The year of behaving badly

I have written over and over again on the subject of how hard I find it to read The Order of the Phoenix. This is a gloomy, claustrophobic novel in which no one... and I mean no one... behaves well.


Of course, the antagonists -- Dolores Umbridge, Draco and Lucius Malfoy, Cornelius Fudge, even Percy Weasley, Voldemort -- are insufferable. That's to be expected.


But even the so-called "good guys" are not at their best.


Mundungus Fletcher leaves his post and permits Harry to be attacked by Dementors.


Sirius Black is childish and moody throughout most of the book. putting his own unhappiness ahead of the interests of his godson, Harry.


Mr. and Mrs. Weasley treat the teenagers like toddlers and refuse to let them in on what's going on with the Order of the Phoenix. Further, they fail entirely to prepare Harry adequately for the trial at the Ministry.


Professor McGonagall seems oblivious to Harry's suffering while at Hogwarts, continually chastising him for letting Umbridge upset him rather than helping him, counseling him on why his suffering is necessary and how he can better endure it.


Professor Dumbledore's behaviour is inexplicably abhorrent. He literally abandons Harry in his hour of need and leaves Harry to suffer the horrors of Umbridge without any support whatsoever. Okay, Dumbledore worries that Voldemort will use the connection between his mind and Harry's to try to spy on Dumbledore so the Headmaster doesn't want to interact with Harry face to face... but why not send him a series of letters, explaining the concerns, outlining what's happening and guiding him as to how to proceed?


You would think that, through all this, Ron and Hermione at least would behave appropriately. But Ron spends the book caught up in his own Quidditch-inspired malaise while Hermione... well, Hermione is awe-inspiring in her insipidness.


Every time the young people get a chance to speak to an Order member and obtain much needed reassurance and guidance, Hermione loses focus completely and goes off on Elf-rights tangents. She knows Harry is desperate for counsel from Sirius and yet, when Harry's godfather appears one evening in the common room fire, Hermione makes the whole, time-limited interaction about how Sirius shouldn't be taking risks and how Sirius should be treating Kreacher better.


It doesn't seem to occur to her that Harry really really really needs to talk to his godfather.


Sirius' own petulant pouting during that conversation is also way over the top.


Hermione is at her worst in Umbridge's Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. While Harry must be faulted for his own inability to control his temper in the face of the obnoxious Ministry hag, Hermione is the one who set matches to gasoline by challenging Umbridge in not one but two consecutive classes.


What is she thinking? What can she possibly be thinking? Hermione is smart enough to understand that the only way she, Harry and the rest of the students can possibly survive Umbridge and the Minister's interference is to keep their heads down and stay quiet. Yet, she goes out of her way to create conflict and confrontation and then has the unmitigated gall to admonish Harry for getting caught up in the fire she herself has created.


There are times I wonder if J.K. Rowling went too far in this book, if she let the narratorial imperative of isolating and abusing Harry in the first half of the novel cause her to undermine the consistency of her carefully established central characters.


The fact of the matter is, Dumbledore is not the insensitive clod that he is portrayed as in The Order of the Phoenix; Hermione is smarter and more sensible than the character who appears in this book.


It is possible that, in her understandable campaign to put Harry into a terrible, lonely, vulnerable and suffering situation in his fifth year at Hogwarts, Rowling lost track of who her characters really are?

The imperfect choice for Prefect

Help me figure something out. I'm re-reading The Order of the Phoenix and I've just come to the part where Ron and Hermione receive their Prefect badges from Hogwarts.

A big deal is made about the fact that Harry was not chosen instead of Ron -- everyone thought he would be -- and, if I recall correctly, Dumbledore will eventually explain to Harry, at the end of the book, that he didn't want to put any more pressure on our hero than he was already facing.

Good enough.

But tell me why Dumbledore would name Draco Malfoy a prefect for Slytherin. The headmaster is well aware that Draco's dad is a confirmed Death Eater. He knows that Draco is Harry's nemesis and that, with the powers of a Prefect, Draco would have a great deal more power to bother, upset and harass Harry throughout the year.

So why, if Dumbledore is worried about putting too much additional pressure on Harry, does he name Draco a Prefect? Why not someone else? Even Crabbe or Goyle would be a better choice, since they are too stupid to be really harmful to Harry. Even if Draco is telling them what to do, their thickness would provide something of a buffer and the fact that Dumbledore refused to recognize Draco as a Prefect should make Harry feel a little bit better about being passed over.

