COMEDY GOLD: Jim Pinkerton: Kids who watch Harry Potter should be thinking about fighting terrorists

[Grebrook]

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070719/OPINION01/707190309/1008

I've seen some assinine attempts to claim this movie or that movie (or book) is an allegory for this or that, but this really takes the case. He offers absolutely no specific examples in his column, and yet breathtakingly claims that Harry Potter is an allegory for the War on Terror (despite the series starting long before Sept 11, LONG BEFORE).

For idiots like Bill O'Reilly who continually wonder out loud "Why are there no conservative film critics" (barring Medved). This is why. Because you won't keep your job that long at Newsweek or Time magazine if you hand your editor a column claiming, "Terminator 2: Judgement Day is an allegory for how homosexuals will be damned on Judgement Day. Get it? Because gays aren't REAL men (Like Arney, who burns in the fire!)".

[Mythsaje]

1. Speaking as an author

I think the whole "allegory" thing is (mostly) nonsense. There ARE books that are composed of a great deal of allegory, but, as I learned to my disgust in Literature class, there's a school of thought that seems to think nearly ALL books are allegory, and certain things always mean/suggest certain other things.

What a crock.

What may pass for allegory in my books is hardly subtle. Powerful global church = powerful global church. Evil aliens manipulating religious sentiment to manipulate the people = evil aliens manipulating religious sentiment to manipulate the people.

Who needs allegory?

[NI4NI]

2. In 1968, Pinkerton was 10 years old.

I wonder how much he was thinking about fighting the Viet-Cong back then?

[Berry Cool]

3. It IS an allegory for the War on Terror...but not a flattering one!

First of all, the Ministry of Magic completely denies that Voldemort has regained power (sound like someone who ignored a report titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.")? Harry Potter tries desperately to get the Ministry to believe him when he says Voldemort is back, but is derided in the papers as a nutjob and a lunatic. At the same time, the Ministry sends one of its own to Hogwarts School to create an impossibly binding set of rules and regulations--one after another--designed to stifle the students' freedom and which essentially attempts to prevent them from knowing what they need to know to defend themselves. They are told that theoretical knowledge of defense is all they really need. They are prohibited from forming student organizations, etc. Life for the students is very fascist.

Then, once presented with incontrovertible proof of Voldemort's return (somebody has to die to prove it), the Ministry imposes all kinds of new restrictions on the wizarding world to keep it "safe." (Even the Muggles are affected--huge disasters keep happening in their world, but they don't know why.)

Eventually the Ministry of Magic returns to Harry Potter, only this time with a new guy in charge (the old one had to resign in disgrace because he looked like such an idiot), with a flattering proposition. They want to be able to use him as part of a public relations attempt to calm people down and convince them that the Ministry has a handle on things--on the theory that if Harry says that everything is fine ("we are winning the War on Terror"?), everyone will believe it. He will have none of that. Realizing the only way to get rid of bin Laden--er, I mean, Voldemort--is to GET RID OF VOLDEMORT, he sets out with his friends to do just that.

I can see how some wingnuts could misread HP as an allegory for the War on Terror, but they are mistaken. They are doing a wacked interpretation in which the Ministry of Magic is the Clinton administration (yeah, right) and Harry Potter and his friends are right-wing patriots trying to prevent 9/11. I don't know where they get this idea from. I don't recall the Clinton Administration ever trying to tell us it was "keeping us safe" while removing our civil liberties one after another.