After watching Desperate Souls I realized that Once Upon A Time approaches magic in a very interesting way. [Beware lots of OUAT spoilers] Through out the series magic is pretty much universally bad and "always comes with a price." Rather early on we are introduced to Rumplestiltskin (though how evil Gold/Rumple is rather that enabling and clever is debatable) and Regina, a time later we meet Cora who also has magic and is Regina's mother. In all circumstances magic is used for evil purposes*. All the "good" characters cannot perform magic; however they do use magic through enchanted potions and objects they get from Gold/Rumple "for a price." It is not until later seasons that magic is wielded by a good character.
Often when "good" characters use magic to get what they want they are often shown to have been corrupted, sometimes rather literally. Snow uses magic to kill Cora and we are shown that her heart has begun to blacken. We have seen other characters who have killed with arrows and otherwise, and their hearts have not been blackened (the huntsmen killed people for Regina and yet his heart was pure when it was eventually crushed).
In the current season of Once Upon a Time we are seeing developments in the way that magic is being portrayed. As Rumple and Regina begin to become more caring and "nice" characters that don't only care about themselves and their power we seen this reflected in the portrayal of magic. Magic is becoming a more and more neutral subject that is really just a tool to be used for either good or bad. Emma Swan, a relatively un-magical character joins forces with Regina and Gold to try and get their son back from Peter Pan (yeah Peter Pan is a bad guy in this show, long story short he essentially wants eternal youth and all that jazz). During their journey to retrieve Henry Regina helps Emma use the magic that she seems to have inside of her. Together they use magic to help save Henry, however to use magic rage is the easiest source. This again steeps magic in angry evil thoughts even though they are doing good with it. More and more frequently in this season we are seeing magic do good, we see Regina try and sacrifice herself to save the city, Rumple aid in the journey to save Henry, and Emma using magic periodically through the season.
Another interesting part of magic in Once Upon a Time is how Fairies get their magic. Like most stories fairies have dust and wands and such that let them do magic. A lot of this magic has to do with "love," "purity," and "good." When Pinocchio was turning into wood the fairy could only turn him back again if essentially repented and was turned into a young boy full of innocence. Fairy dust also has the power to show you the path to your true love. In many of the stories that we read by the Grimm Brothers it was not magic but rather fate and destiny that brought them together. I felt like this was an important difference considering that they are using a lot of the same stories, and that Once Upon a Time was adding magic into many other facets of the stories.
I think that this is not only relevant to our class because it has to do with magic but because we've been looking at the context that magic has been placed in. In once upon a time we see the transition from all magic is bad to only some magic wielders are bad, while in history we see the opposite. We also see a lot of the "bad" magic wielder in many fairy tales as typically you have the witches and fairies that either help or hinder you.
* Fairies do seem to have some magical powers however they seem to hinge on their wands and dust rather than being able to conjure all the time
Often when "good" characters use magic to get what they want they are often shown to have been corrupted, sometimes rather literally. Snow uses magic to kill Cora and we are shown that her heart has begun to blacken. We have seen other characters who have killed with arrows and otherwise, and their hearts have not been blackened (the huntsmen killed people for Regina and yet his heart was pure when it was eventually crushed).
In the current season of Once Upon a Time we are seeing developments in the way that magic is being portrayed. As Rumple and Regina begin to become more caring and "nice" characters that don't only care about themselves and their power we seen this reflected in the portrayal of magic. Magic is becoming a more and more neutral subject that is really just a tool to be used for either good or bad. Emma Swan, a relatively un-magical character joins forces with Regina and Gold to try and get their son back from Peter Pan (yeah Peter Pan is a bad guy in this show, long story short he essentially wants eternal youth and all that jazz). During their journey to retrieve Henry Regina helps Emma use the magic that she seems to have inside of her. Together they use magic to help save Henry, however to use magic rage is the easiest source. This again steeps magic in angry evil thoughts even though they are doing good with it. More and more frequently in this season we are seeing magic do good, we see Regina try and sacrifice herself to save the city, Rumple aid in the journey to save Henry, and Emma using magic periodically through the season.