The only think I can think of is that the Ministry intervened in these choices as well. Maybe Lucius paid Fudge to force Dumbledore to name Draco as Prefect. We see Draco's dad and the Minister of Magic together at the start of the book -- perhaps that's when the demand was made and granted.

I simply cannot believe Dumbledore would make this choice on his own.

Umbridge a Death Eater?

This will show you how really attentive a reader I am -- I just realized, as I re-read the first chapter of The Order of the Phoenix for the 20-somethingth time, that Dolores Umbridge sent the Dementors to Little Whinging to kill Harry Potter on that hot summer night.


She wasn't playing around. She took it upon herself, without any consultation with Cornelius Fudge or anyone else, to send the most heinous of magical creatures into Surrey to kill an innocent 15-year-old boy who had committed no crime but witness the rebirth of the Dark Lord and return to tell about it.


Woweee.


I mean, these Dementors meant business. They arrived, attacked and were ready to perform the Kiss on Dudley, an even more innocent bystander in all this, without wasting any time at all.


We only learn at the end of the novel that it was Umbridge who, on her own initiative, sent them to attack Harry but, in retrospect, this action says a great deal about this delightful lady.


She could not have known that Harry was so capable with the old Patronus Charm. We can't give her the benefit of the doubt by arguing that she sent the Dementors to force Harry to perform magic so that the Ministry would then have some grounds to snap his wand and expel him from Hogwarts.


She was trying to kill him.


Why? For upsetting Fudge? For making him look bad?


Is it possible that Umbridge is actually a Death Eater who is simply never identified as such? That she is acting on the Dark Lord's orders, trying to kill the Boy Who Lived after Voldemort failed to do so in the graveyard?


If she isn't a Death Eater, Doesn't her decision to try to have the Dementors kill Harry seem like a bit of an over-reaction under the circumstances? To kill Harry just because he represents the only real evidence available that Voldemort has returned?

Out of Order in the fifth film

I don't know enough about film making to know whom to blame: the director, the editor or the continuity person. But I've just watched the movie version of The Order of the Phoenix again and, let me tell you, that film is seriously flawed.

And I'm not just talking about the numerous poor decisions the screen writer made in revising J.K. Rowling's long novel into a relatively short film. I'm talking about easy to avoid flaws that suggest that the film makers were just plain sloppy when they made this one.

Take, for example, the opening scene in the play park in Little Whinging in which Harry confronts Dudley and his gang. The editing in this scene is amateurish at best and the continuity just doesn't work. Dudley makes a joke and we're treated to a quick shot of him looking left and right at members of his laughing gang. Harry is nowhere in the shot, still seated on the swings.

Then Dudley teases Harry about his nightmares and Harry gets up, pulls his wand and rushes at his cousin. Cut to that same footage of Dudley laughing, looking side to side, with no sign of Harry in the shot. Then cut back to a close up of Harry jabbing his wand into Dudley's neck and Dudley looking terrified. Sloppy sloppy work.

The storm-clouds set in and we get an aerial shot of the play park. The gang members are still ranged behind Dudley but he appears to be standing side by side with Harry, with some space between them. Cut back to the closeup of Harry with his wand at Dudley's throat. Awful.

Or how about the scenes in the Room of Requirement as the DA practices, just before Umbridge crashes the party. I won't try to describe it all but, suffice it to say, from shot to shot, characters dance all over the place. No continuity. Amateurish, jumpy editing.

While we're on the DA training, how is that so many characters are able to produce corporeal Patronuses on their first try? From what I saw, Ginny, Hermione and Luna all had bright white animals shoot out of their wands on their first attempt at this most difficult charm. How is that possible?

And was that Levicorpus I heard Harry teaching the gang in the DA? Levicorpus, a spell he doesn't learn until he reads it in the Half-Blood Prince's potions text book in the six novel? To compound the problem, the film makers then have James Potter use a different spell on Snape in the Potion Master's memory, rather than Levicorpus. And further, they have Luna use Levicorpus inside the Hall of Prophesy against a Death Eater.

Huh? Why? Why introduce it at this point at all? It's not necessary and people like me are just going to be upset by the change from the original.

And finally, back on the issue of continuity problems, think about the battle scene in the Ministry, where members of the Order of the Phoenix come to the rescue of our six favourite kids.

