Deconstructing Harry Potter:

The Hidden Cultural Costs of the Most Popular Children’s Fantasy

Gregory Desilet

            The popularity of Harry Potter is nothing short of stupefying. Nielsen BookScan reports that the sixth in the series, The Half-Blood Prince (2005), was the fastest selling book ever. Many retailers reported that The Half-Blood Prince sold more copies the day of its release than The Da Vinci Code sold the entire year. Global sales reached over 10 million within the first 24 hours (Weinberg, 2005). These numbers have now been exceeded by sales figures for the last volume in the series, The Deathly Hallows. The entire series has sold over 350 million books worldwide making Rowling the first author to earn over a billion dollars in book royalties (Watson and Kellner, 2004). When adding the success of the films and DVDs to the book sales, the Potter phenomenon is truly staggering—both as a money-making and myth-making engine. Rowling now has a net worth considerably greater than the Queen of England, Elizabeth II.

            Beloved by millions, Rowling’s Potter creation has nevertheless drawn critical fire from some quarters. The criticism has come primarily from two directions, the Christian right and the scholarly left—the former disturbed about the possible promotion of magic, witchcraft, and Satanism (e.g., McGee and Matrisciana, 2001; Kuby, 2003) and the latter unhappy with what has been argued to be Rowling’s pedestrian style. Aside from being peppered with an abundance of rhetorical clichés and stereotyped characters, the scholarly left finds the Potter series to be a narrative that, while appearing to do otherwise, accomplishes little toward liberation from gender and class prejudices and traditional hierarchies of authority (e.g., Bloom, 2000; Yeo, 2004; Mendlesohn, 2004). This analysis will take a different critical approach, arguing that through the structuring of its primary dramatic conflicts Harry Potter encourages readers and viewers to adopt narrowly reductive ways of assessing and engaging conflict while also endorsing deadly violence as the necessary recourse for disposing with what has been identified as “evil” in the world. These reductive ways of structuring conflict reinforce modes of moral evaluation along traditional hierarchical lines of radical polarization between good and evil. This way of structuring and portraying conflict continues to be an unhealthy, if not deadly, predisposition in the increasingly complex climate of a postmodern global village of inclusiveness mixed with difference, division, and discord.

            Since there may be some—a handful, it would seem, based on the volume of book and ticket sales—who have not read a Potter book or viewed a Potter film, revisiting the events that drive the core narrative of the series may prove helpful for purposes of reader orientation and for directing attention toward points crucial to this inquiry.

By the fourth chapter of the first book of the Harry Potter series, The Sorcerer’s Stone (1997), the plot thickens. Expelled in his third year from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and now its Gamekeeper and errand boy, Hagrid—half man, half giant—appears at Harry’s doorstep to inform him that he is accepted into the famous School of Wizardry. This is unexpected news for Harry, but Hagrid quickly moves from the surprising to the shocking.  He informs Harry that his parents, Lily and James, did not die in a car accident when Harry was an infant, as told to him by his Aunt and Uncle Dursley. Rather, Hagrid’s tale begins with a mysterious wizard whose name he hesitates to say. But as Harry presses him, he risks pronouncing it:

“All right—Voldemort.” Hagrid shuddered. “Don’t make me say it again. Anyway, this—this wizard, about twenty years ago, started lookin’ for followers. Got ‘em, too—some were afraid, some just wanted a bit o’ his power, ‘cause he was gettin’ himself power, all right. Dark days, Harry . . . . He was takin’ over. Course, some stood up to him—an’ he killed ‘em. Horribly.... (pp. 54-55)

With these few words, Hagrid establishes Voldemort’s credentials as a power-crazed, cold-blooded murderer. To little surprise on the part of the reader, Hagrid then draws a stark contrast:

Now, yer mum an’ dad were as good a witch an’ wizard as I ever knew. Head boy an’ girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose the myst’ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get ‘em on his side before . . . probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore [Hogwarts Headmaster] ter want anythin’ ter do with the Dark Side. Maybe he thought he could persuade ‘em . . . maybe he just wanted ‘em outta the way. All anyone knows is, he turned up in the village where you was all living, on Halloween ten years ago. You was just a year old. He came ter yer house an’—an’—You-Know-Who killed ‘em. (p. 55)

With this ugly fact, Hagrid draws the lines of conflict—“as good a witch an’ wizard” as Hagrid has ever known on one side and Lord Voldemort, a power hungry, ruthless murderer on the “Dark Side.”  Stark division turning on a death struggle between moral poles of good and evil is the chief characteristic of the exclusionary dualism of violent, radical melodrama. But this conflict then gets even closer to home for Harry. Hagrid continues:

An’ then—an’ this is the real myst’ry of the thing—he tried to kill you, too. Wanted to make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin’ by then. But he couldn’t do it . . . . No one ever lived after he decided ter kill ‘em, no one except you, an’ he’d killed some o’ the best witches an’ wizards of the age . . . an’ you was only a baby, an’ you lived. (pp. 55-56)

Given this turn in the story, Harry—quite understandably—presses Hagrid for the current whereabouts of Voldemort. Hagrid gives Harry more bad news:

Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die . . . . Most of us reckon he’s still out there somewhere but lost his powers. Too weak to carry on. ‘Cause somethin’ about you finished him, Harry. There was somethin’ goin’ on that night he hadn’t counted on—I dunno what it was, no one does—but somethin’ about you stumped him, all right. (p. 57)

Murdered parents, a half-human wizard assassin at large, and Harry his primary target! Perhaps as dark, violent, and ominous a beginning for a book designed as “children’s literature” as one could hope to find. And yet even adolescents and adults are eating it up like carnival candy. When repeated endlessly in various retellings and media formats, the formative cultural influence of this series should not be underestimated. The potential effects of “children’s literature” may extend well beyond childhood. Speaking of C. S. Lewis’ work, one commentator on children’s literature, Dan McVeigh, notes that for Lewis “no literature was worth reading as a child that was not just as worth reading at age fifty. Surely the ultimate appeal of children's literature . . . is that it addresses the fundamental questions of the child gazing up, like Dante, at the stars. Who am I? Why am I? Where am I going? In what story line do I live?” (p. 8).

            Many adults will claim, along with Lewis, that their childhood literature is in some sense still worth reading and has had a seminal influence in shaping character, ambitions, and the particular quality of life they strive to lead. To the extent this assessment of childhood literature is true, it behooves every adult to constantly re-examine the literature presented to children and adolescents. This point will be touched upon again at the conclusion, but now, given the amazing success of the Harry Potter series, one question in particular looms large: Why do these stories resonate in such a popular way for a broad spectrum of the public?

Why the Popular Appeal?
           

