trains and cars and magic
Jun. 9th, 2014 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliWas philosophically contemplating magical trains vs. magical cars not long ago.
Magical trains are more acceptable -- less incongruous, so less of a joke on their own. And are starting to acquire the patina of nostalgiac Romance as they move into the past for a lot of us, which also helps with the magic touch.
But then, they are also different in many other respects. A magical thing must be metaphorically appropriate. Now, a train is a form of transport, but unlike a car, it's a form of transport to a fixed, definite, and predefined point. Most characters would be cast as passengers, have no role in controlling. So a trip to the North Pole works metaphorically best on a train. Still more a trip to Death. You can approximate it with a bus, probably (hmm -- Harry Potter had a magical car as an oddity, but a magical bus was routine business), but for a car, you would need a limo, which would have baggage of its own.
A car is much more free form and under control. Hmm. Like a flying carpet, or a winged horse, or a magical broomstick, or a hippogriff. Another reason why there may be fewer magical cars is that its metaphorical nature already has been expressed in magical form, many, many, many times. But there's nothing else quite so clear that your character will be -- ehem -- railroaded on the path. Even on a boat, you can sometimes prevail against the current and wind.
Magical trains are more acceptable -- less incongruous, so less of a joke on their own. And are starting to acquire the patina of nostalgiac Romance as they move into the past for a lot of us, which also helps with the magic touch.
But then, they are also different in many other respects. A magical thing must be metaphorically appropriate. Now, a train is a form of transport, but unlike a car, it's a form of transport to a fixed, definite, and predefined point. Most characters would be cast as passengers, have no role in controlling. So a trip to the North Pole works metaphorically best on a train. Still more a trip to Death. You can approximate it with a bus, probably (hmm -- Harry Potter had a magical car as an oddity, but a magical bus was routine business), but for a car, you would need a limo, which would have baggage of its own.
A car is much more free form and under control. Hmm. Like a flying carpet, or a winged horse, or a magical broomstick, or a hippogriff. Another reason why there may be fewer magical cars is that its metaphorical nature already has been expressed in magical form, many, many, many times. But there's nothing else quite so clear that your character will be -- ehem -- railroaded on the path. Even on a boat, you can sometimes prevail against the current and wind.
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Date: 2014-06-10 05:44 am (UTC)Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, and Herbie the Love Bug. The first created by Ian Fleming (yes, the one who wrote the James Bond spy novels); and the second afaik from Disney Studios.
One famous evil Magical Car:
Stephen King's Christine.
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Date: 2014-06-10 12:54 pm (UTC)Though we have the Hogwarts Express (and the metaphoric train that Dumbledore tells Harry he can take to go -- on), the train in Spirited Away, Hawthorne's Celestial Railway, The Polar Express, Night on the Galactic Railroad, Harry Dresden's hearing a train, and having to be dragged from its path, when he is shot. . . .
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Date: 2014-06-10 12:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 12:55 am (UTC)Christine is implicitly possessed by a soul-sucking demon who her first owner summoned into her by means of human sacrifice.
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Date: 2014-06-10 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 01:15 am (UTC)Here's the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scalawagons_of_Oz
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Date: 2014-06-12 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-12 06:14 am (UTC)http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/191828691?book_show_action=true
“This isn't a remake or sequel to the official Oz canon, even though it includes a lot of continuity from the original Oz series, which will make hardcore Baum fans happy. But much like the logic of Oz, this book simply exists. And that's a good thing, because it's awesome…”
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Date: 2014-06-12 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 10:51 pm (UTC)The other problem is that cars are so mundane, such a part of the everyday world, that the only way to infuse them with otherworldliness is by making the car a glamorous antique or otherwise flat-out improbable anyway.
“Doc - you made a Time Machine… out of a DeLorean?”
One off-the-wall example, speaking of R Zelazny, is his Amber Chronicles. In the very beginning the main character - who, like the reader, does not yet know what's going on - “walks the path to Amber” by being driven there in an automobile, which itself flows and changes as it travels across time (at one point the steering wheel is hexagonal and made of wood!)
L G Paull, production designer for Blade Runner, said the 'spinners,' the flying cars, were as interesting as bricks; he had to dude them up with all manner of flashing lightbars and whatnot to create any visual pizzazz.
[When next you have a chance to watch that movie, observe closely the skyborne traffic around Gaff as he takes Deckard in to police headquarters in Act I: They're overtaken and passed by a not-to-scale but quite obvious Millennium Falcon. To quote Fozzie the Bear, “Wakka-wakka-wakka!”]
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Date: 2014-06-11 11:40 pm (UTC)