The End of the Potter

So. Before heading to watch the final send-off and the fairly paint by numbers hero's journey finale to the harry Potter franchise, Karla gets my attention with the following statement: "I think Harry Potter has affected more people than 'The Lord of the Rings.' Don't you think? I mean. An entire generation grew up with it." Now, there are some issues of logic with the above statement, fair enough. Like an entire generation didn't grow up with "Lord of the Rings?" And yet, she might be right: more books, more films, more money. Of course, the Lord of the Rings franchise had a greater groundswell of followers by the time the films came out due to longevity. But you could make the argument at least. Now, the statement made me bristle and long for a scathing counterargument. Why? Lord of the Rings resonates with me, in an admittedly geeky kind of way, while Harry Potter? Pleasant and well- wrought escapist fare, maybe, but at the end of the day I could take it or leave it. My wife's argument was that Lord of the Rings was written for too specific an audience (?) and Harry Potter cut across all kinds of boundaries, even though it was ostensibly written for children. Now, there are two main obstacles for Harry Potter having much meaning for me in the long run, and a minor detail in the film versions that has the same alienating effect. It seems to me, for a story to work properly we have to be immersed in it, invested in a selfish kind of way. "If I were in that situation, I would..." This kind of magic has to work seemlessly. You're imagination is not so much captured by a good story, but unleashed by it. So. What's wrong with Harry Potter? First, when it came out, it was strictly kid's stuff, and marketed accordingly. By the time the film came out, HP had been crammed down your throat enough, even looking at the billboard felt like dancing to the tune of the Advertocracy. But let that go. If a movie is hyped enough, we all watch it eventually. I knew next to nothing about the book and yet when I watched the first film I felt "something was missing." That sense didn't leave me even when each of the succeeding episodes became "darker." I realized after this final film not that there was something missing, but that there was "too much there." Oddly enough, some of the story is appealing at first...the Gothic elements of Hogwarts, the mystery novel motifs. But something is also alienating, preventing that suspension of disbelief, full immersion. The first aspect of the stories that prevents them from having any staying power for me is the Charles Dickens-cum-Mother Goose alliterative quality of all the names. Hufflepuff. Dumbledore. Salazar Slitherin. Even the name "Voldemort," despite its obvious latinate etymological roots has a sing-songy eightees cartoon character ring to it. This effectively boundaries the story with a sugary cotton candy rim, communicating that "nothing too bad will happen here." And even when it does with a villain here, a murder there, it feels ho-hum, occurring as it does within the boundaries of candyland, and there is an awareness that all will be made right soon. The second obstacle to any kind of resonance from the films has to do with the main characters' aw-shucks virtue. I'm all for selflessness and loyalty, but the inscrutable moral Puritanism of the characters flattened them out beyond distinction for me. Now, you could simply argue "but these are kids movies, they're supposed to be simple." All well and good, but then I don't understand their widespread appeal to adults and why I have to explain myself anytime I respond to someone else's Potterthusiasm with "Meh." The final, albeit minor, reason the films don't finally resonate is that, in terms of inspiring fear, Ralph Fiennes' "Voldemort" just didn't cut it. Sure, people in the story were scared of him, and he wore black, and was kind of pale and ugly, but the very form of children's story set boundaries of taste on what could be considered scary for an adult audience. I think The Neverending Story's Gmork might have been scarier, and he could hardly move. The most inspired piece of the film series, ironically, was the animated insertion in film seven of the tale of the "Deathly Hallows" from the (excuse me) "Tales of Beedle the Bard." There is some simple folk wisdom in the books, to be sure, and a hint that the author has some experience with the wisdom that comes with loss, and she weaves an entertaining story. But in the end, it doesn't quite achieve the same level of mythos as other modern mythologies, such as, oh, I don't know, say, "Lord of the Rings."