In Defense of Magic

Parents, let's admit it. Some of us don’t quite know how to handle magic in stories and movies. Maybe we don’t want our kids to be frightened by wicked witches that turn into dragons or by mean teachers that turn into Greek Furies. Maybe we want to answer their questions truthfully and magic seems like a cop-out. Or maybe we practice a faith that is deeply uncomfortable with magic.

There’s no escaping it. Magic is everywhere in culture these days.

When the villain in Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” used voodoo to control spirits, there was pushback from religious groups. Percy Jackson of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief” explores the world of Greek gods, demigods, and obscure gods, each with their own powers. Even the upcoming “Shrek Forever After” satirically plays with fairies and witches.

For the granddaddy of magic debates, one doesn’t have to look any farther than Harry Potter and his magic potions, flying broomsticks, and Latin incantations. Poor Harry is a dividing line in certain circles. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked what I think about Harry, with my whole credibility hanging in the balance.

For the record, I love Harry.

By banning Master Potter, "The Princes and The Frog," and other “unorthodox” mysticism, we sell our kids short.

I say, let them bippity boppity boo.

We sell our children short by thinking they’ll somehow absorb paganism from magic in books and cinema. Kids know what is imagination and what is not. What little girl hasn’t longed to be transformed by Cinderella’s fairy godmothers, usually while she’s resenting doing chores? She knows, inside, it won’t happen. Children don’t really believe they can mix effective potions or use wands any more than they believe Spiderman is a real person or that toys come to life when our back is turned. Statistics are sketchy on this, but I haven’t heard of a rash of kids jumping off the roof on their moms’ brooms in a misguided audition for Hogwarts quidditch team. If young people grow up to become Satanists, it’s from factors other than reading The Sorcerer’s Stone when they were eleven.

Indeed, the mythcal, magical, poetic, and lyrical are inherently beneficial.  They create a framework for a big, frightening, sometimes unexplainable world. Children know there is evil in the world. This is not news to them. It frightenes them daily, making them check under the bed and leave a light on in the dark. Part of the business of childhood, and indeed adulthood in some ways, is coming to terms with the reality of evil in the world. Children do this through stories.They need to wrestle it metaphorically as children so they will be prepared to fight it literally as adults.

Big, mythical, epic stories make kids want to do big, mythical, epic things. They need to hear tales of heroes, both ancient and new. It’s a big world. They need big inspiration to face it. Magic talismans and superpowers paint the battles of life in larger-than-life scale, but in stark and easy to understand black and white terms. There are no magic wands in adulthood, although the iPhone comes close, but the moral framework of the stories sticks with us throughout life.

To go a step further, magic, mysticism, and myth create longings for that which is beyond ourselves. Longing for something beautiful and good, something grand and awesome and larger than material existence should be celebrated, not suppressed. Indeed, there is nothing more mystical than faith. Those who restrict imagination to that which can only be seen, felt, and stories told in scripture, while well-intentioned, are closer to secular materialists than to history’s great saints.

As for the issue of exposing children to scary elements, it’s natural for parents, especially mothers, to not want their children to be scared. I agree, we should not let them become traumatized by overwhelming and age-inappropriate movies, stories, or facts. But to protect them from age-appropriate villains walks hand in hand with failing to inspire them. Without villains there can be no heroes, or at least no heroes who matter.

The apologist and Narnia novelist C.S. Lewis touched on this, saying,

“Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the…atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

Finally, magic in popular culture creates common ground. As Mark I. Pinsky argues in his Wall Street Journal article, magic is a way of talking about good and evil without using religious terminology. We all know Voldemort is bad, whether we be Christian, Muslim, or without faith. He is murderous, power-hungry, relentless. In short, Satanic. Voldemort, Sauron of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and even "The Little Mermaid’s" Sea Witch, give us a chance to discuss evil and good with our children, friends, family, and coworkers.

Any time good and evil are being discussed, it strengthens civilization. Plus, it's just a step from a discussion of redemption. Two magic works more commonly accepted in the religious community, Lewis's Narnia series and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, make profound statements about good, evil, and redemption.

Far more dangerous to my mind are the cultural artifacts that create false longings, desires for things that are not real. I loved the movie “Avatar,” despite and not because of its world view, but it is guilty of creating a false longing among some people. In the film, the Na’vi, a tribe of blue giants, connect directly to the earth, its creatures, and the earth’s life force named Eywa. There have been reports of people being depressed and suicidal because they can’t live like the Na’vi, with their conflict-free society, unfallen natures, and structurally impossible treehouse home. James Cameron used his god-given talent and studio-given millions to create a world which contradicts the real world in which we live. See David French's excellent analysis of faith in "Avatar" here.

Which brings us to the truly difficult task as parents and as human beings in Western culture. We must discern. Much more difficult than an outright rejection of magic is the task of sifting each story on its own. Does unselfishness, sacrifice, and goodness prevail? Or do they even exist in the movie? Is evil portrayed as evil? Or as desirable and tempting? In children’s movies, especially, does the bad guy get his comeuppance in the end?

"The Princess and The Frog," which caused all the fuss in the first place, ends with (spoiler alert!) the voodoo doctor sucked into the grave by the very forces he attempted to control. If that’s not an appropriate lesson on black magic, not to mention selfishness, greed, and power-hunger, I don’t know what is.

Sounds like something we should applaud and not condemn.