Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: A Chiastic Reading

Intro

A few introductory comments are in order. First, this post is a chiastically structured analysis of the 2016 film, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," and it relies on a layering of both what I consider to be inner chiasms and overlays on three-scene interactions between key characters (there are sections below for both) in analyzing an overall chiastic structure for the narrative. For my base work on chiasm as a literary structure, see my "Merlin's Chiasm Claims" post and my post on a dual-layered chiastic structure in the original seven-book Harry Potter series.

Secondly, I am writing this before consulting anybody else's work. The most that I have read is Dr John Granger's description of his thought about seventy scenes and jotting things down on a legal pad in the dark in the theater (which I definitely did with the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie) and being about to start the "grunt work" of processing. All I have had is my four viewings in the theater and access to my copy of the published screenplay. I definitely want to dialog with others on the whole thing, but I wanted to get my initial read of the film written up first.

The third thing to be noted is that I have done what I call "clustering" in the construction of my chiastic "elements" or sections. What this means is that, if you were to look at the published screenplay itself, you would not see, on my chiastic reading, say that the section of scenes 50-75 corresponds to the section of scenes 100-125 with 50-55 corresponding to 100-105 (or, in true full chiastic form, scenes 50-55 corresponding to scenes 120-125). I did not want to clog up this intro with further details of why, so see the "footnote" at the end if you want to see why.

The final thing to note is that I have put certain material at the beginning of the story outside the chiastic structure in an introductory section called "settings." At the end of the day, these sort of readings (seeing a work as chiastic structure and then determining the outline of the chiasm) start off as theories, and there is a bit of finessing (what Dr John Granger has aptly called the "grunt work") to find whether the theory (chiasm) works at all, or if it works for the majority of the work and you have to find another theory to explain the parts it doesn't fit and then try it on for size to see if it fits. In the present case, my theory for the material that doesn't fit nicely into the actual chiasm of the individual movie would be called "introducing the series": it all appears at the beginning of the film, and thus at the beginning of the series, and I have given a rationale for how I think each thing is at least representative of something that will carry across the series.


Just as a Table of Contents to help the reader track in reading, the order of sections below is:

1. The Base Chiasm
2. Central Theme
3. Layered Inner Chiasms explicating the base chiasm (4 of them)
4.Overlays of distinctive character scenes (3 of them)
5. An epilogue defending romance as the "face" level.

Base Chiasm

0. Settings: Grindlewald in Europe, Coming to America, Intro of Obscurus and Graves, Meeting the Second Salemers.

Grindlewald will obviously carry across the series, as will Newt (I think I have heard this is the plan? it makes sense, right?), and so a general introduction of Newt (coming to America) is in order. I believe that the theme of institutional wrong-doing and no-maj oppression will also carry across the series, and so there is a logic to meeting Graves and the Second Salemers in this "settings section."
                                                                                   

1. A = Openings:…….Meeting Jacob (collateral needed, an egg held); Magical creature in a no-maj bank. Meeting Tina

2. B = Intros:………....Inside MaCUSA (Graves, President), Obliviating Jacob? Jacob meets Queenie

3. C = Collecting the Beasts: Suitcase, Central Park

4. D = Obscurus Kills: Senator Shaw

5. E = Institution Kills (tries to)

6. D¹ = Obscurus Kills: Mary Lou Barebones

7. C¹ = Collecting the Beasts: Macy’s, Suitcase

8. B¹ = Outros:……..Killing Obscurus (president’s orders), Jacob and Queenie’s Goodbye, Obliviating Jacob

9. A¹ = Closings:…….Meeting Jacob again (eggshells as collateral), Goodbye to Tina, A Witch in a no-maj bakery

Crux Theme: 
The Will to Kill

As can be seen, the crux element (E) is the death sentence Graves pronounces and that is almost carried out. It's also the place where Newt, Tina, and the audience (although, interestingly, not the people working for Graves) notice that something is wrong in Graves' character when he lets slip language of thinking of whether the obscurus is "useful."

