Emily Temple at The Atlantic has some fun exploring “conspiracy theories” in literature, or the alternative or subtextual ideas we’ve had about some of our favorite tales. You know, things like “Holmes and Watson are a gay couple” or “Holden Caulfield is gay” or– actually, there’s a lot of “omg, homo!” stuff here. But this is my favorite, and one I hadn’t heard before:
Hogwarts was all in Harry Potter’s head.
I stumbled across this one over at Cracked, where Karl Smallwood lays out the theory. Namely that Harry was an abused child who coped by escaping into a fantasy world, and turning all his real-life injuries into magical ones (Harry is sent to the infirmary six times over the series). This also, Smallwood notes, helps shore up all the plot holes inherent in Rowling’s world—that’s just Harry’s abused but growing mind trying to fit it all together.
And here’s a link to that Cracked piece, which goes into more detail.
What’s your favorite or pet “conspiracy theory” about a book, movie, or TV show?
I was quite proud to have developed my own conspiracy theory — and it really is more of a conspiracy theory — about Hamlet (although I discovered later that I am not the first person to have thought of this): Did Ophelia really commit suicide? Or was she murdered? Was she murdered, perhaps even by Hamlet himself, because she was pregnant with Hamlet’s child? Someday I’m gonna write my parody script for Law and Order: Elsinore with DCI Rosencrantz and DI Guildenstern and explore this some more…
Your turn. Have fun!
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
That most of Rango is the dying hallucination of the protagonist. It would render the whole film utterly pointless…
I like Michael Schiffer’s sketch about Hamlet. Scooby-Doo shows up and finds the real killer. It’s been posted all over the Internet, but one version is here:
http://www.cord.edu/faculty/sprunger/e315/hamlet.html
I also like Peter David’s theory that Andy Kaufman faked his death and was responsible for all the Elvis sightings back in the 1990s.
“Someday I’m gonna write my parody script for Law and Order: Elsinore with DCI Rosencrantz and DI Guildenstern and explore this some more…”
OMG. I think you just broke my brain.
In a good way, I hope. :->
If that L&O:Elsinor script gets shot, promise me that Roth and Oldman will be in it.
My pet theory is that Shakespeare wrote all of Kit Marlowe’s work, and actually created him as the alter ego responsible for Will’s occasional binge drinking.
So, did Will sober up after 1593 then? ;-)
He “got religion” as a result of the Black Death. That was the year the theaters were shut to stop the spread. Of course there was backsliding…falling off the wagon…but he had already killed off Marlowe and now just had to “own” those later episodes.
:-D
I was thinking more David Tennant and John Simm…
:(
I think the Harry Potter theory is fascinating. I wonder if Rowling was trying to give us a big clue at the end of it all:
As for my own favorite theories, hmm. The only thing I can think of right now is that while I was watching Jane Campion’s The Piano I thought it was clearly, clearly really a film about Lacanian psychoanalysis. (I’m mostly fuzzy on the concepts now, but it was being covered in one of my college courses at the time.) It was the first time I’d consciously used a structured theory to interpret a film, but it felt like more than that: I remember thinking the pieces fit so perfectly that Campion had to be doing this intentionally, that Lacan’s symbolism was really the secret point of the film. (Others have noticed this as well, I see.)
Oh, here’s another one: I think it’s clever that the movie Beowulf suggests that Beowulf is an unreliable narrator, and that the poem “Beowulf” is P.R. mythmaking to cover up what actually happened.
I got one I came up with myself: in Fight Club, Ed Norton’s boss is also his dad. Think about it.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE KLINGONS
The swarthy sneering totalitarians from the original series are the TRUE Klingons. Like the Federation, the Klingon Empire consisted of many planets and races, except in the Klingon case the non-Klingon peoples were subjugated slaves, more or less favored, rather than
voluntary allies.
Among the slave races was a humanoid race with prominent forehead ridges, strong and agile. On their own, they had developed only to Iron-Age technology, and their cultures were overwhelmingly honor-bound, warrior centric, and contemptuous of reflection and dispassionate reason. The Klingons quickly enlisted thousands of these warriors into their service as bodyguards and shock troops, valuing highly their loyalty and warrior ethic, while despising their primitive technology and their naive obsession with honor. The Klingons assumed that these barbarians were both stupid and easily manipulated.
But the barbarians were neither – and were disgusted with their masters’ treacherous politics, while quite rightly fearing that if their masters suspected their warrior slaves of independent thought, it would likely mean genocide. So after decades of service to the Empire, all the while rising higher and higher in positions of trust, the barbarians, in secret communication throughout the Empire, suddently arose and, thanks to their ubiquitous status as bodyguards, quickly conquered and liquidated the Klingons.
But it is one thing to overthrow an Empire – another thing entirely to run it. The barbarians quickly realized that the Empire would fracture and fall prey to internecine war or outside invasion unless the forms were maintained. They therefore resolved to maintain the fiction of Klingon cultural continuity – a subterfuge made easier because the deposed masters had often not even bothered to directly control their slave planets but instead had made their tyranny chiefly through their bone-ridged brute squad. So the Klingon Empire maintained its existence, even though the true Klingons had been eliminated.
