Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Spirituality Analysis

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a lesson for children on family, fear, death, and standing up for your morals. The Deathly Hallows has both direct similarities to Christian teachings and general spiritual principles that can touch its nonreligious readers. The Harry Potter series seems to either inspire spiritual strength or cause people to dust off their pitchforks and accuse it of being Satanic. Many varieties of Christians have fought to have the book banned from schools on a technicality since it promotes witchcraft, which is a government-recognized religion, and so violates the separation between church and state. But more interestingly are the people who find that the series supports their Christian religion and that it works in harmony with their beliefs and teachings.

Harry is, plain and simple, a Christ figure, and in this last book his role as savior and conqueror of death comes to a climax. He is described as the “true master of Death” (720) and has ever held the moniker of The Boy Who Lived. The circumstance and purpose of his death is unique to anyone else’s as he realizes that “this cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery” (692). Harry isn’t a martyr or a sacrifice, dying for jumping in front of a curse meant for someone else. His death is completely on his own agency, and therefore holds more power, just as Christ’s own choice. Harry’s death would “not be a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort” (692), who is a stand in for evil and Satan. Even though he is scared, Harry endures to the end in the name of those he loves, which is the true lesson of his story. Harry’s spiritual strength despite his knowledge that he had a horcrux, a piece of the devil, inside him inspires children who have a desire to do good but know that they are capable of bad. Even after his resurrection, Harry invisibly casts Shield Charms to protect his unknowing friends from curses shot their way, solidifying his role as a savior and protector that largely goes unrecognized.

 

There are other parallels to Christian theology that stand out starkly if you search for them. For example, after Harry dies he appears naked and physically perfect in a white landscape that eventually becomes King’s Cross. It’s only after he sees the shameful manifestation of Voldemort’s/Satan’s soul that he becomes aware of his nakedness and “for the first time, he wish[es] he were clothed” (706). Rowling’s language and imagery evoke the Garden of Eden and its role in knowledge of evil and creation of agency. In their final battle, Voldemort shouts that Harry has only survived by accident, but Harry replies that he didn’t decide to fight back (in book 4) by accident, or that his mother died for him by accident, or that he returned from the dead that night by accident. Harry’s belief in agency and a greater force driven by love encourages a spiritual outlook on life, rather than Voldemort’s cold, calculations of only the facts.  

Harry’s struggle against Voldemort is a struggle of light against dark, moral against immoral, and love against hate. Rowling isn’t a capital “C” Christian writer and doesn’t set out to convert others to her faith, but she is a moralistic writer who hopes to get her “kidult” audience to think about the hard questions and establish tolerance as a core moral in their lives. Rowling claims that her books preach that “love is the most important force” against “bigotry, violence, [and] struggles for power” (Gibbs) and take a spiritual approach to bravery and love. The magic spells, curses, and powers of The Deathly Hallows make the spiritual tangible and the Christian morals more accessible. In a philosophic time where if something can’t be proven on paper, it doesn’t exist, the magic and imagination of Rowling’s books assure children of the legitimacy of their intangible feelings and beliefs, just as Dumbledore reassured Harry: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" (723)

 

Works Cited

Gibbs, Nancy. “Person of the Year 2007: Runners-Up J.K. Rowling.” Time 19 Dec. 2007. Web.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Scholastic Inc., 2007. Print.

The Iron Giant - Critique Analysis

Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant is set in 1957, when Cold War tensions were high and Sputnik was circling the Earth. However, it’s set in this time not to rehash the old fears of communists or the Soviet Union, but to contextual the fears of today and to act as a mirror of our times. The Iron Giant is a stand in for our modern fears of nonconformity, trigger-happy military policy, and ambiguous governmental power.

The Iron Giant uses a certain amount of melodrama and spectacle to help children identify the contradictions of the self-professed “protection” of the government and their role as the “bad guy” in the film. Hogarth repeats the phrase “guns kill” throughout the film in order to encourage the giant to be a good guy, yet the government’s first instinct is to turn to guns as a solution. The political message of anti-gun violence is strong, but in the name of promoting peace and thoughtful response (as opposed to reactionary lashing out) rather than an assault on the second amendment. After discovering that the giant is peaceful, Hogarth starts talking about taking him to experts, but then stops himself and remembers that “people always wig-out and start shooting when they see something big like you.” The film critiques how willing people are, and the government in particular, to turn to violence in the face of anything that doesn’t fit into their description of “normal.”

