Abstract. Artemis Fowl, written at the dawn of the twenty-first century by. Eoin Colfer, hails a new era of cyberculture, in which we are so immersed in technology ...
“Human Magic”, “Fairy Technology”. The Place of the Supernatural in the Age of Cyberculture Anna Bugajska Abstract Artemis Fowl, written at the dawn of the twenty-first century by Eoin Colfer, hails a new era of cyberculture, in which we are so immersed in technology that even a young adult book is hardly understandable without the knowledge of a specialized jargon. Part of the success of Colfer’s series lies in his striking combination of supernatural and technical elements. He forces us to take a new vantage point: we are no longer free to get by with our usual divisions into “technical” and “magical”. In the age of cyberculture, yesterday’s magic is today’s technology. The twentieth century was the time of rapid technological advancement and it was at its wake that we could read in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough how technology replaced what is magical, supernatural, fantastic. More than a century later, we cannot confirm his words. The two spheres co-exist and merge, being indispensable for humans. “Supernatural”, “magical” and “fantastic” become separated, which division is clearly visible in Artemis Fowl. All of these, traditionally considered together, come into interaction with a highly technical world. Fairies deprived of natural wings use their artificial counterparts. Dwarves are practically walking machines. Invisibility is achieved by “shielding”. Artemis uses “human magic” to heal a fairy, but must rack his brains to escape “fairy technology”. The convergence point comes at the search for a Booke of Magick and at a failed Ritual performance. This paper intends to examine the consequences of the meeting of the two worlds. Apparently, the supernatural has not been swallowed up by technology and it is vital to human life. It is our approach to it that has changed and needs to be discussed. In the face of the progress in sciences, we have to redefine our stance, to be able to combine “fairy” with “technology”. Key words: Artemis Fowl, Colfer, supernatural, technology, magic, cyberculture ***** 1.
Introduction The second decade of the twenty-first century opens with a vibrant keynote, connecting a sci-fi, highly technological world with the successful with the popular audience sword-and-magic swashbuckling adventure story.
2Human Magic, Fairy Technology ______________________________________________________________ Kids flock to the theatres to learn how to train their own dragons from a juvenile technician, whereas more mature audience is lured by the fluorescent world wide web of Pandora, presented to us by Cameron’s Avatar. If this accord of technology and magic does not strike us as a dissonance, it is because somehow this connection seems to us in tune with what we intuit about our nature as human beings. Cyberculture, as noticed by Lèvy, is a space in which culture, society and technology permeate one another, creating a fluid, processual environment of ever-shifting particles1. If we touch one of them, there immediately shoot out synapses, inviting us to embrace more than we originally intended. Although a century ago the realms of technology and magic were set by Frazer at the opposite poles2, these concepts are now brought together. By delving into the mythologies of the past we rediscover the truth known to the archaic societies: it was a blacksmith that was complementary to a shaman3, so technology and magic have been intertwined all along. The re-emergence of this idea to the surface of our collective cultural consciousness could be spotted ten years ago on the level of literature. The dealings of the infamous teenage criminal, Artemis Fowl, saw the light thanks to his self-proclaimed biographer, Eoin Colfer, unearthing at the same time the underworld of high-tech fairies, equipped with iris-cams, detachable wings and electrocuting batons. LEPrecon Captain Holly Short, spurting out specialized jargon is a long shot from charmingly malicious Tinker Bell. Artemis, a twelve-year-old child prodigy, flanked with his faithful bodyguards Butler and Jill, sets off on a quest not unlike the challenge humanity faces in the age of cyberculture. Since the death of god, famously announced by Nietzsche, orphaned humans have been seeking to access the supernatural world by means of psychology and culture studies, or explain away the inexplicable with the use of natural sciences in the attempt to master the world4. Similarly, Artemis tries to step into his missing father’s shoes to restore the family fortune. He ceases to be on the constant lookout for Artemis Senior’s return to focus on his goal, that is, fairy treasure, which he hopes to obtain by illegal means. Is then the young criminal mastermind an example of the “last man”5, interested solely in material gain, forsaking morality for worldly riches? Indeed, the coat of arms of his family reads Aurum est potestas, which would suggest such an interpretation. However, in the course of the story we learn that said gold is strongly associated with supernatural, being connected by a special link with the fairies6. If we borrow Mr Pullman’s alethiometer and substitute “gold” with “fairy” and this with “supernatural”, we face an equation which is not to be dismissed. For if the supernatural is in fact what young Artemis seeks and
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______________________________________________________________ desires, what is its character and quality? In the world where fairies rely on blasters and bio-bombs to take out their enemies, is there any place for good ol’ magic? Or is it by any chance homogenous with “man-made magic”7, that is technology? 2.
