It's official, The New Yorker says, hormones are now coursing through every corridor in Hogwarts. More than just the corridors, apparently: am I the only person who finds this image mildly offensive but mostly just mind numbingly (and hopefully unintentionally) ROTFL hilarious? (Especially when you factor in the expression on poor Rupert Grint's face and the way he is holding his, er, broomstick and thrusting into the strategically placed orifice.) I can honestly say that this scene provided possibly the only fleeting moment of pleasure, if one can call it that, in what was otherwise more than two and a half hours of almost unadulterated torture. As Richard Metzger tells it like it is: Well, there is simply no beating around the bush about this one. No mitigating factors. Nope, none. The new Harry Potter film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is absolutely fucking terrible. Not a disaster, just a total bore, which is worse. (Read the rest of his review here.)
To be fair, it is not like absolutely no one is picking up on the subtext here. Anthony Lane points out in his New Yorker review that Dumbledore himself seems to have a quiet thing for Harry, forever putting an arm around his shoulder. “Wands out, Harry,” he commands. And according to this rather amusing compendium of examples of its use in popular culture, the or-are-you-just-happy-to-see-me trope never did directly occur in the Harry Potter series but at least one fan thinks that it should have.
4 comments:
I can certainly see how someone of your delicate, tactful, almost prudish nature might find such innuendo "mildly offensive". :)
Oh, I sense some revisionist history here with Dumbledore in light of Rowling's after-the-fact outing of him. I mean, wands are an easy shot.
On a kind of funny side note: for me, the classic example of inappropriate sexual imagery run amok happens to be The Little Mermaid. The bad guy is a fat, overbearing woman who becomes all-powerful by conniving the sea god to give her his staff. The hero then defeats her by running her through with his long, pointy ship. Remember the whole controversy about how the castle in the movie looked like a penis? Or how the priest at the end of the movie has a noticeable erection? Bad Disney!
*shakes head* This is *exactly* why I stopped watching the movies after the third one. *clutches his HP tomes protectively to his bosom*
I agree with Richard Metzger, who is new to me; but is the first human I've encountered who hated that movie as virulently as I did.
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