Harry Potter and the Dark Side

The American Thinker ^ | 7 18 05 | Elizabeth Bennett

[Kitten Festival]

J.K. Rowling is history’s richest-ever author, enjoying an incomparable global readership. With eager consumers lined up at midnight to buy her book on the date of release, she stands as the literary phenomenon of our times.

Rowling resembles no one in popularity so much as Charles Dickens, who inspired excited crowds in America to meet the packet ships from England, calling out for the next installment of the story of Little Nell.

She also rivals Dickens in her ability to create some of the most delightful names in literature. Uriah Heep, meet Severus Snape.

Few authors today write books for adolescent boys, who readily fall away from reading and are lured to the video tube. Daring to write long and complicated plots, Rowling doesn’t underestimate her readers. Her books contain delightful inventions on almost every page: from mail delivery owls to the winged boars (flying pigs) that grace the Hogwarts school gates.

But huge success makes for a big target. Rowling does not lack for critics.

Some are bothered by her abundant use of adverbs, or worry about exposing very young children to the violence in the books’ good vs. evil plot lines. Occasional gross-out humor and love of annoying practical jokes dismay some adults, but meet the literary tastes of the adolescent boy.

By far the most serious criticism of the Harry Potter series comes from those Christians and Jews who believe any mention of magic in literature is completely and automatically off-limits based simply on the Biblical prohibitions against witchcraft.

I respect such critics, but I disagree with them. A few of them go overboard, muttering darkly about bargains with supernatural forces. But many are sincere and intelligent.

There is a basic difference between reading a Harry Potter book and invoking the dark forces. Casting actual spells is one thing. Reading about them while engrossed in a struggle between good and evil on the magical plane of childrens’ literature is quite another.

Magic has become a literary convention of imaginative literature, positing forces fo

[Porterville]

Harry Potter is crap- give me Grand Theft Auto!!! Now that is some dark stuff.

[Junior]

Your screen name gives you away. You're HIM, aren't you? Shall I go insane now?

[pa mom]

Too much sexual innuendo for my kids. I read reviews at the Catholic Bishops website and the Kids in Mind reviews. I admit I have not seen it, but I don't like the things I read there.

[It's me]

And, Aslan represents...


GOOD.

[kevkrom]

And, Aslan represents... GOOD.

Well, duh. My point was that a "good" character (Lucy) had to be stopped by an outside agency from doing what she knew to be a wrong, selfish, and evil act.

[Chief_Joe]

You're right. There's no such thing as universal concerns or interests, or the general "human condition." Only an author of the same ethnic group, gender, race, religion, economic class, or handicap-status as the subject can write insightful fiction.

Oh my, you're so clever it seems you've missed the point entirely. It's okay for a given writer to write about any subject as long as he/she maintains integrity, even when writing fiction. Take a look at good fiction, Steinbeck for example, and you will find the authors are masterful at telling the story of their characters from a perceptive (outward) rather than from projection (inward) view. It's okay to describe a character of a different race or gender from a perceptive viewpoint when outside the group, but it's dishonest to write as though you're that race or gender and this is how I actually think. Can you discern the difference? Why do you suppose the author of the Potter books needs a  male character as a vehicle to promote witchcraft?

[pa mom]

Actually, the subsequent books are full of magic, potions, mystical creatures. I loved them as a kid and have read them to my kids.

[pa mom]

Well reasoned. Potter books are not universally bad for kids, but in the wrong hands, heck, manure can be deadly!

[pa mom]

Nancy Drew was written by a man and she taught me all there is to know about life.

[kellynch]

Sexual innuendo? I've read every single book at least twice (except the new one -- I've only read it once so far) and there's no sexual innuendo at all.

It's possible that I'm too jaded to see it, but I'd love to know what those reviewers considered "sexual innuendo."

[Physicist]

I'd love to know what those reviewers considered "sexual innuendo."

Its setting in a British boarding school isn't enough?

[kellynch]

Its setting in a British boarding school isn't enough?

Now THAT'S funny!

[It's me]

Well, of course! Isn't that obvious?

[pa mom]

I meant in the movies, not the books. Here's a bit from the Kids in Mind movie reviews: "A woman begins to take off her clothes in a large crowd of people, she turns invisible, we see her bra and panties, and then she becomes visible (men ogle her and she tries to cover herself up). A man walks into a bathroom where a woman is stepping out of the shower and she quickly covers herself with a towel (bare shoulders are visible). Several women wear low-cut, short tops and short skirts that reveal cleavage, bare abdomens and bare legs, a woman wears a low-cut, short negligee that reveals cleavage and bare legs, and a woman wears low-cut tops that reveal cleavage in many scenes. ► A man in flames snowboards over a cliff, crashes into a snowdrift, we see him in a pool of water with no clothes (we see his bare chest) and he asks a woman to join him. ► A nurse says, "you're hot" to a man while taking his temperature and the man says, "thank you, so are you." A man asks another man, "where's your hot sister?" A woman asks "...he can expand 'any' part of his anatomy?" A man says of another man "I think he's a bit limp." ► A visually impaired woman touches a genetically altered man to "see" him -- the man closes his eyes and moans. ► Two men propose to a woman. Two men talk about a romantic relationship between one man's sister and another man."

[jwfiv]

Hary Potter ping.

[kellynch]

That's not from Harry Potter. I've seen all 3 movies, and don't remember that at all.

[LuLuLuLu]

I try to stay away from controversies here, but your post is one of the most uninformed I've ever seen.

The Harry Potter books are NOT based in reality. You may be different than me and the people I know, but who wouldn't want a wand to clean up all the Thanksgiving dishes? Who wouldn't want a wand to peel the potatoes?

The books are something called FICTION, as in not real. Others have posted comparisons to LOTR and C.S. Lewis. Why don't we pick on Mark Twain, too? It was obviously fiction at the time that Tom would stand up for Jim.

I'm all for family values and feel that I help in the fight against the left. But really. Like Freud said, sometimes a cigar is JUST a cigar.

[miliantnutcase]

I know where your coming from. I'm an animator who just is coming from a school that's wall to wall liberals and I would guess Lucas Film and ILM (my dream job) would be no different. Yet, conservatives like us continue to deal with it and move on.

[kevkrom]

Sexual innuendo? I've read every single book at least twice (except the new one -- I've only read it once so far) and there's no sexual innuendo at all.

OTOH, if you consider "wand" to be a double-entendre, the books become far more funny (from a purely juvenile sense) to read.

[pa mom]

Sorry, that was in Fantastic Four. I had posted that I preferred HP movies to that kind of stuff. Someone had asked what I didn't like about the FF movie and somehow we got our lines crossed!

LOL! We really don't want to see Dumbledore and McGonigal nude, now do we?