Besides answering the famous Deep Space 9 question of “what happened to the Klingon appearance”, I think my theory elegantly explains how Next Generation- era “Klingons” can have and maintain a stellar empire despite having a samurai-style culture that pretty obviously could never have developed the steam engine, let alone warp drive…
Nicely creative!!! A bit grander in scale than the genetic engineering gone awry solution that was presented in Enterprise Divergance and Affliction episodes. Although Worf’s reaction in the DS9 episode might be a bit more consistent with the genetic engineering plot.
Although certainly not unique in my thoughts, the possibility that Vger from Star Trek The Motion Picture was created and sent by the Borg is a nice theory that has never really been mentioned or explored in subsequent stories….probably because it’s too painful to think about Star Trek the Motion Picture.
Because I haven’t seen them for so long, I watched the first four Star Trek movies on Netflix the other day. How long had it been? Long enough that I’d never realized the theme music for Star Trek: TMP was reused for Star Trek:TNG.
Yikes. That interpretation makes Harry Potter as bleak as Pan’s Labyrinth. Not sure I want to go there.
My own personal favorite theory is the interpretation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an allegory for William Jennings Bryan and the populist Free Silver movement of the 1890s. It’s summarized on Wikipedia here.
The Harry Potter theory is interesting to ponder but doesn’t actually hold up. While the majority of scenes in the series occur in Harry’s P.O.V., there are a few that he is not there for, including the opening of “Half-Blood Prince,” in which the Prime Minister is warned about Voldemort’s return by Cornelius Fudge and the new Minister for Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour, and the chapter in that same book in which Snape makes the Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa Malfoy. Extending to the movies, they have even more scenes Harry isn’t there for, such as when Hermione casts the “Obliviate” spell on her parents.
I’ve never liked those “the entire plot was made up by the main character all along” type theories. It just takes the fun out of everything and, like you said, seldom actually makes sense(since most of them fail to account for, like you said, scenes that take place when the protagonist is not present.). Plus, it’s often coupled with some kind of dark trauma that led them to supposedly make up the world the story takes place in to begin with. Not everything has to be dark to be complex and interesting. It’s like that Rugrats Theory, which the creators have confirmed never happened. Fortunately. Or like the theory in the MLP:FIM fandom that all of the Mane Six(or characters in general) have some sort of mental disorder/dark and troubled past/are secretly psychopathic. Unfortunately, I have yet to witness any confirmation on whether or not those are true either.
Here’s the thing: I like “dark theories” if they’re good and plausible in-universe. But when it’s just “let’s make this fun innocent childlike show(I’m talking about shows in general when I say this, by the way) dark and scary because it can’t be interesting if someone’s not getting abused/neglected/raped/killed!”…I just groan and roll my eyes. Why can’t people just chillax and let a lighthearted, fun show be just that–lighthearted and fun?! It doesn’t mean it can’t still have conflict, but not everything has to be grimdark, especially not just for the sake of being grimdark. There needs to be rhyme and reason to it.
And yeah, “x never happened” theories are boring and lazy, more often than not. Usually they just make things bleak for the sake of it.
Anyway, I might not be that big on theories, but I’d have to say that my favorite theory is The Pixar Theory, or that all Pixar films take place within the same universe(which has actually been confirmed by Disney itself! I also like the Titanic theory that Jack was a time traveler(I’m boring okay???). There’s also the Haruhi Suzumiya theory that Kyon is God, not Haruhi(to be honest, while it’s an interesting theory, I can’t say I agree with it, since there’s no reason for the other characters to make sure that Haruhi is oblivious to the workings around her or for Itsuki, Yuki, and Mikuru to observe her if she’s not really God. Also, I kind of like the idea of the supreme ruler of the universe being a girl, but that’s just me.). And then there’s the theory that Rapunzel is the cousin of Elsa and Anna, due to her magical powers, blonde hair(which presumably comes from her magical powers, like Elsa’s), and showing up with Eugene to Elsa’s coronation. You can see them in “First Time in Forever”. I’m also fond of the one where Jane from Tarzan is a descendant of Belle from Beauty and the Beast(I also heard one in which Tarzan and Elsa and Anna are related, and another in which the ship Elsa and Anna’s parents sunk on is the same one found in The Little Mermaid, but I highly doubt those. The latter mainly because we didn’t see any adult human-sized skeletons in that ship. Just kidding!).
So yeah, those are the theories I like. ;)
I’ve foolishly tried to speculate what happened between Red Dwarf VIII and Back to Earth. What happened to the resurrected RD crew? Why is Rimmer a hologram again (and a hard light one, to boot).
