The Search for Magic in A World of Different Costs: The Magicians TV & Book Series

The Search for Magic in a World of Different Costs

The Magicians, is Harry Potter College for the tortured soul. The author of The Magicians, Lev Grossman, was once a tortured grad student. So was I.

            I was so happy when I got into my graduate program. I picked up my whole life in order to go. Once in school I was miserable, but like a bad relationship I couldn’t leave it. There was no way I wasn’t going to like The Magicians book series. It was the rebound I needed from years of academia abuse.

            I loved The Magicians more than grad school, but it was also like a bad relationship. The Magicians was a better bad relationship where I stayed out of love rather than fear. I loved the word-building and the pacing. The course and actions of the main characters broke my heart. So, of course, I had to watch the show.

            Here is the set up: The main character, Quentin, (Q) is accepted into Brakebills. His best friend, Julia, is not accepted into Brakebills. Of course, Q has been in love with Julia forever. He also has the worst case of Entitled Nice Guy Syndrome (ENGS) for her I have ever seen.

            Q is a depressed smart white boy. Mostly because his academic achievements have left him feeling hallow. No one cares how smart he is. No one wants to talk about the things he wants to talk about as deeply as he does.

            The TV show displays this in one well-executed party scene. Q gives up trying to explain to people why the Danish version of a movie is better. He goes to his room and reads his childhood fantasy novels.

            Julia enters the scene where he is hiding. She gives him the friend-zone lecture of how he should try to connect with people. In both the book and the show Julia is not just your typical Jennifer Love-Hewitt coveted love object. Julia is also smart. In fact, she is even smarter and more completive than Quentin.

            However, as a smart girl, Julia doesn’t expect the world to fall at her feet. She realizes being smart is work. Of course, she is still magazine beautiful. She still has a boyfriend, James. He is not an asshole. He’s actually also fairly smart and kind. The Magicians is more trope twisting than it is trope smashing.

             In the book James is destined to go to an Ivy League college along with Julia and Q. In the show he is already at said college with James and Q. They are getting ready to go to Ivy League graduate school now. Because, if you are super smart and want fulfillment in America today- it can’t happen without graduate school.

            It’s not just graduate school that tears Q, James, and Julia apart. It’s magic graduate school. Because we all know graduate school is really magic. It has to be. It keeps us from crap office jobs with no safety. It costs six figures and promises to give us less crappy office jobs with some safety. When we get in we feel our lives are set. It is the only way we can be taught magic, but there is a price. So why do we do it?

             Some might think that the answer is money. Those people haven’t been to graduate school in twenty years. The same millennials and Gen-Xers that fight and claw at each to get into school continue on to non-paying internships. They have loans that last decades. The answer can’t be money. Everyone thinks they are going to beat the student loans and be a giant in their field. But, that isn’t really about money. That’s about wanting a magical life.  

            In The Magicians, Brakebills seems to be the only game in town for a magical life.  Q gets in. Julia doesn’t. Brakebills attempts to erase Julia’s memory. It is a kindness they do for all potential students that fail the admissions process. Because who wants to know the potential of a magical life they can’t have?

            Julia, that’s who. She literally uses pain to remember her Brakebills experience. Her boyfriend James doesn’t even get tested. He doesn’t even get to know about Brakebills. Its existence and the existence of true magic are secret.            

            Why wouldn’t perfectly smart chosen-boyfriend of Julia not even get a chance? Answer: because he’s too perfect. He has no true struggles.

            On the show, one of the most dynamic characters is Brakebill’s student Elliot. He’s gay and comes from a rural town with a pained past. Elliot is brought to three dimensions well by actor Hale Appleman. Elliot claims that Brakebills doesn’t tell you the real secret that magic doesn’t come from talent, but pain. So, where are all the minorities? Just like real grad school most of them aren’t at Brakebills. Brakebills specializes in the pain of over-achieving rather than adversity.

            It isn’t money that Juila or Q are after. It’s magic and an end to pain, the very pain that may give them their ability. Like a lot of depressed/obsessed over-achievers a Magician can easily have money and success. Yet, they end up steering away from it. The characters aren’t motived by the desire for success. They’re motivated by a desire to be the best, to have knowledge, and then adventure.

             They wanted to win, to pass the mysterious test. To be deemed not just good, but elite by other elites. After a life of pain it is the only thing that will fill the hole inside of them. After that adventure will surely follow. Really, why else would anyone go to grad school? But what do you do when you don’t make the cut and you are a stubborn bitch Julia who wants to remember magic is real?

