Tag Archives: Harry Potter

Ron Weasley plays great chess, better than Voldemort.

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Every now and again a book or movie includes a chess game. Generally, it’s in a story where death is on the line. It’s a literary device used to indicate high mental acumen of the people involved, particularly the one who wins. As an example, in “Sherlock Holmes, A Game of Shadows”, 2011, Holmes plays Moriarty, each calling out moves far advanced for the 1800s. It emphasizes these individuals’ super-smarts. Holmes wins at the end, of course. The Ingrid Berman film, “The Seventh Seal” is similar, with the chess game played against death himself. The knight shows himself a more-than-worth opponent. And that brings us to Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, book 1 of the series, and movie, Ron Weasley is presented as a sort-of fool throughout the series. He’s mostly as source of background information about wizarding, but in one episode standout, he plays brilliantly with giant-size chess men against a magical intelligence, and wins. After the game, one that is described as one of the best ever, Ron goes back to being the goof-ball he was throughout. His chess skills don’t come up again, or do they. It’s a well written series, so what’s the point of including the game?

Position of pieces in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone (movie).

To see how brilliant Ron’s play is, recall that Ron is eleven years old in book 1. He, Harry, and Hermione enter a mysterious room filled with menacing statues. Ron immediately realizes it’s a chess board, and infers that they must win as black to pass through. He further infers that the piece representing Harry must make the checkmate. Two or three pieces are missing, and Ron infers that Harry’s character must replace one of these and become the mating piece. If you’ve ever played a decent computer, you know it’s very hard to win as white (in the 90s you could still win). This ghost intelligence plays quite well, and it’s almost impossible to win if you need to have a particular minor piece make the mate. In the movie, Ron plays as black and reaches the position shown with Harry as the king’s bishop and Hermione as a rook. He is down in material, but has laid a very good trap. The white queen captures the “free pawn” on d3, violently threatening the Harry-bishop. Ron interposes the rook to c3 forcing the white queen to take the rook. At this point, Ron could win by B-c5+, QxB, N-h3 mate, but that would sacrifice Harry and leave Ron as the winning piece. Both Ron and Hermione realize this, and Ron causes Harry to make the checkmate by N-h3+, QxN, B-c5+, Q-f3, BxQ mate. Ron is injured when QxN — a sacrifice in both senses of the word.

Death plays chess, painting by Albertus Pictor, 1480

It’s an impressive display of chess skill, and Dumbledore is right in saying it’s one of the best games. No normal player could manage a game like that, certainly no eleven year old. Normally such a display would be used to present Ron as the group brain, or at least as a very deep thinker. If so, why does the author have Ron revert to his care-free, stupid persona with chess never showing up.

We see that Voldemort, the arch villain, won his game too, and only lost a few pieces doing it. That Voldemort is good at chess is no surprise; it goes with his deep-thinking persona. We don’t see Voldemort’s game, but I can infer that he won via the Trailer gambit. It’s a fairly tricky win, but the only way that I know where you win as black losing only a kings bishop, a rook, and a knight, the pieces that Ron and his friends replaced. The Queen is the winning piece, though, and that’s a lot simpler than winning with a bishop. Ron’s win is far more sophisticated, a surprise given Ron’s behavior and how he is treated.

Perhaps it’s just bad writing, or an effort to show Ron is good at something, but I thought to do a quick re-read of Ron’s early appearance in book 2. Here I find that Ron is bright and motivated, but overshadowed. Early in the book, we find 12 year old Ron picking a lock using a hat pin, and driving a flying car reasonably well. We don’t think this is exceptional because his brothers do all this first, but it is exceptional: imagine tryin to drive a regular car with no instruction at 12. Later we find that Ron learns the fine points of Quidditch without native skill or a coach, just using a book, and we find that Dumbledore picks him to prefect, instead of Harry, a job he does well. Finally, we find that Hermione prefers Ron to Harry. It’s a somewhat surprising turn because she’s supposed to be the brains of the trio. How could she stand to be with Ron? Perhaps she is one of the few people who sees that Ron is bright. Dumbledore is too.

Viewed this way, the chess game becomes the first of the examples of Ron’s brainpower, and becomes an important foreshadowing to a surprise at the end of the last book/movie, to the final battle against Voldemort. In that battle, while everyone else is throwing hexes, Ron is the one who realizes that, to win the war, he must go to the basement chamber and collect basilisk teeth. It’s chess thinking: he’s focused on the king, on Voldemort, while everyone else is dealing with side threats. In a sense, it’s Ron who defeats Voldemort. The chess game is a foreshadowing, and fits with Hermione’s choice of Ron over Harry.

