[Movies] Fantastic Beasts and My Tendency to Overthink Things
Okay, seriously, if you haven't seen the movie yet, don't read this, because there are SPOILERS.
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So, in this story, we have a "no-maj" (as in "no magic," the American wizard term for "muggle," as we are told) who is a baker. Or, rather, he wants to open a bakery. He presents some samples of his work to a dubious banker, and is told that these days, machines can make donuts. "Ah, but not like these pastries!" is (roughly paraphrased from memory) the general note of the baker's response.
Later, our "no-maj" baker, having unwittingly stumbled upon the world of magic (and in constant peril of being "Obliviated" -- or having his memory erased, which is the common solution for such oversights) is the guest at the home of a couple of witches, who conjure up strudel in a wonderfully CGI'ed sequence with the ingredients weaving themselves together and baking in mid-air with but a few expressive whips of a wand. The baker expresses that he's never enjoyed such wonderful cooking, to the giggling delight of the witch host.
And my thought is along the lines of, "Dude, earlier you were scorned because someone thinks that a machine can do what you do. Now you find out that a lady with a stick can wave it around and in a blink make the best meal you've ever had, with no mess, no fuss, and the barest hint of effort."
Magic is marvelous in the Potterverse, but I find it laughable when wizards and witches seriously intone the importance of keeping magic a secret from the Muggle/Nomaj world (never mind that the human concept of "magic" and "witches" is apparently alive and well in some quarters, even if it's laughed off by more "rational" folks) under the threat of ... gasp, wait for it ... WAR with the muggle/no-maj world.
Like, oh dearie me. And we're supposed to think that somehow mere mortal humanity could ever pose any sort of serious threat? (And this is in a time period well before the atomic bomb.) Not that I should consider it an oversight of the writer; rather, the film's villain seems to call this bluff right away, roughly paraphrased with, "Who does this rule actually protect?" And I suppose the answer would be that those benevolent wizards do this so that they can protect those poor benighted, foolish, stupid, and magic-free muggles/no-majes. (I'm not sure how one should spell the plural.)
But I digress. What I was wondering about was why they bothered presenting this baker as being challenged with the accusation, "We have MACHINES that could do what you do!" when presumably this isn't entirely true ... but then we get to discover that, actually, it's even worse than that. In the wizarding world, any Joe Schmoe Wizard can probably conjure up a decent snack in seconds; specialization within the wizarding world (i.e., things that other wizards would actually pay good money for) seems to be focused more on making foodstuffs that are overtly magical and weird, because I guess that's the only way left to go when years of experience and hours of labor are surpassed by some average wizard or witch with a wand wiggle.
And, good grief, skyscrapers get obliterated, but never fear, we get some amazing CGI montages of people purposefully striding about and pointing wands and making twisted steel girders straighten themselves out and -- bibbity bobbity boo! -- everything just falls into place, and it makes me wonder that there's any manual labor at all in the wizarding world (or whether it's really just a sort of charity to house elves and the lot of them to make sure they still have some reason to still exist).
Did someone involved in the movie deliberately make the automation analogy with machines and magic vs. a mere muggle baker? Was there any sort of lesson or meaning in it? Or is it that everyone the least bit interested in the Potterverse identifies with wizards and witches rather than mere muggles, and thus it wasn't anything that was even a blip on the radar, and any "Aesop" I try to read into this is entirely accidental?
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Actually, I've been pondering this a bit because it seems to tie into some of Gwendel's recent anxieties, and some ideas I've had for writing some sort of story. (I just haven't gotten very far into it because it touches on science fiction, and I'm simply not smart enough, educated enough, and/or technically-minded enough to manage any sort of "hard" science fiction ... and what's more, so many of my story ideas involve setting up some sort of PROBLEM, and if it's too easily solved, that feels cheap, and if it's NOT solved, it's depressing, so since it's so difficult for me to imagine a story with a resolution that strikes JUST the right level of effort for our protagonists to reach, I just don't write anything at all. Bleah.)