Review Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire

Review: Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire

The Harry Potter Express trundles on and the latest effort hit the cinemas last week.  I actually saw it three weeks ago, but I’ve been too busy conquering the ancient world and being visited by the in-laws to write about it.  So, other than to say I think it’s the best in the series so far I’m not really going to review it.  It’s tight, thrilling, probably too scary for a great many of the children who will be taken to it (I saw it first at a private showing full of RBS staff & their children and there were a great many whimpers of fear during certain passages).  Most of the flab has been cut right out – and this was a flabby book that needed a lot more editing than it got – though some good stuff is missing.  Neville’s enchanted shoes for one thing.

What I am going to discuss about it is the queasy feeling some scenes gave me.  Both scenes regard the sexual undertones between some characters and the age differential between them.

The first, and least worrisome is that between Hermione and Viktor Krum.  There’s nothing even slightly worrying about this in the book.  However, the choice of actor for Krum makes it a bit disconcerting under the present political climate. He’s too old for her.  Now, there are only a few years between the characters.  I’ve had bigger age gaps in many of my own relationships and in both directions.  Somehow, this just seems wrong.  He’s so much more mature looking than any of the other male students in the film, perhaps the addition of a beard adding to that appearance but more than that is Emma Watson’s appearance.  More than any of the other girls in the film, when she turns up in her ball gown she looks like a little girl dressed up.  Combine his seeming maturity to her look of immaturity and it’s just a little bit off-key.

That disparity pales into insignificance when put next to the Harry/Moaning Myrtle scene in the bath.  I can see the attempt at humour of having this ghost turn up and be trying to get a look at Harry’s tackle in the bath.  The kids in the audiences I’ve seen it with thought it was funny enough when they caught it.  The trouble again is in the casting as the actress playing Myrtle is in her thirties rather than being a teenager. Having her come on to a fourteen year-old in the bath made me feel very uncomfortable.  And that was before I found out just how old she is. The sexual overtones in this scene are quite out of place in a film for young children.

I’m prepared to admit that my feelings about these scenes has more to do with the conditioning even I seem to be picking up from the politically correct lobby, but when I’ve mentioned it to others they agree.  These are fairly trivial incidents and concerns. I’m actually more concerned with wondering about the effect the conditioning I’ve mentioned and whether or not it is actually colouring my judgement. The recent stories about teacher who have lost their jobs and been criminalised because they snogged boys in their late teens has really made me think about this sort of thing. In the most recent case there was only about five years between the two, there was no implication of anything more than a kiss and, indeed the teacher, said that the second time it happened the boy had forced it.  True or not why was this woman turned into what our society sees as the worst type of criminal, the sexual offender?

Any teenage boy who managed to get a kiss from a pretty, young teacher would once have thought of himself as privileged and would have cherished the memory for the rest of his life.  It is clear to me that this boy turned this into a complaint of sexual assault in a fit of pique after being rejected.

Put young men, and let’s be clear about their being young men and not children as the press likes to report them (I was pushing six feet at fourteen), and young women in close proximity and there will be occasions where they end up having some kind of relationship.  These will either fizzle out or may go on to become a real, actual, affaire.  We have to look at the circumstances, the age gap and the maturity of the student before we go stigmatising people for life.  Especially when we live in a society that insists on sexualising children through advertising and example at ever-earlier ages.