            Julia asks Quentin, her best friend, for help.  Julia can’t very well “go to Yale knowing this place exists.” Q choses to do nothing to help Julia. He says his help wouldn’t do any good anyway. He is only a lowly grad student at the mercy of his school.

            Q’s Entitled Nice Guy Syndrome (ENGS) rears its ugly head in such a brilliant and insidious way. It shows the ripple affects of privilege. Julia’s main vagina-block to magic isn’t Q’s ENGS. It’s Brakebills not accepting her.

            Currently in the show the battle-of-the-sexes is playing out like this: Julia challenges Q for not helping her. Q calls her inferior for not getting into the school. Alas, he gets to feel justified because in his eyes she is acting inferior. His Brakebills (Ivy League) friends tell him so.  She is stealing books from his school, after all. She is hanging out with hedge witches (self-taught DYIers.)  She is making very questionable decisions chasing magic.

            The hedge witches are all ages, races, and levels of ability. Brakebills is mostly white. There are no older students, and one student with a disability. She was only a minor character in the book. I’m not holding my breath that she will show up in the show.

            But, the hedge witches are no pagan love-circle. They are like any group after power that they are denied. Not always good. Not really safe. The most ruthless have risen to the top. 

            In order to be find magic Julia has to do some questionably ethical things. She’s locked in a room, get sexually harassed, and deals with manipulative girls that pretend to be her friend. That’s no paid-for magic school. In fact, that sounds exactly like a bad office job. So, naturally, Q’s calling Julia inferior, and admitting he was indeed angry he didn’t get sex, pushes her over the edge.

             Julia is made to feel responsible for all of her choices. Yet, Q is protected by Brakebills from real-life consequences of his actions. Currently on SyFy, Julia isn’t the only one suffering. Q is still suffering. People do suffer in grad school. People die, but, this seems par for the course at Brakebills. Q does care, but his biggest fear is that he will be kicked out of Brakebills and end up cut-off like Julia.

             So, what happens if you get kicked out? In episode four we learn some of the backstory of Marina, “top-bitch in New York,” and head of the hedge witches. Episode four is a thoughtful departure from the book. Julia decides to make a decision to use magic to actively hurt Q after his abandonment. She makes Q think all of his Brakebills experience was a hallucination and that he is in a mental hospital. Julia does this spell trope spell under the direction and influence of Marina.

            Yep, they get their mental hospital magic-is-fake episode out of the way by number four. It is brilliantly trope twisting and written by the Grossman himself. What the TV show has done with the deepening of the character of Penny, played by the talented Arjun Gupta, has helped the fullness of the story greatly. Also, OMG Taylor Swift musical number! How can you not love it? Side-baring that, let’s look at who engineered the spell, ex-Brakebills student Marina.

            Marina is an angry girl, kicked out of Brakebills three months before graduation. The Brakebills faculty erased Marina’s memories and knowledge of magic. She had to build them back up from nothing.  We don’t yet know what Marina did to be kicked out and her memories taken.

            It may be worse than sleeping with a professor and indirectly getting another student killed. Another student did this and she was given a cushy do-nothing job with a huge salary. It may be worse than what Q did, which was accidentally calling up a murderous beast, which crippled the dean and killed faculty, but the difference was he did the best thing you can do in grad school. He didn’t get caught. Or maybe the Brakebills staff just really wants Q in there school because they know something we don’t.

            Chances are that whatever Marina’s offenses were they didn’t serve the greater cause of the University of Brakebills.  Like most grad schools, Brakebills true goal that isn’t in its mission statement. One of the strongest things about the show is we are aloud to see what others in power may be thinking outside of Q and Julia. We get to really see how Q and Julia are cogs in a plan.

            Brakebills has plenty more to worry about than its individual students and cast-offs. It is literally saving the multiverse from a beast. The dean is fighting the good fight. He has paid the ultimate price in fantasy fiction. He has become physically disabled.

            He’s played by the understated, commanding, Rick Worthy. He instantly became my favorite character, when he said no one really has control over anything.  Because if it’s one thing people with magic, disability, and pain know- it’s that you don’t have control over anything, but you have to keep working your grand plan to save the multiverse, right? Even if that means making your school elite.

            In fact, you probably have to put diversity and fairness on the back burner for the larger cause. You have to work to keep magic away from dangerous people. But, when you deny people the right to knowledge and magic aren’t you just making more dangerous people? When an institution denies people of abilities its knowledge several things will begin to happen: People will turn against each other. People will find other ways to get that knowledge. Over time, if the institution gets too myopically focused it will crumble.