Hogarth is an outcast like the giant, bullied at school for skipping a grade and for “thinking he’s smarter than everyone else.” In his espresso-induced rant, Hogarth expresses his frustration with being viewed as a smart show-off when really all he does is the homework that his classmates don’t bother to do:

 

Not to mention that his single-mother family contradicts the American suburbia model of father, mother, and obedient children, adding to his feelings of not belonging. This combined with the vulgarly-happy atomic bomb instruction videos critiques the public school system of overly-patronizing children and ignoring their needs and social realities.

This outcast model applies to the giant, Hogarth, and Dean respectively, but in the giant’s case, he is a Christ-type outcast. His direct comparison to Superman in the movie also directly compares him to Christ as a savior, the misunderstood who came from another world (heaven, Krypton, etc.) in order to sacrifice his life to save others. Even though he physically resembles Hogarth’s comic book villain Atomo, Hogarth encourages him to be Superman, the hero who always uses his powers for good. The giant is also dies for the sins of the people he protects, especially for Kent who screams for the missile to be launched directly at the city. Kent believes in the philosophy that if “we didn’t build it and that’s reason enough to assume the worse and blow it to kingdom-come!” By making the giant a Christ figure, the film promotes charity and peace in opposition to violence and close-mindedness.

The Iron Giant is a children’s film that addresses serious themes of nonconformity, outcasts, and government policy in a non-patronizing way. It refrains from using musical numbers or even cutesy, anthropomorphic animation in order to encourage their young viewers to exercise their critical analysis and actively participate in the film’s dialogue between peace and violence, art and guns, and good and evil.

I Wish - Family

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film, I Wish, gives a voice to two inseparable brothers who have been separated by their parents’ divorce. Koichi, older and wiser to the worries of the world, lives with their mother who is preoccupied with responsibility. Ryunosuke, younger and constantly beaming, lives with their free-spirited father. The high-speed bullet trains become a physical manifestation of Koichi’s wish for their family to be united again as the trains connect their two cities. It is rumored that the energy released when the two trains pass one another will grant the wishes of those who witness it, and Koichi’s wish comes tantalizingly close to reality.

What I found most moving about this film is that was realistic rather than the fanciful wishings of two children. Though it is a little fairytale-ish that both Koichi and Ryu gather enough money to skip school and find one another halfway between their cities, at the moment they have to yell their wishes to the passing trains the brothers acknowledge the reality of their situation. The film shows why Koichi wants the family to be united as we see a picturesque family picnic, but it also shows why the separation benefits Ryu, who is still a child. During a fight at the dinner table, Koichi dives in to stop the yelling between his parents, while Ryu removes himself from the situation, eating his rice and unable to emotionally handle the situation. Later, Koichi says that he chose the world over his own family, marking his passage into adulthood with the realization that his parents wouldn’t get back together, even if the city was drowned in lava and ash.  

I Wish lingers on the everyday events that make up a child’s life, emphasizing the importance of family in those events—school assignments interviewing fathers, making karukan cake with your grandfather, calling your brother after a long day of school, having your dreams of being an actress acknowledged by your mother. I Wish gives an insight into the joys and pains of the childhood experience and the role family plays in the coming-of-age of children. 

I also thought it was very touching that Kiochi and Ryu were played by real-life brothers, which is really incredible given the incredible acting done by both, with Kiochi’s gravity and Ryu’s infectious happiness. I liked how I Wish finished off our trilogy of family-centered children’s media of “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts” as a family history/heritage story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit as a cautionary parental tale, and I Wish as a broken family/coming-of-age story. I know that my siblings have been (and still are) an inseparable part of my upbringing and identity, and I couldn’t imagine having to accept being separated from them, let alone entrusting a parent to them.

 

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Critique

Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) is interesting as a critical film, because instead of seeing the process of environmental pollution, we only see the result. The film starts in the "new normal" achieved after some previous crisis that is mentioned but not fully expounded upon in the film. Instead teaching children how to prevent pollution, the film teaches them how to live in an already polluted world, and how to fix it. By framing the plot this way, Miyazaki is politically preparing his viewers to inherit a broken world and gives them a heroine to emulate in order to begin to heal it. From the beginning of the film, children are encouraged to stretch their critical analysis muscles and ask, “why the world like this?”

Nausicaä also portrays a critical view of history and society because of its alternate Earth setting. The deliberate selection of certain World War II era design choices voice a political opinion—the German-like gas masks, airplanes, and military uniforms visually reminds the viewer of the Nazis and their totalitarian regime, coloring the Tolmekians and their princess as extremists. The Tolmekians also echo World War II not just in design, but in actions too. They’re plan to destroy the Sea of Decay is to awaken a great monster that has a weapon very similar to an atomic bomb.  By designing the Tolmekians and their Great Warrior to echo that of the Nazis and atomic warfare, the film encourages children to make connections between the destruction of war and the destruction of the environment.

