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Culture_Voyeur
Culture_VoyeurThursday, July 23, 2009 at 10:10:00 AM EDT
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Like millions of others last week, I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opening day (not the midnight showing, mind you).
Although I regretfully partake in the Twilight series fandom, I legitimately like Harry Potter. To use a term coined by my best friend, Alice, I am a Dumbledork. I’ve read every book at least three times and have seen each film opening day. I may not dress up and wait in line for each new book or movie, but I have spent countless hours discussing the series’ mythology and debating with friends over which book is the best.
As the sixth film came to a close, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between Harry Potter and the inferior Twilight. Going into the film (based off one of my favorite books in the saga), I had read critics praising the film for its focus on relationships and sexual chemistry. And although I’m aware of the lack of sex in JK Rowling’s series, I hoped that perhaps director David Yates would emphasize teenage hormones a bit more explicitly than Rowling had originally envisioned. But sadly, no.
Parallels between Potter and Twilight caught my attention as I began to notice the noticeable lack of sex coupled with graphic levels of violence in each of the series. And while each author (Rowling and Meyer) has been berated by the conservative right for their use of magic and mysticism, rarely does either series get called out on the amount of violence that is abundant in these books largely targeted at young adult readers.
When did Americans decide that exposing children to violence is better than exposing them to sex? Film ratings, book reviews, and music advisories might exist under the banner of alerting parents to sex and violence, but at the end of the day we all know that these people are really afraid of exposing kids to positive (or explicit) sexuality.
Another interesting similarity between the two series is each of the authors’ emphasis on the finality of first love. Every character in each series achieves their happily ever after with the first person they fall in love with at a very young age. While this isn’t particularly surprising coming from Mormon Stephenie Meyer, but JK Rowling is on her second marriage – thereby proving that the ideals she writes about are not necessarily ones that she believes in. So why would she choose to set possibly unrealistic expectations for her readers?
While each series might be lacking in overt sexuality (let’s not forget to point out that Harry Potter is one giant gay-metaphor; or the fact that Rowling outed Albus Dumbledore after the series ended), one thing that sets the two apart is that Rowling has never placed sexuality in a negative light. Meyer, however, uses her four-book series to ingrain into her readers’ minds that sex should only exist in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage – otherwise you’re going to hell. So while each author (and subsequent screenwriters) may succumb to societal pressures to keep sex to a minimum, at least we can take comfort in the fact that Harry Potter fans shouldn’t be scared into staying abstinent until they are legally wed.
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by AFY_Samantha
by AFY_Samantha
Ginny dates Dean prior to Harry, Harry has his thing with Cho and one of the Pravati twins at the ule ball. Ron goes to the ball with someone other than Hermione as well, he also dates Lavender Brown for awhile. Hermione has a full-on relationship with Vickro Krum before the war... and thats just the main four. It hardly seems to me as if they all ended up with their first love/romance/whatever.
They do seem to fall in love fast though, in terms of almost all of them finding their "true love" in what we view as high school, but I think this is misleading as well for two reasons:
1) They're in a war-time and many probably don't have much faith they'll even live to see the next year... so they have to sieze whatever opportunities they have for love.
2) There is no Wizard college (far as I know) so their life is structured differently. In the muggle world many of us are encouraged to wait and find love in college or after so as to not be tied down when making the transition... these characters don't seem to have that stigma/issue.
What I think we need to keep in mind, in terms of sexuality, is that these books were originally geared towards a young adult audience - an audience with parents who likely would not let them read about graphic sex scenes (or watch them in theatres.) What I love about Rowling is, while she doesn't depict the characters being sexual much, she also doesn't deny their sexuality - it is simply a part of the story that is not mentione and, thus, left to the reader to fill in. This is incredibly different from Meyer, who points out Edwards refusal of Bella's sexual advances at every turn.
In short, I think for what they are these books do a decent job of portraying realistic and healthy relationships and sexuality.
HOWEVER, the Harry Potter movies are based on the books, and violence does factor into the plot of the HP books much more than romance and sex do. In fact, every HP book in the series included violent wizardry of some sort, especially in the final action sequences. I loved the young romances in the book, but they were really subplots, not the center of the action. As it was, I felt a lot of the plot was rushed through in the latest movie (the quest for a horcrux in the cave, for example), and so adding more intricate and intimate relationships probably got left on the cutting board for lack of space. Maybe we'll see more of this in the movie version(s) of the 7th book, since, presumably there should be more time to explore romance with two installments.