and Miss Honey tries to comfort her, "Sometimes we can do a thing until we want to show someone. Sometimes a thing is lost until we ask someone to help us look for it."

But Matilda dismisses the advice: "This isn't like that."

Whatever she wants from Miss Honey, it's not wisdom.

5) But Matilda can and does offer a great deal to Miss Honey. She's cast as knight-in-armor, and she gifts Miss Honey with Lyssie-doll and with the chocolates, and moreover she saves them both from their hideous families and gets rid of the Trunchbull forever. It's in the nature of children's stories for children to triumph without the aid of adults. Parents in children's books are evil or incompetent or both; Miss Honey is not, so she's not a parent. The role of good parent hardly exists in literature, and there's nothing in what Miss Honey does to make her feel like a parent at all.

She tries to empower Matilda (again, "it's wonderful you feel so powerful,") but it's Matilda who actually empowers - it's she who prompts Miss Honey to confront the Trunchbull again and again until finally Matilda gets rid of her forever. It parallels Matilda's relationship with Lavender - (In the climax, Lavender ends up hanging from a bar; Matilda tells her to let go and Lav floats gently down and says, "I didn't know I could do that!") Matilda makes people feel strong and powerful.

6) I have overstated my point; there is one scene where Miss Honey is genuinely heroic - the Trunchbull says it's the "most interesting thing you've ever done." She rescues Matilda from the Chokey. But even there, Miss Honey and Matilda are both disempowered by the Trunchbull. The act is not of maternal forgiveness for wrongdoing, but a rescue by a sibling equally susceptible to a parent's wrath.

Similarly when Miss Honey leaves the book for Matilda without the Wormwoods seeing - they conspire against the evil adults/authority figures, but Miss Honey herself is not an authority figure - she doesn't have the power to rescue Matilda from her parents by overt means.

7) It occurs to me that Matilda does "rescue" her father from the slashy speedboat salesmen when she destroys their tape; when viewed in this light, perhaps Miss Honey is just another hapless adult in Matilda's life who needs her control, manipulation, and power in order to survive.

But looking at everything in light of the love-at-first-sight Dickens moment, I'm more inclined to view Matilda as a love story, in which they triumph over terrible odds in order to be together and to live happily ever after. The montage at the end - they play with hula hoops, they sew, they roll around on the lawn, they read together - to me reinforces the image of them as peers. Matilda is smarter (though the whole issue of Matilda's intelligence is utterly problematic and the subject of another post altogether, comparing bookverse and movieverse and showing why Matilda is Ravenclaw in the book and Gryffindor in the movie) and Miss Honey is older, but ultimately they play together and read together and learn together and build a life together that, based on the ending montage, doesn't need Hortensia or Bruce or Lavender to be complete. I'm not saying that they read as sexual to me, because they don't, but the relationship does read as more romantic than maternal.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

*carefully avoids reading* I didn't know there was a movie! Should I see it?

Well, it depends. I'm averse to books-made-into-movies and especially to Dahl-books-made-into-movies (early Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory trauma) in principle, and I have serious problems with a couple of the changes from book to movie. OTOH, I do enjoy the movie rather a lot and have seen it several times. For one thing, Embeth Davidzt, who plays Miss Honey, is so pretty. I developed a minor fixation with her four or five years back. Mara Wilson plays Matilda, and I seem fated to love Mara Wilson but have issues with her roles - she plays Susan in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street, and the whole concept of remaking that film is woeful to me, but Mara Wilson! *loves*

Dude, the ads for the Matilda movie commenced and I was like, "RAGE!"

I saw the Mara Wilson Miracle at some point after it came out on video and quite enjoyed it (able to suspend my Santa issues? impressive, I know). I considered watching the 1947 original first but just couldn't get into it and have never been one for b&w films. (So yes, the 1994 Mara Wilson was my intro to that film. I fail at normative cultural references and am so okay with that.)

I can suspend my Santa issues for Miracle as well. It's totally impressive.

have never been one for b&w films.

We didn't have a color TV for the first several years of my life, so I couldn't tell the difference between b+w and color. I watched lots of Three Stooges and classic Shirley Temple films borrowed from the library, and movies that I did see in color pretty much terrified me.

Interesting.

