Food for thought

[violachic]

Via The Leaky Cauldron-

David Yates, director of the upcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix gave an interview to geekmonthly.com about the new movie, including the political bent.

"An interesting idea in the story is how fear can sometimes make people do terrible things to their own community and society. We’re not trying to parallel anything, we’re just trying to look at what fear does to people and how it sometimes affects people of authority with the responsibility of leadership."

It iss certainly hardly intentional on the part of the moviemakers, since this movie just fulfills the next chapter in a serial- meaning, its not as if they went "ooh, a book with an cool political allegory, this is the perfect time to make it into a movie!". But it should be noted that the book itself was published in 2003, well into the era of "the war on terror", and a reawakening of governments exhorting their citizens to turn each other in. Faithful readers of the Harry Potter series can be in no doubt that the author herself was indeed offering a thinly veiled parallel of current events.

Comments

[tanyad.livejournal.com]

I need to re-read this before OoTP is released. Sadly, I don't think that this Potter film will be able to escape accusation of being a statement on war or a comparison to the current political climate.

[roadkillmary.livejournal.com]

I think what is interesting is to think of how this book will be interpreted in the future. Now it seems like a straightforward indictment of the war on terror and Bush/Blair involvment, but it later generations be read completely differently.

Like Shakespeare's play Henry the Fifth. Right now (being the time of a controversial and unpopular war) it is read and performed as a play about authority abusing power and causing utter destruction. And, for me at least, it is hard right now to imagine that play in any other way

But, in other times (like in WWI and WWII) it was perfomed in such a way as to inspire nations to come together and support the wars. "Once more into the breech, dear friends, once more" and "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" are famous lines from from that play, that can be used to rally support for fighting.