The flesh is weak, and it seems the spirit is too

First posted 10-15-07


So, in the past week or so I have once again done something I swore I would never do. This is becoming a habit. First, I swore I'd never start drinking coffee. Then I went to a conference in New Orleans and, well, let's just say that the Starbucks at the convention center saved my butt a couple of times. Then I swore I'd never take my warrior PvP'ing in WoW. But lo and behold a month or so ago I got a Gorehowl, speced MS and went pwning horde. And you know what? I liked it. It was the only character I have ever PvP'd with that I actually stood a fighting chance against most people I was going against (except warlocks, fuck them).

What is it this time?

I'm...I'm a little ashamed to admit.

I've....

I've........

I've been Harry Pottered!

*breaks down in tears*

If you scroll back a few pages in this very blog you will see a very adamant (and if I may so, cleverly written) vitriolic rant against all things Harry Potter. It's one of my favorite of my own posts! I swore I was never going to have anything to do with this Harry Potter fellow. I had settled with the fact that I would eventually because my girlfriend at the time threatened to withhold sex until I saw the movies, but once we broke up I was free of that circumstance!

There they were...at the top of my Netflix list. And I had been curious. I figured I could just try one, see what it was like. Just one little movie. One little, tiny, insignificant, innocent little movie...

Now, the main reason I wanted to avoid Harry Potter like the plague was so that I could maintain my unreasonable elitist attitude towards the franchise. I still think the violent reaction that people gave me when I started bagging on it was utterly hysterical, and the level of fanaticism Harry Potter inspires in its devotees is more akin to that of a cult, which disturbs me greatly. I have, in the past, maintained elitist attitudes towards many things. I am elitist, I make no bones about this. If something is "popular", it's usually a strike against it. I am unapologetic about this. It's a quirk of mine I've come to live with, and of all the sins a person is heir to, I consider it a lesser one.

Unsurprisingly, most of my elitist positions often fall into the category of: I don't want to watch that popular movie because I will probably like it and I want to go on hating it. However, in the past, I have abandoned the position to experience such movies. My response falls into two different lines. Either A) I do watch the movie and do end up loving it (see: Shane), or, more rarely, B) I do watch the movie and do end up hating it (see: Moulin Rouge, lousy bastards OOOO OOOO IT'S A MUSICAL, THAT'S SO OUT OF ORDINARY EXCEPT I'VE BEEN WATCHING MUSICALS MY ENTIRE LIFE SO BITE ME). Ahem. Anyways.

So, I watched the first Harry Potter movie (and like a drug, it begins). And I enjoyed it. And then I watched the next two. I actually was looking forward to not playing WoW for a couple nights so I could chill and watch these movies. And now I'm waiting for the next one to arrive...and the next one to come out on DVD...and I'm probably going to buy the DVD's and then buy the books so I can read all the stuff that didn't make it into the movies AND OH GOD HELP ME SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME OR SHOOT ME TO PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY LIKE I'M OLD YELLER.

Do I think it's the next best thing to Jesus on sliced bread? Lord no. But it's entertaining, engrossing, well-crafted and at some places surprisingly deep.

Barring a complete and total in depth discussion which frankly would make me sound more like a fan than I am, I will say one positive thing about the movies and one negative thing.

Positive: they actually remind me of old movies from the 40's in a way. You see, unlike most huge blockbuster series of films nowindays, there isn't a huge story arc progressing through all the films. I mean, there is to a certain degree, i.e. Voldemort and Harry's parents. But this isn't Lord of the Rings, this isn't Star Wars. Each movie is sort of "what crazy situation does Harry and his cohorts get into at school this year?" This is very similar to old movies with reoccuring characters. For example, all the Thin Man movies. There wasn't a huge story arc, it was just "what kooky mystery does Nick and Nora Charles get into this time." I really like this format. Though it's hard to say why. I guess it's because with a huge story arc you are always tryiing to keep bunches of story lines straight over long periods of time, whereas with this other style you can enjoy each film as an independent entity. Plus, it bucks the trend of modern movie series for something a little more classic, which totally works for me.

Negative: there are a number of times when a plot point is revealed, and then in the very next scene that plot point is explained in detail...to death. For example (OMG SPOILER): in the Prisoner of Zenda....er, I mean Azkaban, when Harry does the spell to drive the Dementors away from his other self. He had been going on for some time that he thought it was his father that did it, but then when we see him do it we realize that it was himself from the future (ok, none of this probably makes any sense unless you've seen the movie). It's blatantly obvious what has happened. And yet in the very next scene Harry and Hermione are riding on the hippogryph and he explicitly explains that it wasn't his father he saw, it was himself from the future. NO SHIT SHERLOCK. It's like someone tells a joke and then immediately gives a 1000 word explanation on the punchline. It annoys the ever loving shit out of me.

So there, I admit my terrible secret. I've been Harry Pottered. And I'm terrified that I'm going to turn into one of the raving lunatics slobbering over the franchise. I don't wanna be. I learned from Star Wars. I learned the hard way.

Please forgive me.

	Posted by Inga @ 10/25/2007 01:57 PM PDT
	So now I'm a crazy peasant who's trying to be bohemian. Wow. Yeah. Bye.

	Posted by Bluejeangirlnc @ 10/21/2007 10:51 PM PDT
	Now all you have to do is read the books and you're in. Inga's pissed at you? Meh. She's a crazy peasant and won't read them because she's trying to be bohemian.. or some other fancy term for stubborn. The books are better than the movies in my opinion. Having read each of the books before the movie came out, I caught myself thinking lots of times that things in the movie were exactly as I'd pictured them. I love Harry Potter and I'm so glad you're not being a Potter snob anymore. Inga, read the damn book. After all, I'm reading the freaking "Under the Banner of Heaven" because of you and Coyote. It's the least you could do after I had to read about Joe Smith translating his visions with his head buried in a hat. Seriously.

	Posted by Inga @ 10/15/2007 07:51 PM PDT
	Yeah, you're still dead to me.

	Posted by Coyote @ 10/15/2007 07:07 PM PDT
	Don't listen to that one, she's stuck in crazy mode as far as this topic goes. Anyway, Just recently I decided to get Pottered (refer back to my own post about it) and I'm not unhappy about the decision. I wasn't adamantly against it from the jump though. I was amazed at the sheer number of children that were reading. This near illiterate generation of if it doesn't have a screen on it then I don't care kids were picking up books and reading of their own free will! I was well pleased by this but it didn't really make me want to read them. Don't get me wrong, I read, own and enjoy books that are written for younger audiences like the Narnia books, Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series, Gaiman's Corraline, The Princess Bride etc etc etc. Then I read that a very large percentage of kids that didn't read for pleasure before Potter had started to do so after him. That was it. I had to support this wonderful thing or at least try to. I found that the books get better as they go and I don't consider it wasted time. I've read better (see above for a short list) but believe that I have read much worse. There are very positive messages for kids in there and if I had kids I would definitely be trying to get them to read these books. Hell, I was even surprised a few times by a nicely worded sentence or such. Whether you end up liking them or not, you have to acknowledge the fact that these books have had a huge positive influence on more than one generation of people. Gods bless you Mrs. Rowling.

	Posted by Inga @ 10/15/2007 05:08 PM PDT
	You're dead to me.