            Most grads schools don’t want to save the world. Most are either worried about their bottom line or staying elite. While schools are battling that beast and students with in it look for their larger purpose you have to wonder where the magic is. It turns out it is on SyFy, and we should all watch The Magicians to see who gets it.   

             

What People should know about me and this blog:

1) I am a mother with a physical and learning disabilities. 

2) I am slightly dyslexic. I am busy. I stopped doing this blog because checking the posts for perfection took to long. Now I've decided- F that noise (ableist rhetoric)  There will be misspellings and typos.

 A) If you are the kind of person that finds these errors too distracting you have every right not to read the blog.

B) If you feel that such errors make me not intelligent or make my points invalid you are wrong and ableist. 

C) Yes, I believe in good clear writing. I am a published author and work hard to make my stories readable and error free. However, my errors, that I work hard to fix, or my errors on this fast and hard blog may throw you off, but they do not mean I am not a good writer or have no right to be writing. 

D) The above doesn't make me apart of the Trump/Palin movement or the anti-science/anti-facts movement AKA the "don't oppress us for being willfully ignorant, not bothering to check our facts, we think we are so cool we don't bother with critical thinking, reading, speaking or feeling" people. I'm just not good at spelling. I also leave out words and can't tell if I have. This isn't the same as thinking whatever crap I poop out is awesome.    

3) I am aware that writing: “person with a disability” is the correct term for obvious reasons.
However, as I’m writing this as a rushed mom I have chosen to sometimes write: “disabled person,” like they do across the pond. As a "disabled person" I can get away with this. I don't feel non-disabled people can. 

3)  I try to be aware of all my privilege. I am white and queer, but I’m married to a man. A white man who works in the tech industry. Despite this, I love him a lot.  As most people with disabilities I have 

A HUGE mountain of debt. However, due to the support of those around me I have never truly lived in poverty. I am LUCKY. 

4) I know I benefit from white privilege and middle class privilege. I try to be aware of all my privilege. Sometimes I fail.

Another Look Disability Representation on Screen and Off

Okay, so I was wrong...mostly. I recently had some criticisms about actors with disabilities fighting for the cause that ONLY actors with disabilities should play people with disabilities.  I basically said it was impossible. I actually found myself defending the “free market” {shudder}. I often saw it as actors whining for their own self-promotion.

            I think my defending ABs playing people with disabilities comes from my own issues of not wanting to get credit for my work because I have a disability. I want to get credit for my work because it’s good. If I were an actor I wouldn’t want to get a part due to my disability but due to my acting ability. I felt if an actor was “better” than me and they were able-bodied they should get it.

            But, what is really “better?” If “better” means easier to work with because they are able-bodied or more famous because of all the opportunities they had because of their AB privilege, that is not really better. But how will we ever know? 

            The good ol’ affirmative action conundrum that makes us hate ourselves (or maybe just me.) I also felt this way because like most people with disabilities I was dealing with far larger problems than Hollywood.

            I felt this way because I spend too many years in a field that gave lip-service to being disability aware but was anything but under the surface. (It rhymes with Biology but begins with a P.)

            I didn’t want to fight for pointless things I was never going to get.  I have very limited energy and time. I didn’t want to spend it screaming into a void. I’d rather just quietly write my own disability positive stuff in the back, thanks.

            But then I went to Comic Con.  I write this after being so “inspired” by Comic con. A lot of stuff happened, but one of the things that happened was this:

             

Actors with Disabilities Speak Out

            I agree with everything that was said here. Especially all the Ryan Murphy stuff.

            Sadly, Ryan Murphy is where it’s at right now…in America.  A powerful person in the industry wants to do “diversity.” However, they still want things to be neat and clean to work with. They also want to be seen as heroes for dealing with the disability in the first place.

           

            I think this is what caused one of my disability activist friends to say: “Fuck them.” {All the LGBTQI kids getting their rights and feeling so great about Glee. It was a moment of frustration. I reminded her I was also one of those kids once. It’s hard not to get frustrated. I know a lot of LGBTQIA people that weren’t happy with the depiction. I personally think every character is a shallow cow.} 

             I once said that people with disabilities depicted in media are where African Americans were in the 70s. Everyone was watching Good Times, which depicted one dimensional ghetto life. I think Glee is out Good Times. I was hoping The Jefferson’s would come soon. I would love a sassy person with a disability who openly mocked able-bodied people. Especially one that GOT A JOB and MOVED ON UP and got rich. Yeah. I think I’m losing my millennial audience.  (I watched reruns when I was seven. They came on before Scooby Doo.)