            Obviously, the exceptional appeal of the series has not been significantly diminished by its dark and violent themes. As the series has progressed, most agree it has gotten darker with each book. Indeed, if some fans are to be believed, this darkening of the content only increases the appeal. As one middle-schooler from Alexandria, Minnesota confirms, "I do think they have gotten darker. I think it has made the books marvelous! That's what a lot of people like to read about—kind of suspenseful and scary at the same time. I think it has had a great effect on the books and I hope they keep getting darker as the series goes on." (Hard, 2005)

            That wish has come true in the six books that have now followed the first. No abatement of this trend was forthcoming in book seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Especially with the third film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, many parents began concluding that the series had gotten too dark for young children. This film introduced audiences to the graphically depicted, ghostly, soul-sucking “dementors.” One parent, Colleen Kersting of Wauconda, Illinois, remarked, "When my family went, it was surprising to see how many parents brought 6-, 7- or 8-year-olds, and I was thinking, 'That's not the age group that this is for.' One child screamed out in the theater and had to leave. I think parents were shocked at how violent and scary the movies have gotten." (Hard, 2005)

            The violent and scary trend worsened with the next film, The Goblet of Fire, which was the first in the series to receive a 12A British rating—closing it to those under 12. In America the rating went to PG13. Readers of the books might argue that the directors of the films may have taken too many liberties in the depiction of frightening and violent scenes were it not for the fact that the films closely follow the books. Rowling has had unprecedented control over the content of the scripts. She assisted screenwriter Steve Kloves in writing the first four films. If she felt the depictions in certain scenes were too dark and violent and excessively beyond what she had intended in the books, she could easily have insisted on changes. (CBBC, 2003)

            Although The New York Times officially lists the series as “children’s literature,” the fact that each book follows a year of Harry’s life from age 11 to 18, suggests the Potter books more suitably belong in the category of “adolescent literature.” And, as adolescent literature, the books fall within the primary boundaries of a specific genre. The middle-schooler quoted above finds the violent and “scary” side of Harry Potter to be a seductive attraction—and is doubtless not alone in this response. Given the role of witches, wizards, and magic in Harry Potter, the series has generally been regarded as a species of the fantasy genre. Yet a sufficient number of beasts, monsters, ghosts, werewolves, the undead, and assorted hybrid demons populate the pages and are marshaled together in a symphony of life-threatening, death-dealing ferment to qualify the series as at least a close relative of classic horror.

            Initially, the association of Harry Potter with the horror genre may seem extreme because so much recent horror, such as the “torture porn” of films like Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005), contains graphic violence of a different order and intensity. Nevertheless, as will be discussed more thoroughly, Harry Potter conforms to many defining features of horror with its portrayal of conflict and its depiction of the monstrous in the character of Voldemort.

            Regarding the issue of popularity, the horror story has had consistent appeal within the adolescent age group—a group that has been the primary audience of horror films since the emergence of popular horror cinema in the 20^th century. The attractions of horror cater to adolescent fascination with themes of sex and violence—a fascination that may be more easily understood in light of the crisis initiated by the onset of puberty.

            Coming of age sexually launches a child into adolescence and does so by inserting a disturbing loss of control into the relatively secure bubble of autonomy enjoyed by the pre-pubertal self. The innocent and complacent child-body suddenly experiences visible changes in the direction of “animality”—the deepening of the voice (for males), the appearance of hair in strange places, the gaining of weight and strength—all coinciding with the onset of completely new motives over which the self seems to have little control. That sexuality becomes aligned in many cultural communities with a “fall from innocence” and with the notion of an alien intrusion that enters and takes possession of the body is not surprising given the nature of the sudden emergence of the pubertal metamorphosis and associated alteration of desires. This alien disturbance easily takes on the identity of “malevolent’ agency by usurping formerly intact pretenses of self-control and by introducing new temptations toward possessiveness, indulgence, and other-control.

            Due to the invasive way in which budding sexuality asserts itself, the intrusion quite naturally appears to the prior structure of self-awareness as corruption and pollution—a defilement of what appeared to be an innocent and pure host. The alien presence alongside a prior, more autonomous self may even assume the veil of a death-dealing agency by association with the inauguration of the death of innocence. As a result of this crisis, an autonomous and innocent self divides into two factions in conflict with each other whereby one side emerges as not only defiant but defiling. This experience of identity conflict within the adolescent psyche accounts for a large part of the attraction of horror where the crisis between sexually conflicted parts of the self manifests as conflict between hero and Doppelgänger, a monstrous version of the self. (1) Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains the classic example of this conflict. Every sort of monster in the adolescent horror story may be seen to have its origin in this crisis of puberty involving a weaving of themes of the monstrous and the innocent, death and sex, murder and gender. (2) 

            Themes of death and sex are irresistible to teenagers because these lie at the heart of a secret store of knowledge that must be wrested from the adult community—usually piecemeal and with cunning perseverance. How and why people come into the world and how and why they leave it are subjects many parents never directly discuss with their kids. Consequently, like pieces of a grand jigsaw puzzle, information filters in from various sources outside the family.  The seductions of this forbidden knowledge form the basis of the attractions of secret societies, initiation rituals, and cult (and occult) knowledge (c.f., Postman, 1982). While Rowling’s direct treatment of the subject of budding sexuality and adolescent romance is rather thin and sometimes clumsy (but perhaps more resonant to a number of anxious adolescents for that), her engagement with themes of death, murder, torture, and related violence is considerably more passionate and detailed.  Consequently, her books raise questions regarding the attractions and effects of such violence in relation to consumers in ways similar to questions raised by the horror genre.

            Sexual maturity brings with it a self in radical conflict over which readily descends the conflict model of defilement—of malevolent alien agency menacing an innocent host. These factions lock in deadly combat contending for possession of the soul, the essence of the self, and amplify the conflict into the severity of warfare. Once in place, the specific psychic configuration and understanding of this conflict easily acquires the role of template in governing personal confrontation with all conflict. Only a short distance separates this organization of the inner pubertal crisis and repressed themes of sexuality, death, and corruption from projection onto the world and its conflicts of all the creatures of the id haunting the many horror stories that have accumulated through centuries of story-telling. (3)

Conflict modeled on the concept of evil as pollution or defilement raises specific concerns. Given the extreme nature of evil as contamination, the battle between good and evil polarizes to the point where negotiation and compromise become impossible. The impurity of evil as a contaminating alien agency must be thoroughly and permanently destroyed. Nothing short of destruction can be tolerated because the survival of even a small amount of contamination will continue to threaten and pollute the whole. The predicament of pollution combined with the necessity for wholesale destruction of the threatening impurity drives every version of classic horror where—once identified—the monstrous must be targeted and destroyed. Even where the monster may be cast in a somewhat sympathetic light—as in versions of the Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolfman stories—that which defiles, that which makes the monster monstrous, emerges as unambiguously evil. The termination of this evil usually requires destruction of the monster as something too contaminated and dangerous to redeem. (4) In current American culture the most popular form of this story remains the saga of blood defilement in the vampire tale—a tale dressed up in postmodern hip in popular television shows such as Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Angel and in the highly successful Anne Rice series of vampire chronicles. 

            The Harry Potter series resembles the vampire story in that the monstrous Voldemort achieves (or attempts to achieve) his immortality and power through the bodies of other humans. He lives at the expense of the life blood of others. Whether he is evil itself or merely another tool of the cosmic force of evil is unimportant to the overall structure of the conflict—a structure conforming to the highly polarized, take-no-prisoners, template of good and evil. At every appropriate opportunity Rowling makes clear that Voldemort is evil:  someone (or something) that must be destroyed—and Harry is humanity’s best bet for this task.