Hand, Head and Heart The alliterative “hand, head, heart” title of this section of the discussion invites association with nursery rhymes, making us imagine children standing in a circle, waiting to be counted out of some game or dubbed “It”. Yet, in this enumeration none of the constituent parts can be discarded without a threat to the integrity of the whole system. In this threedimensional reality of human interior we are aiming at the convergence point, instead of pursuing each of these axes to the infinity and beyond. Traditionally, “head” and “heart” would be the ones contending for the primacy in our handling of the perceived world. The eighteenth century clash between rigidly scientific “head” and divinely inspired “heart” is by now a classic. What tended to be overlooked is the third factor, namely “hand”. It expresses the stance of the man as a tool-maker, who subdues the Earth and has dominion over all creation. As initially the heart-man was looking for salvation in divine providence, after the death of god he was forced to take refuge in a sterile and ordered world of science, with “head” necessarily gaining ascendancy. Technology was employed in the service of dissecting reality to understand it better, finding its niche as a sort of technoscience. Yet, since it existed in opposition to the spiritual side of man, the two were perceived as parallel and separate. If we accept the vision of the three axes of human predicament, we clearly see that pursuing only one of them leads to nowhere. With the development of technology, man the toolmaker reached out to embrace “heart”. As a result, a new hybrid was created, which, for the sake of the discussion we can call technospirituality. The visible form of the latter may be spotted in such phenomena as technopaganism. In Grahame’s Representations of the post/human we read that digital world is animated and enchanted, that information technology is the continuation of hidden codifications of wisdom known only to initiates, and in their recovery of neopagan rituals to celebrate not only the cycles of nature but the wonders of technological invention, such high-tech adepts are the direct descendents of the hermetic magi.8 The associations with memory and arcane, elitist knowledge are perhaps those which most ring the bell in our daily experience of more and more technicized world. The modern man’s quest for knowledge resembles
4Human Magic, Fairy Technology ______________________________________________________________ the Gnostic journey in search of enlightenment9. It is popular to seek spiritual experience through techniques, trying to control and channel the sacred. While pure reason and unrestrained fantasy proved unreliable, technology remained the only option. Such a stance is well visible in Colfer’s book. The overblown emotions are locked away in the dark and dusty attic in the person of Angelina, Artemis’s mother, who descended into a mental illness after her husband’s disappearance. She suffers from delusions, photophobia and mood swings, leaving young criminal to his own schemes. Any association between hallucination and the supernatural is renounced10. As it appears, the question of “physical” vs. “virtual” is no longer valid. ‘I see,’ fibbed Butler. ‘Metaphorically or literally?’ smiled his employer. ‘Exactly.’11 As long as the bodyguard sees something clearly, the matter of the “reality” of the experience is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the degree of trust we can put in our equipment. On the other hand, science is perceived as a mere prop for efficient handling of the world. Root, the Commander of the fairy LEPrecon force, finds it hard to cooperate with Foaly the chief scientist, and psychoanalysts are openly ridiculed. As Root says “science is taking magic out of everything”12. The directness of the experience is lost as Foaly “feels” Holly’s pain through sensors and removing the “human factor” from the time-stopping ritual. Magic in Artemis’s world exists only in a rudimentary form of blue sparks, used for healing and regeneration and mesmer for hypnothising. It is the very power to subdue Nature and gain domination over people that Artemis seeks to obtain, in his wish to restore the family fortune. Thus, it bears uncommon resemblance to technology, which both sides of the conflict use to the excess. The key to the world of fairies appears the Booke of Magick, which Artemis coerces from one of them. He learns their secret language and their rules, which he later uses to fulfil his wishes. At the convergence point of the supernatural and the human worlds stands culture, with its symbols to be deciphered, opening the door to creation through imagination. 3.
