For those of you who somehow missed the multi million dollar mass media campaign to announce and promote the release of the last Harry Potter film last weekend, I am here to tell you that it is all finally over. At least until someone figures out some way to milk the whole project for another couple hundred million. Ever since the Harry Potter books began to rise in popularity there have been well meaning Christians out there who have been crying foul over the use of magic and denouncing the whole series as blatantly satanic. A 30 second internet search will have no trouble whatsoever yielding you a myriad of websites telling you that if you and your children are reading Harry Potter, you are probably going straight to Hell. I do not, however, agree with them. While I will be one of the first to admit that there are, in fact, some references and imagery from modern day wicca (witchcraft) I do not find it to be too particularly alarming. One of the things to remember about reading Harry Potter is that it does not occur in a vacuum. If we have lost our grip enough to throw out all our flashlights and start holding up sticks at shouting quasi Latin phrases like lumos in order to see in the dark, I don’t think Harry Potter is the real problem. The problem is that you have begun to take fantasy literature and live it out in real life. But that is not the real point. The real point is that magic is not the focus or the point of the Harry Potter story. It is merely a means to an end. While I may find the wiccan imagery a bit on the dangerous side, what I find far more so is the theme of using people as tools and objects. Of rationalizing lying and rule breaking as good things and generally saying that the end justifies the means. As long as we are fighting for a good goal it doesn’t really matter how we achieve it. Such themes go against everything we believe as Catholics and we are called to reject them. All that being said, however, I still recommend reading, if not owning, all the Harry Potter books. Rarely on the negative websites will you see any of the Christian imagery discussed. Nobody talks about how the Griffon has been seen as image of Christ himself, a combination of the lion and the eagle. The lion represents the king of beasts (everything on the earth) and the eagle is the king of the air (all birds, but can also represent everything non worldly, i.e. the spiritual realm). Christ is both of these. The dark wizard is represented by the snake. Throughout Christian art and allegory the snake is always seen as a symbol of temptation and the devil (beginning in the Garden of Eden). Evil incarnate looks kind of like a snake, and so does Voldemort. There are a multitude of other Christian/Catholic symbols (like the phoenix, the stag, and the resurrection to name a few) but I won’t go into them here. The point is that they are there. The real point of Harry Potter, both in the last book and in the last movie, is that there comes a point where good men and women must draw a line in the sand and say to evil, “no more.” That no matter how much we may deplore violence there are some things in this world worth fighting for, worth dying for. Harry dies at the end of the movie (sorry if I just spoiled things for some of you) and I was happy that he did so. He didn’t die in some epic confrontation or battle. Instead he willingly went forth and laid down his life for his friends. He gave his life so that others might have a chance to live. No one forced him to do it, in fact his friends tried to talk him out of it. In the end he realized that to give his life was the only way to defeat evil and protect those whom he loved. I seem to remember that being a major theme in another book I read recently. Now is Harry Potter a perfect allegory of the Jesus Christ? No, not by a long shot. But are there really strong, good themes in the books that can inspire all of us (especially youth) to live better lives of self-giving love? Absolutely. These positive themes, just like the negative themes, need to be discussed within our families, and just because the books are appropriate for some doesn’t mean that they are appropriate for everyone. While I would recommend the books for those in high school and older, I would be more cautious about them depending on the maturity of younger readers, but that’s what parents are for. As previously stated, Harry Potter doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it occurs in the real world in the context of our families and our friends. Treating others as a objects or tools to be used (even for good reasons) without recognizing their human dignity is always wrong, as is doing an evil action in order to get a good result. These themes run rampant in our secular world, not just Harry Potter. Themes of sacrificial love, chaste friendship, and dying for a good cause are not so readily available.
No comments:
Post a Comment