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I’m not wild about Harry, so folks get riled about me.
It isn’t difficult to get oneself labeled a fanatic
these days. Having just endured an election chock-full of the nasty
little love letters that pass for campaign ads, it’d be easy to
believe that half the people on the continent are extremists and the
other half zealots. All it takes is having an opinion, which is sin
enough in some circles.
If this sounds a little defensive it’s because I’ve
written of Harry Potter before.
One can write on gun control, capital punishment, or abortion and
barely raise a ripple; lay a finger on Harry Potter and your email
inbox screams “tilt” for a week.
With the November 15 release of “Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets,” the boy wizard is back in the news. The film
is out just in time for Christmas, likely no coincidence given the
half billion dollars in toy sales that accompanied the first Potter
movie.
I’m the last guy to fault clever timing and good
marketing, but there is something cynical about using a holiday that
is still nominally a celebration of the birth of Jesus to pedal
witchcraft paraphernalia. If you haven’t muttered “Oh, one of
those” and flipped to the comics, consider both the tone of this
movie and its mostly preteen audience.
Time magazine reports
that “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” parallels the
increasingly “sinister and intense” nature of J.K. Rowling’s books.
A cat is hung in the hallway of Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry, children are frozen by a monster, and Harry is attacked
with “surprising violence” by something called a Whomping Willow,
which sounds like a refugee from a Willie Wonka flick but is
considerably less charming. The movie’s director cautions parents
of younger children – who will undoubtedly fill most of the seats in
the theaters anyway – to “make sure they know what they’re getting
into.”
Warner Brothers feared the new film would be slapped
with a PG 13 rating, box office death considering that Harry’s
biggest fans would have been theoretically unable to get past the
popcorn stand. The movie eventually ended up rated PG, though
probably not by much.
Rowling has
penned four Potter books and a fifth is overdue. She promises to
cap the series at seven and intimates it will continue to darken.
That will make the PG rating tougher to get, but as the saying goes,
where there’s a will and a boatload of cash, there’s a way.
Book four
contains mild sexual innuendo and blackening magic; by the time
Rowling conjures up her last book I suspect the lovable, naïve Harry
of the first offering will be unrecognizable. Rowling has made
Harry Potter the Britney Spears of sorcery, beguiling us with cute
and cuddly then morphing him into something very different. If book
seven, or even four, had been the first, it’s moral tone and
sanitization of witchcraft would have not been so roundly
pooh-poohed. Now we’re hooked.
In some ways the sweet Harry was more dangerous. In a
nation in which citizens overwhelmingly describe themselves as
Christian, young Harry made witchcraft seem mainstream, and worse,
harmless. Adoration of the series has reached the point that
criticism of the Potter phenomenon has become a litmus test for
religious fanaticism.
The purpose of most “extremist” claims is to cut off
discussion, to marginalize the views of others so as to not have to
support one’s own. The word is so overused that I suspect it will
soon become as meaningless as “New and Improved!” on a box of
laundry soap, but for now the tactic still works if one lets it.
Don’t. Beliefs have consequences. That can make them
darned inconvenient, but in the end they are all we have. |
