The movie of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter portraits the dark sides of life and social injustices by cruel tortures and bloody rituals of the bad wizards. In Harry Potter series, the social order seems to be verified; in fact, it is violated in some way at the same time.
The protagonist Harry Potter, an orphan who is frequently abused by his relatives and lives a life as a walking dead, finally gets out of the situation by discovering his true identity as one of the special beings with magical power. This power does not come from learning nor hard working; it is “gifted.” And it is an easy explanation that those who suppressed him before are absurd and foolish because they are insensible to the world of magic.
Justice does come to Potter, and when it comes, Potter seems to be reborn into life, and there are people who love and care about him. However, the magical power does not solve Potter’s problem with his relatives, and Rowling seems to promote unrealistic escapes from this problem rather than restore the relationship back to normal, to harmony.
In series five, Order of the Phoenix, the evil force grows, and good guys gets tortured and killed. It is life. In reality bad guys always get advantage of good guys, and people do murder each other for any reasons. Luckily, there is a powerful good guy stand against the evil ones at the end, and temporary drive the bad guys away. Justice comes in and restores the social order back to normal. But this time, justice comes with a message that the bad guys will prevail, and the values the good guys suffer to withhold are questioned.
Although Harry Potter is popular among children, I think Rowling’s work is not suitable for kids because it consists of complicated social injustices and it is not easy for children to distinguish the good from the bad, in which children might be influenced more by the negative issues rather than accepting the bright side of life.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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