Another interesting part of magic in Once Upon a Time is how Fairies get their magic. Like most stories fairies have dust and wands and such that let them do magic. A lot of this magic has to do with "love," "purity," and "good." When Pinocchio was turning into wood the fairy could only turn him back again if essentially repented and was turned into a young boy full of innocence. Fairy dust also has the power to show you the path to your true love. In many of the stories that we read by the Grimm Brothers it was not magic but rather fate and destiny that brought them together. I felt like this was an important difference considering that they are using a lot of the same stories, and that Once Upon a Time was adding magic into many other facets of the stories.
I think that this is not only relevant to our class because it has to do with magic but because we've been looking at the context that magic has been placed in. In once upon a time we see the transition from all magic is bad to only some magic wielders are bad, while in history we see the opposite. We also see a lot of the "bad" magic wielder in many fairy tales as typically you have the witches and fairies that either help or hinder you.
* Fairies do seem to have some magical powers however they seem to hinge on their wands and dust rather than being able to conjure all the time
I think the reason the huntsman (RIP, you were my favorite) had a pure heart when he died was because he didn't commit his crimes willingly. Regina had ultimate control over him, because she had his heart and could make him do whatever she wanted him to do (on a tangent, don't get me started on the implications of her having sex with him...yeah, that wasn't consensual at all, even if he didn't realize it). Magic is definitely shown throughout the series to come with terrible consequences, and I think the fairies and Emma are the only ones who use "good" magic who are shown to not be corrupted, but even that is limited. I could be wrong, especially because I haven't watched any of season 3 yet. Basically, using magic to hurt people is easy, but it comes with terrible consequences for the user. Using magic to help people is harder, but more rewarding, because the person receiving the magic has to earn it.
ReplyDeleteI think that a lot of the reasoning behind the shift from fate to magic as a plot device is that we've developed as a culture to not really be 100% on board with the idea of fate.
ReplyDeleteI think it's best summarized in this bit from George Carlin (censored)-
"Pray for anything you want. Pray for anything, but what about the Divine Plan? Remember that? The Divine Plan. Long time ago, God made a Divine Plan. Gave it a lot of thought, decided it was a good plan, put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years, the Divine Plan has been doing just fine. Now, you come along, and pray for something. Well suppose the thing you want isn't in God's Divine Plan? What do you want Him to do? Change His plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a Divine Plan. What's the use of being God if every run-down shmuck with a two-dollar prayer book can come along and !@#$ up Your Plan? And here's something else, another problem you might have: Suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? "Well, it's God's will." "Thy Will Be Done." Fine, but if it's God's will, and He's going to do what He wants to anyway, why the !@#$ bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me! Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go right to His Will? It's all very confusing. "
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Carlin
So by shifting from Fate to Magic, we at least bring the idea into the realm of something that is understandable to the modern audience, that doesn't come with the narrative baggage of "is there or is there not fate as an operating part of this universe?"
To deliberately write capital-F "Fate" into your narrative universe is to completely absolve all narrative tension, as no matter what the characters do, they're absolutely supposed to do it. With Fate being replaced by magic, then it's an out there thing that wouldn't exactly necessarily be comprehensible to us, but it's also not absolute.
First of all can we acknowledge how weird of an a show/episode this was?! Or is that just my opinion? I do however, think it was crazy interesting to see a curveball thrown and a shift of power change from a magical character AKA the "dark one" to the simple humble character of Rumpelstiltskin......I did not expect that coming at all and certain came from left field. I thought Rumpelstiltskin would just tried to run and hide his son as much as he could and then went out of this way to come up with this really elaborate plan to burn down the castle and take the "special" dagger. Not to mention he gets all crazy and out of control at the end and slays everyone in like 5 seconds in front of his son who he was initially was trying to protect from this type of stuff....well that certainly escalated quickly. Overall, I definitely love the points you make and it was overall interesting to see a huge shift in the typical plot.
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