Similarities with Lord of the Rings

            But not everyone is convinced of the radically divided, morally polarized conflict in Harry Potter. Because it presents similar story structure and character types, Harry Potter has been justifiably compared to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. However, at least one analyst argues that this comparison is faulty. Steve Bonta, a writer for the conservative publication The New American, claims, for example, that “Potter and LOTR [Lord of the Rings] are often compared on the basis of their supposedly common theme, the struggle between good and evil. But here, too, the two series bear only surface resemblances. For while in LOTR the line dividing good and evil is always clear and well-defined, it is muddled—deliberately, one senses—in Harry Potter” (2002, p. 1; see also Bonta, 2000). 

            As evidence of this “muddling” of the line between good and evil Bonta points to the fact that “none of Harry's teachers, except perhaps the unflappable Dumbledore, can be fully trusted. Almost without exception, the villains turn out to be people we thought were on Harry's side and, conversely, many of the more menacing characters, like Harry's teacher Severus Snape, are in fact ‘good guys,’ after a fashion” (p. 2).

            In Tolkien's work, however, villains and heroes are always well-defined. Bonta asserts that “even those who switch sides are never ambiguous, like traitors Saruman and Wormtongue, or the pitiable Boromir, who is overcome by the temptation of the ring before sacrificing his life in a redemptive act. The treachery of Saruman is clearly signaled early in the story, while the temptation of Boromir is foreshadowed by his proud and suspicious demeanor” (p. 2). These differences force Bonta to conclude: “Such factors cause the overall mood of the two stories to differ sharply. Tolkien is by turns soaring, whimsical and gloomy, but always enlightening, never trivial. Rowling, despite a measure of whimsy, is almost unremittingly grim, brooding, and morally ambiguous” (p. 2).

            But Bonta’s distinction between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings is at best hair-splitting. While Rowling loves to keep readers guessing about the ultimate loyalties of certain characters, the line between good and evil in her novels is not thereby compromised or rendered ambiguous. Rather, this apparent ambiguity points out the deceitful and cunning nature of evil and its ability to invade the soul of a person and potentially twist it toward evil ends in such a way as to conceal itself, at least for a time, from the eyes of others. In Lord of the Rings, for example, Gollum takes on this ambiguous role whereby readers, as well as Frodo, remain uncertain about his desire to be “helpful.” In Harry Potter, Severus Snape, as Bonta mentions, is an ambiguous character whose ultimate loyalty in the battle between good and evil appeared to be resolved in The Half-Blood Prince—but Rowling’s penchant for sudden twists insured that a final decision on Snape’s character and loyalties remained for the last book of the series. Nevertheless, any difficulty in placing Snape’s loyalties in the early books does not reflect a deeper moral ambiguity in the forces vying for control in Harry Potter. Despite Bonta’s claims, Harry Potter presents no doubt that the “dark side” embodied in the character of Voldemort and cohorts is as unremittingly evil as Sauron and represents an impurity worthy of complete destruction.

            In contradiction to Bonta’s views, John Killinger (2002) validates Voldemort’s role in establishing radical moral division in Harry Potter. He also confirms Voldemort’s credentials as a monster in the classic tradition of radically polarized evil, a supernatural being of a defiling nature transcending merely human wickedness. Killinger remarks, “It is as if he [Voldemort] is a condition or a disease rather than a real person. He is a negative value corrupting the world” (p. 41). Killinger also clearly identifies Voldemort with an evil comparable to the vampire tradition of creatures that live off the blood of others: “Evil [referring to Voldemort] regains its strength by feeding on all that is good and holy. Voldemort restores himself by drinking the blood of Christ” (p. 56). This is a reference to Voldemort drinking the blood of a unicorn—an especially sacred symbol of Christ—in The Sorcerer’s Stone (p. 256). Also, near the end of the same book, Dumbledore informs Harry in no uncertain terms that Voldemort is a being beyond the merely human when he says of him that, “He is still out there somewhere, perhaps looking for another body to share... not being truly alive, he cannot be killed” (p. 298).

            Bonta’s separation of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings on the basis of a difference in the clarity of the conflict between good and evil turns out to be an opinion not widely shared. Several others who have authored books on Harry Potter generally concur with Killinger (see, for example, Neal, 2002; Kern, 2003; Granger, 2006; Dickerson and O’Hara, 2006). In a television interview given in 2006, even Rowling, referring to her series and especially the last book, states, “We are dealing with pure evil here” (Pauli, 2006). Given a similarity in the treatment of good and evil in these epic stories, many commentators also see both Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings aligning closely with Christian theology and cosmology.

A Christian Melodrama?

            The Potter story, although not yet finished, contains clear parallels with the story of Christ. Both epics offer 1) sharp moral lines between good and evil, 2) an innocent hero who is nearly killed at birth by a villain because of a prophecy that the child will grow to threaten his power (the story of King Herod and the escape to Egypt; Matthew 2:13-18) , and 3) the ongoing self-sacrifice of the hero for the greater salvation of human community resulting eventually in his death (or potential death in the case of Potter) in sacrifice for the good of that community.

            Indeed, the model of conflict in Harry Potter, that of innocence defiled by villainy, may be seen as a symbolic piece of a larger conflict on the scale of the entire cosmos and all of creation. An example of this cosmic model is evident in the Book of Genesis where the story of Adam and Eve contains many themes also belonging to what in later centuries may be identified as the horror story. The story of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent—with allusions to the “fall from innocence” in pubertal transformation and knowledge of sexuality—becomes the story of the knowledge of Good and Evil and the division of all of creation into a battle between the Pure and the Impure. (5) With the long tradition of association of the serpent with evil and Satan, Rowling does not by accident assign to Voldemort the symbol of the serpent (or, more accurately, the skull with a serpent coming out of the mouth).  

            Similarities between events and beliefs in the Harry Potter novels and Christian views, to which can be added many further parallels, have nevertheless been overlooked or swept aside by a segment of Christian believers who find the Potter series to be advocating varieties of Satanism in its celebration of magic and sorcery. In the United States this view has been passionately advanced by the Baptist minister Patrick Matrisciana and his wife Caryl—founders of the fundamentalist Christian group Citizens for Honest Government and co-owners of the media company Jeremiah Films. In 2001, Caryl co-hosted with Robert S. McGee in a Jeremiah Films production entitled Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged—Making Evil Look Innocent. In Europe, Gabriele Kuby (2003) led the Christian denunciation of Rowling’s work with her book Harry Potter—Good or Evil? Even Pope Benedict the XVI, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, issued a statement in praise of Kuby and her indictment of the Potter series stating that, “It is good that you are throwing light on Harry Potter, because these are subtle seductions that work imperceptibly, and because of that deeply, and erode Christianity in the soul before it can even grow properly” (Hard, 2005). (6) 

            But in his lengthy study entitled “Is Harry Potter Christian?” Dan McVeigh, an English professor at the Catholic Siena Heights University in Michigan, argues persuasively that the Pope and those on the Christian right have gotten it wrong. After laying out his evidence, McVeigh (2002) concludes, “It seems obvious, then, that Rowling writes in a Christian tradition” (p. 7). (7) Identifying the confrontation between good and evil as a central characteristic of this tradition, McVeigh indicates why he believes the stark confrontation between good and evil does not and will not dissolve into something more ambiguous, less Christian, in Harry Potter: 

A Christian cannot believe that the devil can ultimately be victorious, or misunderstood by God. Satan cannot defeat Christ. But until the end of our pilgrimage, he can defeat us. This is the possibility Harry faces. The series' growing darkness disturbs some readers. But by its nature Gethsemane comes near the end, and the apostles' flight. Yet this "end" turns out to be an illusion, a beginning whose reality was clouded all the time by the black magic of evil . . . . Specifically, it would take an almost inconceivable turn of plot to recast Voldemort into either conqueror or victim [of evil]. That which is Full of Death will not win in this story. (p. 8)

In line with this thought, McVeigh also concludes that Rowling’s “fictional magic is nightmarishly black, in traditional Grimm brothers' hue. Any parent may read one of the books and not like it or feel it could harm her child. Who knows? She may even be right” (p. 7).

