The Harry Hype

by Cynthia Fuchs

Even if you love All Things Potter, it’s hard not to be tired of Harry Hype. Obviously, it’s not Harry Potter’s fault that his bespectacled face is everywhere you turn, on every tv screen, book- and toy-store window. He’s only 11. And fictional. And, sadly, so’s the Evil One Who Shall Not Be Named And Who Gave Harry the Lightning Bolt Scar And Killed His Parents, that gone-to-the-darksidey wizard named Voldemort.

So, who to blame? You can’t feel anything but sympathy for the bijjillions of wizard-hatted and becloaked kiddies, lining up for hours on end to buy action figures, Lego sets, towels, and Cokes with HP pictures on them, or, best of all, get into theaters on this opening weekend, panting to see the very movie they’ve been dreaming about since the publicity machine began grinding, some two years ago, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I guess you can’t really be mad at their parents either, since they’re only pawns in this particular Wizards’ Chess Game.

Nor can you reproach the lovely boy actor who plays Harry Potter. Daniel Radcliffe is by all accounts genuinely sweet, and so what if he is already too tall to play Harry in the next installment, sophomore year at Hogwarts School of Wizardry? He charmed Katie Couric (admittedly easy prey, considering her affection for the project) on her NBC special about the phenom, and even won over Carson Daly, whom you might forgive for feeling just a smidgen of jealousy — the kid is horning in on the TRL host’s demographic, after all.

But it’s all good. When Radcliffe appeared on TRL Nov. 13, he looked perfectly sheepish when Daly introduced him to the girl who, wearing only a towel, had positioned herself in Times Square just below the TRL studio window, so desperate was she to be noticed by young Daniel. "Only in New York," smiled Carson. Radcliffe nodded, hair flopping adorably. Sure thing.

Such selfless idolatry is, of course, not limited to New York, or even the U.S. I heard that it started back in England, where infamously former single-mom-on-the-dole J.K. Rowling wrote some books that hit big time. And even though I haven’t read one of those books and so have no right to hold her even partially responsible for the Harry Biz, I do.

Still, you have to admire her cunning: She’s parlayed her superstardom into a power that is unusual in the annals of novelists who sell their ideas to Hollywood. Indeed, when she sold the rights, she kept her head and some major say over how the film series would happen, including veto power over personnel. She insisted that the films be populated by actual British actors — Maggie Smith, Richard Harris, and Alan Rickman as Hogwarts teachers, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid the Giant, Radcliffe as HP, Emma Watson as Hermione, and Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley — rather than the La-La-Land stand-ins initially suggested by the gods of the entertainment industry.

She also passed on Spielberg and a few writers, settling on (or for?) director Chris Columbus (who made Home Alone and Bicentennial Man) and writer Steve Kloves (Wonderboys), whose dialogue is lifted largely from the tome itself. Perhaps she feels reaffirmed.

So the movie has been adapted by folks who aren’t so want to do right by the book, or more precisely, by the kids who are invested in the book, in order to ensure their support and cash money. And of course, as everyone knows, that is really what Harry Hype is all about. Not only was it promoted ad nauseam for weeks before opening day, it opened in a record-breaking number of theaters - 7,000 in the U.S. alone (which reportedly translates to one in four theaters showing the thing) — this being AOL Time Warner’s sledgehammer strategy for winning the Biggest Opening Weekend of All Time prize. It’s a title that, for profits-mongering movie executives, is really, really important, even though the movie is bound to make lots of money no matter what happens and even though the series is already in motion, with actors and such signed to multiple-film contracts (please, even the doting grandfather Richard Harris must have something better to do with his time).

Where did this contest come from? Is there anyone who cares aside from the people who will make money off it? Why is it breathlessly reported by news organizations?

To wit, the word from Warners is that the film made an estimated $93.5 million in its first three days. According to E!online, the exact number is in dispute, but no matter — even if it ends up being as low as $89 million, the total will smash to heck the record set by The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997 (a measly $72.1 million), not to mention that on its first Saturday, Harry Potter also beat the one-day record held by Phantom Menace, part of the franchise to which HP owes so very much of its plot. And no doubt, over Thanksgiving weekend, before Lord of the Rings steps up to cramp its style, Harry Potter will inevitably be mopping the proverbial floor with the competition.

Such news — and such nattering over numbers, my goodness — is frightening, but it’s hardly surprising. The movie understands its purpose as Merchandising Goldmine. After all, its smartest part, even for those reviewers who have had the nerve to note its lack of imagination, insipid FX, and poor plotting, is the shopping sequence, when Hagrid — having rescued orphan Harry from his evil aunt, uncle and cousin (who made him live under the stairs and cook breakfast!) — takes his charge to pick up his school supplies. They enter a magical, rather dank and dark-even-in-daytime street, where folks appear to be clinging to medieval styles as if they have some spiritual value. Or maybe it’s because they look cool. Same same in Wizard-land.

This shopping spree is actually the film’s cagiest moment, at once a familiar activity for school kid viewers and an apt metaphor for what this movie is all about — consumption, of everything in sight. When Harry finds out that his dead parents have left him a room full of treasure and coins — whoo-hoo! When it comes time to pick out a sweet or two from the cart coming round on the train, well, he just buys the whole lot. Being a wealthy wizard’s child has serious benefits.

The wandering from shop to shop also prepares you for the disconnected structure to come. Many scenes could come in any order, seeming discrete inclusions of Special Scenes from the Book: Looky! there’s John Cleese as the ghost, Nearly Headless Nick; or again, there’s Harry’s white owl and Hagrid’s dragon; check the troll in the girls’ bathroom dripping yucky boogers on the kids’ wands; and oh yes, there’s the wholly unconvincing digital centaur, stopping by to instruct Harry in the healthful effects of drinking unicorn blood.

Each appears for a few seconds, then is quickly ejected from the screen to make room for some other favorite book details that need to be squished into the movie’s two-and-a-half-hour running time.

Certainly, you can see where the estimated $125 million budget went — the scenes are full of consumable objects, from the digitally zooming brooms in the (not so interesting) Quidditch match and the crowded dining hall’s heaping plates (the extras! the food designers!), to Fluffy the three-headed guard dog (I’m imagining stuffed versions for Xmas stockings) and the money that must have been spent on John Williams’ pompous score (I like to think that Rowling is not responsible for this dreadful choice of composer, though I’m not sure why I care).

All this merchandising is what it is, namely, unstoppable. But the Harry Potter Marketing Event is distressing not because it’s selling a conglomeration of toys-clothing-food-ideas to ignorant muggles and aspiring wizards alike — such efforts are everywhere (though most are less effective). It’s distressing because it’s passing as hope for the future. It’s quite possible — inside George W. Bush’s smoke-em-out-of-their-caves-by-buying-American logic — to read Harry Potter’s opening weekend as a super-patriotic event, like those all-star concerts soliciting everyone to donate bucks, the "America the Beautiful" single sales, all proceeds going toward the hailing and healing of the nation, or the super-sales on cars, of all things.

For all its resolute and often admirable Britishness, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a function of Hollywood, which is to say, it is a function of well-organized and self-loving forces worldwide, with a vested interest in making you believe in their magic.