CLAL on Culture Archive
Welcome to CLAL on Culture where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on contemporary culture: high and low, material and ethereal, trendy and retro, Jewish and otherwise. Every other week you will find something new on this page.
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Harry Potter and the American Philosopher’s Stone
By Tsvi Blanchard
I
went to see the new blockbuster movie Harry Potter because
of my kids. They had read, or had been read, the first two of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and wanted to see the movie.
“Why not take them?” I thought. After
all, the movie is kid friendly and fairly PC on gender, race and class. As for seeming to
succumb to the marketing hype that surrounds the movie, I could handle it -- in the world
of contemporary popular culture that comes with the territory. So I endured the long
lines, watched the movie, and became part of the
Harry Potter phenomena.
I’ll
admit that I was surprised to find that adults without children far outnumbered those who
were there with their kids. And their obvious excitement as they watched the movie made
clear that they were thoroughly enjoying it. The sheer size of ticket sales across the
country should have tipped me off—Harry Potter
is not just a movie for kids, it’s an important part of contemporary American
culture.
What
is it about contemporary American popular culture that makes Harry Potter fit in so well? First, Harry Potter affirms what America has always most
believed in. It affirms our story, our values and our truths. Americans have always loved the
innocent hero who faces a dangerous challenge with integrity and overcomes it. This is the
American story. It is the story that starts with the pilgrims and runs right up to the
present war against terrorism. And, as always, it has a happy ending.
Despite
its foreign (U.K.) origins, Harry Potter once
again gives us our story. Like the book, it is
essentially a fairy tale. Harry is a boy Cinderella, misunderstood and mistreated by the
relatives who raise him after the death of his parents. Of course, he is really a special
child who, on the threshold of adulthood, discovers who he really is.
Being
a contemporary hero, Harry comes equipped with a smart and funny girl as his sidekick, but
he is nonetheless a true innocent. He is completely without any of the sexual interests
usually found in the protagonists of adolescent coming-of- age movies. Although
self-effacing and humble, Harry still follows the fairy tale mythic pattern of becoming an
adult by confronting dangerous, malevolent powers and triumphing over them.
The
movie also affirms a very important cliché about being human. Harry Potter seems to say:
to truly grow up, you need all the classic virtues of a good leader—charisma,
courage, perseverance, generosity of spirit and genuine concern for others. If you dare to
do what you know you must do--in order to become
who you really are and to enjoy close, caring
relationships with others--you will discover the genuine intensity and excitement of life
truly lived. Admittedly, this is only half of the truth. But those of us who know this
should remember that a half-truth is still half true.
There
is a second feature of Harry Potter that helps
us understand the movie’s appeal at this particular cultural moment, a feature that
it shares with The Sixth Sense, The Others, The
Matrix, City of Angels. Like these movies,
and the hit television show “Touched by
an Angel,” it imaginatively constructs a split-level reality that, on one plane, is
the prosaic world with which we are all familiar and, on another plane, includes another
dimension of existence that, although hidden from
most people, is nonetheless accessible to
special others. For Harry, this alternative reality lies just behind the wall of an
otherwise ordinary train station. In The Matrix,
the hidden world lies just below the surface of this world, and we will see it if we only
dare unplug ourselves from the web of illusions and open our eyes to what is really there.
In The Sixth Sense, the dead who are still with
us populate the hidden world and in “Touched by an Angel,” angels do. The drama
of such stories, fairy tales or myths takes place at the point of intersection between our
ordinary world and the hidden-but-accessible alternative world.
The
appeal of stories that are situated at the intersection between worlds, of stories that in
effect invite us to locate ourselves at that nexus, if only imaginatively, is evident. At
these liminal points of intersection between the worlds, our ordinary experience is
invested with greater psychic energy. There is a sense of expansive possibilities for good
or for ill. Life somehow seems larger than life. Our daily reality suddenly becomes more real. We feel more fully alive. The limits of
our sometimes too dull and conventional ordinary life are transcended.
Contemporary
American culture’s search for intense and transformative experience is not limited to
popular entertainment. The appeal of drugs and extreme sports is surely related. So, too,
is the increasingly widespread interest in experientially oriented forms of spirituality
-- from Evangelical Christianity to Kabbalah and Buddhist meditation – which offer
access to, and invite us to live our lives within, alternative worlds (and perspectives)
that are not merely different, but profoundly different from the everyday world in which
we live.
In Harry Potter, however, the alternative world, while
very much more exciting than our everyday world, is not so very different when it comes to
what really matters. While its physics are quite unlike those that govern our world, its
ethical norms are just the same. If there is a transformative message here, it is on
behalf of the power of the imagination as a means of inspiriting our rather humdrum lives
with the relish and flair that J.K. Rowling’s imagination brought to the world of Harry Potter.
I
doubt that the Harry Potter movie will
transform the life of anyone who sees it. If you are looking to be filled with the power
or passion that comes with living your life at the intersection between worlds, two hours
spent with Harry Potter are unlikely even to
point you in the right direction. But for all its limitations as a movie, Harry Potter does offer and affirm a distinctly
American conception of the moral virtues that render a "life truly lived." Even
more, it affirms that a life lived in accordance with these values might also be exciting.
Perhaps not as exciting as Harry’s life, but exciting nonetheless.
To view other articles by Tsvi Blanchard, click here.
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