My determination to wait for the paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is weakening as Pottermania is engulfing the city, yea, even the entire globe. There is the minor point that I don’t have the seven hundred rupees I need to buy the hardback edition, but it’s only a minor point. There are ways around it. I could mug somebody. Or rob a bank. After all, it’s only a matter of time before the ‘Net is overflowing with spoilers to OotP, and I doubt I can successfully avoid spoilers for six months.
What does this have to do with the title? Yes. Sorry. I’ve realised something this week.
The Harry Potter mythos and the X-Men mythos are very similar.
The background running through both of them is the same. Here is a group of people. They have powers granted to them. They use extremely cool technology- sufficiently advanced magic, to quote Terry Pratchett. Powers denied to normal people. Even so, everything’s not hunky dory.
The X-Men- mutants- have to hide and conceal their powers. The world isn’t ready for them, or ready to trust them. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they have to deal with people out to kill them, robots out to kill them, and enemies like themselves- other mutants.
Sound familiar? In the Harry Potter mythos, the witches and wizards have to hide themselves to prevent nonmagical people- Muggles- freaking out. They use very cool magical spells- sufficiently advanced technology, to quote Arthur C Clarke. They have magical powers that Muggles don’t, but everything’s not hunky-dory with them either. They also have to deal with enemies within their own ranks. Lord Voldemort, anybody?
The characters correspond, too. Remove all the hair, and Albus Dumbledore is Professor X. Hagrid is Beast. I fancy Professor McGonagall as Storm, and Sirius Black has shades of The Amazing Nightcrawler. Harry Potter himself, for some reason reminds me of Rogue.
Voldemort, though, doesn’t seem to me to be a Magneto. If one goes by the movie depictions, Magneto would correspond more closely to Severus Snape. Voldemort would be somebody a lot more obsessed and evil. Apocalypse or Bolivar Trask, maybe.
But there’s one more similarity. The most important one. The core theme, which coincidentally is also the core theme of Spider-man and a lot of the Terry Pratchett books. Choice.
It’s not fun being a mutant or a wizard. You’ve got powers, but what do you do with them. Serve evil? Fight evil? Be the good guy? Be the bad guy? You never asked for your powers, magical or mutant, but you’re responsible for them.
And in the end, it comes down to choice. When you’re on the crux, the saddle point, Do you use your powers or not? What are you going to use them for?
This is the question. And her’s yet another linkup.
It’s my question too. What use should I put my (albeit limited) powers- taking an interest in everything around me, seeing the connections between things, an imagination that works 24×7 and then puts in some overtime- to? Should I study like mad these next six months and get into an IIM? Should I come up with a CS project that’s brilliant and beautiful? Should I come up with an idea and dive into entrepreneurship? Should I just give up?
Oh, and here’s another linkup.
It’s not just my choice. It’s India’s too.
India the nation is also on the crux. It’s on a million of them, actually. It’s got powers- educated people, people with a talent for making money. Oh, and as India Today pointed out, it’s got jugaad- the ability to do things and make stuff work better and cheaper than anywhere else in the world.
So, what will India do? Use it’s powers? Give up? Another rhetorical question like the ones above. Let time tell.