This is very intriguing, since I've never considered looking at the Matilda/Miss Honey relationship before in this light. Nevertheless, reading what you've written explaining their relationship with each other and those around them, it all makes such wonderful sense. Of course, you are a perv and all. ;P

I still kind of see Miss Honey being the mother-figure in Matilda's life, only because I like the happy ending where both of them finally get a family they both wanted and that's how I've naturally seen their relationship as a whole. However, I agree that Miss Honey doesn't necessarily discipline Matilda like regular adults would discipline children. Matilda also doesn't really need to be taught normally, considering she's already a clever girl; Miss Honey is equally as intelligent, and I guess they both see each other as that. Equals. Both are drawn together by their passions of learning and education, and their desires of one day getting out of the hellhole lives they live.

Okay, I'm more rambling now, and probably not as good as your analysis above. But yes. I enjoyed this immensely, as it's very thought-provoking and interesting to see another perspective of the relationship between Miss Honey and Matilda. :)

Cool, thanks for reading and responding. It was your comment about how Miss Honey was a mother figure to Matilda that got me thinking about how I really didn't read their relationship that way and trying to articulate why. :)

Damn if you're not persuasive. You're right of course; they do relate to each other as peers.

Now this has me thinking about other child characters who can act as a peer with adults. It's a common trope in kidslit, of course, and also in my own writing, fanfic and original (which is littered with teenaged supergenius girls). It's the place from which Dawn/Giles comes from, I suppose, as well as other things.

Dawn is at the age Buffy was when she was Called, so does it even make sense to think of her as a child? Of course, the ability to relate to adults as peers is relevant for teenagers as well.

What strikes me particularly about your mention of Dawn/Giles is that that gets my brain going along the lines of non-adults who want to be (treated like) adults, which is where my interest lies (having been one of those children/teens), whereas thinking about Ari's talk about the Matilda movie (which I haven't seen) I find myself thinking that Matilda found a person with whom she could safely be a child (Ari's description of the ending montage sticks with me particularly) and I secondarily think of the idea that Matilda is an adult figure for Miss Honey, which makes sense to me (esp. given Ari's talk about the movie playing up Matilda's Gryffindor-ness) and is interesting also because I'm not sure I see Miss Honey as being able to be on Matilda's level intellectually. (I know at the end of the book we have Matilda finally finding sufficiently challenging material into which to channel her energies, and it's been years since I read the book so I can't remember what grade level she ends up at, but I don't recall ever seeing Miss Honey depicted as particularly intellectual; she's teaching kindergartners, and the big appeal she has is her kindness -- which of course is nothing to sneeze at, esp. given the environment of the Wormwoods and the Trunchbull, but Matilda isn't drawn to her because she is an intellectual equal.)

Oh, I wait until Dawn is in her mid-to-late twenties to make the Dawn/Giles happen, so it's certainly not the same thing logically. But I think it sort of comes from the same place--it's Dawn's adolescence which attracts me to her character, because she's able to live out the adolescent fantasy which to me Buffy is all about. That "child" aspect of Dawn is forever associated to her with me, so that even when she is on paper an adult her acting like an adult hits one of my kinks (which is why I love writing her post-"Chosen"). Becoming an adult and a possible lover and thus equal to Giles-the-father-figure (the ultimate expression of her maturity) is for me a type of coming-of-age story, just as the romance Ari's painted between movie!verse Maltilda/Miss Honey is a coming-of-age story where Matilda earns her independece (rather than, Ari argues persuasively, merely transferring her obedience to a more palatable parental figure) and becomes an equal to the adult. A lot of potentially squicky pairings--basically any parent!kink or teacher!kink--suddenly make sense to me on this level. (It'd all depend on how well the writer could persuade me that the child/adolescent figure really was capable of acting as an adult and thus have the ability to consent.)

non-adults who want to be (treated like) adults, which is where my interest lies (having been one of those children/teens)

I still support child suffrage, although not in the same way or quite as vehemently as I did as a child.

I find myself thinking that Matilda found a person with whom she could safely be a child

That makes sense, and I think you could support that reading if you had seen the movie, but that's not the place Ari's post sent me to. I tend to think that Ari was</> setting up Miss Honey as Matilda's intellectual equal (or close enough), especially with her comment about the Dickens moment (which I don't actually remember). Also, I find myself convinced by the post that in the movie that Miss Honey isn't an emotional adult (although Matilda is), and so I think the ending montage is as much about Miss Honey reclaiming the happy childhood Miss Trunchbull never let her have than it is about Matilda.