I think what happened was that there was a glitch in the nano’s resurrecting process for organic material and eventually anything organic that was resurrected collapsed into a nasty puddle of chemicals including the original RD crew and the human-Rimmer. But, everything mechanical remains including the upgraded version of the Red Dwarf ship. But, senile-Holly, once again in control of the ship brought back Rimmer as a hologram. And as the ship was reconstituted from its original blue prints before the JMC cut-backs; the ship had the ability to create hard light holograms so Holly could bring Rimmer back in hard-light form (we’re assuming Legion gave the hard light technology to human civilization, including the Jupiter Mining Corporation, back in Lister’s time–it just wasn’t well known, and the original, cheaper version of Red Dwarf originally could project only soft light.)
So, the hard light hologram Rimmer in Back to Earth and season X is composited from the Rimmer of season 8. The Rimmer of seasons 1-7, perhaps, is still being heroic and getting into adventures as Ace. So, there are still in fact two Rimmers.
See? Easy peasey.
As for how they got themselves out of the jam at the end VIII: just watch the alternate ending on the DVD or *cough*YouTube*cough*.
Oh, waitaminit.
Rimmer in the last broadcast episode of RD X, says that he remembered the nuclear accident that wiped him and the crew out. It couldn’t be the Rimmer of Red Dwarf VIII. Unless…Ace Rimmer (the Rimmer of seasons 1-7) swooped in at the last minute, moments after the events of “Only the Good…” and found some heroic way to save the day but damages his light bee in the process (perhaps he comes aboard through that dimension transmitter-jobby that got human-Rimmer to the mirror universe). Holo-Rimmer and human-Rimmer work fiercely to destroy the microorganism destroying the ship, but both end up “dead”. With the human-Rimmer dead, senile-Holly resurrects a new hard light hologram of Rimmer that has the memories of the two different Rimmers integrated. So, either way, its Rimmer.So…that’s how he can remember both the events from “The End” and “Only the Good…” Yeah, that’s the ticket.(I’ll go wipe the rabid foam from my mouth)
Not really a conspiracy theory or anything, just my take on the Harry Potter books. What if Voldemort wasn’t actually sure that Harry was the one the prophecy was referring to? What if he was going to go after both Harry and Neville, and just happened to go after Harry first? So Voldemort told Snape he thought it was Harry. So what? Maybe Voldemort didn’t tell Snape all his thoughts. Or maybe Voldemort DID say both Harry and Neville, but Snape only heard Harry and stopped listening, panicking about Lily?
I have a few weird(er) ones.
– in Waiting for Godot, everyone in the cast has short-term memory lose.
– I doubt anyone has seen the show, but Miss Frizzle from The Magic School bus is the Doctor. In disguise. Or something. She has a bigger-on-the-inside, time/space traveling bus that never takes her where she wants to go. Both are living vechicles. Even the two protagonists have a similar personality and wear a ridiculous amount of question marks. If you look up “miss frizzle” on google, one of the first suggestions is “miss frizzle time lord”
-Oh… And there is the whole Sherlock reichenbach thing… Everyone has a conspiracy theory about that.
Speaking of Ms. Frizzle, has anyone seen her and “Weird Al” Yankovic in the same place at the same time?
ok, this is a classic.
there is no actual person named james bond. ‘james bond’ and ”007′ are code names for whoever happens to be mi6’s leading field agent. when that field agent retires or ‘disappears’, another agent simply takes up the ‘james bond’ persona. similarly ‘m’ and ‘q’ refer more to positions within mi6 rather than specific persons.
fans have been hashing out this theory for years.
That Matt Smith’s first season of Doctor Who was, in fact, just a massive fever dream in his head due to a faulty regeneration. Hence all the “cracks” in that reality.
Now where did I read that one… ;-)
My personal pet theory is that in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the movie only not the book, Willie Wonka is Satan. Think about it the kids sign their souls away at the beginning and are punished for their sins. Being the Prince of Lies he never answers a question, the Oompa Lumpas are demons and if that boat trip isn’t the river Dis I don’t know what it is.
Man I hate that “it was all in Harry’s head” theory. It’s like the opposite of fun. I have the same reaction to the people who think every song is about drugs. In fact I generally have a distaste for “it’s all in their head” theories because they’re so obvious, but I do have a soft spot for the one about how Ferris Bueller was a figment of Cameron’s imagination.
Personally I like that theory where every James Bond actor is a different person and James Bond is actually a code name.
I’ve always had a fondness for the variant reading of “Minority Report,” that everything that happens to Tom Cruise after he gets arrested are just his own mind’s fantasizing about escape, which doesn’t actually happen.
I’ll start one:
The Big Lebowski foretold the date of the World Trade Centre attacks.
During the film when the Dude is talking about the Gulf War (and stealing milk) he writes a cheque dated September the 11th.
I heard a good Inception one last week – Dom Cobb’s spinning top was not his Totem, his wedding ring is. After watching again, that was actually quite interesting ….
I actually love Rosencratz & Guildenstein. It feels like a conspiracy theory as to what Hamlet actually did, but at the same time feels like really good fanfic (that occasionally breaks the fourth wall). It’s just a delight to watch, and puts “Hamlet” in a whole new perspective.