(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
— David Hudson, IFC.com
Harry's so pissed that he actually takes his bag and walks, out into the street. Imagine, a well-born young gentleman like himself, actually carrying something heavy! Fortunately, this humiliation doesn't last long. A mysterious double-decker arrives, the Knight Bus, a marvelous vehicle for non-Muggles only, thank you very much! At last, someone to tote Harry's bags! The moral order of the universe is restored!
4
The Prisoner of Azkaban is getting particular buzz because of the direction of Alfonso Cuarón, who's replaced Chris Columbus. There's no denying that Y Tu Mamá También outhips Jingle All the Way, but the real reason Azkaban shines, in my opinion, is that it puts Hermione (Emma Watson) front and center. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Ron (Rupert Grint) are pleasant enough, but Hermione, one must admit, is one classy broad.
Rowling has tried to squeeze some of the snobbishness (and maleness) out of the public school ethos, but she hasn't made much progress. The films show a handful of "Empire" students from India, Africa, and the Caribbean, but, to my unwashed ears at least, none at all from either Scotland or (God forbid!) Ireland.
11 None of these students play a role in any of the plots. All of the teachers are English and nearly all of them are male, and all of the upper class (sixth form?) students are both. Hermione is the only girl who has a plot function.12
1. Or does he? You'll have to see the picture. J.K. Rowling doesn't write these books for her health.
2. The Harry Potter series works on the seemingly universal fantasy of escaping the fat, dreary, graceless parents with whom a malicious fate has linked us, banal individuals who commit the supreme offense of being almost exactly like us. The theme of a boy of gentle birth thrust among commoners was a favorite with Dickens.
3. Brits don't care how poor they are, as long as they have servants.
4. The conductor on the Knight Bus, Stan Shunpike, is shrunken, ill-dressed, overly familiar yet obsequious, and unhealthy to boot, his face and neck covered with what I assume to be pimples rather than lesions. Dobby the House-Elf in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was similarly repulsive. Why must the lower classes be so lower class?
5. The Eumenides (literally, "the kindly ones," to avoid pissing them off), also known as the Furies, were bloodthirsty creatures, more or less female, who pursued murderers. In Aeschylus's play The Eumenides, Athena convinces them to accept the rule of law.
6. The staircases reflect the Imaginary Prisons (Carceri d'Invenzione) of Giovanni Piranesi, previously appearing in The Name of the Rose.
7. I particularly liked the Knight Bus, the croaking toad chorus for "Something wicked this way comes," and the book on monsters, which was itself a little monster. But the divination teacher, a spaced-out California hippie, seemed a bit of a cheap shot at the U.S., rather ungrateful, really, considering all we've done for perfidious Albion.
8. I say Cuarón rather than Rowling. There's at least a hint of subtext in the book, but Cuarón more than underlines it. Besides, in the book, Lupin tells Harry "I have the feeling we may some day meet again," so perhaps R.J. will have the chance to redeem himself.
9. George Orwell wrote a famous essay, "Boys' Weeklies," about the stories in Gem and Magnet. I once came across a collection of them and wanted to buy it, but the book was too racist to touch, much less read. The stories were set in Egypt, and the Egyptians, referred to flatly as "niggers," were portrayed as hideous, bloodthirsty cannibals held in check (barely!) by the threat of English steel. Bring back the Empire! Yeah!
10. Even now, anyone with any money in England sends their kids to "public schools," to ensure that they have a "public school accent."
11. And as for an "American," well, you can forget that shit right now.
12. Furthermore, the Hogwarts world is laden with bits and tags from the classical learning that was once the substance of public school education. Nearly all of the fabulous creatures are drawn from classical mythology, and nearly all of the incantations are Latin (of a sort). The timeframe of the Hogwarts world seems to shift randomly from about 1850 to 1900. But whatever the specific date, one can guess that it's frickin' Britannia that rules the frickin' waves.