Hmm, now I really want to write movie!verse Matilda/Jenny and explore these dynamics.

This brings up a really interesting point about the perceived age of characters; I know for me and many viewers/fans, Dawn as younger-sister is really hard to shake, even though she's almost an adult by series end and can be aged up regardless, she feels like a younger-sister to me. Likewise Joyce-as-mother. We-as-viewers take the viewpoint character (Buffy)'s age to be the norm and point-of-identity... it's illogical but it's how I react to text. Like, in the BSC the viewpoint characters are 13, and yet I still cannot think of them as anything but Older Than Me (or maybe Just About My Age) since I started reading them when I was in 2nd grade. So when writing/conceptualizing BuffyversexBSC crossover, I find it hard to imagine that Dawn Summers when we meet her is actually older than the babysitters are.

Becoming an adult and a possible lover and thus equal to Giles-the-father-figure (the ultimate expression of her maturity) is for me a type of coming-of-age story, just as the romance Ari's painted between movie!verse Maltilda/Miss Honey is a coming-of-age story where Matilda earns her independece (rather than, Ari argues persuasively, merely transferring her obedience to a more palatable parental figure) and becomes an equal to the adult.

This is interesting! In a sense, Matilda is always-already earning independence/acting independently - she teaches herself to read, she learns, in the words of the movie's vo, "something most people never learn - to take care of herself," and as soon as she figures out how, she's punishing adults and changing the world to her liking.

Which is why Miss Honey's presence feels so odd. Matilda doesn't need a caretaker (the vo already told us she can take care of herself) and she doesn't need a teacher (she taught herself to read), so Miss Honey's role must be something different....

I think the ending montage is as much about Miss Honey reclaiming the happy childhood Miss Trunchbull never let her have than it is about Matilda.

Yup!

Hmm, now I really want to write movie!verse Matilda/Jenny and explore these dynamics.

~~My hypnotic powers are already taking effect~~ Please do!

Yep. There is (as I was discussing with Elizabeth after I wrote "Permutations") a very real sense of Valentine Wiggin in Dawn's High-Watcher-ness (in my Watcher!verse universe): I've always been attracted to the idea of the teenaged girl who takes over the world (a couple years ago I would have said I was attracted to the teenaged girl herself). With Dawn, I sort of get to have my cake and eat it too.

In a sense, Matilda is always-already earning independence/acting independently - she teaches herself to read, she learns, in the words of the movie's vo, "something most people never learn - to take care of herself," and as soon as she figures out how, she's punishing adults and changing the world to her liking.

And I think this is why her story speaks to so many people. The "changing the world to her liking" is particularly will-to-power-y, an expression of an adolescent fantasy.

Which is why Miss Honey's presence feels so odd. Matilda doesn't need a caretaker (the vo already told us she can take care of herself) and she doesn't need a teacher (she taught herself to read), so Miss Honey's role must be something different....

I see the potential for much angst. Which is why I want to write the fic.

~~My hypnotic powers are already taking effect~~ Please do!

My canon is at home; I never thought to bring the movie to school with me. Also, I'm not sure I could make it Matilda/Jenny, at least not at first; she'd need a same-age love interest to make Jenny angst some more. Any good crossover candidates? (The movie is set sometime in the 90s, right?)

And I think this is why her story speaks to so many people. The "changing the world to her liking" is particularly will-to-power-y, an expression of an adolescent fantasy.

It's interesting; you mentioned in a post wayback (and God I should actually like, comment on people's posts when they make them and not save it all up for conversation in my lj) about how insofar as she had that power, Dawn was your self-insert, and how maybe that's not quite how I felt about Tara, which made me giggle and go yeah, maybe not. Then I got to thinking about how I identify with Willow and Tara and Fred (and all my characters to some extent but those most frequently) and how some of the very first Buffyverse fic I wrote was "A Teeny Tiny Temporal Fold," where one of the major themes is that Willow can have a person she's had a crush on for nearly her whole life, and that while he's always had power over her and been older/wiser/more mature, now she has the knowledge and the power to intrigue him as he did her when she was in high school. And hey, that's pretty will-to-power-y.