This is the place where Grindlewald, disguised an an actual official, manages to push through an actual plan to kill (although, thankfully, thwarted) with full institutional approval. The functionaries do not skip a beat in moving to follow out the order. There is no stopping to verify an authorization by the president (although the president's willingness to kill will be emphasized in the final subway confrontation with Grindlewald, a chiastic tie-out with this scene). And that death chamber was not impromptu: they had all that elaborate apparatus for capital punishment already set up, and specifically for that purpose. It is taken as "run of the mill" that a high ranking official might order an execution and that it be carried out without any further verification, let alone due process.

On the closeout side of the whole movie, the biggest scene is the killing of the obscurus. Here two things are important: the justification and the authorization. The president makes it clear that the killing was done on her orders and by her authority as president. The justification given foremost is the killing of the no-majes. Whether the stated logic is preventative or retributive, this is as close as you get to state execution without it being actually on government premises.

This can be a "hot potato" issue, but it is undeniable that, for Rowling as a public advocate of Amnesty International, capital punishment looms large on her radar. I saw this as in the central crux of the Harry Potter series too (although not as the central theme), at the end of Goblet of Fire, which is the only place we have a dementor's kiss performed in the whole of that series. Some dismiss that reading of that scene because a kiss is decidedly described elsewhere as not a material death. But this does not prevent the radicality of it (there is no coming back from this, no rehabilitation of the criminal) from symbolizing capital punishment. I think that the fact that it is that for her seeps back through into character dialogue when Harry ponders, after hearing of it, that they had administered their "fatal kiss."

On the material evidence side, while I have noted (in the footnote at the end) that one cannot work so easily from the numbering schema of an actual screenplay being used for actual production, certain broad lines can be found. The screenplay lists 124 scenes, so the center (the place the "crux" should be in a chiasm), should be somewhere around the 60s. The sequence from when Newt appears before the international confederation to when he saves Tina from the death pool using the swooping evil and they leave the death chamber begins at scene 59 and ends at scene 73 (it was the first hing I checked when I got my copy of the screenplay in the mail, already having had a theory of that as the center from three viewings of the film in the theater).

It should be noted too that the theme connects with the whole "Fantastic Beasts" setting: That is Newt's continual passionate plea, "please don't kill those beasts" (and on the institutional side, banning of some sort or another in the US is seen in at least two places in the early scenes of the film: in the newspapers montage and in Tina telling him of the ban and that they shut down his friend over a year ago).

As will hopefully be realized below (meaning that I hope I write the sections well enough for it to be discerned), I don't see the actual issue of capital punishment as the only distinct issue (and there is a bit of variety even on the material level, meaning that the disposition could apply to the question of how readily one jumps to the killing option before exploring other means in conflict). I also try to tie it to a larger human theme as far as literature, imagination, and wonder in the issue of the American radical separation of the magical world.

Layered Chiasm: 
Bones, Flesh, and Face

Opening Caveat: The Bones chiasms will contain heavy thematic elements. Just as you can't get a really good look at a skeleton until after the flesh is off the bones, meaning it is dead, so you can't get to bones chaisms entirely in isolation of the muscle/them. The key thing for the "bones" classification is the concreteness of the elements and the demonstrability of clear repetition. For instance Retrieving all the beasts is a very distinct project with a clear opening (the murtlap is the only that got out of the case and goes back in before the first suitcase scene) and a clear ending ("that's everything, and that's the truth"), and the killings are pretty distinct.

1. Bones Chiasm 1: The Middle Cluster

Oscurus kills Sentator Shaw

          Graves' Death Sentence in MaCUSA

Obscurus kills Mary Lou Barebones


For this one, because it is central, the way it layers with others becomes more than just a one-on-top-of-the-other layering and more of an intertwining or weaving. This is also relates to what I said in my post on dual-layed chiastic structuring in Harry Potter about Goblet of Fire: it is the center of so much, having structural and thematic elements so packed in it that it is hard to isolate things for a better view.