 

In contrast, Nausicaä is clothed in blues and whites, pleading for a stop to the violence. This film preaches nonviolence, with Nausicaä leading the way after her own commitment to the ideal after her father’s death. Although the Sea of Decay is spreading and destroying towns, it’s the Ohms that pose the immediate threat in the film. Ohms react violently to any damage humans do to the Sea of Decay, making it not pollution that angers the earth, but violence itself. Nausicaä’s gentle treatment of the spores leads her to discover how to grow them purely, while the Tolmekians’ desire to destroy the plague leads to a deadly rampage of thousands of Ohms. Even with the squirrel-fox Nausicaä practices nonviolence, allowing it to bite her out of fear and realize on its own that there is no threat.

 

 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind uses a double pronged strategy, advocating both environmental preservation and nonviolence. It communicates these political views through design, color, and (most importantly) story. The film’s ending also encourages active hope in the viewers, as Nuasicaä succeeds in ending the war and finding a cure to the Sea of Decay, but the world is still polluted.

Lego Star Wars: The Video Game - Play Analysis

The Lego game franchise is ever evolving and expanding, but it all began (at least for this new age of console gaming) with Lego Star Wars: The Video Game (2005). Though it retained some aspects of play it had before, such as intertextuality, Lego’s translation from physical building blocks to video game created new aspects of play for children to engage in--elastic game complexity, competition/cooperation, and creative interpretation.

I played Lego Star Wars on an original Xbox, the console I grew up playing the game on. The very structure of the game encourages complex and varied interaction with both the game and your fellow players. The game appeals to a wide age range of players. Younger children can enjoy themselves by smashing blocks and bad guys and easily walking through the levels, while older children (and adults) can engage more deeply with the design as they explore to find secret rooms, strategically stay alive to conserve studs and achieve “True Jedi” status, and unlock the various achievements in each level as well as find all the easter eggs. The fact that none of the characters talk also makes the game accessible to all ages because it isn’t necessary to know how to read in order to understand the game. The game’s procedure is simple, find your way to the end of the level using the characters given you, but it has the potential to become more complex for older players.

Playing solo is fulfilling and successful, but the game is really designed to be played by two people. Here is where the Lego block concepts of construction/deconstruction are translated into cooperation/competition, as players need to work together to win the levels. The shared screen requires the two players to work as a team, as one player cannot run off solo to accomplish the goals on their own. As my sister joined me in play, we went through our bouts of arguing which way to explore, how to jump, destroying each other with light sabers, and working together to unlock secrets. Unlike most team games, friendly-fire is on and it is completely possible to destroy your partner again and again (to their annoyance). Players have to overcome their competitive tendencies and work together to push buttons, build/move Lego blocks, and defeat bosses.

The video game also retains the intertextuality that playing with Lego blocks often creates. During Free Play (an option available once the level is completed) the player is able to rotate through several characters, putting characters in situations that never occur in the original story. For example, you can play as Darth Maul and fight General Grievous, or have a battle droid save Naboo. In the main menu, you can also mix-and-match heads, bodies, legs, and weapons of all the characters and create your own player. This intertextual play (admittedly, only within the Star Wars canon) reflects the creativity and imagination of a child’s natural play. The game also incorporates a child’s interpretation of the iconic story of Star Wars: Episode I-III. Coming back to the no-dialogue game style, the story is distilled down to the narrative moments that strike children the most while viewing the films, and put a kid-friendly angle on them. Violence is translated into blocks coming apart (children accept popping off a Lego head) and bad guys become comical gags.

Within Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, children have the freedom to explore their virtual play space, destroying and creating, solving puzzles, and defeating hordes of droids, all while enjoying the narrative and aesthetics of the Star Wars franchise. Their play within the game builds their skills of cooperation, curiosity, and creativity as they play with others, manipulate their environments and unlock achievements, and use their imaginations to push the game to its limits.

Winnie-the-Pooh - Nostalgia Analysis

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) has a strong atmosphere of nostalgia, as Pooh Bear and his friends innocently engage with the benign woodland world around them. On his return to England from fighting in World War I as a signaling officer, Alan Alexander Milne continued his writing career. After writing several moderately successful but no longer remembered plays, he created the iconic, universal character of Winnie the Pooh. More accurately, he created a fictional version of his son, Christopher Robin, and his toy bear.