OTOH, and SoLS!Fred would spank me for saying this (snerk), I feel as though the particular power-themes that work through my fics are only peripherally power issues and more about love/desire proper. Or rather, the fics of mine that most speak to my adolescent fantasies are things like "Never Was Cool," (which I can't remember/don't know if you've read) where, minus the reciprocity of the feeling, was my middle school experience.

So. Um. The reason Matilda spoke to me is not so much she-had-power-over-grownups as she-won-the-day-and-got-the-girl, though I'm not sure how I articulated that when I was younger (maybe when I was first introduced to the text, it was just "ooh, she reads books just like me!")

My canon is at home; I never thought to bring the movie to school with me.

Local library? (I checked, because I am becoming more like Elizabeth every day, and it's not in your school library, which is funny, because I'm reasonably sure it was in Baldwin's collection, which was low on actual academic stuff but good with chick flicks and Disney's animated. *g*)

Any good crossover candidates?

I asked my brain this question, it spat out "River!" and I (metaphorically) spat out my drink. According to Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) this means it's a good idea - good ideas are the ones you react to physically. And if River and Matilda bonded over braininess and magical powers, just think of the angst from both Jenny and Simon, who love them so but can't connect on that same level!

I have my own plans for an HP crossover, though I can't decide which 'verse to set it in - or rather, there are clear disadvantages to each. The bookverse doesn't really work because [whited out just in case; spoilers for the end of the book] Matilda loses her powers and so wouldn't get a Hogwarts letter, but the movieverse doesn't work either because it's set in America, so Matilda wouldn't get a Hogwarts letter. Other than that, I'm enjoying the idea of Matilda-at-Hogwarts but don't have any particular ideas - and since she's sorted differently in book and movieverse, the Luna-or-Hermione question depends on which 'verse it's in. Yes, I've been thinking about this far too much!

CJ Cregg. I'm just sayin'.

Yeah, I was hoping for someone with whom I wouldn't have to work quite so hard for the crossover, which I was hoping to be seamless. I love female characters; you'd think I'd be able to think of a female character from a realistic universe set in a more or less contemporary setting, wouldn't you?

(Well, I can't.)

Elizabeth would check my school library? Anyway, I had already checked, and no.. Nor would I think it'd be in the local library, which is pretty pathetic (we're in the middle of rural nowhere).

Well, of my fandoms, that pretty much just leaves the BSC.

And yeah, since whenever I mention media I wish I owned, Elizabeth checks the SAILS network (the library I rely on) to see if I could borrow it and not have to spend my money. It amuses me.

You totally commented while I was commenting.

And dude, I had totally forgotten about your crazy ideas about buying things and how my ILL suggestions were in large part reactions against that.

Elizabeth would check my school library?

Elizabeth practically grew up in her town's wonderful library and thinks interlibrary loan is one of the best inventions ever (and has been spoiled by a vast interlibrary loan network where she lives). Thus frequently Ari has lamented a lack of some media item and Elizabeth has helpfully suggested the library -- with a concluding statement wherein Elizabeth points out that yes Ari can in fact request it ILL because Elizabeth knows where Ari lives and has checked her library network catalog. ~~Because Elizabeth is destined to become a reference librarian.~~

Alixtii probably does not rate such effort from Elizabeth but Ari is clearly (finally) adopting some of my good habits :)

ROTFL!

and God I should actually like, comment on people's posts when they make them and not save it all up for conversation in my lj

Word, yo.

The reason Matilda spoke to me is not so much she-had-power-over-grownups as she-won-the-day-and-got-the-girl, though I'm not sure how I articulated that when I was younger (maybe when I was first introduced to the text, it was just "ooh, she reads books just like me!")

Is it bad that Matilda's bookworm nature remains my primary reason for loving her? (The power-over-grownups doesn't particularly speak to me who always had positive relationships with adults, though I certainly felt the narrative powerfully while I was reading it -- as one should if a story is well-written.)

Local library? (I checked, because I am becoming more like Elizabeth every day

*grins and loves* I am so glad my good influence is rubbing off on you.

I know for me and many viewers/fans, Dawn as younger-sister is really hard to shake, even though she's almost an adult by series end and can be aged up regardless, she feels like a younger-sister to me.