            This last admission is an honest if not disturbing one and pertains not only to the Grimm Brothers’ stories. (8) Although possibly not McVeigh’s intent, this admission draws into question core aspects of the Christian tradition itself insofar as that tradition incorporates the metaphysical and cosmological dualism of good versus evil and corresponding notions of the whole and the pure versus the alien and the impure.

            Rigidly structured conflict between irreconcilable essences of Good and Evil is often characterized as Manichean dualism, after the Babylonian priest Mani who founded a radical religious sect in the 3^rd century CE. Radical cosmic dualism, implicit in many places in the Bible, spread to certain strains of the Gnostic tradition and eventually to many varieties of Christian tradition.      

            Though the Bible and the other sacred texts of the Abrahamic tradition can be interpreted in multiple ways, many passages in these texts excite and stimulate a radical Manichean separation of good and evil, God and Satan. The drawbacks of this way of understanding fundamental conflicts can be most immediately appreciated by returning to the example of sexuality. Exceptional psychological training is not required to figure out that the model of conflict offered in the dichotomy of good versus evil does not present a healthy model for understanding the crisis of self-division initiated by puberty and sexual desires. One part of the self is not monstrous or evil in relation to a part that was formerly whole and innocent. While it may be debated whether this model of radical polarity derives primarily from a wrongful understanding of sexuality and its temptations or more essentially from broader more abstract notions of the pure versus the impure, the resulting model is the same. The logic of opposition conveyed by such radical moral polarity leaves human community with a highly destructive, inflammatory, intractable, violent, and non-negotiable orientation toward conflict that may, when left unquestioned and unaccompanied by alternatives, extend itself easily to any intense conflict.

            Violence presented in the context of radically polarized morally weighted conflict results in a massive “liberation” of restraints and a celebration of the destruction of villainous forces. This sense of “liberation” often finds expression among proponents of violent fiction as a beneficial “catharsis” for consumers. But this is largely false liberation. Emotional catharsis remains weak, superficial, and thereby incomplete unless accompanied by overt physical enactment. The best illustration of this principle of catharsis derives from comparison to the sexual act whereby mere sexual arousal fails to provide adequate catharsis in itself. (9) Even when understood as stimulating a weaker “cognitive” (or fantasy) simulation of cathartic release, violent melodramatic conflict offers dubious therapeutic benefit. This simulation provides inducement to active imitation of the conflict model—an imitation that results in the gross reductionism of demonization of opponents and the subsequent violent disposal of them through death-dealing action in celebratory fashion. In psychological terms of projection, this model presents a classic formula for violent scapegoating. This formula becomes especially dangerous when the criteria for identifying “evil” are hastily applied under the pressure of strong emotional currents.

            Readers and viewers of the Harry Potter novels and films may more easily understand and appreciate the larger problems inherent in the melodramatic structuring of conflict into poles of good and evil when contrasting this series with alternative, more engaging dramatic structures. For example, instead of contrasting Harry Potter, wrongly it would seem, with the saga of Lord of the Rings, a more illuminating disparity surfaces in contrast with a reflexive melodrama such as Lord of the Flies.

Contrasts with Lord of the Flies

            First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is a story about a group of English boys who find themselves as castaways on a deserted tropical island. Set at the onset of a world war of the future, the story begins with an impending catastrophic battle prior to which many children are removed from England—presumably to place them beyond harm’s reach in a war-free corner of the world. On the way to this unnamed destination the plane in which the boys are transported crashes in the sea near an island, killing the adult crew. Only the boys survive and make their way to the beach. 

            From this point, the story describes what happens when the boys are left to their own devices in the absence of adults. The main characters, Ralph, Piggy, and Jack are about twelve years old and the remaining boys, numbering around two dozen, are of younger ages ranging down to perhaps seven or eight. As the story progresses, conflict arises between the “choir boys” led by Jack and the remaining boys led by Ralph and an overweight boy nicknamed Piggy.  Jack’s group become “hunters,” stress the importance of getting meat, and begin tracking wild pigs. Ralph and Piggy stress the importance of building shelters and keeping a fire as a means of signaling for rescue. The tension between these factions increases when two of the boys imagine they see a “beastie” in the forest and run in fear to warn the others. 

            Later, when gathered at a group meeting, another boy claims there is a beast that comes out of the sea. Someone else suggests the beast may be a ghost. As fear sets in, a boy named Simon gains the courage to speak and in faltering words slowly suggests, “Maybe if there is a beast . . . . What I mean is. . . maybe it’s only us” (p. 82). Despite Simon’s words the boys remain unsure about what to think about the existence of a beast. Following this meeting, Jack and his hunters break from Ralph’s leadership and run off from the group. As the boys begin to fully believe in the existence of the beast, what remains of order in the group rapidly disintegrates.

            Jack’s hunters continue hunting for meat and eventually kill a sow deep in the forest.  They cut the head off and place it on a stick “sharpened at both ends” with one end planted in the ground and the other crowned with the impaled head of the pig. Having created this totem, Jack consecrates it as an offering to the “beastie.” 

            Searching for answers about the beast, Simon confronts his fears and, walking alone in the forest, comes upon the pig’s head atop the stick. Staring at the head as flies buzz around it, he has a dreamlike hallucination in which the pig “speaks” to him, warning him that there is no escape. He then faints and collapses. Awakening later, he wanders up the hill on the island. His thought that the beast is not a real creature is confirmed when he discovers the body of a dead pilot who has parachuted from a plane and realizes that it must be what the other boys thought was the “beastie.” When he returns in the night to tell the others, he finds them wildly chanting and dancing around a campfire. In the darkness, with their fears, they mistake him for the beast and kill him before realizing what they are doing. Even Ralph and Piggy, who had joined Jack’s hunting party on the beach to share in feasting on the pig, are swept up in the frenzied assault on Simon. The next morning Ralph and Piggy, terrified of what they have all done, go to confront Jack and the hunters in an attempt to mend their differences and restore order.

An argument between Ralph and Jack breaks into a fight. As scuffling ensues, one of Jack’s hunters topples a boulder from an overhanging cliff killing Piggy. Ralph realizes that if he does not run they will kill him too. Now identified with the dark force of the “beast,” he becomes the hunted.  He flees into the forest while the others track him. Dawn breaks as the hunters close in. They start a fire to smoke him out of a thicket where he is hiding. Weak from hunger and exhaustion, Ralph scrambles on hands and knees across the beach. As he crawls, looking backwards, he suddenly finds himself at the feet of a British naval officer. 

            The boys have been discovered and rescue is at hand. Ironically, the sailors were drawn to the island by the smoke from the fire set to trap Ralph. The hunters are stunned and stop in their tracks. As Ralph stares into the face of the officer, he begins to cry. The story concludes with the two groups puzzling over each other in wordless silence.   