The devastation of World War  I certainly has a large role to play in the appealing nostalgia in Winnie-the-Pooh. The war brought an end to many things—a generation of men, romanticization of the glory of war, and the class system (a progressive but upsetting social and political change). The pastoral setting of Winnie-the-Pooh longs for a simpler past of simpler language and the clean innocence of a child at play. Today, Winnie-the-Pooh still creates a nostalgia for a pastoral, pre-war past, but its legacy has also created new forms of nostalgia.

The writing style itself throws the reader back into an idealized childhood, of a parent reading a bedtime story to their child. Milne acts as both the author and the narrator, interacting with the characters in such a way that he is interrupted by them while he is addressing the reader. It’s as if the reader were sitting in on a scene of a father reading to his son. For example:

“…he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire and listen to a story. This evening—”

“What about a story?” said Christopher Robin.

“What about a story?” I said.

“Could you very sweetly tell Winnie-the-Pooh one?”

“I suppose I could,” I said. …

So I tried.

(pg. 4)

Milne’s use of “you” changes from addressing the reader and addressing Christopher Robin who is also a listener while the narrator tells stories involving him. The texts language also reflects an idealized past as it is very polite and charming while imitating the speech of a child. Pooh Bear is constantly saying things like, “Oh bother!” while Christopher calls him “Silly old Bear!”

Obviously, nostalgia can only be created when time has separated us from a period of life, but experience is also crucial to nostalgia. Children are unable to romanticize their lives as they are in them, not just because they are currently living them but because they lack the experience required to feel the keen sense of loss (at least in terms of time) that makes up nostalgia. Returning to the past is only appealing to us as adults because of the new knowledge we bring with us. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh appeals to the adult experience over the child’s with its small jokes of misspelled words, gentle mocking of social niceties, and a comic appreciation for child logic. Piglet’s sign, “Trespassers W,” (broken sign of “Trespassers Will Be Shot,” not the name of his grandfather), and the logic that Pooh must lose his fat for a week rather than digging him out, are examples of needing adult experience to appreciate the childish aspects of the story.

But most of all, Winnie-the-Pooh calls to our own experiences of our parents reading the story to us, a nostalgia evoked by the narration style and illustrations. It is a common childhood experience that appeals to most adults as they remember a shared memory of an idealized past, listening to a story deep in the Hundred Acre Woods where Christopher Robin was free to play and imagine with his friends.

George Washington - Diversity

Although George Washington isn’t a film that expressly sets out to expose the inequality of poor, black children in North Carolina, it does so by examining their lives and how they react to the situation of their friend dying. It is shot intimately and acted authentically which adds to the underlying argument that these children’s poor situation needs to be heard.

As was demonstrated with the children’s books we read, childhood is a time of identity formation. It is when people begin to attach things like race and culture to their personal definitions. George Washington takes place just before this formation—when children are still naïve to the seriousness of the inequalities of the world. Roger Ebert describes it as “the summer when adolescence has arrived, but…makes you feel hopeful…[and] powerful instead of unsure.” The children see each other as equals in spite of age difference or skin color or medical condition. The adults working on the railway converse with the children as if there was nothing to separate them. Green creates a sort of paradise (later shattered by the death of Buddy) of hot summer days spent in peace with all.

The film assumes that their world is the only world—there isn’t a real binary (besides the audience’s own experience) to compare their situation with. Green privileges this one side of the binary by treating it as if it were the only side. However, he keeps waving red flags for the audience in order to ground their almost surreal existence in reality. For instance, the portrait of Pres. Bush Sr. starkly stands out against its environment , just as George did when he walked by the predominantly white parade sporting beauty queens and fat, white business owners and politicians. These jolting reminders that the children’s situations are underprivileged and not a summer fairytale  emphasizes the plight of the film.

The form of the film contributes to privileging their poor, minority living as we see it through the perception of the children, similar to the way poor life was portrayed in the clip from Days of Heaven. The cinematography is glowing, warm, and beautiful, emphasizing the overgrown, rusty beauty of rural North Carolina, creating an almost surreal environment. However, the subject matter and the acting counteract the surrealist look of the film as they were uncomfortably realistic. Buddy’s death was terrifying in its suddenness and innocence, breaking the spell of these children’s carefree lives and bringing the immediacy of the problem of these children’s situations right to the forefront. Their varied reactions to their friend’s death brings a universality to their characters, peeling away the alienating layers of dialect, race, culture, and economic status that may have distanced the audience before.