Interesting. I never particularly identified with any of the Scooby Gang (Willow if I had to, but she was way more genius than I ever was, plus way prettier) but both Tara and Dawn both pinged me very much as "Oh, she's so very much like me." So I in fact tend to think of them (Dawn in particular) as their own entities rather than in connection to the primary characters. And I never think of Dawn as little sister. I sometimes use the problematic of her being Buffy's sister when I'm ficcing (in Dawn/Spike, for example) but I mostly just think of her as another character and she is very much one of my primary objects of identification/desire.

I was I think in elementary school when I read BSC, and I thought of the characters as being So Much Older Than Me, with that distant awe kids have for older kids. I now think of them (when I think of canon) as annoyingly existing in a younger than me 'verse that doesn't make a whole lot of reality sense; and when I think of fic I generally think of them as college age (since it makes for easy sexualizing while still maintaining a lot of the canon dynamics, plus I'm sure the fact that college still feels like the default norm for me after four years there).

Huh. And it's weird because I don't identify with Buffy as I do with Willow or Tara, but I somehow seem to see the whole 'verse from her perspective. And randomly, I have Giles-lust that's very much fueled by the fact that he's older, while in my lust for the Gateverse characters, who are also older than I am, I'm much less aware of them as older - they're just people. So yeah, when I view/read literature, I completely identify with the viewpoint character at least for the duration of the narrative. Fanfic changes that for me to some extent by changing the viewpoint character...

I stopped reading the BSC the first time when I was 12 (I gave it up for Lent in sixth grade...) which feels really appropriate, since I never achieved age-equality with the older BSC members... rereading them I giggle and groan a lot at the 11-12-13 year old points of view, but my images of them in my mind are still of Slightly Older or Just My Age girls, regardless of what age they actually are when I'm writing them.

Then again, the BSCverse character whose head I slip into most easily is a 15-year-old deeply closeted gay boy, so I have no idea what this says about me.

Identifying with viewpoint characters certainly makes sense. I think in part I feel like for an ensemble show there are multiple viewpoints of entry even if there is one dominant protagonist.

I also tend to view texts from my outside-the-text perspective rather than from the perspective of any of the characters. Some of my critique is definitely grounded in the world of the text, but I also critique it as a text -- critiquing the creator's decisions.

I always thought of myself as (wanting to be) adult, so I rather suspect that plays a large role in my thinking of older-than-me characters as "just people," and in lusting after them I probably age myself up to be peer with them. (Perving on the age differential is definitely something I do in fanfic and I frequently place myself in the markedly younger character's position, but that's a separate kind of fantasy.)

Then again, the BSCverse character whose head I slip into most easily is a 15-year-old deeply closeted gay boy, so I have no idea what this says about me.

That being a queer adolescent misfit is a strong point of identity for you?

Hmm, yes, about Giles seeming much older than, say, Jack does.

Oh, I'm all over the adult/teen thing (holdover from my own teen years I'm sure) so I was more making a distinction between child-as-proto-adult and teen-as-actual-adult.

Buffy has never been about the adolescence issues for me, though obviously I see in the text a lot of the metaphors Joss uses for such. When I think about meta for the text I think about issues of good and evil, and while I was watching the show I was always engaged and desirous to continue most because of the characters and caring about them and what happened to them.

I still support child suffrage, although not in the same way or quite as vehemently as I did as a child.

Oh, man, I have to restrain my cravings for competency requirements for adult voters (though my desire that everyone be ridiculously well-informed would be appeased somewhat if the people making the laws and running for the offices -- and those opposing such -- made real efforts to disseminate information amongst the populace).

I well remember my adolescent insistences that I had solutions to major problems, and I equally well remember my father hearing me out and pointing out the ways in which matters were more complicated than I saw.

I think the ending montage is as much about Miss Honey reclaiming the happy childhood Miss Trunchbull never let her have than it is about Matilda

Oh, I definitely agree. I said in response to the original post that "I rather suspect that the ideal in Dahl's children's books is eternal childness," and even leaving aside that claim, happy childhood is clearly an important issue in Dahl's kidlit, and there's a huge element of mutuality in the Matilda/Miss Honey relationship with them being able to save each other in some ways and give each other what they had been denied.

Movieverse Matilda and Jenny Calendar? Interesting.

