Harry Potter
Kiss Harry Potter goodbye
The handful of days left before the movie comes out are our last chance to remember J.K. Rowling's young wizard as we imagined him.
My grade-school son committed a major gaffe the other night — holding a dinner guest captive with a blow-by-blow plot synopsis of his favorite book. But because the matter at hand was urgent, I let him ramble on: Our adult visitor was wondering if she should read “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” before the movie comes out.
In a few days, she won’t have that choice to make anymore. The movie opens wide, as they say in the industry, on Nov. 16. It will likely be greeted by many moviegoers as a welcome respite from these past weeks of sorrow and fear. But even as we herd to the theater for a much-needed escape from reality, let’s pause for a moment and pay our respects to what Harry Potter was before it was a movie.
Just as much of the 1990s and 2000 now seem from our new perspective to be some sort of fever dream, it’s hard to imagine that a few short months ago Harry Potter was nothing but a series of books. A staggeringly successful series, but still just books. Not DVDs, not shockwaves, not JPEGs; nonprogrammable, undownloadable, noninteractive.
Now we are on the edge of something different. Warner Brothers’ huge marketing juggernaut has been cranking merchandise into the marketplace for more than a year, so you can already “get” Harry via coffee mug, sweatshirt, lightning-bolt scar stickers or mantelpiece figurine rather than getting him by reading. Thankfully, the stuff is in most cases so ugly that it helps even the youngest readers separate the wonderfully illustrated books from the movie hype.
But once the movie hits, there’ll be no going back. Reading a book is an intensely private interaction between reader and writer, and even a chart-topping book like each of the Harry Potter installments has had to win over its converts one reader at a time. But going to the movies, especially a costly, much-anticipated would-be blockbuster, is about as public an act as you can commit. And so, even before the movie’s release, our personal, intimate imaginings of quidditch, potions and chocolate frogs have been diluted by Harry on the Coke can, Hagrid in FAO Schwartz and wizards by the dozens on our Halloween doorsteps.
Film is simply too visual a medium not to worm its way into our consciousness. That the all-British cast seems reassuringly superb only exacerbates the problem. Once Dame Maggie Smith latches onto a role, who among us is strong enough to retain our own anemic vision of what Professor Minerva McGonagall is really like?
In a world as changed as ours is after Sept. 11, does any of this really matter, copies sold or box-office records broken? It might. Living in a culture that has in the past decade seemed bent on dividing the populace into ever smaller niche markets, we could do worse than to start looking at what unites us, even if it’s just our shared amusements.
J.K. Rowling’s books have connected hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, and in the process reminded at least some of them of the simple power of the paper-and-ink medium. As Americans start stockpiling bottled water and canned goods against the next unnamed catastrophe, it might be a comfort to remember that a book still works when the power is out; read aloud at bedtime, it can reassure an anxious child that all is well with the world even when that’s not wholly the case; taken up at 3 a.m., it can distract the heartsick of any age.
If the Harry Potter movie opens up the books’ shared experience to an even wider audience, then maybe it’s all for the best. Unless director Chris Columbus has screwed up the story royally, then sure, let’s all go. But let’s also remember that there was a moment, way back in the mists of the late last century, when Harry Potter was a cool club you could join only by reading. You can still join, in fact — they’re taking applications at the bookstore and the library right now. But hurry, this offer expires at midnight on Nov. 15.
Tracy Mayor is a contributing editor at Computerworld.com and Brain,Child magazine and author of the parenting humor book "Mommy Prayers". More Tracy Mayor.
Majoring in Potterology
Are books like J.K. Rowling's popular series and Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" fit subjects for serious scholarship?
(Credit: Shutterstock/Salon) Last week in Scotland, 60 scholars gathered over two days for the U.K.’s first scholarly conference on the Harry Potter series. The Guardian newspaper quoted John Mullan, a professor of English at University College London, questioning the wisdom of organizing such an event. Concluding that the host college, the University of St. Andrews, was primarily after “publicity,” Mullan suggested the attendees would be better off forgetting kids’ books and cultivating their gravitas. “They should be reading Milton and ‘Tristram Shandy,’” he told the Guardian. “That’s what they’re paid to do.”
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Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com. More Laura Miller.
“Captain America” corners the box office
Has the superhero won the summer by pushing "Harry Potter" from the top spot?
A scene from "Captain America: The First Avenger." If early estimates are to be believed (at Deadline, Nikki Finke had her doubts on Sunday), it looks like “Captain America: The First Avenger” has flown higher and faster than its summertime superhero rivals, “Green Lantern,” “X-Men: First Class” and “Thor.”
According to Box Office Mojo:
Continue Reading CloseCaptain America made an estimated $65.8 million on approximately 7,100 screens at 3,715 locations, edging out fellow Avenger Thor’s $65.7 million as well as Green Lantern’s $53.2 million and X-Men: First Class’s $55.1 million to top the summer’s superhero launches.
Emma Mustich is a Salon contributor. Follow her on Twitter: @emustich. More Emma Mustich.
Harry Potter: How it couldn’t have ended
Journalist Greg Palast claims J.K. Rowling had a surprising idea for her series' conclusion. We don't buy it
In this film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures, from left, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe are shown in a scene from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures, Jaap Buitendijk)(Credit: AP) According to Greg Palast — an American journalist who says he and J.K. Rowling became “buds” when they “shared the bestseller list” in England “years ago” — J.K. Rowling considered ending the Harry Potter series in what one could reasonably term a highly unlikely fashion. New York magazine was quick to pick up on Palast’s relevant blog post yesterday.
Continue Reading CloseEmma Mustich is a Salon contributor. Follow her on Twitter: @emustich. More Emma Mustich.
Wizards or Jedis?
Salon's TV critic and his ninth-grader discuss the cross-generational magic of Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker
My daughter Hannah is a ninth-grader, and my favorite person to see movies with. Sometimes we’ll see a film and then instant message each other about it later, or tape ourselves talking and do a transcript, then publish the result at my friend Ed Copeland’s blog, Edward Copeland on Film. This conversation is on the final Harry Potter film, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.” I was really looking forward to seeing this movie with Hannah, not just because it’s the final installment in a franchise that’s been around nearly as long as she has, but also because Hannah has read all the books and I’ve read exactly none, which makes her an ideal explainer.
Continue Reading CloseHarry Potter triumphs at the box office
The final Potter film takes $168.5 million in U.S. ticket sales on its opening weekend, smashing several records
The final Harry Potter film has broken the box office record for most successful opening weekend in history — besting the previous record-holder, 2008′s “The Dark Knight,” by about $10 million.
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ took an estimated $168.5 million in domestic ticket sales between Friday and Sunday; “The Dark Knight” took only $158.4 million on its first weekend (although Deadline reminds us to consider that HP 7.2, unlike “The Dark Knight,” was available in 3D — and thus some tickets were more expensive).
Continue Reading CloseEmma Mustich is a Salon contributor. Follow her on Twitter: @emustich. More Emma Mustich.
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