The reason it fits theme/flesh so well is that it's the place of that heavy theme of willingness to killing  (we assume that, whatever may be the subjective feelings distinct to Credence, Obscurus is willing to kill ... it goes right to it both times). The reason it fits structure/bones so well is that it is there at the center and has the solid materiality of a structure of distinct killings (2 solids kills flanking one institutional attempt. So that is the element, material killings and actual passing of a death sentence, by which I will identify this as a "bones"/structure chiasm.

Beyond that, this one pretty much explains itself.

2. Bones Chiasm 2: Collecting the Beasts

 Collecting the Beasts (In the suitcase and Central Park)

          Escape from MaCUSA

Collecting the Beasts (Macy's and In the Suitcase)

So, regardless of how cleverly intricate the chiasmic elements are, if there is going to be something really distinctive about "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" that makes sense as more than "hey, we wanna make another movie to make more money, so have somebody write a story and slap one of the titles on from any of the textbooks in Harry Potter on it, doesn't matter which one" ... then it should probably actually have something to do with the beasts. And having the sequential collecting of the beasts as part of the bones structure of the work is probably the most obvious way to do it.

But, just like the actual collecting of those beasts takes some care, tact, and finesse, so also the construction of a plot around it is a bit tricky if it is not to sound like the narrative version of "see dick run; see jane run," something like "first we caught one beast, and then we caught two, and then we caught lots, and had us a zoo."

So, what is the best way to spice anything up? ... Add sex. Just kidding ... mostly. I should say, add romance. But there is also something of the question of humans being both similar to and distinct from beasts. I thought the female erumpant was cute. But as endearing and cute as you can make make an animal being in season and mating, it's not the same as humans falling in love and the need for companionship of that kind that can arise only in creatures with self-reflexive capability, and getting married and having kids and family outings and all the other potentials of the lovers. And so there is a progression.

The crux for the collecting-the-beasts inner chiasm is simply getting that case out of Graves' office and out of MaCUSA (which closes out later with the president telling him to get the case out of New York). I also think it is significant that Tina meeting swooping evil and saying "I love it" are in at the same time as Queenie tells Jacob "you're one of us now." The romance and fantastic beasts themes are grouped together, so this is actually both a bones (structure) chiasm and a flesh (theme) chiasm.
(I think Tina's like and trust of Newt has been growing throughout the whole movie, but the "I love it" about swooping evil is the first expression of "I like being around you" and it comes right after the trust jump and his catching her in the death chamber).

It should be noted that, on the actual structuring level, the first collecting the beasts section begins with the hot cocoa intro to the first down into the suitcase scene (see my post on the importance of cocoa). This sort of splits The sequence of Tina and Queenie's apartment in half, but it really does seem to break there, between dinner in the apartment and bedtime in the apartment. There is other thematic material separating them, there is a page break in the screenplay (although I am not sure how those are functioning for her in the print production), and the sections can be kept consistent: "Intros" ends with the important Queenie and Jacob meeting at dinner; Collecting the Beasts 1 begins with the interaction of the cocoa ("but, we made them cocoa") so that Collecting Beasts 2 can end in the suitcase with the two couples.

3. Flesh Chiasm/Theme: Intros and Outros

Obliviation preoccupation

          Killing and Obliviation

Killing Obscurus and Obliviating all else


The "killing" chiasm in this set may seem at first to be the hardest to demonstrate because the center contains killing in the willingness to kill institutionally (and that draws its flanking elements, the two killings by the obscurus, into it almost as if by a heavy gravity) and the finale contains killing in the form of killing the obscurus. But there does not seem to be a killing or even a willingness to kill in the introductory part, the "intros" ... or is there?

The killing in the intros has to do with a hidden "killing" of sorts in the outros, and this is a place where I think another distinct theme is layered in ... a really huge one for what I think has always been one of the central projects for Rowling in writing the wizarding world. We know that there are no-majes who want to kill witches and wizards, but there are also, I would argue, wizard-kind who want to kill no-majes in a sense (I mean aside from the Grindlewalds and Voldemorts and deatheeters of the magical world), and in a way that ultimately leads to their own "killing" of magic. The key narrative detail is that, at the same time as she has killed the obscurus ("the obscurus was killed on my orders"), the president orders the obliviation of "that no-maj," Jacob Kowalski. And indeed this has been the running concern about Jacob the whole time, stretching all the way back the bank scene (so right a the beginning of "intros" with Tina taking Newt to MaCUSA): get him obliviated (and will they succeed?).