Oh, I'm all over the adult/teen thing (holdover from my own teen years I'm sure) so I was more making a distinction between child-as-proto-adult and teen-as-actual-adult.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?

Oh, man, I have to restrain my cravings for competency requirements for adult voters (though my desire that everyone be ridiculously well-informed would be appeased somewhat if the people making the laws and running for the offices -- and those opposing such -- made real efforts to disseminate information amongst the populace).

Yes yes YES! If only competencey restrictions weren't so clearly historically used to disenfranchise minorities. Robert Heinlein actually has a good essay about different possible competency requirements that could be put in place and what the effects of various possibilities might be.

Movieverse Matilda and Jenny Calendar? Interesting.

Isn't Miss Honey's first name Jennifer? I just can't see teen!Matilda calling her guardian "Miss Honey."

> > Oh, I'm all over the adult/teen thing (holdover from my own teen years I'm sure) so I was more making a distinction between child-as-proto-adult and teen-as-actual-adult.
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?

I was thinking particularly of your statement that That "child" aspect of Dawn is forever associated to her with me. I'm far more interested in adults than children, so I meant that I was interested in teenagers who were capable of functioning as adults rather than in children who are adultlike in some ways.

Also, you had said "I wait until Dawn is in her mid-to-late twenties to make the Dawn/Giles happen, so it's certainly not the same thing logically" and I was explaining that I have no problem with adult/teen relationships so I don't necessarily age Dawn up and thus was saying "does it even make sense to think of her as a child?" not to say "Dawn/Giles means Dawn is not a good comparison for Matilda/Miss Honey" but rather to say "Dawn is very adultlike."

Does that make more sense?

If only competencey restrictions weren't so clearly historically used to disenfranchise minorities. Robert Heinlein actually has a good essay about different possible competency requirements that could be put in place and what the effects of various possibilities might be.

I'd be interested to read that Heinlein essay.

My default fallback solution for most every problem is to more education (in a broad sense, not necessarily an endorsement of how the current educational system is run or idealized by any number of groups) -- in this case, encouraging people to educate themselves about political issues.

Isn't Miss Honey's first name Jennifer? I just can't see teen!Matilda calling her guardian "Miss Honey."

Oh, that's entirely possible. As I said elsewhere in this discussion, it's been years since I read the book, and obviously I think of her primarily as "Miss Honey." That makes your statement far less non-sequitor-y :)

[And yes, IMDb lists her as: Miss Jennifer 'Jenny' Honey]

Does that make more sense?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Fascinating--certainly not the way I percieve adolescence. For one thing, I don't think I believe there really any such thing as "adultness" as a category--although I suppose I could say that about most soi-disant categories. For me, I think it has to do more with the way their identity is interpellated: a teenager is someone who isn't fully treated as an adult.

After all, once a human creature is old enough to acquire language s/he is by necessity already a rational agent. So in that sense, can we ever really remember not being "adults"?

I'd be interested to read that Heinlein essay.

I found the essay; it's the Afterword to "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?" in Expanded Universe (Ace, 1980), pages 396-402.

Isn't Miss Honey's first name Jennifer?
Yes. Jenny Honey. *dies*

I just can't see teen!Matilda calling her guardian "Miss Honey."

I can! I've actually no idea what she would call her, but I perv more on calling her Miss Honey, so there you go.

In retrospect, of course you can--but I wouldn't be able to sustain that state of mind long enough to support a fiction.

I find myself thinking that Matilda found a person with whom she could safely be a child (Ari's description of the ending montage sticks with me particularly)

Yes. And that's pretty much explicit in the vo - "Matilda discovered something she'd never known before - life could be fun. And she decided to have as much of it as possible." I think at the same time, Miss Honey experiences it as a second childhood and she encourages Matilda to have all the fun she never got to have as an actual child.

(I know at the end of the book we have Matilda finally finding sufficiently challenging material into which to channel her energies,

I'm not going to mention how the way this changes from book to movie infuriates me. Nope.

but I don't recall ever seeing Miss Honey depicted as particularly intellectual; )

This is a good point. I think Miss Honey is heaps smarter than anyone else in the film except Matilda, but that's really not saying much (and again, the Trunchbull isn't neccessarily stupid, just mean). She does read lots, and besides the Dickens moment, there's the two of them reading Moby-Dick in the last scene - and it just occured to me that it's Matilda who reads to Miss Honey and not the other way around and how that just enforces how very *not* parent-child they are.

