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The Amazing, Incredible Harry
Potter Phenomena
by Boudica
I grew up a child in the 50's and
60's. It was the time of the cold war, "commies"
hiding under ever rock, Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of
nuclear war. "Duck and cover" was practiced in school
while the local Air Force Base flew fighter planes over Brooklyn,
breaking the sound barrier. The sonic booms could be heard as
we practiced our abc's and 123's.
Yes, I grew up in a paranoid
society, afraid that tomorrow someone, probably the
"commies", could "drop the big one" and we would
all end up embroiled in WWIII, with the whole thing ending in a big
mushroom cloud.
But come the weekend, we would all
escape to the movies. Everyone has their preference.
Romance was popular, but I was hooked on a particular flavor of movie
- The Science Fiction B Film. Yes, I would run out to see the
latest cheap black and white "monster" film. And they
were monsters - The
Blob, Cape
Canaveral Monster,
The Amazing
Colossal Man.
Radiation Theater. Giant Ants. Giant Tomatoes. I
could go on and on. All threatening our safety as a nation and
a planet, and all met with the same solution - shoot first, ask
questions later. And we triumphed over all kinds of
threats. This was the answer to our paranoia. While we
tackled the "commies" in real life, and never seemed to
make headway, we always were victorious over the monsters in the
Science Fiction B Films. America walked away the champions each
and every time.
Once the Berlin Wall fell, and we
realized we had overcome the enemy, not with guns and tanks and
armies, but with capitalism. Actually, we never did defeat the
"commies" - they kinda defeated themselves. And our
view of the world started to change. Enter Close
Encounters of the Third Kind.
The spaceman was no longer a threat. He actually was holding
his hand out in friendship. And we were returning the
handshake. But the real change came in one movie, ET.
We met the enemy, and he was cute, hung out with our kids and
changed our entire outlook. He was the change in our
perspective on the entire world. We were no longer shooting the
monster, we were greeting the "Aliens". They were not
the threat we had envisioned. Well, to a few leftover paranoid
refugees from the 50's and 60's, yes, he still was. But to our
generation, the monsters were gone. All that was left was a new
idea, to embrace those things we feared only to find out we had
created the monsters, the real aliens were a vast unknown to be explored.
As my tastes changed, my love for
movies remained much the same. Enter Hammer House Studios and
their beloved "monster" films. Most of them started
Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as the vampire and the vampire
hunter. But there were these movies with witches and witch
hunters. Oh, Hammer Studios knew how to scare a fledgling
witch. Burn them at the stake, run around with a cross and
drive wooden dowels through the vampire's heart. We had
something new to be afraid of. Threats against our immortal
soul. I got into these kinds of films about the same time I was
discovering alternative religions. Interesting how again, we
strike out against what we do not know, rather than looking at what
it may be and examining it further. For all we knew, we were
looking at ET
again, only this time he was an Elemental, and we just drove a stake
through his heart.
But, being the kind of person I
am, I have a sense of humor, and I rather enjoyed some of the
attempts at portraying witches. The
Witches of Eastwick,
which I found hilarious, and Jack Nicolson as the devil was a
scream. Also - Hocus
Pocus, an all
time classic witch film. But my favorite has to be one of the
earliest movies with witches. Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart in Bell,
Book and Candle.
While the witch changes at the end of the move, and I was sorry to
see that, it was the closest portrayal of what real witches might be
of the time. Normal people, for the most part, if you realize
that beatniks were popular at the time and the movie portrayed the
times. I loved her brother portrayed by Jack Lemmon.
Witch movies have come to a
crossroad. We are now presented with something that the
Religious Right has every reason to fear. While Practical
Magic was not
all that accurate a portrayal, it was very close to the American
Witch. We are pretty, we are real people, we are quirky, and we
practice magic. Not too much emphasis on the Goddess, but
enough to make us almost likable. Blair
Witch was a
terrible spook story, the first one at least. And there was no
witch in that one. The second movie, however, had a Wiccan
Witch. I wonder how many people saw that one, much less
understood it. If you did, write me and let me know. Then
there is Drawing
Down the Moon.
