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There's a scene in the 3rd Harry Potter movie
that is expected to find the viewers cheering.
(It's also repeated in a flash-back later in the
movie.) It's where one of the Slytherin girls makes
a sneeringly vicious insult towards Ron, and he
hauls off and slugs her.
I'm sorry. I think I got the characters mixed
up. It's Malfoy who makes the snide remark and
Hermione halls off and slugs him. Whew. Don't want
to have anyone get upset, do we. Well, actually,
did you find yourself getting angry when I reported
that a boy hit a girl? Were you relieved to
find out that it was actually only a girl hitting a
boy? And it wasn't magic she used. It was physical
violence. Is that okay? That's what our
culture seems to think. That it's okay for a girl
to hit a boy because of something he says or does
but not okay for a boy to hit a girl in the same
situation. The latter could bring jail time. The
former should, but seldom does.
Before I go any further let me say that I love
all of the Harry Potter movies. I like their
use of fantasy and magic and I like them so much
better than the Lord of the Rings movies which, in
my opinion are filled to overflowing with
unnecessary violence.
Let me also say that there are many times when
men are violent towards women. On the other hand,
there are also many cases where the man gets blamed
when he isn't the violent one but the woman is
violent towards him or towards her children.
Interestingly enough, one of the major themes of
this movie is that the "Prisoner of Azkaban" was
convicted of killing thirteen people with a single
curse. The case against him magnified during his 12
years in prison with the rumor that he was the heir
apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Sounds like
another one of those over zealous DA's racking up a
case against an innocent man
Like the man in the poster above. In the film,
he was one of those cases of false accusations.
However, Hermione's crime was captured on film, not
by a vacationing bystander. It was in the final
script and it was filmed on purpose by the film
crew of the new film Harry Potter and the Prisoner
of Azkaban. Not only is the scene part of this
movie, but the actress, Emma Watson is quoted as
saying, "It was great fun. We did a couple of
takes, and I was saying, 'Come on, come on, let's
do it again."
She's referring to a scene where she decks
Harry's Hogwarts foe, the ultra-obnoxious Draco
Malfoy, after he sneeringly insults her mixed
heritage (she's a wizard with human parents). After
her character Hermione slugs Malfoy, she exclaims,
"That felt good!" As the newspaper article
states, "It's a move that Azkaban audiences are
likely to cheer, and the punch proved therapeutic
in easing Watson's newly developed teen angst."
The author of the article USA Today
article, Claudia Puig, seemed to get off on the
violence and shrugged it off as an example of
"...real girl-power...". Would she get so
pleasantly excited if Ron had leveled one of the
Slytherin girls for a similarly snide comment? I
bet that that would bring out the women in droves
to protest, to march on the studio, and probably
suggest a boycott of the film itself. My how a
little thing like the difference of sex changes the
whole picture so, instead of being an act of
violence (if committed by a girl on the school
yard), it's seen as an appropriate response to mere
words. It reminds me of the audience in the Dixie
Chicks' video going crazy as the Chicks sing
"Goodbye Earl." If you don't remember, the song
champions the premeditated murder (and cover-up) of
an abusive husband from a two-week old
marriage.
As long as we give our daughter's the message
that these kinds of actions are okay, and even
exhilarating, it can only get worse. If we don't
make our voices known to the film's producers, at
the movie theater (maybe even booing the scene), to
newspaper and TV movie reviewers, and to our own
children, then we too are telling them that boys
should expect violence against them and just
continue to take it without fighting back. I say,
let's insure that our girls know that this is
violence, and our boys know to report it without
feeling less manly because it came from "a girl."
It's violence, and the longer we don't accept this
fact, the more it's going to come back and haunt
us. If this happens on the school yard, the way the
system works is that our boys and young men will
probably be the ones carted off to jail and maybe
even prison. In some states, if the man restrains
the woman who is attacking him, he's the one who
will most often be charged.
We live in a culture where women are the
perpetrators of over 2/3 of all maltreatment of
children including 62% of all child fatalities as
well as the perpetrators of 1/3 of reported
domestic violence cases. Films and society alike
have gotten more violent since these women were
children. But they learned this violence somewhere.
The children today seeing this scene will be
similarly impacted as adults, especially because
they will, most likely, have the audiences'
acceptance of the violence locked in their memory
banks. Does it matter?
We've got to stop supporting a double-standard.
The power of these messages is even greater with
our children, because, in a film where the main
characters are so loved, they're the ones actually
doing the violence. This isn't the use of the
mystical or the use of magic. This is outright
physical violence. What an interesting way to
demonstrate to our children about handling
themselves with the other sex as they mature into
young adults.
We encourage you to go to the Warner Brothers
message board at boards.harrypotter.warnerbros.com/web/index.jsp
and record your thoughts as well as
scoops@empiremovies.com.
Also consider writing a letter to the editor of
your local paper. I hope enough of you complain
about this scene so that it gets cut from the
dvd.
Sources: The March 19-21, 2004
issue of U.S.A. Today and www.empiremovies.com/movies/harry_potter/prisoner_of_azkaban/index.shtml
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