22 July 2009

I went to see the new Harry Potter film last night in Tel Aviv. True, the humidity there was so awful that the moment one gets off the bus from Jerusalem all the moisture in one’s skin ends up soaking one’s clothes, but I had to see it. Despite admittedly not having read the books, the movies have progressively addicted me to the series – so much so I invariably watch one of the movies each week.

I tend to become engrossed in film criticism and finding symbolism between the frames, but I think the Harry Potter series has something invaluable to teach. The whole series is about a group of humans who are considered different from the rest of humanity. They lead different lives, though otherwise act and look just the same. They invariably fight among one another over who more rightly carries the mantle of tradition and authority, not to mention who truly is part of the community. At the heart of this intra-communal struggle is one wizard who’s left feeling even more isolated from his surroundings because of his disconnected family and people's assumptions about him. Yet in spite of this, he knows he has to carry on his family’s tradition and that of his school’s, ultimately bringing the redemption from the evil lurking all around his loved ones.

The idea of Self vs/ Other, fights over authority and tradition, deciding who is included and who isn't....the movies are so Jewish that the Hebrew subtitles from the Tel Aviv screening were superfluous.

An article published in the LA Jewish Journal, and carried by Haaretz.com, completely missed this angle and instead focused primarily on the Jewish identity of several actors in the film. While the article starts off talking about the films' dichotomy between full-bloods and half-bloods, that it proceeds to talk about the Jewish "heritage" of the actors makes this Jewish geography article out of touch with Jewish heritage itself. The themes prevalent in the series, when connected with Jewish identity, have the potential of connecting otherwise disconnected Jews to discussing their identity; instead, it's about who's "out" with their Jewishness, thus more connected with the antagonists' obsession than with the positive messages of the protagonist. As soon as the thesis is done, I'll start reading the books.