On Monday, I went to the Alamo Draft House to watch the last Harry Potter movie. The Alamo Draft House is a famous place to watch movies in Austin, where you can order foods and drinks during the movie and then waiters or waitresses will bring them to you. It's essentially a restaurant-styled theater. I tried "Butterbeer" there, which was a weird mix of apple cider and other things (including alcohol). It was pretty good and weird at the same time.
The movie itself was visually awesome. I didn't see the 1st installment of the Harry Potter 7th movie, so I was slightly worried that I would be disappointed with the break in the plot line. However, the movie turned out much better than I had expected, and some scenes in the film were really awe inspiring. I walked out of the theater with a fresh dose of "I wish magic really existed in the world..." as I usually do after sci-fi or fantasy movies.
However, on the way home, a thought struck me - why is the book series so "perfect"? How come everyone can afford to go to school? Even the "poor" Weasley family could afford to send all their children to school. Sure, it was with hand-me-downs, but still - it's not about the haves and have-nots, but rather about the haves and have-mores. What happens to the kids who cannot afford to go to the magician boarding schools? Can they learn magic? Are they the antithesis to Mudbloods, in that they are born into a wizarding family but cannot use magic? Where are the magician homeless people? All we see in the books and the movies are people from the middle or upper class in the wizarding world. Do the less well off not exist? What about orphans who are not as lucky as Harry is?
I know that these are really not questions that are relevant to the actual story or book itself, but it does pose interesting questions for the state of children's novels, and the very nature of a book series. Harry Potter was originally intended for a younger audience, so from the very first books Rowling has made the setting very PG and moral, just like a good children's book should. The endings were happy and the messages that were in the books were clear-cut and vanilla.
However, as Harry and his friends matured, the series also began maturing for an older audience. The atmosphere became darker, good people began to die (more than usual), bad people began to escape, and the moral content began to become more muddy. Basically, things became less clear-cut, and Harry Potter turned into a much more accurate model of the real world. The Ministry of Magic began to model the inefficient governments in real life, people began conspiring and backstabbing one another, and even the very nature of the magic itself became more violent.
The metamorphosis of the Harry Potter universe from a palatable and childish representation into a mature and adolescent-based series is an amazing transformation. It is the reason why I can feel justified in asking the question that I do above - where are the homeless people, what happens to the orphans, etc? Children's novels do not usually instigate such social or political-laced commentary. The Harry Potter series represents a true Bildungsroman or character-building series, in more ways than one. The ability of Rowling to adapt her series is truly remarkable.
It really is the end of an era.
-FCDH
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