Sunday

I don't know about these fundmentalist Christians. they get their knickers in a twist over the stupidest things, like Harry Potter. You make a movie nearly devoid of gratuitous profane language, violence, vulgarity, toilet humor, and sexuality, and they still complain because the theme of the film is sorcery and witchcraft. This has nothing to do with Wicca, or any other sort of "real" sorcery and/or witchcraft, but the pure fantasy depicted in our popular fiction, which one might find on such television shows as Sabrina The Teenage Witch, or in classic English fairy tales. This sort of literary theme has been around since the invention of literature, and no-one seems to have been harmed by it. Almost no one takes it seriously, and even such a well-made film as this one requires a certain suspension of disbelief.

Let us put Harry Potter to the test, shall we? As of May of this year, some 100,000,000 Harry Potter novels have been sold worldwide in dozens of languages around the world. In fact, J.K. Rowling's novels have so monopolized the New York Times Bestseller List, that a new category needed to be created to exclude books written for school-age children. Does this cause young people to forsake the God their parents so relentlessly promote on their behalf? No, unless perhaps you aren't so serious about what you believe yourself. Has our current generation of schoolchildren become a great herd of wand-wavers and spell-casters? Also, no, yet the American Christian Taliban, for want of anything more worthwhile to get upset about, insists that Harry Potter, an intelligently written series of books that encourages young people to read beyond their reading level, is an adverse influence and should be banished from our shores. I have heard about demonstrations in front of movie theaters akin to those in response to Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

"A colorful display of goth art," says one reviewer for capalert.com, a "Christian" site that rates movies for the "saved." Some members of the American Christian Taliban like to think they have a flair for the dramatic. "Goth," of course, is the dark fashion style of Marilyn Manson fans and the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre. If current shopping-mall observations are accurate, I can say that Goth is pretty much out of fashion (thank God). OF course, to associate Harry Potter with Goth is, to say the least, absurd.

"Several points of wisdom, integrity and honor (are) skillfully placed," says another reviewer, "And all to present evil as good." OK, I'll bite, in which part of the Potter movie was evil portrayed as good, and don't give me any of that crap about fantasy wand-waving. I will be eagerly awaiting your answers RIGHT HERE.

The movie is quality family entertainment, something sorely lacking in today's cinema, especially this time of year. Go to any multiplex in the country this time of year, and you will find mostly R rated movies, and PG-13 movies that should have been rated R; there usually isn't much there to warrant a family trip to the cinema. Like the books, the movie was intelligently and tastefully done, entertaining without the sort of deliberate vulgarity that permeates most of what passes for art and culture nowadays, and even though it is a bit on the long side, thoroughly engaging. Unless you are the sort that home-skools their children, thinks George W. Bush is a great President, and begins and ends every conversation with "praise Jesus," you could do far worse than to allow your child(ren) to see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
In fact, go with them; you'll enjoy it too.

~~David W. Jansing

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