First, try to ignore the ridiculous fact that the filmmakers decided that witches and wizards should be able to fly without the aid of brooms, thestrals or other instruments of flight (which still bothers me greatly), and the fact that the filmic Sirius Black arrives and, with Lucius Malfoy at his utter mercy, chooses to punch him, rather than stunning or even killing him. This inexplicable choice permits Malfoy to continue in the battle.

Sorry, I can't. I simply can't ignore that stuff. It drives me absolutely nuts.

Anyway, back to continuity. After the punch, Harry and Sirius get involved in a serious wand battle with Malfoy and another Death Eater. Sirius manages to stun the DE and Harry, taking advantage of the distraction, hits Malfoy with a quick disarming spell and we see Malfoy's wand go spinning out of his hand.

"Nice one James," cries Sirius. But when Sirius fires another spell at Malfoy, Malfoy deflects it with the wand that a split second ago we saw flying away from him. Another battle ensues, which distracts Sirius enough to permit Bellatrix to kill him with the killing curse.

How did Malfoy get his wand back?

This film is so poorly made that I can't help but wonder if the filmmakers chose to cut as many corners as possible, knowing that Harry Potter fans around the world would flock to the film anyway.

In praise of the Dale audiobooks

I know I have been quite critical of the Jim Dale audiobooks of the Harry Potter novels. It is usually much easier (and more popular) to find fault in things than it is to praise them and I all too often fall victim to the lure of being critical.

I am now in the middle of book five -- The Order of the Phoenix -- and, despite the faults with Dale's delivery that I have documented in earlier posts to this blog, I am thoroughly enjoying the experience.  He is, overall, an excellent reader and brings the stories to vivid life for me.

During the course of listening to the first four and a half books, I have laughed out loud often and gasped in surprise several times. I have been so enthralled that I have been unable to shut off the CD player, even when I was supposed to be starting my work day and I have found myself taking every opportunity to get back to the story throughout the day.

I find it something of a miracle that, in the two months I have possessed this 124-disc collection, comprising about 153 hours of reading, I have already managed to listen to more than 80 of the discs (representing more than 100 hours). That's just amazing!

One of my favourite aspects of Jim Dale's reading, believe it or not, is the way he vocalises Dobby saying the name "Harry Potter". I cannot even begin to describe it but I think it is absolutely perfect. It makes me smile every time it comes up.

Another aspect of the audiobooks that I particularly like has nothing to do with the recordings themselves -- it's the artwork that decorates the CD cartons. I have not yet been able to discover who the artist or artists is/are but the little drawings are fantastic. They are wonderful visual representations of the characters from the stories that, in my opinion, capture the essence of the Potter books much better than do the films.

I'm not sure if I am allowed to reproduce them for you on this blog but I will try to find them somewhere online for you. They really are pretty wonderful.

No feet up on Harry Potter

So I'm watching Orange is the New Black on Netflix, the award-winning show about an upper middle class woman who ends up spending a year in prison for a crime she committed when she was younger.

I was just cruising through the first season, trying to figure out what all the buzz is about. So far, I'm not totally sold on it. It's okay, I guess. Kind of hit and miss. Not as funny as I had hoped and somewhat lacking in interesting characters.

Then, out of the blue, there's a scene in the prison library. One of the women is wishing to borrow a book and the inmate who works in the library, thinking she just wants to borrow a thick book to use as a foot stool, refuses to let her borrow The Order of the Phoenix.

It came and went in a flash but I think the line was something like, "You ain't puttin' your feet up on Harry Potter. You want something to stand on, you borrow [James Joyce's] Ulysses. I tried to read that s---. That's for puttin' you feet on."

Now, I've read Ulysses and it's really very good. It doesn't deserve to have people stepping all over it either. But what a moment of joy to be watching this crazy, crude, violent, disturbing television show that seems so far away from J.K.'s magical world and to find that, even in this prison, Harry Potter is revered.

Awesome.

J.K.'s Harry is more human... and more interesting

I've always been interested in the difference between literature and film as narrative forms. In fact, I wrote my Masters dissertation on how his work as a screenwriter in the 1930s impacted F. Scott Fitzgerald's approach to his novels.

So it should come as no surprise that I find myself comparing how J.K. Rowling told the Harry Potter stories in her books to how the same stories were re-told by the movie makers.

