Finishing a book can be a very satisfying experience, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a moment to ruin that for any Harry Potter fans out there. Right now, somewhere in Orange County, Billy Ray (the guy who wrote the iPhone review, and couldn’t get through the title without making a serious grammatical error) is also feverishly making his way through Harry’s latest magical adventure. This is the same fellow who limits his non-Potter reading to Star Wars novels (not joking) yet cannot pronounce the word heir or spell the word rogue.
Something never rubbed me the right way about the Potter series from the beginning. They work well as 90 minute flicks, but I couldn’t bring myself to get more than a few pages into any of the novels. In discussing the last book with my sister, who was very satisfied to have finished it last night, I think I figured out why I have such a problem with them. I just identify way too much with the bad guy. Let’s break down a young wizard’s life, in chronological order:
- You are born into a magical world where you’re told to segregate yourself from the non-magical folk (unless you find a cute one, then you fuck her and have half-breed babies) due to a mixture of precaution and racial elitism.
- Somewhere around your eighth birthday, you accidentally blow up a family pet. Your father brings it back from the dead, and then goes back to grilling up some dragonburgers. Business as usual.
- You go off to school just like a normal chump, but you get to learn how to turn animals into cups and fly around on brooms.
- You hook up with numerous chicks, partly due to teenage rebellion, partly due to the fact that Quiddich really gets those panties wet.
- Your later scholastic career is a whirlwind experience of the supernatural, where you are constantly reminded that you must restrain yourself because your powers are too great to wield all willy-nilly.
- Finally, your graduation day looms. And despite the fact that you can blow up anything by pointing a stick at it, your guidance counselor tells you that you’d make an excellent file clerk.
I can see why you might go power crazy and start killing some motherfuckers. Shit, look at Ron’s family. How can you be poor when you can fly? Fuck the Ministry of Magic or whatever, I’m going to be the world’s richest courier. You can teleport from place to place through the Goddamned chimneys, and you don’t decide to become a drug mule?
And I know, there are rules and restrictions. The ministry will throw your ass into Azkaban, a place where they torture and maim the souls of the inmates. So you’ve gotta go around living your life like a normal schlub, except you can do all kinds of amazing things that you’re not really allowed to do. Then you have to sit back and watch the non-magical people fuck up the planet with pollution and war. You can turn tanks into carousels, but you’re not allowed to round up a few dozen colleagues to go solve the Iraq conflict. Christ, the world of wizards is almost a police state. Voldermort wasn’t a villain, he was a liberator.
…wow, I’ll do just about anything to avoid work.
While watching the first movie (my first experience with Mistah Pottah)I was disturbed at how much segregation, favoritism, and politicking went on at Hogwarts. Harry got away with everything because he was special, while ugly, dorky kids like Ron had to play by the rules. For example, Harry is REWARDED with a spot on the Quidditch team when he goes against his teacher’s rules and takes off on his broom before being properly trained. Weasley would have got his ass tossed in the brig for that shit.
It’s like watching MTV. Rich and good looking = success, poor and ugly = failure. Nice values we are teaching our children.
Being beautiful is everything…..where’s my iphone?
u seem to speak Dorkanese very well… well at least understand it anyhoo.