Rose-tree Dryad wrote:I wouldn't compare what she does to schoolyard bullying perpetrated by girls, either... as you said, they ostracize and isolate their victims, whereas the LotGK is trying to lure and brainwash more people into her cult, if she doesn't kill them instead. She also doesn't come across as having a bullying manner in her debate with the questers and Rilian: while she uses a half-mocking tone at times and at the end says they're all being silly, it's all done in a very coaxing, gentle way as though she's speaking to a child who is making up stories and won't go to bed.
Well, actually the boarding school matron, who had asked us if we'd talked enough, did give me a bit of a hiding for rebelliously saying no when she wanted us all to say yes at lights out....
And stronger girls did practise on me half Nelsons and Chinese burns at that place....
I hope they thought they were only playing.
Should I mention the boxing gloves I once tried, or the fencing the girls got to learn at sport there?
What I am really saying is that men don't have the monopoly on even physical violence, even back in the "good old days" when women rode sidesaddle and wore long gorgeous houppelandes and kirtles, leaving much of the dirty work to men and underlings (earthmen?).
Actually I wouldn't necessarily call the giants bullies either. Yes, they look and sound fearsome, but they were playing a game hitting a cairn with rocks, on Ettinsmoor, just like a troop of soldiers on garrison duty might. If they clobbered someone with a rock or two, and thereby provided themselves with dinner, it wasn't personal, and if they squabbled among themselves and ended up crying like babies, they weren't very disciplined. No wonder Peter and then Caspian beat them in war in previous Narnia stories, if these were the giants they were fighting. And while their Harfang colleagues seemed to be just like LOTGK, treating Jill, Eustace and even Puddleglum like absolute babies, which of course even the King and Queen Giant knew about, since they at one time were babies, themselves, they were only hoping to serve them up as the first course at dinner.
But just because LOTGK sounds nice, with nice clothes, nice music and perfumed incense doesn't mean she was nice, and wasn't coercing the children, Puddleglum and Prince Rilian into staying under her absolute control. And one form of bullies that people meet either at work or at play, as at Experiment House, are those who can be considered control freaks - micromanagers is the technical term. Jadis also lured Edmund with no doubt "legal" Turkish Delight to get him to do what she wanted, in LWW. And yet, surely, you may agree with me, that the White Witch, at least, whose attitude was "My way or the highway" could fairly be called a bully. But deadly and bullying as Jadis was, I wouldn't call her a control freak. She merely petrified everyone and called them lawbreakers, to keep it simple.
But I would call LOTGK a bit of a control freak. The sort of person who needs people's allegiances, and their admiration to her specifications. The sort of bully who not only wants to control their victims' bodies but their minds as well. Remember those sickly gallant compliments Prince Rilian showered LOTGK with? You see, unlike Jadis, LOTGK knew she had to keep her temper, if she wasn't to throw away all her hard-gained control. Outside she was just as gentle-looking, beautiful and seductive as, say, Kylie Minogue (an Australian singer) performing on stage can be. But inside the act she was seething with anger and poison - poisoned honey, just like one Dolores Umbridge in another series I have clearly read.
And yes, that anger and poison was personal. Directed at Prince Rilian, who could never entirely be coerced into lavishing all those beautiful compliments on her, 24/7, thus becoming her tale-bearer and hanger-on, and whose dissent and knowledge of his own kidnapping and 10 years of imprisonment was controlled by being bound into a silver chair for an hour every evening. Much more serious "knock-em-into-a-locker" tactics than you say the Experiment House bullies might have used, possibly on Jill.
And yes, like so much of the bullying we see at Experiment House her intention was to demoralise, humiliate and to control others to suit herself. Just like any other micromanaging bully that people sometimes come across. Only she doesn't nag or back-seat drive, the bullying methods often associated with women, not girls, usually by men who are quite as capable of such behaviours, themselves. If really annoyed LOTGK turns into a snake and kills people. She wanted to turn all those annoying interlopers, including the Prince, into her prisoners and obedient puppets to do her bidding, without any right to answer back or to live differently to what she said. If she turned into a snake to kill Prince Rilian like she already had done to his mother, the game was up.
Just because LOTGK can coo and coax doesn't mean she wasn't putting on an act just like Experiment House bullies putting on an act for the teachers. And playing innocent doesn't mean that Experiment House bullies and LOTGK alike weren't out to lord it over and control everyone else. She would have needed the Prince to oversee Narnia, since he was the rightful heir. But her methods of keeping him her prisoner, drugging him and confining him to a chair, no matter how valuable that chair was, or how brief the time, weren't the ways to get him to truly love her as a husband might, nor does Prince Rilian's seeming "Stockholm Syndrome" justify her reasons to rule anyone, or absolve LOTGK from being a bully.
Hannah Minghella probably has several other films to think about besides SC. It is something in her favour that she can articulate as much as she did what
Silver Chair is about. And I hope that I am right in expecting that everyone concerned wants the best possible outcome.