For a no-maj like Jacob who has such a sense of wonder at the magical world, this is a kind of death. This may seem a bit strong of a statement or a bit of a leap to connect with the issue of actual killing, but it is a place where, again, the various themes are weaving and intertwining together. If you watch Jacob's reaction to the sentence ... it certainly does seem like a part of him is dying. Where will he go without knowing that the magic is there? Back to the cannery, that world in which he said "we're all dying there" (walking down the street with Newt on their way to Central Park)

But such a disposition spells a death for magic as well, at least as magic rather than simply power. In the wonder-filled eyes of a no-maj like Jacob, magic is special. In a certain sense, it is "holy," in the original sense of that word. Originally, being "holy" does not mean primarily being "right" or "truthful." The truth exists without lies, but holiness as such does not exist without the realm of the "profane." That word too has an original meaning that is not our modern "dirty" or "filthy." It is simply the realm that is not the holy. In traditional Christianity stretching back through medieval and into patristic time and into the sub-apostolic age, Churches are holy ground, the realm of the sacred. The "profane" is good in and of itself ("profanity" in our lingo means when you take something holy and treat it as if it is profane, which it isn't), and the "holy" cannot be "holy" as such without the "profane" for it to be separate from. For, this is the real original meaning of "holy": special, set apart.

Where this goes for Fantastic Beasts is that magic cannot be special as magic without the appreciation and wonder of the non-magical world. Obviously this isn't possible at the present for most muggles/no-majes. The president is right that there needs to be an obliviation of the whole city, because most in the city simply can't handle it (least of all the Shaws), at least at present. But Jacob is himself special among no-majes, as Queenie notes just before he accepts his sentence. And to obliviate one like him who is able to handle it and does wonder at it is to kill that wonder. And without that wonder, magic is not special ... it is just power. "Magic is Might."

As a little further bit of evidence along the lines of concrete elements in the story, consider the fact that, in the death sentence scene at the center, what I am calling the interpretive crux of the chiastic reading, it involves ... the taking of memory from the mind of the sentenced person. One of the functionaries even says to Newt, "ok, let's get the good stuff out of you," language suggestive of what obliviation does to a no-maj like Jacob who looks at the magical world he has discovered with a sense of wonder and awe. And the removal of memory is directly connected with killing when the memory is placed in the death pool as an enticement, a manipulation of the memory.

4. Face Chiasm: Openings and Closings

A Magical Creature in a Bank (no collateral and an egg)

          A No-Maj in a MaCUSA Jail

A Witch in a Bakery (eggshells as collateral)

I really hope I have not lost the reader or worn them out by now, because this level has some of the most endearing material in the movie. And I also hope I haven't spilled all the beans in the just previous chiasm when talking about obliviating Jacob, but hopefully the possibility that there is more than what was there holds the reader's interest.

In the X setup for this section, just above, I mention only one of the couples to keep it short and neat looking, but the opening and closing meeting and parting of Newt and Tina is obviously really important as well, almost so important that asking whether or not it is important is kind of like asking a fish whether the water in its bowl is optional. 

But what of this level I call the "face" as experiential, what are the concrete characteristics of the characters that I claim make it so engaging? When I chose which couple to drop from the X line-items at the opening of this section, I chose to keep Queenie and Jacob in because of the larger connection they have: they are the meeting of the magical and non-magical (and hopefully show that meeting coming to fruition in a marriage in one of the future films, even if just the last). That wonderfully fun romp of the niffler in a bank, the magical world playing hilarious havoc in a non-magical place, comes to fruition in a witch in a bakery having fallen in love with the no-maj baker.

That niffler had some serious character of his own to begin with, especially given that he managed to convey it to us without being able to do dialogue. That is how the story hooks us. And the witch in the bakery is how, to quote that very witch herself, the story "slays us."