Realistic - well, sorta kinda, but not out in the public
enough. Just never caught on.
Now - Harry
Potter.
The books have brought kids who normally would not read into the book
generation with a delightful fantasy series that entertains, delights
and gives kids a chance to use their imagination. Who doesn't
have a very definite picture of what a Quidditch game is all
about? What do Harry and his friends look like to you?
And who is not in love with this series of books the likes of which
we haven't seen since the Hardy
Boys or Nancy
Drew?
The movie is out, and we all have
the opportunity to see how close Hollywood has come to making our
fantasy heroes come alive against the images we have fixed in our
minds. We have all run out to see the movie or our kids have
dragged us to see it. And we all love it. Not just our
witchy types, but everyone. Harry Potter is a household
word. Our grandkids and kids are reading, yes reading, and
enjoying it. The TV was turned off while they ran to their
rooms to read the next chapter, or we got them to bed and they sat
with attentive eyes and ears as we have read these books to them.
But wait. Something is going
on in the background. The paranoid Religious Right is getting
very nervous. Seems they are afraid of what is going on.
People are changing, and the Religious Right is up in arms. The
one thing the Religious Right detests is change, especially when it
comes to words like "witch". The enemy they have been
beating back for centuries is at the door. In true ET
manner, people are looking, questioning and coming to realize that,
even though Harry Potter is pure fantasy and has nothing to do with
real witches, he is a likable person. Our kids love him and the
parents like that their kids are happy with a book that they are
actually - GASP
-
reading. And maybe, just maybe, the stigma associated with the
word "witch" is being examined, and possibly even
- GASP
- overlooked. People are not firing their guns and
shooting first. They are, instead, offering their hand in
friendship to Harry Potter, welcoming him into their homes for - GASP
- their children to be introduced to. After all, as parents,
whatever gets them to read.
But, there is something deeper
here. Something that everyone is overlooking. Harry
Potter is fiction. It is fantasy. It is magic.
After years of paranoia, after centuries of denying that magic
exists, we are finding that Harry Potter is a spell we can all live
with. It is something that we want in our lives. We loved
those stories when we were kids where the Fairy Godmother granted Cinderella
her wish and she went to the Ball and found her prince. The
magic of Beauty
and the Beast
- look how successful that play has been.
Practical Magic
has been extremely popular. It's the magic.
People want some kind of magic in
their mundane (muggle) lives. We can not live on "fire and
brimstone" anymore. The world is not a dark, dank place
with some guy yelling at us telling us we are going to burn for
eternity. We need positive affirmations in our lives. We
need to know that there is more than be good and you will go to
heaven, muck up and you will be damned. We want to see we can
exist on earth and enjoy our time here. And we need to see that
we can make this a better place for everyone, if only we have a touch
of magic to help us through. Life is for living and enjoying,
within the boundaries of common sense. We can have a good time,
enjoy ourselves, and still find spiritual happiness, without being
threatened or paranoid about who we are or what we do. And God
(or Goddess) is a kind and loving God (or Goddess). After all,
He gave someone the idea to write Harry Potter to entertain and
delight both the reader and the audience.
We are going to experience those
people who find anything that is enjoyable must be bad for you.
They have every right to fear. Their world is changing.
We are going to start enjoying ourselves, having a good time, and not
worrying about how we feel about it. Feeling good is good.
Enjoying a movie is good. Getting our kids to enjoy reading is
good. And none of that is going to threaten our immortal
souls. Maybe even Harry Potter, the witch, is a good thing, and
it is not going to cost our immortal souls to say so.
Is Harry Potter the ET
of the witch movies? I could only hope so. I am tired of
everyone fearing what they don't understand. Is this going to
change everyone overnight? No, I don't think so. But
Harry Potter has opened the box of change. He has come out of
the broom closet and shown the world that fantasy is nothing to be
afraid of. And maybe, just maybe, he will show that being a
witch is nothing to be afraid of either. We are just a little
bit different. We believe in that magic that everyone is
looking for. And maybe, just maybe, we will be able to spread
that magic around and everyone will find it in their hearts, where it
has been all along. |