In both book and film, Matilda does have same-age friends as well, and they aren't intellectual peers but satisfy other needs, which is nice.

Damn if you're not persuasive

*swings watch* You should all write me cross-gen femslash porn.... you should all write me cross-gen femslash porn...

:p

But yeah. It's interesting. If I really had to pinpoint my kink, it wouldn't be children-relating-to-adults as peers per se so much as eroticizing the inequality in adult-child interaction -- it's fun when the child (or teen, as Elizabeth points out below) is intellectually equal or superior to the adult in question but not emotionally so.

Because I am a great big perv. The end.

Because I am a great big perv. The end.

Hmm, yis.

If I really had to pinpoint my kink, it wouldn't be children-relating-to-adults as peers per se so much as eroticizing the inequality in adult-child interaction

Yeah. I still think I often find that squicky, but of course it is fun to read when you write it. (And sometimes the squick can be the point.) Hoory for Ari's kinks!

Hooray indeed for my many and sometimes upsetting kinks. Hey, at least I own them.

Now this discussion's made me all gleeful over the potential in Miss Honey/Matilda to be something other than just It Hits My Kinks. I mean, of course that's a perfectly valid reason for me to obsess over it, but it's got like, an actual factual basis in the film! *g*

[[ But looking at everything in light of the love-at-first-sight Dickens moment, I'm more inclined to view Matilda as a love story, in which they triumph over terrible odds in order to be together and to live happily ever after. The montage at the end - they play with hula hoops, they sew, they roll around on the lawn, they read together - to me reinforces the image of them as peers. ]]

Interesting. Reading that montage litany I thought, "That sounds like peers like whoa, and that bothers me" -- because Miss Honey is an adult acting like a child, and I like adult adults, even though thinking back to the book she is far more child than adult. And I rather suspect that the ideal in Dahl's children's books is eternal childness (the only positive real adult I can think of is the grandmother in The Witches). But it has been years since I read any of the Dahl books.

I love Matilda's Ravenclawness (if we must use HP metaphors) and the idea that they make her into more of a Gryffindor in the film adds to my reasons not to see the film -- because I am way more comfortable with her bookishness than with her tricksiness.

There's also Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, setting aside the troublesomeness of Willy Wonka himself (it's been far too long since I've read the book and so can't really remember). But yeah, adults suck is a not-exactly-subtle theme in Dahl.

OTOH, the children are very... adultlike. I mean, part of who Matilda is is a little girl who thinks like an adult - I haven't read the book recently, but I don't think there's anything really equivalent to that ending montage with its reclaiming-of-childhood ideal. Huh.

I love Matilda's Ravenclawness (if we must use HP metaphors) and the idea that they make her into more of a Gryffindor in the film adds to my reasons not to see the film -- because I am way more comfortable with her bookishness than with her tricksiness.

It's not just tricksiness, it's stupid-frelling-pointless-bravery, which is how I define Gryffindor and which makes me want to slap her. Her intelligence isn't really downplayed so much as her bravery is played up, but there is a shift from Matilda as generally intelligent to Matilda-as-bookworm that upsets me.

If you'll recall, in the book she demonstrates her ability to multiply and explains that she doesn't know how she does it - she just thought if a pocket calculator could do it, so could she - in the movie she says, "I learned how from a book," or similar. It's a minor change, but consistant - everywhere that Matilda demonstrates intelligence, it goes back to book-learning and lots of it, and I remember her having a much more rounded intelligence in the book.

There is Grandpa Joe, yes. I feel like he acts primarily as an agent to move storyaction along than anything else, however. Though thinking back now (I reread the book after the Johnny Depp movie came out so I could at least chime in re: source text in the discussions) he consistently acts as a counter to Wonka -- pressing him with questions about his logic, etc. The text itself problematizes the character of Wonka through Grandpa Joe.

Definitely agreed re: adultlike children. I think that inversion is a major part of Dahl's critique.

I am now home and can pull out my copy of the book. The end scene is your icon, with the Wormwoods running away, all too happy to have someone take Matilda, but what I always think of as the end scene is her loss of her powers, her having finally found her niche.