Of course, the center of that chiasm meant a no-maj sitting in a jail cell in the wizarding world. But the same witch who got both him and his memories out of there intact in the suitcase is the one who comes to his bakery to find him even when MaCUSA released him further than he himself wanted to be released by obliviating those memories.

And of course, no chiasm theoretician likes to claim things without a few hard material details, and so we have that bank asking for collateral from that no-maj with an occamy egg in his pocket and then that no-maj using occamy eggshells as as collateral for that bakery.

I have one piece here to add on characterization that plays in the central element and then in the outros. It does not have an opening that can be pinpointed as well as those because it is Newt's character and we have been progressively being exposed to that as the film progresses. In that first half of the film we have been being exposed to what I describe in the "side note" here in a moment as a certain sadness yet sympathy that New seems to carry with him from his experience in the wide world. And right in that central scene, as they are in the jail cell right before they go to the interrogation by Graves, we find out a major experience that contributes to that quality, and that is when he reveals that he has actually worked with an obscuriel (which I have found out since first penning this post is the name for the host, the child, while "obscurus" is the name for the actual dark force that the child now hosts) and has probably watched that child die, which is a most tragic event to watch or be around and the base of his sadness and weariness in the world. We then see it play out in the outros segment when he again works with an obscuriel, Credence, trying to save him, and again has to watch the obscuriel die. And it is significant for JKR's criticism of the institution that it is not Graves/Grindelwald who does the killing. As the president says, the obscurus was killed on her orders, on the orders of the institution.

On a side note (but still on the "face" level of endearing characters):

I have always had a beef with David Yates about the last 4 movies of the original HP series, and really with Mike Newell before him, for creating the characters I call "Grumbledore" (the meaning of which should be obvious), "Hairy Pooper" (always looks like he's holding it in), and "Snip Snip Snape" (they cut off his ... well, you get the picture ... the Snape of the books would NEVER have rolled his eyes before rolling up his sleeves and going over and play-boxing Harry's and Ron's ears for talking during a test or whatever that scene was).

But the Newt Scamander of the screen is amazingly textured: a dry English wit, a certain sadness and sympathy, a certain mix of patience and impatience, a certain self-awareness ("no, not really. I annoy people"). I don't know what produces the written screen directions for characters in the screenplay, whether they are JKR's own original vision or if she is sticking back in her descriptions of what happened on screen after that has come about in a collaborative process among the whole team, but the Newt of the screen is far more interesting than the one in the screenplay.

And that is not just in that you get to see him or that you have more data in the screen version; it is in the way you could describe him in a sentence or two. He is not the scientist whose scientific curiosity is aroused at seeing that Queenie is a legilimens (screenplay description); he is a weary man who has walked a weary mile but is still a young man with a twinkle in his eye, although a little warier than when he was a really young man (my description from the movie). When he parts with Tina on the dock and says, "I've changed. I think. Maybe a little," it is not the "dawning realization" given in the screenplay directions. The much more intricate and richer expression on his face is "I know I have changed; we all can't help but change; I hope I have changed for the better" (as a counterpart: Jacob doesn't glare at Newt to sit down a the girls' table [screenplay description]; what his eyes really say is "come on buddy, help a guy out here ... good food, good feminine company ... I don't ever get the opportunity for this"). If Yates is the one most responsible for creating that character on the scene, I applaud it. All of the characters are awesome, but Newt is especially intricate (although I'm not sure I'll ever forgive Yates and Newell or whoever ordered the life-in-death execution of characters that happened with Goblet through Hallows).

Overlays

These are key scenes that include certain characters interacting together.

1. Graves and Credence:
The importance of this pairing should be obvious for the eventual matter of who Graves is, but it is also a very distinctive set of scenes ... just the two of them, close conversation and heavy psychological dynamics going on.

The heaviest of the scenes psychologically is the one in the very central cluster (elements 4-5-6), where Graves heals Credence's hand and gives him the sign of the deathly hallows. This scene falls on the border between the escape from MaCUSA and the killing of Mary Lou Barebones.
The first of the three scenes is in the "Intros" section and the last (where they are alone) is the opener of the "outros" section, when Graves finds him in the ruined Second Salemers church near Mary Lou's body.