I'm interested in how the medium impacts the manner in which the story is told but I'm also interested in how the narrative decisions made by the story tellers, as affected by the medium, impact how we understand the characters and the events they encounter.

That's a really high-falutin' way of saying I saw something interesting when I re-read The Order of the Phoenix recently, an interesting difference between how a particular scene takes place in the book versus how it was later presented in the film.

Remember the scene where Harry is taking Occlumency lessons in Snape's office and ends up inside Snape's own memories?

It's a neat scene and very important both to our understanding of Snape and to our understanding of Harry himself and his relationship with his father.

But there's a really interesting difference between what Rowling wrote and what ended up in the film.

In J.K.'s version, Harry chooses to invade Snape's memories, memories which the Potions master had very carefully attempted to safeguard by placing them in Dumbledore's pensieve before beginning the lesson. It is very clear in the book that Harry is in the wrong when he decides, while Snape is temporarily absent from the room, to dive into the memories Snape has so carefully set aside.

In the movie version, on the other hand, Harry's invasion of Snape's memory occurs by accident. When Harry attempts to defend himself from Snape's assault, Harry is somehow propelled into Snape's mind.

I can understand why the filmmakers decided to simplify the whole process. It would have taken a great deal of screen time to show Snape using the pensieve, to set up the reason for Snape's absence and then to explain that Snape has returned. As they so often do, the filmmakers identified what was truly important to the plot (Harry entering Snape's memory) and tried to figure out the simplest, fastest way to include that event in the film.

But the decision has a an impact and, I would argue, plays into a much larger ongoing campaign the filmmakers were on: their effort to show Harry as much more of a hero than he comes across in the books.

Rowling wants us to see that Harry is a a real, flawed human being, subject to the same kinds of unkind, inappropriate temptations as the rest of us. Harry sees Snape's memories swirling in the pensieve, realises he has some time and succumbs to the temptation to snoop.

And maybe, as Snape's memory of being bullied by James Potter and Sirius Black shows him a side of his father Harry doesn't really like, Harry also starts to recognise that he, himself, can behave poorly, can treat others badly.

In the film version, however, Harry's invasion of Snape's memories is purely accidental. Harry experiences something he shouldn't but through no fault, no choice of his own. Snape's fury at him thereafter is unfair and we come away from the incident feeling that, while James Potter might have been a bully, Snape too behaves inappropriately in shouting at Harry.

Nothing in the way the incident takes place in the film makes us question Harry's virtue.

And that ties in well with the way Harry is portrayed in the rest of the films: as the pure, virtuous loner with no flaws, as the all-American kid, as the hero with a capital "H".

I like Rowling's Harry much better. He's human and that makes his willingness to sacrifice himself so much the more interesting and valuable.

Out of Order in the Film

I find The Order of the Phoenix such a difficult book to read. In fact, it's a little like torture. Which shouldn't be much of a surprise since the first three-quarters of the book involves the torture of our favourite wand-carrier, both directly by Dolores Umbridge and more subtly by the Ministry, the wizarding community and the other kids at Hogwarts.

Even though I know what's coming, I still cringe when I read this book.

That's not an insult to J.K. Rowling. In fact, it's a huge compliment. J.K. wanted to make this book an ordeal both for Harry and her reader and she succeeds remarkably.

That's why I get so angry when I watch the film version of it. I honestly don't know which movie I detest more, The Order or the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and that's saying something since I really really really hate Part 2.

The fifth novel is a claustrophobic, harrowing ordeal. It's a gut-wrenching experience of a kind that is rarely found in literature. Because we identify so closely with Harry after the first four books, we feel every tiny sting he receives in this fifth one. We hurt for him and suffer with him.

So why did the movie makers have to turn this ordeal into a slapstick comedy (and a poor one at that)? Instead of ominous and evil, Umbridge is presented as a silly nuisance in the movie. I'm not taking a shot at Imelda Staunton -- she does a beautiful job of acting the role she was given -- but the role itself is a mockery of Rowling's villainous original.

The only thing, in my opinion, that saves the movie is the very strong performances of Evanna Lynch (as Luna Lovegood) and Katie Leung (as Cho Chang). These two make strong impressions, with some great scenes, even if the film reduces the part played by each in the main plot.

So I leave the film version of The Order of the Phoenix on the shelf while I battle my way through the tremendously well written novel. Too bad. Another wasted filmic opportunity.