Skimming, I come across:

"I'm glad it's happened," Matilda said. "I wouldn't want to go through life as a miracle-worker."

Oh the wonderfully adult child.

Sidenote: From the facing page, after the heartbeats conversation:

This child, Miss Honey told herself, seems to be interested in everything. When one is with her it is impossible to be bored. I love it.

It is your fault that my brain goes shippy fic places reading that.

Wow, harsh on the Gryffindors, much? Though admittedly the pointless (or at least ill-thought-through) acts of "bravery" are probably the most frustrating things about the Gryffindor heroes in the HP books.

I love bookworm!Matilda, but that's more for the ideas of escaping into books and of gobbling up knowledge, but I also really like the idea that she's innately gifted. And I particularly identify with the idea of being able to do math but not be able to explain how :) And that's a bizarre unrealism the movie is working if she's supposed to have all her knowledge from books and superpowers she retains even after finding her intellectual niche.

Really don't remember Charlie well enough to comment.

I really ought to reread Matilda the book, and probably will, so I can discuss more (and try to avoid just posting book vs movie, since I think both are interesting in their own right and not just in the ways the movie ~~desecrates~~ changes the book.

*wins!

Yeah. I'm not a fan of Gryffindors or Gryffindor-type heroes in most 'verses and associate them with blind idealism and the Gene Roddenberry heroes - the Kirks of the world. And yeah. Not a fan. (Though in the HP-verse itself, I do like the Gryffindors more than the Slytherins. In the larger 'verse, characters who'd be sorted Slytherin are interesting, but Rowling's villains, not so much [except for Snape]).

And that's a bizarre unrealism the movie is working if she's supposed to have all her knowledge from books and superpowers she retains even after finding her intellectual niche.

Yup. It's wicked annoying. I think there's something to be said about the shift in values from Dahl's book to the American cinema... I think there's a far more striking theme of independence from authority in the movie (though still with the needing to reread the book!). And also the total lack of logic with the magical powers.

Somewhere in this conversation I was thinking of suggesting that we both reread the book so we could discuss :)

I never watched TOS and don't have any particular fondness for Kirk. I do love Picard, though I am also constantly critiquing the Trekverse (from a meta outsider perspective as mentioned in a previous comment).

And I'm one the few who is not utterly fascinated by Snape, huh?

I think there's a far more striking theme of independence from authority in the movie (though still with the needing to reread the book!).

Interesting, since my dominant memory of the book (well past the initial image of tiny Matilda in the huge chair with the stacks of books) is of all the tricks Matilda plays, of the ways in which she is able to attack the established figures of authority (her parents and the Trunchbull).

Well.

I just watched this movie again the other day...and I was thinking this, but I didn't know I was thinking it.

This is awesome

Oh this topic is fantastic! I have a huge crush on Miss Honey lol but I always think the same thing: there is something more than a parent-child relationship between Matilda and Miss Honey!

I've gotten this vibe from the movie too. Like, Matilda is an adult in a child's body and maybe Miss Honey never really grew up all the way, so they're equals. Which I can totally understand and relate to; when I was a kid, I didn't like the company of most of the people my age, and I hung out with adults. I had a lot more in common with them. I was far more intelligent than the other kids my age and not at all interested in anything they were interested in. When I wasn't by myself - which I usually was - then I was hanging out with the adults. But I wouldn't classify myself as having been an adult in a child's body. And today, I feel almost the reverse (child in an adult body), but not quite. I don't fit in with any age group, really, and never have. Probably never will. So I make friends without really paying much attention to age; someone my age would normally have friends between the ages of 20 and 35, but my best friend is in her mid-50s and it's an equal relationship, though she has more experience and knowledge in many areas, but it still is like equals helping each other fill in each others' knowledge gaps.

I would befriend children with equal ease if not for the fact that the ones that actually have something in common with me make me extremely nervous; in this day and age it is far too dangerous for adults to befriend unrelated children despite the purest of intentions, so I avoid children despite the fact I would have loved to have had an adult friend like me growing up. It makes me sad to think that I could be enriching someone's life. Though I suppose I could always volunteer for Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Although I'm transgendered, so there's another complication.

Sorry to ramble, just spotted this entry whilst Googling and was moved to comment.

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