2. Graves and Tina and Newt (Tina by first name).
I really liked discovering this one for some reason. It started with a question: Why does Graves take an interests and come down to follow up Tina's minor case that the president has dismissed? (my "intros" segment). By the end of the film, one could assume that he knows about her interaction with the Second Salemers and Credence, and of course, he has an avid interest in them. But what would make him think Newt, this guy just running around with a suitcase, was a special case of hers that he should look into? I suppose it's because he hopes he has scapegoats for the obscurus while he works on harnessing it for his own ends, but it still seems to me like it just sort of jumps out a bit.

I'm not saying I think there is anything there that he knows about Newt ... I think it was just a convenient way for JKR to put the three of them together at this juncture because of a structuring she wants. He's the villian, and I think the Newt-Tina relationship (or friendship dynamic if JKR doesn't go fully for the romance, but I think she will to some degree or another) is important to JKR, and so it is natural for the villain to intersect with the good thing that could happen (the friendship/romance) at key points, which in a chiasm = three scenes at key points in the chiasm.

That structuring becomes a little more evident in a fact that is easy to miss in the chiastically connected scenes. Graves uses her first name twice in the film, and he is really the only superior she has of any type to do it (even the goblin named Red who runs the elevator calls her "Goldstein"). In the first of the three scenes, the one in the basement when they find the cases got switched, he mutters her name in exasperation as he walks away. The closeout of these three scenes is when they directly fight each other outside the subway before the final fight in the subway. He says, "Tina, You're always turning up where you are least wanted" (scene 101 in the screenplay). He's very familiar in those first and final scenes (at least the final scene of direct interaction with her ... in the subway he is focusing on Credence). In the central scene, however, the one where he sentences her to death, he is cold and formal, calling her "Miss Goldstein."


3. The Shaws (No-Maj reactions):
 This one is a little bit more subtle or diffused, but there is some definite substance; it's just a less organized and evenly applied of an "overlay." It has to do with the Shaw family: the newspaper baron Henry and his senator son and wild-eyed son. I would call this the reaction of the larger no-maj world (as opposed to the fringe-dwellers like the Barebones) to all things magic (including those fringe-dwellers who believe it exists and are worried about it). That scene that ends with Senator Shaw calling Credence a freak is just way too self-contained and substantial of a scene not to be important, especially as a sub-theme.

The sequence is harder to tie out as an overlay "sequence" because there is no third scene that is such a clear self-contained and pointed scene as that first one in the newspaper office. But I would argue that some tie-out can be done with the presence of Henry, the father, at the subway entrance leading into the final fight scene, with his "I'll expose you for who you are" to the wizards. The reaction of of the high-powered no-maj has gone from derisively dismissive to fearfully attentive ("take photos!") and combative. There is a bit of support that may be a weak connection, but it may be something to consider that, while at the beginning of the film the most we had gotten of anything about the subway was a fleeting glimpse of an entrance in a couple of the obscurus-cam flight scenes, the wild-eyed Shaw son distinctly mentions subway (with pictures) as the place of the big disturbances he wants father to publish about. Not a super strong connection, but maybe a little bit of weight to balance out between the big presence of the Shaws in the earlier scene and the lighter presence in the end of the film (a whole scene sequence to yourself at the beginning is much weightier than being one of a crowd later, even if you are pretty prominent in the crowd, but if the setting of that later crowd scene is the place mentioned in the first scene, that might add a little weight).

Of course, the Shaw family has a VERY big presence in the middle part of the movie.

