Harry Potter wasn’t that good.
(note: this is a repost from my old blog site under a pen name and with edits 8/2/21)
The Harry Potter’ series is a well known franchise that continues to captivate new generations through syndication. For me, Harry Potter was a classic in my home. My sister was obsessed with the books while I really loved the movies. We would be excited for the new films to come out and discuss them afterwards. Yes, I loved the series. Overtime as I got used to the material, I started to see the series in a new light. The magic I felt at first, just dimmed. The film series made me question a lot about the wizarding world. About the ways of Dumbledore to the staleness of the characters.
The Greater Good and Albus Dumbledore
The things that good ole Dumbledore sacrifice for the greater good is very questionable. Looking at poor Harry’s childhood alone is evidence enough. He was abnormally small for his age due to being malnourished and getting all the chores and his cousins’ hand me downs in the first movie. Now, there’s nothing wrong with having some chores or hand me downs, but he was being overworked and clearly wasn’t in a loving home. Rowling drills this in by showing the different types of summers that Harry had to endure with his aunt’s family. And when its mentioned to the headmaster, he tells Harry that it couldn’t be that bad and sends him back there.
Despite the dismissal of child abuse, this isn’t the first time he endangers a child. With the different tribulations that Harry goes through, that cause a ruckus and disturbs other Hogwarts students. Through his lack of control over the school, its has allowed many villains to have easy access to the school. For example, having the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Quirrell with Voldemort’s spirit attached to the back of his head or when Professor Remus, a deemed dangerous werewolf that turns every full moon with potential students he could infect. Or Umbridge with those illegal blood quills, (pen that cuts into the skin, using blood as ink) in Harry’s fifth year. It was a literal pen that craves words into the user’s skin and when it was mentioned to Professor McGonagall, who just told Harry to ‘keep his head down’. In this it gives the impression that while the students are being mistreated, they are supposed to bear it and not complain. Like there isn’t adults that could fight and protect the students better than the students doing it themselves.
Overall, the adults in this series basically gives the young children the task to save their world along with ignoring the potential dangers around them. Mind you that these dangers can be from professors, other parents and fellow students. The story heavily rely on the kids to figure everything out without much help from the adults and have to deal with getting adapted to this new world.
Lack of Character Growth
Having a characters like the Golden Trio that goes through adventure after adventure is good yet no changes were made. Well, let’s not say that they didn’t grow as they have. I just wished that it was more. Harry found his friends and family, Ron found out how to standout from his siblings, and Hermione learned to not be a stickler to the rules. It’s how they grew is the problem. Lets focus on Harry’s growth. Harry grows from the constant loss and trauma he goes through. This trauma comes from losing his godfather, Sirius, members of his pseudo family, the Weasleys, and classmates.
Looking back, the way that Rowling wrote the series was basically Harry having constant death around him and his voice shut down when he notices something wrong. That last part contradicts too much, a hero that notices wrongdoings but no one follows him. As a hero is supposed to see was wrong and try to fix it, but Harry’s mentors and fellow peers always calls him crazy or talk down to him. Not trying to let him make decisions for himself, everything is made for him. For instance, when he wanted to stay at Hogwarts over the summer but was told it was too dangerous. (sn: which never made sense because if he could be there for a whole school year, what would be wrong with being there doing the summer?). Yet somehow he is still able to strive against the odds every time. I believe that to make the story work a little better, would be a crash and burn moment. A moment where we see Harry hit rock bottom. We get it in the sense of him losing all his friends during the Triwizard tournament and the loss of his godfather. I think it could have been more drawn out, where these events doesn’t make him go back the status quo and builds his own status quo. A rebellion period would be needed, especially with how devastated he was when those two events happened.
Then, when looking at the behavior of Harry and his interactions with friends, it clashes with the hinted history of abuse. The hinted history of abuse that doesn’t come out in his behavior besides in the way of his paranoia, obsessiveness, and untrustworthiness in others, that is seen later in the series. And for it to be later in the series, it could be seen as Rowling taking time to develop those behaviors. For instance, in the last two parts of the film series, Harry becomes obsessed about Draco being a Death Eaters and was following him around constantly. If we look back at the first films, Harry’s home life shows the components for a neglected child with emotional abuse.
When I think of a neglected child, I see a child that wants attention but wants it in a way of achieving his goals, a child that’s is wary of strangers because his family only treated him like in house servant, a child where other adults have seen the abuse but no one helped. But no, instead we get a wide-eyed child that’s too overly trusting and too innocent for the implied trauma that he went through to have an effect on him. Every neglected child has some type of effect on them and its not always wanting attention but want it but watching out for the people that will turn on him in a minute’s notice. But since Harry is new to the wizarding world, Rowling writes him as someone with very bright eyes. I think a young Harry could have been written as someone which bright eyes but still being cautious of everyone and not just jumping into friendship so easily. Especially with the way his family was to him for the first 10–11 years of his life.
As I said earlier, Harry doesn’t get to have a rebellion arc where he truly starts to think for himself, questioning every and anything, clashing with his mentors and even friends. I want to revisit why I think it would’ve been a good idea for a rebellion arc to be more central in the story than what it is. It’s would be necessary moment for Harry, where he really turns from Dumbledore and isn’t the ‘Golden Boy’ anymore. A rebellion is also apart of the hero’s journey, that gets missed. Some could say that we get that in the form of Snape and Draco being Death Eaters in the first place or when the revolt from them. The apprentice goes on their own without the hovering of a mentor, coming into their own ideals and way. Well, we do get a little rebellious attitude from Harry, when he questions Dumbledore about the prophecy and getting the vision of Sirius dying. But he doesn’t really do anything about it besides being angry and sneaking around, following people that he is suspicious of.
Moments like this can be used as a tool to shatter the concept of good and evil that Rowling shoves into the audience’s face. Now, I will admit that JK Rowling, does attempt to shatter this concept of strictly good and evil, through characters like Karkaroff, Regulus Black, Draco, and even Snape’s last minute changes where they all turn out to be good people because they defected from the Death Eaters. But with our main character, Harry, we the viewer, see the world in a very black and white view and don’t see the shades of gray that are between from his point of view. To me, I feel like Harry is a little too naive at finding people evil and sometimes misjudging before he even knows the person. And it contradicts which the way he was raised around his mother’s sister’s family. A family that would have made him more cautious about reaching out to others, adult and children the like. Or even in his naivety he might trust the fellow children but not the adults, but once they turned their back on him during the Triwizard tournament, he could become jaded or bitter towards them. With that being said, I believe that Rowling could have added more instances of breaking the concept of good v. evil, if she added it more throughout the films. One way could be when Harry saw how a younger Snape was bullied by Dad and godparents. That could have been a turning point for him, where he realizes that people he thought were good, was always so good and vice versa with evil people. Or have Harry in his earlier years, actively being searching for information and memories of his parents. It would had been a good turn around for Harry to have a realization early when he meet his godparents. He thought Sirius was the one that killed his parents and didn’t know of Remus’ condition.
While Harry is on a hero’s journey, it feels like he evolves very little from the first film. The journey has a good premise but it didn’t develop nicely as the series expanded. It just a set of movies that repeats itself with different villains and problems, with poorly developed backgrounds and characters.