             I saw The Doctor Who episode “Under the Lake” at home. It depicted a deaf woman as a captain as a ship, who was truly deaf. I thought about posting “This is how you do it, Ryan Murphy.” As Murphy recently had a character who was also a deaf actor. I was far from offended by the jokes about the characters deafness. Most of them were funny and true to life. (If you are deaf buried up to your neck for a sorority prank you wouldn’t hear the serial killer coming like the other girls.) What I didn’t like was that the deaf character felt very inserted to me an after thought for a pat-on-the-back for diversity… But, I didn’t post anything because it was just all too complicated.

            FYI: The actress had to ask Ryan to change “hearing impaired” to “deaf” in the script because she didn’t want to offend her deaf community. He did it. Yippee, but his writing team didn’t already know this. I may not expect all characters to be played by actors with disabilities but I do expect basic research. 

            Then I went to comic con and I saw the part II of the doctor who episode: “Before the Flood” and…. You know how you’ve wanted something for so long, and then you accepted that you were never going to get it, and then you do get it. At first it’s scary…

 Then all bottled up emotions come out: 

 And then you realize all you bottled up when you gave up and lowered expectations:

            The deaf character was deep and central to the story. Her deafness was a strength but not in a super-crip way. She was like any other central Dr. Who character in an episode. And in the end she got love… LOVE. With a really cute boy.  As an 80s baby you don’t know how much I DIDN’T see:

            A strong woman get love

            A woman with a disability get love

            Saw either of women like this get love but somehow get pathetic and weaker to get it by making it the only thing she cared about…like some sad stalker.

            Too many times to count. So I did this in public.

            Very aware that I may’ve been looking like a sad stereotype, buy oh well. I’m me.

            The writer, Toby Whitehouse, an English White dude, didn’t make my fan freak out any better. He said it started out with him wanting a character to read lips for some reason…hmmm. This led him to a deaf character. This led him to actually research deafness… Ryan Murphy. This led him to want a deaf actress. This led him to talk to actors with disabilities. Here is his quote as I remember it:

           

            “I had no idea how cut-off this whole group of people felt from being accurately represented. I don’t feel it’s heroic to include them. I feel it’s responsible and necessary.”

            I hope he understand my tearful fan-girling out wasn’t treating as a hero but being so relieved that FINALLY someone didn’t want to be one—The hero paradox. Luckily, Toby is used to dealing with a lot paradoxes in Dr. Who.

I think the closest thing we got the The Jefferson’s was actually American Horror Story- Freak Show. There is a writer on Ryan’s AHS team I personally love, a White dude. Tim Minear. He likes to write about physical/psychological weakness can actually be strength. His flawed characters are never super-crips. They are always flawed people that have character weakness, but the character weakness isn’t due to the disability. He has a thing for blindness, but he completely flipped all the blind stereotypes that I HATED as an 80s baby. I will say his blind characters were NEVER played by blind women. Two of them were played by my favorite actresses, but now I actually think that’s a shame...and it is time to start shouting that something different be done, and maybe by the time they hear the echoes of our worn out voices something will happen.    

IF SOMEONE KNOWS OF WRITERS WITH DISABILITIES WHO WRITE SCRIPTS FOR TV PLEASE TELL ME. I DON'T KNOW ANY.

       Send all scathing complaints to @JimNorton    (Jim Norton is a comedian that has made many jokes about how women with disabilities are “gross” and should feel grateful for sex. He is by far the greatest enemy to feminism and disability causes. He has a sense of humor. He’s has been open about his own sexual trauma with a sense of humor.  Still it's weird he agreed to handle all my complaints, huh?)

My not so "conservative" view on AB actors playing "disabled" parts

My friend asked me to respond to this:Scott Jordan Harris's Why The Theory of Everything Is a Disappointing Depiction of Disability

Here's what I said:

Ugh. This why did you ask me this???? This is one of those disability arguments that I hate because it forces me to see that while we are a minority group we are still so connected to -and isolated from- the majority of where we came from. My simple answer: The author’s point about the Oscars and disabilities is spot on. The Oscars are deplorable on all kinds of disability-inspiration-porn. I think the larger problem is the lack of movies and shows that have people with disabilities in them. Maybe one day we can live in a world where we don’t just see people with disabilities as movie and TV vehicles of “inspiration” aka “I saw this movie and I now so grateful for my own problems because I’d rather be anything but disabled.” Imagine if we lived in a world where Rachel from Friends was disabled and sometimes talked about those issues but the character and storyline was basically the same? Looonger answer…