The Ghost in the Machine
The said Booke of Magick must necessarily assume the form acceptable and easily manageable in the contemporary world. Thus, each leaf is photographed with a digital camera, and the images are stored in multiple
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______________________________________________________________ files saved to minidiscs and projected into virtual space with the help of the Internet. The mechanical decoding of the fairy language is taken care of by Artemis’s computer translator. The humans are left only with “jigsaws” to rearrange13 and make sense of the disconnected pieces. The supernatural, then, is forcefully put into a man-made machine, and accommodates there pretty well. It is drawn into the world wide web of associations, instantly linked to ancient cultures and digested through analytical systems. Not only Mud People, as humans are called, but the fairy People as well cram their magic into technical devices, as is the case with the ritual of time-stopping, channelled by Foaly to the lithium batteries. Are not then Colfer’s fairies yet another version of the ghost in the machine question? Science-fiction offered us cyborgs, animated with artificial intelligence. Instead of breathing life into a new construct, people re-heat old mythologies to suit the age of technology. Supernatural creatures, locked in the realm of fantasy, now are gaining ground, armed with advanced weaponry. The age-old stories look slightly different when processed through the modern mind, as the Booke of Magick had to change its form to be analysed by Artemis. Cyber-fairies do not wield wands, but electrocuting batons, and are largely deprived of traditionally sacred powers. Farseeing, farhearing, invisibility and flying appear to be possible only thanks to advanced technology. The actual “magic”, in the shape of blue sparks, much akin to electricity, is kept in a rudimentary form to enhance natural processes in the organism (as is the case with regeneration). Other than that, it is present in the life of fairies as a system of rules, preventing too close interaction between the supernatural and the human. Breaking into a human household results in the instant loss of magical powers, and disobeying host’s eyeball orders is punished with a severe allergic reaction. However, this kind of magic can be lived without, as can be seen on the examples of Holly and Mulch. They can work efficiently without resorting themselves to tricks, and the protection against mesmer is all but too simple. It is enough to put on sunglasses to be secure from supernatural influence. Fairies, eons ahead of humans in the realm of technology, bear resemblance to the medieval intelligences14. However, divinities with their magic now come under the threat of becoming mere tools for achieving human desires. Artemis uses the laws of the fairy world to heal his mother, but keeps fairy treasure as well, being the ultimate winner of the human vs supernatural clash. The characters of Artemis Fowl live in the abstract, virtual space, where body is redundant. The “disembodied breathing” of Commander Root meets Artemis’s voice, coming from a box15. Explaining away supernatural phenomena by the means of science, concerned with the physical, becomes
6Human Magic, Fairy Technology ______________________________________________________________ inadequate. Instead of trying to fit supernatural into the natural, we ponder over the utility of the phenomena that appear to us in the virtual world. More often than not, the interaction depends on outsmarting the other party, and crime and violence are common rates of exchange. 4.
Conclusion If the quest for the supernatural in the cybernetic space is fraught with so much danger (not to mention morally dubious actions), is it worth pursuing? Fairies themselves wish to remain hidden safely in their Haven and avoid the hazards of contacting Mud People. Yet, both races are threatened by uncontrollable predators, trolls, and both seek to eliminate them. It appears that to rise above our animal instincts we must turn to supernatural and risk the unstable balance which it brings. One of many aims of young Artemis is to escape the time field, in which he is trapped together with his companions. Thanks to the observation of his mother Angelina he learns that the rigid rules of the fourth dimension do not apply to individuals sunken in their unconscious. To escape the death from a bio-bomb, he finds it necessary to remove himself from the realm of consciousness. This breaking from human constraints is in agreement with the transhumanist aim to escape mortality and testifies to the new kind of idealism tailored for the needs of modern times. Artemis Fowl, as it appears, is a book, inviting us to the virtual world, wholly dependent on imagination. This time it is not so much to provide us with an escape from harsh everyday reality, but a suggestion to create our own world, which we can tame and inhabit by the means of technology. To battle our trolls we must don medieval suits of armour, and the combination of magic and modern appliances gives us every chance of survival.
Notes
1 Lèvy, Pierre, Cyberculture. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2001, pp.:1-3. 2 Frazer, Sir James, The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion, January, 2003, < www.manybooks.com>, pp. 26, 37. 3 Czaplicka, M.A., Shamanism in Siberia: Aboriginal Siberia, A study in Social Anthropology. Forgotten Books, 2007, , viewed on 20 May 2010, p. 58. 4 Ortmann, Leonard W., Human nature and the creation of new values. Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science, July 2004, , viewed on 20 May 2010. 5 Waters, Brent, From human to posthuman: Christian theology and technology in a postmodern world. Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2006, p. 25. 6 Colfer, Eoin, Artemis Fowl. Puffin Books, London, 2002, p. 255.
7 ibid., p. 13. 8 Graham, Elaine L., Representations of the post/human: monsters, aliens and others in popular culture. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002, p. 168. 9 Herrick, James A., The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition. InterVarsity Press, Westmont, 2004, p. 272.
10 see, e.g., Colfer, Eoin, op.cit., p. 233. 11 ibid., p. 131. 12 ibid., p. 94. 13 ibid, p. 28. 14 Herrick, James A., op.cit., p. 275 15 Colfer, Eoin, op.cit., p. 108-109 Bibliography Colfer, Eoin. Artemis Fowl. Puffin Books, London, 2002. Czaplicka, M.A. Shamanism in Siberia: Aboriginal Siberia, A study in Social Anthropology. Forgotten Books, 2007, , viewed on 20 May 2010. Frazer, Sir James. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion, January, 2003, < www.manybooks.com>. Graham, Elaine L. Representations of the post/human: monsters, aliens and others in popular culture. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002. Herrick, James A. The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition. InterVarsity Press, Westmont, 2004 . Lèvy, Pierre. Cyberculture. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2001.
Ortmann, Leonard W. Human nature and the creation of new values. Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science, July 2004, , viewed on 20 May 2010 Waters, Brent. From human to posthuman: Christian theology and technology in a postmodern world. Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2006.
