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wisdomeagle) wrote2006-02-08 01:32 pm
wisdomeagle) wrote2006-02-08 01:32 pm
Entry tags:
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 (slashyFBI 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.
++++
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
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.
no subject
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 effectPlease 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?)
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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'.
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(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).
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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.
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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.
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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 :)
no subject
no subject
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.