The Harry Potter Movie

What’s The Appeal Of Harry Potter?

A new Harry Potter movie is about to debut, I can hardly wait to once again read all of the Letters To The Editor demonizing the movie, the concept of magic, and the evils awaiting our impressionable children.

Despite or because of this negative outlook by some, I expect this Harry Potter movie (The Chamber Of Secrets) to do as well - if not better- than the first movie. Why is this type movie so popular? Why do kids and adults love this type of movie? Is there something missing in out lives that causes us to relate to magic? True, the movies and the books are about the triumph of good over evil but that is the theme of thousands of less popular movies and books.

I believe magic appeals to a deep and often hidden desire of the mind. We really do want to believe in magic regardless of the name used by some. Some may call it fantasy but the desire to perform magic is a part of most of us. We search for ways to do this through religions, clubs, and relationships; anything to make us feel special and unordinary. We sense deep down that real magic is nor evil regardless of the teaching of some religions.

Magic is a part of out soul and that’s it true appeal. Magic is part of our religion although almost all of them have forgotten their magical roots. Magic appeals to our primitive side and to our higher self. Magic becomes the next level of existence. It is the province of the Gods and its realization is our desire to join the gods, to become what in reality we are - gods with memory loss.

We all hope for something greater than ourselves. To some this is magic, to others it is God, and to others it is the Force as popularized by Star Wars. Magic has the same primal, primitive quality to it that suggests a power greater than the ordinary - a power from a higher source.

There is an intuitive feeling that to control magic we must first be in control of ourselves. Magic is a challenge to our individuality and to those looking deep enough, a challenge to our spirituality. Seeing magic even in fantasy causes us to believe in its possibility. Magic is a siren call to our deepest self. A part of us that is hidden by a civilized veneer of reality. A layer that we want to erode so as to touch that other realm - make believe.

Movies that scratch at our layer of reality excite our imagination and draw us into another reality - if only for a short time. To condemn movies that woe us into another reality is to condemn the spirit and the imagination we need both as children and as adults. When we were children the world offered infinite possibilities. As we grew older, reality and well intentioned parents and adults crushed those dreams, erased our fantasies. Children believe in impossibilities but as adults we limit ourselves to the demands of those around us. Who is better off - the child or the adult?

A movie or book such as Harry Potter allows the dying child in the adult to be revived if only for a short time. Cares are forgotten, worries are postponed and ignored as we drink deeply from the waters of imagination. Sadly the imagination is someone else’s but at least it is a start.

Those who disapprove of Harry Potter type films and books are only showing their fear of the unknown. They fear their lack of control, their imagination unbridled, they fear anything they cannot understand or want to believe.

Author: Don Miller
Posted: Nov. 2002

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2002 Articles

2002 Articles Home

On Obsession
Harry P. Movie
Priests & The Law
On The Parties
Greatest Invention
Artificial Minds
On Religion II
On Religion
On Oneness
On Morality
Letter To Friend
On Karma
Religious Freedom
On Rituals
On Masters
On Magic
On Society
On Reparations
On Profiling