Epilogue: 
Defending Romance

I place the moment when Tina actually starts to fall for Newt at the "I love it" in the escape scene. As I said above, I take that as a kind of first time she expresses "I like being around you." I hoping I'm not setting myself up here as a guy who has figured out too many things about women (that is, if I am right, which I might not be ... and figuring out things in an objective, literary analysis sort of way is NOT the same thing as learning how to relate well with anyone, which is why women are right to be suspicious of guys who have figured out too many things, and why I am hoping I'm not crossing any lines; the suspicions are not always proven right, but better to start with caution), but I am going to go out on a limb and mention a thing I think I have observed in life and that I was first cognizant of in a Rob Reiner film that starred Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfieffer: Women like to like. Men will like things and people, and women will also like things and people. But, in addition to this, women like the actual act of liking. It is fun and pleasurable for them. They smile in cute (please don't slap me) ways when they do it. The say things in excited little ways, like "I love it" when they find out this thing that is helping them escape miraculously is called "swooping evil."

But I want to take this whole kind of theme a step further and broaden it out onto a larger plane that connects romance with the possibility of heavy themes, because I think it can get a bad rap in "serious" literature studies (I mean the stories with happy endings ... as long as Ophelia is in a nunnery or Romeo and Juliet are dead, critics seem relatively happy). In medieval literature, courtly love was seen as symbolic of divine grace.

My own sourcework on this is, among other things, Religion and Love in Dante by Charles Williams, although some of my memory of the content may be also being informed by his The Figure of Beatrice. Williams sees theological, grace-centered significance in the scene atop Mt Purgatory in the Divine Comedy in which the face of Beatrice is unveiled. The beauty of the woman and the wonder of the man somehow symbolize the wonder and gift of grace. This is seen in the fact that there is a very particular progression in that unveiling that sort of represents the gradual revelation of grace in Christian theology. It is first the smile and then the eyes.

This reminds me very much of how, in the Harry Potter series, JKR very often describes a smile as either extending to/reaching the eyes or not as a way of saying the smile was or wasn't real. Eyes and smiles go together. And so do smiles and liking. And people liking each other romantically can be wound up together with very deep themes and be a very real symbolic part of them.



And on that note, I am going to go to my corner and go through withdrawal until the DVD hits.

Footnote: Explanation of Clustering

Even though I have the published screenplay, I cannot do a chiastic reading on the scene numbering schema in it. That is in part because of the immense work that it would be, but also because I am not sure that the work would be productive (or, I should say, even if others can do it productively, I cannot do so for this type of reading). For one, in looking at this screenplay, which is the first I have ever really examined, I thin that scenes are separated and numbered according to the actual shooting. In other words, a "scene" does not necessarily mean the same thing in a screenplay as it does in a simple narrative construction. In the former, it means a distinct element that is shot (or constructed in CGI, or a mix) in film production, which is the primary use of a screenplay. This makes the numbering bloody hell to work with because, for instance, the approach to the jewelry story and the actual retrieval of the niffler from the store might be two separate "scenes" in the screenplay (when from the perspective of the narrative sequence of events, it is one event) or the Macy's sequence may be several "scenes" long. But secondly, the sequence of the elements I note within segments may appear in an order other than strictly chiastic ordering for other reasons. For example, I have meeting Jacob and meeting Tina in "openings" and "meeting Jacob again and leaving Tina" in "closings, but they don't happen in respective chiastic order: It is not the case that "openings" goes "Jacob then Tine" and closings goes "Tina then Jacob" ... they both go "Jacob then Tina" (for one, how do you get Newt interacting with Jacob in NYC when he has already left NYC when saying good by to Tina?).

For all of these reasons, I have clustered the individual significant elements within a section I see as a chiasitc "element" as long as they do all occur in proximity (other things are mixed in, but there is no leapfrogging across elements in ways other than demonstrable chiastic connection), and this is how I have determined the demarcation for my elements of the chiasm (and I have done my best in the titles of the sections to make obvious what the different elements within a section have in common: killing, intro versus "outro," etc). Some may disagree or see my groupings as problematic, but that is where the defense comes in with the further exposition of layerings and inner chiasms, which are the most substantial parts of this piece and hopefully decently done.

I'm not sure if "outro" is a common word in any lingo about literature or films, or even musie, although music is where I have seen it, as the closing track on an album by a band called Balkan Beat Box that I went to see a number of times in NYC when I lived there.