A conversation about who can claim ownership over a myth.
In this episode, Rich from Monomyth.org visits to discuss the lawsuit between JK Rowling and RDR Books over the attempt to publish a book version of the Harry Potter Lexicon, a popular fansite and excellent resources for HP research. The conversation was recorded back in June, but the verdit was reached just a couple weeks ago in favor of JKR.
Link: www.monomyth.org
Contact info: Web: www.mythicthinking.org (for now at least)
e-mail: mythinginaction at gmail dot com.
The music is “Song #9″ by Avagadros Number. I found them in podsafemusic and they are totally awesome.
September 24th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I think to figure out Rowling’s motives behind wanting to keep control of the lexicon would help us decide a few questions brought up in the podcast. Does she see herself as a humble custodian of the Harry Potter material: in other words does she acknowledge her debt to the collective layer of the unconscious whence the mythological framework emerged, she being merely a midwife(“Thou Lord, and Thou only are worthy of praise and thanks”-Koran); or does she feel, consciously or unconsciously, that the Harry Potter stuff is her exclusive property, saying to herself “I came up with it. It’s MINE”; etc.
I kind of doubt that she has the kind of psychological insight that would allow her to recognize, much less acknowledge, her debt to the unconscious. I read in Jung a lecture that he was giving(Terry Lectures?) where he said to the audience that if it weren’t for the unconscious, he couldn’t have been able to string two sentences together. Knowing what we do about depth psychology, we, as Jungians, have to admit this truth: that if the unconscious decided to quit cooperating with our ego, we’d be reduced to only being capable of speaking a one word sentence: “I.” Even this would be a great achievement because most of us live so unconsciously that we wouldn’t even be able to say “I” if the unconscious abandoned us; our egos would be reduced to indistinct amorphous blobs of desire and fear(The points of demarcation in “my” little model may be off; but I think is fairly accurate in the Jungian generalities).
Does Rowling feel that she should retain control of the material for the higher purpose of wanting to preserve the integrity of this gift of the unconscious; or is she merely being selfish(and greedy?!). She might say more the former; but I don’t think she’d be in much of a position to answer that question accurately until she had read a lot of Jung and maybe undergone a lot of analysis; and had the courage to even really ask this question. I read in Campbell that basically we’re selfish, predacious little survival machines; and that it isn’t until we’ve started to live out of our heart Chakra that we become anything resembling a human “created in the image of God”(Christian type of God; not Old Testament type).
So which is it J.K., selfishness, or altruism?(But that begs the question: is there such a thing as altruism?).
I read somewhere in “Conversations with Goethe” by Johann Eckermann, Goethe going on comparing various poets with each other and himself. He said that some of poets were almost as good as him in various departments but that he was better in a lot of departments. Then he said that it may sound like he was all infatuated with himself and arrogant; but then he refutes those accusations with the statement “I didn’t make me.” I don’t know if Goethe had the Jungian concept of “the unconscious” in his lexicon, but he clearly understood it; at least intuitively; and that the mind-boggling volumes of brilliant stuff attributed to him, was attributable to him as conduit for the unconscious.
In the same book Goethe says that he had no objection if others “borrowed” from him; nor did he seem to have a problem borrowing from others himself, “Thus, my Mephistopheles sings a song from Shakespeare, and why should he not? Why should I give myself the trouble of inventing one of my own, when this said just what was wanted? Also, if the prologue to my Faust is something like the beginning of Job, that is again quite right, and I am rather to be praised than censured…. Whether I got it from a book or from life, is of no consequence; the only point is, whether I have made a right use of it.” Again, I think that Goethe intuited the concept of the collective unconscious where these archetypal themes are the common property of humanity.
Arguing over the rights to publish a lexicon sounds like pure economics to me. Remember where Krishna tells Arjuna that one should give up the desire for the fruits of one’s action? Or in Colossians where Paul admonishes us, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart; as though you were working for the Lord and not for men(Col,., 3:23)? Who in the West can honestly say they live that way?
In the grandest scheme of things, Rowling does not have copyrights over “her” material; nor does any author; nor inventor(“What do you have that wasn’t given to you by God?”-the Koran, I think). But this is just philosophizing. Reality Check: I guess if I did the work to put together a book that I wouldn’t be on my knees thanking God that I had been made a conduit for Creativity- screw that! I’d want the fruits, vegetables, royalties, notoriety, cars, condos and concubines etc. of/for “my” efforts too. One solace I can find in my not so philosophical attitude is that selfishness and ambition is necessary for the evolution of consciousness; but only to an extent that will one day have to be abandoned to continue to evolve. In the meantime, to paraphrase Augustine, “Lord, make me philosophical; but not yet!