            Ralph’s tears can be interpreted in several ways. They could be tears of joy at being rescued. They could be tears of shame for the boys’ savage appearance and actions. Or they could be the result of a combination of joy, shame, and shock. They could also be tears of grief and fear in recognizing that the adult world, with its warfare, offers little hope for a life essentially different from what Ralph faces on the island.  

            This story weaves its plot around the melodramatic structure of good and evil but does so by directing exceptional attention to that structure in a reflexive way, exposing the sense in which the notion of evil itself must be drawn into question. The plot revolves not around evil but instead the concept of evil. Simon suspects that evil, as the beast, may be a fiction that the boys themselves are inventing. His suspicions are further confirmed when he discovers the dead paratrooper. But so long as the other boys believe in the beast and its evil, so long as they hold to this fiction, then the framework of that belief shifts to every conflict on the island to the point that small differences magnify to deadly violence. There are no monsters. There is only the belief in monsters and this belief creates real and deadly actions in response to what are in fact only fictions. Unfortunately, these fictions get superimposed over real persons. 

            Lord of the Flies suggests that in every real life conflict characterizing opponents as the “other” of monstrous evil creates a dangerous fiction. Simon, as he is being slain, could well have uttered Christ’s last words: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  However, what has become lost in the Christian tradition, if in fact it was ever there, is the notion that evil is a fiction. Instead, the Christian tradition has played an essential role in establishing and perpetuating the belief that evil, as a kind of alien agency penetrating even to the level of nature and the cosmic fabric, is indeed real and works its black magic in the world by asserting its force through human souls.

            Although the effects of “evil” as a real agency and force in the world may be difficult to distinguish from the effects of a “belief in evil,” with respect to understanding the problem of evil and confronting its potential effects in human community this difference is crucial. This difference is as large as that between obstacles and the way one thinks about obstacles.

            Of course, none of this should be taken to imply that people do not do terrible things to each other. Nor should this imply that those who do terrible things should not be opposed and stopped—with force, if necessary. Rather, an imperative need emerges to understand that radically conceptualizing opponents as evil “others” worthy of destruction is not conducive to individual or collective health. No one, no thing, is purely evil and no conflict can be productively structured around the notion of radical evil—as that which is essentially defiled and corrupt. Structuring conflict around radical poles of good and evil creates a formula for cycles of excessive pain, death-dealing, and disaster. (10)      

            Returning to Harry Potter, unless Rowling has extraordinary surprises up her sleeve for the last volume, Voldemort clearly is real evil (or the agent of real evil). Therefore, he must be really destroyed—not merely because he is trying to kill Harry but because he is, as evil, thoroughly worthy of destruction. And this is no happenstance. Rowling has deliberately designed Voldemort to be worthy of annihilation. But this design in characterization and dramatic structure makes the violence in Harry Potter unilluminating and gratuitous. The destruction of Voldemort or his cohorts triggers celebration of violence in the defeat of evil. And, when heroic figures such as Cedric Diggory are victimized (in The Goblet of Fire), the violence leads to inflamed pity, righteous indignation, and the desire for vengeance. None of these emotions, in the midst of conflict, build healthy community. On the contrary, there is a great need to provide a different awareness about conflict and a need to promote a different set of emotions in response to conflict and deadly violence. In the realm of fiction, in other words, there is a need for telling a different story. 

            To gain a sense of this different awareness about conflict, imagine again the thoughts and emotions experienced by Ralph at the conclusion of Lord of the Flies. There is considerable violence in Lord of the Flies, but the violence occurs within a context whereby its tragic dimensions can be fully appreciated, promoting a level of psychic metanoia accompanied by shock or grief rather than celebration. This context arouses a profound sense of the descent into violence as a direct result of unnecessary fictions and misunderstandings that authorize it.

            Nothing like this broad sense of the tragic quality of violence in relation to the primary conflict results from a reading of the Harry Potter novels. Instead, readers, as well as viewers of the films, acquire a strong sense of polluting evil and the need for vengeful cleansing. In a world full of differences and the potential for violence, models of conflict that primarily train and condition reflexes of revenge and associated complementary emotions—such as outraged pity—are of little value to individuals or communities.

What About Love?

            Granting that the argument thus far may make points worth considering, the objection may nevertheless be raised that Harry Potter is not fundamentally about evil and the destruction of evil. Instead, an opposing case may be made that the stories display the overriding importance of love. After all, Rowling, through the character of Dumbledore, makes the point on numerous occasions that Harry is different from Voldemort, not only because he is loved greatly by the mother who sacrifices her life for him, but also because he is, unlike Voldemort, capable of love. Surely, this message overrides other concerns about violence and evil in these novels.

            However, the power of love and its portrayal in the novels appears problematic from the first book forward. Readers learn from Dumbledore in The Sorcerer’s Stone that Harry could not be harmed by Professor Quirrell/Voldemort because, “if there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark . . . .To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever” (p. 299). The power of a mother’s love protects Harry, but, as it turns out, this love is not merely protective. Dumbledore continues, “Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good” (p. 299). 

            Indeed, it was more than agony. In the film version, audiences see Quirrell attack Harry. When Harry resists and begins to pull Quirrell’s arm away from him, the mere touch of Harry’s hand draws shrieks of pain from Quirrell. Then Quirrell watches in horror as his hand and arm turn to ash and drop to the floor. Sensing his power, Harry attacks. After placing his hands on Quirrell’s head, his face also crumbles and turns to ash. In seconds Quirrell’s entire body disintegrates and collapses to the floor. The power of Harry’s love, turned into a weapon, kills Quirrell in an agonizing death. (11) 

            A later book specifically states that Harry’s capacity to love gives him the power to kill Voldemort as well. By the fifth book of the series readers learn that Harry is condemned to use the one thing that may give him supremacy over Voldemort. Sibyll Trelawney’s prophecy, revealed in Chapter 37 of The Order of the Phoenix, explains Voldemort’s motive for wanting to kill the infant Harry. Hearing only part of the prophecy, Voldemort learned that Harry will be the only one “with the power to vanquish him” (p. 841). He had not heard the part of the prophecy stating that his nemesis would have a “power the Dark Lord knows not”—a power that would mark him as at least Voldemort’s “equal” (p. 841).  This power, of course, is the power of love. Sibyll’s prophecy goes on to reveal that Potter and Voldemort are locked in a zero-sum conflict: “either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives” (p. 841). The two represent a struggle between love and hate, good and evil, in an irreconcilable, antagonistic, mutually exclusive battle to the death. But here any message of love is overwhelmed by the imperative for warfare.   

            This theme of deadly warfare, rather than competition, reflects the melodramatic structure of good versus evil at the core of the entire series. Despite Rowling’s insistence on the crucial importance of love in the quality of Harry’s character and in his family, no trace of the notion of “love” as in “love thy enemy” crosses Harry’s mind when he thinks of Voldemort. Nor is there any attempt on Harry’s part to understand who Voldemort is in the sense of how and why he became the evil that he is—aside from the tactical task of gathering information that might prove useful in destroying him. Even in this chore Dumbledore admits there is not much to be found: “If it was difficult to find evidence about the boy Riddle, it has been almost impossible to find anyone prepared to reminisce about the man Voldemort. In fact, I doubt whether there is a soul alive, apart from himself, who could give us a full account of his life since he left Hogwarts” (The Half-Blood Prince, p. 430). Merely understanding that Voldemort is evil and what his powers and weaknesses are, to the extent that is possible, not only seems sufficient but remains the prime directive. Given the way conflict is structured in the series this is not surprising. The kind of story Rowling has chosen to tell requires that Voldemort function as a cardboard symbol of evil—worthy in every way of extermination—rather than a character with a complex history and set of motives. For the dramatic effects of this story Voldemort must not be a person with whom readers can form significant points of identification.

