Note: I realized after writing this, that most people will write me off as overly paranoid and critical, but please try to see if there is even some validity to what I’m saying.
I’ll start by saying I’m not a Harry Potter hater, nor am I a fanatic. I come from a fairly unbiased side of the fence (it’s a strange looking fence) and I simply want to voice my thoughts and concerns on the most recent movie: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I should preface with two notes, I’ve only read the first book and I’ve only seen the first movie, before seeing this one.
Though I enjoyed the movie overall, I felt there were far too many scenes overt and implied concerning the sexuality of the young characters. I don’t mean to say that youth the age of Harry and his friends don’t have sexual feelings or that those parts should be left out of the movie, I’m more specifically talking about the age difference in two of the relationship scenes specifically. The two I’d like to address are: Hermione and Viktor Krum; and Harry Potter and Myrtle.
We’ll start with Hermione and Viktor. From my amateur detective work while watching the film I believe Hermione is supposed to be 14 (the same age as Harry I assumed) and here date for the big ball is Viktor (who is at least 17, and definitely meant to look bigger, more mature, and older then all of his peers). Now, in an attempt to make that look as good as possible, there are plenty of couples with that big of an age gap, and given Viktor’s seeming lack of intelligence and Hermione’s geniusness, they could even be in the same grade. At the same time that age difference has gotten a lot of folks in a lot of trouble, and it’s a little awkward to see it in a movie targeted to our youth.
The few lines we get from Hermione about Viktor are this:
Actually we didn’t really talk at all, Viktor’s more of a physical being. I just mean he’s not particularly… (I could be wrong but it sounded like an innuendo)
And then there is Harry and Myrtle. I did a little research on Myrtle and found she is a ghost that haunts the Hogwarts bathroom after being killed while a student there (So I guess in actuality she’s student age as well, but she does appear older in the movie). In the movie Myrtle talks to Harry while he’s in the bath and their interaction is again rather sexually driven. The troublesome part is that Harry appears to be very uncomfortable with it, but Myrtle persist nonetheless.
Maybe I’m a little paranoid, but I felt a little uncomfortable with those interactions in a movie geared toward such a young audience.
harry and myrtle. i agree with you. i felt the same way. i have not yet taken time to analyze this but i do agree. i also thought it was crossing into some strange fetish area. seriously. ghosts that make a bee-line for the genital area in a bubble bath?
drew.
your paranoid bro
You can’t really make a fair and unbiased judgement without charting the progress of all four books(or movies if you like). The movie is not actually aimed at little kids, the target audience is ageing with the characters, so to strip the film of those nuances that are so typical of adolescent sexual frustration would be a major disservice to the book. I’m surprised that you would not be more concerned about how frightening the final graveyard scene would be for young children. In other words, relax and enjoy!