(I personally HATED Rachel from Friends but I wanted to pick someone non-cult iconic. If I had to pick anyone it would be Faith the vampire Slayer. She could be deaf…or Willow could be limping. They came close on Buffy with Tara’s stuttering but not close enough..bBut, done wonderfully by Amber Benson. Anyway, I’m digressing…ADD. They did a really good job with portraying someone with ADD on ER and other disabilities but then it got way too soapy. There is also a larger and way more complex Glee and American Horror Story conversation... ) 

But back to the original question: My more leftist counterparts would be the first to argue and champion that only actors with disabilities should play people with disabilities. Me, I support the idea very much, but then we get back to the old “affirmative action” argument… What if someone else is a more talented actor? I know in the case of a movie like Selma if someone said: “Let’s have Daniel Day-Lewis play MLK,” there would rightfully be out-cry. As far as this I am not so sure; just like I am not so sure that GBLT stories should only be played by GBLT actors. It such a theoretical argument anyway because it isn’t like the movie industry is ever going to do it. They won’t even let fat women be played by fat women or ugly women be played by ugly women. They think it is perfectly reasonable to pair Jonah Hill with a 20 year old super-model-looking actor to play his doting wife.

But as far as the actors: This may get me some hate from my brethren, but when I heard The Ted Talk from Maysoon Zayid I found her entitled in regard to her acting. She complained that she didn’t get the part in her college play of the woman with the disability. (Maybe I was also upset because she was also very cure focused and was using her disability for fame rather than helping the cause IMO. Maybe I’m pissed because her disability problem seems to be she can’t become a celebrity actress and mine is I can’t get a good paying job that won’t accommodate my disability without being hostile. Sorry, Maysoon.) 

Maysoon's Ted Talk

Maysoon’s story was that she didn’t get her college part because they didn’t think she could physically do it. If that is true she SHOULD be mad and it’s ridiculous, but what if she just wasn’t as good at acting as the other woman and they didn’t want to hurt her feelings?? She talked about how this was the only part she could play in her college career. I think she was looking at the whole thing upside down. Why didn’t they just give her other parts and write in a damned disability?!
As I’m criticizing Maysoon I should also commend her for going for it. When I was 12 I wanted to act. I then got a huge case of stage fright. I’m sure this was related to my disability. There are times people have said “you should act.” And I would respond: “It would have to be a cross gendered performance of Richard III.” It wouldn’t have mattered anyway even if I was born able-bodied there was no way I was ever going to be able to be 100lbs without literally killing myself. As a disabled woman there are no parts I’d want to play. 

(PS. I also really suck at acting now. I think people think I’d be good because I have my moments of being funny.)

My friend and long time activist Nina G Comedian and I were talking once. I told her that Eliza Dushku could play her in the movie of her life. She said she only wanting a stuttering actress to play her. I saw her point but kept think “Oh, but Eliza would be perfect!” I always wanted Britney Murphy to play me. (It can’t happen now L. RIP Britney. I think what really killed her was anorexia.) I then realized the true problem was not that I didn’t really want a disabled actor to play a part but that I know virtually no disabled actors (other than that kid from Breaking Bad or Facts of Life woman.) 

There is no way I WILL know any disabled actors until we get more disabled parts. I’m sure that there are many talented actors with disabilities and even if they gave every disabled role to a disabled person we would still be sadly under-represented.

The Glee stuff that tries to go beyond inspiration porn is not enough ( and yes, I do think Ryan Murphy should have gotten a “real wheelchair kid” and researched wheelchair dancing, but I still appreciate the effort.) And I am grateful for Family Guy/South Park and the like for making fun of inspiration porn and having actual disabled characters! Efforts like Tim Minear of Dollhouse and American Horror Story have shown the complex relationship of disability’s strengths and weaknesses while it not being the only thing about the character is more my personal favorite. (I don’t know why I’m not that into this season of AHS. I think it was because the I know the moral center of Lobster Boy is doomed. I LOVED the disability parts but got sick of the woman cattiness and the rich psycho. I have like 6 eps to catch up on. )  
However, there still needs to be much much more on disability…. We need to marry the fringes of the efforts of Ryan Murphy and writers like Tim Minear and Family Guy…What I mean by that is seeing disability in all aspects of “primetime;” like some shallow How-I-Met-Your-Mother show with a major disabled character or a show like Modern Family with a disabled kid where it is not a tragedy (Luke and Hayley being stupid doesn’t count.) Then we can see more actors with disabilities. 

You asked for my thoughts. Anyway, we should get the kids together and hang out. I promise we can just talk about good pre-schools.