            Throughout the series, Harry’s growing fear, anger, and hatred toward Voldemort, combined with his desire for revenge for the death of his parents, consume him to the point that genuine love never emerges as the dominant or guiding impulse in his behavior. Excepting the contempt for Voldemort, and, on occasion, lesser figures such as Malfoy (for example, the mud-slinging assault in book 3—pp. 280-281) and Dudley (for example, the taunting at the beginning of book 5—p. 13]), and a few others, Harry manages respect and dutifulness touched with paranoia toward most——but not love. (12) 

            A similar aura of brooding resignation, dutifulness, and battle-weary paranoia also characterizes the main protagonist, Frodo, in Lord of the Rings. Emotions of hatred and revenge are precisely what begin to dominate the psyche when conflict centers around an opponent conceived of as “evil.” Within the dramatic structure of conflict she has chosen, Rowling would have great difficulty portraying Harry with a genuinely loving countenance. Nevertheless, readers are constantly reminded that Harry’s ability to love, in contrast to Voldemort’s inability, is his saving grace. This disparity between what is said about Harry and what he primarily manifests in behavior creates a cognitive dissonance within readers that lends more than a hint of artificiality and empty moralizing to the narrative and its touting of love. Whether Harry’s emotional development will grow beyond this limited spectrum in the final book of the series remains to be seen. But this possibility is not likely given the constraints of the structuring of conflict Rowling has chosen.

Healthy Competition?

            Aside from the theme of love, a claim has been made for the healthy and exemplary quality of another element in the Potter stories. Speaking of the heroic, fantasy/Romantic tradition of children’s literature, within which he includes the Potter series, McVeigh points out that in “the young readers' line at least one must call it a thoroughly ‘moral’ genre, with its attacks on snobbery, phoniness, and bullying, and its celebration of the character building provided by sports” (p. 3). However, a closer examination of the “character building” provided by sports in Harry Potter draws into question the quality of competition Rowling constructs. Her portrayal of sport mirrors the larger good versus evil conflict and serves to expose further the illusory role of love as central in the series. 

            Sporting competition can indeed build character and in the Potter series the sport is Quidditch. However, beginning with the first novel, Rowling immediately transforms the game from the cooperative competition of sport to the deadly, rule-bashing, conflict of warfare. This transformation of sport into warfare occurs with increasing ferocity with each book. 

            In the first book, for example, Harry’s Nimbus Two Thousand broomstick falls under the control of “powerful Dark magic” (p. 190) as he plays Seeker during the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin. The evil spell controlling his broom appears to Hermione to be the work of Professor Snape (though readers later learn through a twist of plot that this was the work of Professor Quirrell). The spell is an attack on Harry that readers are led to believe is an attempt to kill him. Hermione makes this clear in her retort to the skeptical Hagrid: “So why did he [Snape] just try to kill Harry?” (p. 192). This deadly threat to Harry during the heat of the contest changes the stakes of the Quidditch game from sport to warfare.

            Apparently believing that sporting competition cannot be sufficiently packed with thrills without the stakes being life and death, Rowling again changes Quidditch into a deadly battle in the second book. Here the competition ratchets upward into a life-threatening chase when a “rogue Bludger” pursues Harry. Judging from the destruction of everything in its path, the Bludger clearly has the power to kill Harry as one of his teammates warns him, “It’ll take your head off” (p. 170). Rather than stop the game and risk forfeiting to Slytherin, Harry continues in the effort to “get the Snitch or die trying” (p. 170). Harry secures the Snitch but receives a broken arm from the Bludger in the process and barely escapes with his life.

            In the third novel, a Quidditch game between Gryffindor and Slytherin takes no deadly twists but nevertheless descends into something darker than sport. The game rapidly deteriorates into chaos when Gryffindor takes an early lead and fouls begin to accumulate on each side. The reader learns this game was “turning into the dirtiest game Harry had ever played in.” The Slytherins were “resorting to any means to take the Quaffle” (p. 309). Rage wells forth from each team amidst taunts such as “YOU CHEATING SCUM” and “YOU FILTHY, CHEATING B—” (p. 310). With a liberal dash of swearing, fouls, and outright rule-breaking this match disintegrates into a poor example of the kind of competitive sport that “builds character.” All this could perhaps, with a charitable interpretation, be taken as a slapstick interlude and a comedic breakdown of order if it were not for the nastiness of tone Rowling establishes throughout the books between Potter and Malfoy and between Gryffindor and Slytherin (apparent in this and previous games). 

            In the fourth book, Rowling stages the Quidditch World Cup (Chapter Eight) followed by the appearance of the “Dark Mark”—the sign of Voldemort (Chapter Nine). These two chapters are conflated in the fourth film where, following the opening ceremonies and prior to the commencement of the games, an army of flame-throwing Death Eaters ravages the camp of participants. These marauders kill several people as they try to escape, nearly kill Harry, and leave the camp and the World Cup in a torched ruin. In the book version, several members of the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, including Mr. Diggory and Mr. Weasley, interrupt the Death Eaters before they are able to kill any Muggles. But the book makes clear the intent of the Death Eaters and the perverse inversion of attitude whereby they approach their deadly activity as if it were a sport. As Mr. Weasley explains: “Harry, that’s their idea of fun. Half the Muggle killings back when You-Know-Who was in power were done for fun. I suppose they had a few drinks tonight and couldn’t resist reminding us all that lots of them are still at large” (p. 143).

            Throughout the series Rowling consistently tramples the spirit of competition, interrupting or replacing it with the dark spirit of deadly conflict. This occurs again later in the fourth book in the Triwizard Tournament—an event that eventually escalates from death-threatening competition in the First Task to deadly confrontation with Voldemort in the Third Task. 

            The Second Task is particularly disturbing in its use of Hogwarts student hostages as “treasures” who are roped to the bottom of the lake and left to be “saved” by the heroic competitors. Readers are led to believe, along with Harry, that the lives of the students are in peril should the competitors fail. The cavalier risking of students’ lives for the purposes of a “competition” seems a colossal piece of poor judgment on the part of Dumbledore (not to mention Rowling)—especially since Dumbledore knows from earlier events that Voldemort is lurking and waiting to take advantage of any opportunity to wreck havoc and death. In the book version of the story, Rowling attempts damage control over this questionable scene when she has Ron inform Harry (along with the reader) that there was no real danger: “Harry, you prat . . .  Dumbledore wouldn’t have let any of us [hostages] drown!” (p. 503). Nevertheless, through song lyrics provided previously in the chapter (“ . . . your time’s half gone, so tarry not/Lest what you seek stays here to rot”) (p. 497), Rowling sets up readers to believe that the hostages’ lives are indeed at risk. The film version creates a similar and perhaps more intense impression. 

