Of Harry Potter and Growing Old

Netflix recently added the Harry Potter movies in their repertoire, which introduced my children to the world created by the writer J.K Rowling. It has been ages since I read the book and watched the movies, so it was quite hazy for me while watching the start of the Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s stone. But as Celine Dion used to sing, “It is all coming back to me now,” and it surely did as I sat there and watched the movie with my family. Needless to say, it brings the feeling of nostalgic, and I must say that the video effects from decades ago still hold up quite well now. The story however, does not.

As we were watching the second movie, I realized and commented how Harry Potter (himself, and the series) relies a lot to sudden help to save the characters from help, also known as deus ex machina. The stories is also event driven, not character driven, where one event or action moves on to another, normally linked by a McGuffin. However what strike me and made me write this is that the characters have no arc at all.

Arc or development shows that a character changes. A famous arc is how spiderman changes when he got his power and acts arrogantly, and later ‘overcomes’ that by using his power for the all good. Batman in the Dark Knight shows the batman arc changing from a fearing orphan into a vigilante with a strong principle. Harry Potter meanwhile was born as an end to a villain, and continues to be so throughout ALL the book series. Not only him, even other character hardly grows. Hermione continues to be clever, while Ron is always loyal as ever. There is some wavering during the searching of the Horcruxes, but that was more like a mood swing than a real character change. Dumbledore maintains an all knowing, omni prescient wildcard, Hagrid is loveable and affable from the first chapter till the end. One can argue only Snape shows a bit of change, which might explain why he’s very well remembered (at least for me).

All this fix characters was a comfort to me when I was reading the series, back when I was a child/teen, as they symbolizes that the good is good, and evil will not change them. It was also because I believed, and expected, people not to change. I did not imagined that when you leave school, you’re close friends one day might not be only an estranged acquaintance, or even worse, enemies. I did not know then that people’s values change, myself included, and things that I despised my something dear to me. I also did not expect, although I know, that people close to me would passed away and I would learn to live without them.

I guess I am just growing old. Harry Potter is, after all, a children’s book and children deserves their childhood as much as we had ours.

Thank you for reading.