Poetic Justice

FEB 16 – Oscar Wilde once wrote in The Decay of Lying that, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.” What he meant by that was that art is the reality and life a mere mirror. As it strange as it may sound, the evidence appears to bear Wilde’s aphorism out.

Consider this for a start. In 1828, Morgan Robertson wrote a short novel entitled Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan.

The story was about an ocean liner called Titan which sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. A scant 14 years later, real life followed suit with the ocean liner being none other than the R.M.S. Titanic.
The similarities between fact and fiction did not just end there. Both the Titan and the Titanic:

• were considered unsinkable;
• carried less lifeboats than was necessary;
• struck an iceberg; and
• sank.

Of course, I accept that one solitary incident like that could be explained away as mere coincidence. The problem is, there were and are many more incidents like that.

In 1915, D.W. Griffith directed a film entitled The Birth of a Nation. It did tremendously well at the box office, raking in almost US$10 million. Today, that sum sounds paltry but back then it was a princely figure and once we take into account of inflation, the US$10 million is equivalent to today’s US$200 million.¹  To put it in simpler terms, it is right up there with Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.²

The movie was not truly noted for its box office figures though. It was famous or perhaps more truthfully infamous for romanticizing the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as saviours of white civilization. So effective was it at its task that the almost defunct group leapt back to life “from just a few thousand members to more than 100,000 within the same year”.³  Once again, life imitates art.

As for the piece de resistance, well I can only offer this: sometime in 1997, a then little known author wrote a series of books about a young dark haired and bespectacled wizard called Harry Potter. She built a fascinating world in the book replete with a Ministry of Magic, a school of magic and an antagonist who for various reasons ‘must not be named’.

It caught the attention of the world and spawned tremendous interest even over here. As fate would have it, things then took a bizarre twist.

Sometime in the late 2000s, someone in the Home Ministry took umbrage over the use of the word Allah by some communities in East Malaysia. With one magical stroke, the Almighty was relegated to ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’.

The story, of course, did not end there. The Muggle-like individuals, upset by the change, ran to the equivalent of the Wizengamot to make their objections known.

‘Wizards’ came from near and far to consider the merits of the objection and much were the deliberations over the arcane-like matter. Finally, a decision was handed down and it favoured that Muggle-like community.

Of course, I wish I am able to end just there but already an appeal has been lodged and whatever possible conclusion to the tale appears to have fallen squarely in the laps of a higher court, one which sometimes functions rather enigmatically, much like the Department of Mysteries but not quite content with that, fringe elements are already attempting to cast Silencio with their acts and deeds.

Perhaps, in doing so, they appear to be taking their cue from Wilde’s other aphorism that “Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.” The thing is what the aphorism reads and what it actually means are two entirely different things.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_of_A_Nation#Significance [↩]
2. http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross?region=world-wide [↩]
3. http://tinyurl.com/yzfr8r9 [↩]