            In the Third Task of the tournament Voldemort breaks into the competition and ruthlessly murders Cedric Diggory—thereby confirming Dumbledore’s unreliability in guaranteeing the safety of the competitors. Nevertheless, Rowling’s consistent choice to escalate competition to deadly conflict complements her structuring of the larger conflict in the novels—the conflict between Harry and Voldemort. This choice appears justifiable only as part of a questionable plan to amplify thrills by increasing the stakes to life and death wherever possible, regardless of the plot contrivances needed to do so.

Critics Miss the Larger Point

            Although having drawn fire, however misplaced, from groups on the Christian right (including the Pope), generally, when the Potter novels are given a critical word or comment, they are criticized on stylistic points rather than narrative content. For example, speaking of the first book of the series, Harold Bloom (2000) notes that Rowling’s “prose style, heavy on cliché, makes no demands upon her readers” (para. 10). In the same piece Bloom declares that he hopes his discontent is not merely “highbrow snobbery.” Bloom certainly has his own detractors and literary stylistic tastes can vary. But, with the mounting popularity of the series, the publisher has clearly lost editorial control over Rowling. And she has in turn lost any sense of the need to edit herself. What Rowling may lack in style she has made up for in words. The length of the novels has grown from around 300 pages in the first to over 800 pages in the fifth, only retreating to slightly under 700 pages in the sixth.

            However, by focusing too much on stylistic problems, Bloom and other critics miss the larger point beyond these faults—that Rowling’s work is complacently couched in a dramatic structure that encourages readers to adopt narrowly unproductive ways of assessing and structuring conflict while doing little to model alternatives to deadly violence as a means of resolution. The series of books presents a trail of grotesque deaths from would-be Potter assassins such as Professor Quirrell, Tom Riddle (as one part of Voldemort’s soul), a Basilisk monster, and Barty Crouch among others to an assortment of murdered innocents such as Harry’s mother and father, Moaning Myrtle, Cedric Diggory, Bertha Jorkins, and Sirius Black among others. 

            At this point, it should be emphasized again that violence in fiction is not something to be automatically and roundly condemned. In dramatic contexts, such as the reflexive melodrama illustrated in Lord of the Flies, the portrayal of violence can contribute in ways that are profoundly illuminating and cathartically beneficial. (13) There is also nothing to condemn in the adolescent fascination with themes of sex and death. This fascination is natural, inevitable, and reflects a healthy curiosity and a normal trajectory for emotional development. But human community owes upcoming generations literature and entertainment that address these fascinations while doing so in a context that adequately portrays deadly violence as a tragic outcome of complex conflict rather than the goal and the triumph of overly reductionistic conflict. In this regard, some offerings in literature and film are definitely better than others.

            Speaking of the entire tradition of vampire stories and films epitomized by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Robin Wood notes that in the Victorian age the Count may have served his purpose “by insisting that the repressed cannot be kept down, that it must always surface and strive to be recognized” (p. 378). But Wood announces the obsolescence of that tradition when he adds the crucial caveat, “But we cannot purge him of his connotations of evil—the evil that Victorian society projected onto sexuality and by which our contemporary notions of sexuality are still contaminated. If ‘the return of the repressed’ is to be welcomed, then we must learn to represent it in forms other than that of an undead vampire-aristocrat” (p. 378). 

            Although one can quibble with Wood’s recycling of the metaphor of contamination to “purge” the idea of sexuality as contamination, his thinking moves in the right direction. With its similarities with the horror and vampire tradition, Harry Potter offers yet another version of an obsolete and dysfunctional mythic structure—a conflict structure that nevertheless continues to hang on, propped up by association with perennially fascinating themes of death, violence, sexuality, and intrigue. Despite its popularity, the Potter series is not inspiring fare for children, adolescents, or adults. In 2000, Bloom asked the question, “Can 35 million book buyers be wrong?” Now 350 million book buyers later, the answer is still “yes.” 

            The fact that tons of junk food are consumed every year does not prove that junk food accomplishes anything significantly beneficial for the body. During the Second World War and the decades surrounding it, the majority of adults smoked cigarettes. Better information changed that. Now smokers are primarily adolescents who put off or simply defy the recognition that their bodies are destructible. Consumers need to take care when choosing what to put in their stomachs and lungs. No less care should be taken in choosing what to feed the head.   

            In the 1960s, media specialist Marshall McLuhan coined and popularized the expression, “The medium is the message” (1964, p. 7). Since then, the rise of information technology has contributed massively to a sense in which the reverse has become true: “The message is the medium.” The message content conveyed through various media such as television, cinematography, iPods, Playstations, and the Internet begins to function itself as a medium through constant repetition.  Content repeated over and over kneads the psyche, directing attention, focusing perception, and imprinting memory. McLuhan drew attention to the pervasive and tangible effects of the medium itself by cleverly altering his maxim to read: “The medium is the massage” (1967, p. 10). In the postmodern information age it may now be important to understand the sense in which “the message is the massage.”  

            Anything repeated often enough has the capacity to massage the mind in ways similar to those proposed by McLuhan’s theory of medium effects. The effects of repeated exposure to content, in any medium, may slip under the radar of conscious awareness to work in ways beyond mindful, critical control. The mavens of Madison Avenue have for decades understood the mechanism of repetition. This phenomenon of repetition includes not only the repetition of exactly the same content (as in repeated viewings of advertisements and films) but also the repetition of similar plot lines and story structures. Probably very little of the repetitive wave of media content passes through consumers in the postmodern information stream without consequences. But some of this content may become especially problematic when it rises to the level of being unnecessarily inflammatory and potentially destructive in its effects—all for the sake of commercial and entertainment shock value, for the sake of making a buck.

            The power of repetition and escalation of intensity of message made possible by postmodern information technology magnifies the need for attention to media and entertainment content. The challenges of adolescence brought on by puberty do not change significantly over time. But the dominant ways in which societies represent this crisis and associated psychic and relational conflicts through fiction and drama can change through cultural choices. The mythological story-structures through which conflict is portrayed and confronted influence early perceptions of conflict and may continue to influence how crises and conflicts will be confronted in future real-life situations. The ongoing project of individual and communal liberation from unproductive beliefs, attitudes, and cognitive structurings of self and world demands that more evaluative attention be focused on content and structuring of content. The pervasiveness of information and information technology requires greater critical reflection on the stories we repeatedly choose to tell ourselves. The power of the media environment and its potential influence on global culture insures that this century is one in which human community will have to confront the problem of conflict and conflict management in ways it has never been forced to do in the past. Violence portrayed through melodramatic story structures like Harry Potter should no longer pass under the radar of cultural critique simply because similar stories have done so in the past. In an age of information technology—combined with weapons of mass destruction technologies—the future of human community can no longer afford that oversight.     

Notes

1. For a full discussion of the Doppelgänger and adolescent sexuality see Desilet (2005) chapters 2 and 3.

2. Much of the basis for the psychological ground of the association of horror and sexuality, especially prior to and during adolescence, derives from the work of Sigmund Freud (see especially 1905, 1912, 1913, 1919,). Freud’s work, along with that of Robin Fox (1980), provided the inspiration for James Twitchell in his landmark association of horror and adolescent sexuality in Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of Modern Horror (1985). For further treatment of the theme of horror and sexuality see the collection The Dread of Difference (1996). The articles in this collection explore the tensions between male/female gender difference relating to various creations of the monstrous, arguing that the tensions surrounding these differences turn on primal fears of castration, rape, and other forms of sexual violation rooted in attempts to overcome traumas of childbirth (separation from mother), puberty (separation of sexual difference), and identity formation (separation from family).  