Robert Buxbaum, August 26, 2022. If you like chess puzzles, find some here. And in “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey,” 1991, the brilliance idea is sort-of reversed. Bill and Ted play against death in battleship, twister, and clue, and win. It’s used to show that death is sort of random, and sort of stupid.

Dark Academia, the new mood.

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Old libraries and old books play a big part in the aesthetic.

The movie version of academia is typically a leafy campus, with great libraries, bright minds, and deep intellectual discussions. It’s a happy grove where the young and talented go to bloom to superiority, eclipsing their parents and their well-meaning, but fuddy-duddy teachers. It’s also where oppressed middle-agers go to complete a journey of self -discovery. To the extent that professors are there in older movies, it’s to confer degrees and, eventually praise.

But there is a new mood in literature and movies where professors are sinister, and competition is darker and more dangerous place, both for the body and the soul. It’s called “Dark Academia.” Consider the recent hit movie and book, “The Secret History,” by Danna Tartt. It follows a talented person without any particular view or direction. The person arrives, looking to make friends and to become special, and through misguided efforts, students end up damaged or killed. Any friendships that result are sinister, and often exploitive.

An early version was Hitchcock’s “Rope,” where two students get excited by a professor expounding the ideas of Nietzsche. They go on to kill one of their fellows who they come to decide isn’t, quite as enlighten as they. Secret History is similar, except that the professor teaches Greek. Another early version was Frankenstein, whose early chapters are of crazed collegians pushing the limits of science in a dark laboratory and similarly dark library settings. For Dr. Frankenstein, the crushing pressure is from inside the student, and not so much from his professors or classmates. University is still a place of refuge, without the pressure of drugs, sex, or fashion.

Harry Potter and friends in dark academic garb. Casual, clean, active, hip-academic.

The evil professor trope of Dark Academia first appears in Harry Potter, I think. The school is both helpful and hurtful, both refuge and enemy. It’s education in a building that tries to trip you, with sadistic professors, plus slave labor, and some murderers or “death eaters.” There are friends too, with the friendship bound by fire-whiskey, or butter-beer, and an intense desire to excel over each other at ones craft, in this case magic. Fashion becomes important in dark academia. Harry Potter’s round glasses, robes, and school neckties, but the alcohol isn’t excessive in HP and the books are pretty chaste where sex is concerned.

Alcohol abuse, fashion, and sex are more central in “The Secret History”. There is a cultish professor, Morrow, and students fashions are described in detail. Most dress in tweeds, and all of them wear round glasses, like Harry Potter’s– in this case with metal rims. All are rich. And as in Hitchcock’s “Rope,” they conspire to murder the least special of their group in the goal of understanding the ancient Greeks. Unlike in Rope, they get away with it.

A yet more recent example is “Kill your darlings” — the main character is played by Daniel Radclift, the same actor who was Harry in the HP movies. It takes place in Columbia University in 1943-46 and portrays the young Alan Ginsberg. As in “Secret History” there is a cultish leader and a murder. Alan enters school not knowing what sort of poetry he’d like to write, or if he’ll write poetry. In the movie, Jack Kerouac, William Burrows and a few others who introduce him to drugs, including heroin, gay sex, wanton destruction, and benzedrine. As in Secret History, there are no bad effects from the drugs, though he tries suicide and one of his group murders another — the least special one as in other dark academia. He gets away with it, as in Secret History, the cult leader is rejected, and the others become special — a happy ending of sorts. Ginsberg writes a great “absurdist” essay and goes on to become a great poet.

Danna Tartt, author models the Dark Academic look. Notice the cigarette.

The mood of dark academia is a mix of repressed anger and innocence that takes place on a campus, but might as easily taken place in bohemian Paris. The movie architecture includes vast dining halls, gothic bell towers and forbidding libraries. The devoted student searches here for hidden light but finds only darkness. Murder follows. Students stare into space like Oscar Wilde with a heartburn, smoking like well-dressed longshoremen on break. See Danna Tartt at left.

The main contributions of Dark Academia is the fashion: Shades of brown, black and gray mostly, casual and active, but clean. The look says, “I’m both sexually active and criminally active; I do drugs think great thoughts, but don’t do homework. I might do murder too, but it’s OK since I plan to submit a killer final project. Morality is for losers, and “Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” It’s a line from “The secret History,” appears, slightly altered, in Hitchcock’s “Rope.” The tremendous desire to be pure and special; great in a word, and that involves a destruction of the ordinary: an academic aesthetic where murder is the crowning creative act.

Robert Buxbaum, April 2-5, 2021.