Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

This is not a review of the movie. My review of the movie is that it is quite good, that the characters are very endearing, and that the themes are solid (some of them ones that she picks back up from places in the Harry Potter series where she did not have the context in which to pursue them). This post is simply a collection of observations and possible theories on chiastic reading of the movie and other things. For chiastic structures, see "Merlin's Chiasm Claims" and "Flesh, Blood, Bone ... and Heart: Exploration of a Dual-layer Chiastic Structure in Harry Potter (addendum to Chiasm post)."Also look into the work of Dr John Granger at his Hogwarts Professor site, particularly his work on ring structure; he is also developing material on interpreting the Fantastic Beasts film. I began writing about chiasm on a site called Muggle Matters just as he was beginning his work on ring composition, and so we began work on the same ideas independently but have often been in touch and swapped ideas etc.

1. I am very pleased with the fact that there is a “book” (the screenplay) release because it keeps actual reading at least in the mix even if it’s not the traditional book-adaptation model, although I kind of would like a book first in which I have to engage my imagination in creating the texture and flesh of the world and characters and actions for myself first, but the Warner Bros situation is what it is and I think it’s very good that she is keeping some written form in the public production mix, which makes sense for her with her advocacy for getting kids reading more that she had with the original series.

2. Chiasm: my raw guess without processing the screenplay is that the scene where they are about to put Tina in the death potion is the crux, with the issue being the willingness to take life in the pursuit of “justice” etc. It is definitely mirrored in Newt’s continual plea not to kill his creatures. And this is the place where Grindlewald actually pushes through a death sentence, killing (although thwarted) using the actual institution of governance (those who will actually do the killing do not question at all: it is taken by them as normal standard operations that a higher up might order an execution and that they would perform it not only without question but without even any need to question or verify ... and the room was obviously designed for that purpose) . I won’t know until I look at the screenplay itself what I think the key opening element is, but my possible placement of the crux scene is because that placement fits with the major closing scene being the one in which they actually kill Creedence/obscurus and the president says "the obscurus was killed on my orders."

It’s a theme that played for her in HP in the form of having the openness to creatures like the dementors and book 4 (Goblet of Fire) being the only place we have a kiss actually performed. I have always thought there is much more significance to the line in Goblet where Harry thinks “they had already administered their FATAL kiss” ... people dismiss the death penalty as a theme there because of the other material declaring that the kiss is not death, but I don’t see, especially with as active of a supporter of Amnesty International as she has been, how capital punishment is not there as a theme, just symbolically, without the instance being an actual death, but the theme slipped back in through the language used by the character.

3. Chiasm: As per the piece I just wrote about a dual-layer chiastic structure in the original 7-book HP series made up of two chiasms, 2-4-6 on top of 3-4-5, and actually possibly a three-level structure (3-4-5 = skeleton, 2-4-6=flesh, 1-4-7=skin/face/experiential) I would suggest that there could be two rings in Fantastic Beasts. The more I think about it, the more I am beginning to suspect that layering multiple chiasms/rings might be the material way that she handles having more than one heavy theme and having them interacting with each other (although, I am not sure, but I might reserve “ring” for the whole [whether individual book/movie or the whole series] and use “chiasm” for any sub-chiasm that is less than the whole, so my 3-4-5 and 2-4-6 chiasms ... I can’t remember if John Granger did this in a talk at which I met up with him in NYC, but it feels to me like he might have at least leaned that way in the construction he did of the deathly hallows symbol). I don’t have any more on that right now other than that I think there are definitely two targets going on: the wizard handling of the repression/obscurus issue (kill them) and the no-mage handling of all magic ( also ... kill them).

So, a dual ring/chiasm would be a structuring method of handling them together, probably with the wizarding world at the center and the no-mage overlayed and mirroring it, which would then require finding a wizard crux (which I have tentatively proposed as the thwarted death penalty, but that depends on looking at the actual scene numbering structure) and a no-mage crux. On the same provisional footing, (I don’t have the published screenplay yet to count scenes and see what is at the exact center) I would guess the scene where Creedence erupts as the obscurus when Barebone is about to beat him again, but that may be too late in the sequence to be the crux ... so, perhaps at the killing of the senator because that is where it impacts the no-mage world not just at the level of property damage or individuals being killed but at the level of its actual governance of its society in the person of an elected official, which might fit with having the central wizard scene be the one in which Graves/Grindlewald uses the actual power of the government to do the killing.

If my reading of the “skeleton” chiasm in the original HP series is correct, the 3-4-5 chiasm I propose works as the skeleton structure so well because it is that of the base institution that is the context for the series, the school, which is also a very important them for her (education), AND THEN, at least in the theme level, it makes sense to be focused on some type of institutionality in this series as well, in this case more directly actual civil governance. This would seem to be supported by the beast ban in the US (from the newspapers in the intro and Tina's statement to Newt that creature breeding is outlawed and they shut his breeder friend down) and the laws of not marrying no-mages.

4. Given Kowalksi’s wonder at the magical world and the (very well-done) heart-rending obliviation scene at the end, then, paralleling the will to kill materially, obliviation may be a kind of “death” for not only no-mage wonder at magic but also of the magical side itself by killing the possibility of having no-mages wonder at it, kind of like the Holy is not Holy without the profane ... it is good and it is true (truth does not need lie in order to be truth), but it is not Holy in the original and deeper meaning of the word, “set apart,” because it is not in contact with anything from which to be set apart, no context in which to be special ... no interaction with no-mages = no context for magic to be viewed as wonderful … just more useful and a base for bigotry and violence.

5. Expelliarmus: as per my vindication in HP as far as my seeing the expelliarmus spell as important (in that it was the spell HP uses in the defeat scene, as well as it being what transfers the elder wand to Draco’s possession), in the scene in Beasts that we see in the death potion, even though we hear no spell … what spell do you think Tina does nonverbal to take the belt out of Mary Lou Barebone’s hands).

6. Prediction: the two Barebone sisters will be the centrals in the next movie, Chastity as the oppressor and Modesty as the oppressed.

7. With five movies planned, they damn well better have Jacob and Queenie married at the end ... Newt and Tina would be nice too, but I can understand with their personalities if they have them remain unattached but very fond friends kind of thing (but I think marriage could work for them), but for the personalities of Jacob and Queenie ... they better have them married at the end.