Oh, and by the way, I've finally joined Pottermore. And I'm happy to report that I was sorted into Gryffindor House, meaning I can keep my wonderful hand-knit scarf! I don't have as much time as I wish I did to enjoy this amazing, interactive site but I'll keep plugging away.

Neville and Luna: Do we buy this movie love match?

Neville and Luna, together at last.

Do we buy it?

There's no suggestion that I can find in any of the novels that Neville and Luna are interested in each other. But in the eighth film, Neville tells the hero trio that he needs to find Luna because he's "mad about her" and wants her to know that before they all die in the battle with evil.

It seems kind of out of the blue to me. And I don't think it suits Neville's character at all.

Neville has always been a young man who has struggled to fit in, struggled to find confidence in himself, struggled to prove himself to his grandmother, to his classmates, to the world.

He's desperate to show that he is worthy of his parents, who were valued members of the Order of the Phoenix before they were tortured into madness by Bellatrix Lestrange.

So why would a boy who has for so long battled to be accepted as one of the team suddenly fall in love with a young woman who is so clearly different?

Neville's sudden expression of his love for Luna doesn't work for me in the film. I wonder why the filmmakers felt they needed to add it.

Luna's great thestral scene

With the final film now on the horizon (less than two months left to wait), I have been thinking lately of some of my favourite scenes from the movies. I don't always like what they do to J.K.'s novels when they write the scripts but they do manage to come up with some great stuff from time to time.

One scene that leaps to mind is the one in The Order of the Phoenix where Harry finds Luna Lovegood, barefoot in the forest, feeding the mysterious Thestrals. Luna tells Harry that she and her father believe him when he says that Voldemort has returned and, when he responds by saying that they might be the only ones who do believe him, Luna gives a lovely answer.

She says something like, "I guess that's how he wants you to feel. Because, if you're all alone, you're not as much of a threat". Evanna Lynch plays the scene beautifully (as she does all her scenes) and the message worms its way into Harry's brain.

It's a great scene. One of my favourites in the movies. More great scenes tomorrow.

The Art of The Half-Blood Prince

I've finally completed my reading of The Order of the Phoenix, having thoroughly enjoyed the final interaction between Harry and Dumbledore at the end. Now I'm onto The Half-Blood Prince, the book that has been broadly panned for being merely a set up for the final novel.

Problem is, I have grown to enjoy the sixth novel very much. I think it is the best written of the seven. Rowling makes it interesting without imbuing the story with the heart-stopping action of the other books.

The first two chapters of the novel send a clear message that something new is afoot. Harry Potter appears in neither of them. The first is a vivid scene told from the point of view of the Muggle Prime Minister, who is dealing with a string of disasters and a visit from the new Minister For Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour.

The second chapter involves Narcissa Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange and Severus Snape. Both are very well written but very different from each other. In the first, Rowling speaks from a particular point of view, that of the Muggle, while in the second, her narrator is much less subjectively placed, following the interactions between the three characters in an almost objective fashion.

It's writing at an exceptionally high, surprisingly adult level. It sends a message that the Harry Potter series has come of age.

The Fifth Book's the Hardest

In preparation for the release of the eighth movie this summer, I am re-reading J.K. Rowling's seven novels, in order, from start to finish. It's a ritual I began to follow when I was anxiously awaiting the release of the sixth book several years ago. Each time a new novel or movie was scheduled for release, I'd re-read the entire series to remind myself of the magnificence of J.K.'s art.

I'm now well into the fifth novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and I have to admit: I always approach this book with a lot of trepidation. I find it the toughest of the seven novels to read, by far.

Why? Because J.K. does such a fantastic job of depicting Harry's isolation and the claustrophobia of his life at Hogwarts during the Umbridge year. I actually find myself getting angry and upset reading this book, both for and at Harry. I have to remind myself over and over again that he's still a kid at this point, that it cannot be easy at all to be going through what he's facing.

I hate and love this book, both at the same time. I hate it because it is such an emotional trial to read. I love it because, well, it takes some fantastic writing to make a reader react so strongly to the story.

Thestrals Eat Owls

I've read the Harry Potter novels a number of times, I've watched each of the movies too many times to count and I've even started to construct my own Harry Potter Concordance.

So why didn't I know that thestrals eat owls?

I found this out today while reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a book I've read many times. I wonder why this fact didn't register?