3. In Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (2006) David Frankfurter documents a long tradition, continuing today, of destruction of individuals and communities resulting from the imposition of superstition through the model of conflict based on the concept of evil as radical defilement and alien otherness.

4. Mary Shelley’s original version of Frankenstein may not appear to fit this pattern of an evil monster who merits destruction. However, a strong case can be made that this story does in fact conform. In Shelley's version, at the end the monster consigns himself to the ice until he dies. There is also the suggestion that he may destroy himself in a fire when he says, "Soon the burning miseries shall be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames" (p. 202). The reader is left with the impression that the monster will kill himself soon. Also a good case can be made that the monster is indeed evil. The monster compares himself to Satan, the fallen angel--" a malignant devil" and says that "evil thenceforth became my good." (p. 202). While Shelley paints the monster in a somewhat sympathetic light, she leaves the reader with the clear impression that he will destroy himself because he sees himself as having become, however unwillingly, “a malignant devil.”

5. Paden (1988) discusses the significance of notions of the Pure and the Impure in religious context and concludes that systems of purity, of one sort or another, are a defining quality of religious belief and ritual. According to Paden, “Religions draw lines. They distinguish between what is compatible and what is incompatible with the sacred. In classical terminology, this is the separation of the sacred and the profane. More broadly conceived, the polarization of two kinds of behavior—such as pure and impure, right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, good and evil, holy and sinful—is a fundamental form of religious systems that has a thematic richness and structuring importance comparable to that of mythic prototypes, ritual time, and holy objects” (p. 141). The fear of evil corresponds to the fear of pollution. Paden continues, “Pollution represents not just a mistaken fear about contagion or a prescientific idea about the physical world but an instance of something threateningly incongruous with or violative of one’s world categories” (p. 142).

6. Kuby asserts that the Potter series denigrates the human world, the world of “Muggles,” while glorifying the world of witchcraft and magic, the world of Hogwarts. Consequently, the lines between good and evil are not so much compromised as turned upside down. The Hogwarts world of magic is, according to Kuby, a world of repugnant creatures, horrifying monsters, blood-sucking spirits, cruel teachers, and terrible spells and curses. The influence of these elements on the formative minds of children is, thereby, anything but Christian.

7. McVeigh is not alone in countering those on the Christian right who denounce Harry Potter as anti-Christian. Killinger, for example, states, “For the story Rowling tells, again and again, is the one so basic to Christian belief, of a cosmic battleground on which the servants of God are continuously engaged in mortal combat with the forces of evil, and of the way characters define themselves and their eternal fate by identifying with one or the other of these eternal armies (p. 39). Dickerson and O’Hara (2006) are equally unmistakable. Asking of the Potter books, “Do they give a transcendent or objective basis for judging good and evil?” they answer, “Here again, Rowling’s works stand consistent with Christianity. Rowling makes it clear that there is a cosmic battle going on. By book 5, we can name both sides: the Order of the Phoenix, and the Death Eaters; those who stand with Dumbledore, and those who stand in service of Voldemort. There is no question in the books that this is a battle between good and evil” (p. 246). For further corroboration of the Christian elements in Harry Potter see Neal (2002), Kern (2003), and Granger (2006).

8. In Our faith in evil: Melodrama and the effects of entertainment violence (2005) chapter 12, I discuss the potential risks relating to the Grimm fairy tales. Basically, I conclude that a fairy tale can accomplish all that is needed of a fairy tale without the recourse to maiming or deadly violence. The melodramatic structure of good and bad characters can be retained but the villains can be dealt with, as they are in many stories, by means of outwitting, deflecting, overcoming, or appropriating the threat—short of deadly violence. Several of the original stories adapted by the Grimm Brothers were of this structure and were subsequently modified to conform to modes of punishment popular at the time they published their versions of the stories.

9. For a more complete discussion of the principle of catharsis in relation to physiology and the response to viewing films and reading fiction see Desilet (2005) chapters 10 and 11.

10. In Cult of the kill: Traditional metaphysics of rhetoric, truth, and violence (2002) I provide a more extensive treatment of this cycle in its cultural, metaphysical, and philosophical roots. Specifically, this work takes inspiration from American literary critic and language theorist Kenneth Burke.  Burke claims that within its many resources language introduces one in particular—the negative—that inclines humans toward modes of evaluation and discrimination that offer many seductive avenues toward what he calls "congregation by segregation." Through opportunities for reductionistic varieties of exclusionary and "sacrificial" negation, language induces a fixation on purification with predictable cycles of ritualistic scapegoating violence (both real and symbolic). These cycles of violence permeate individual, social, and cultural levels and, according to Burke, may be justly said to constitute a culture as a "cult of the kill." The book explores the questions: What are the metaphysical alternatives? And to what extent may a less violent future lie in the possibility of a metaphysical choice that departs from the tradition of the use of the negative that Burke identifies?

11. The book version of this scene is not quite as graphic but, still, the reader learns that, upon touching Harry, Quirrell’s palms became “burned, raw, red, and shiny.” Harry then grabbed Quirrell’s face and it began “blistering.” Quirrell suffered “terrible pain” and then “he screamed and tried to throw Harry off” while Harry could only hear “Quirrell’s terrible shrieks” (p. 295). Harry’s protective shield of parental love harbors a love capable of inflicting painful death.

12. Harry’s sparing of Peter Pettigrew’s life at the end of book 3 may seem to be a counter-instance suggesting that love does in fact motivate Harry. But here a closer reading indicates another interpretation. Sirius Black calls Peter "a piece of vermin" and a "cringing bit of filth" to which Harry responds "I know." Then Harry explains to Peter (regarding the sparing of his life): "I'm not doing this for you.  I'm doing it because--I don't reckon my dad would've wanted them [Sirius and Lupin] to become killers--just for you." (p. 376). The dominant motive here is not a liberal sense of justice or a kind of Christian love but rather a dutifulness toward what Harry thinks his father would want in relation to Black and Lupin. The idea seems to be that none of them should dirty their hands with the likes of Peter, as he will likely meet an appropriate death at the hands of dementors.

13. This is also the case with “tragic drama”—a dramatic structure where the tragic dramatist constructs the primary conflict between opposing sides in such a way that the reader/audience has difficulty identifying entirely with one side. The complications of this kind of conflict elicit emotions that Aristotle named eleos and phobos, usually translated as “pity” and “fear.” These emotions register responses to events in largely “nonpartisan” ways with respect to opposing sides. For further discussion of tragic drama in the context of fictional violence see Desilet (2005), especially chapters 6 and 11.

References

Barthes, R. (1957, 1972). Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang.

Bloom, H. (2000, July 11). Can 35 million book buyers be wrong? Yes. The Wall Street Journal. (Retrieved January 17, 2007 from  http://wrtbrooke.syr.edu/courses/205.03/bloom.html).

Bonta, S. (2000, August 28). Harry Potter’s Hocus-Pocus. The New American, Vol 18, #2, 1-2. (Retrieved Jan 15, 2007 from http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2000/08-28-2000/vo16no18_potter.htm).

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