An incident involving harry potter

[realisticphish]

I was sitting in a waiting room for a market research company today; there were only two of us in there, and we were chatting with the receptionist. The topic turned to movies, and I mentioned that I would probably be seeing Harry Potter, since I'm a huge nerd. I mentioned that I had read and liked the books, etc. She and another employee who was walking by mentioned off-handedly, and not at all hostilely, that they didn't allow their kids to read the books.

Well, I didn't want to start anything, so I just kept my mouth shut. But here's the amazing part. About 5 minutes later, the receptionist asks me "You said you've read the HP books?" Yeah, I had. "Is there anything... well... demonic about them?" I said absolutely not; they don't summon demons, they don't use sacrifices, or anything like that. I said they just pointed a wand, said something in fake latin, and made stuff fly. If anything, the themes in the book revolve around love and friendship. I also mentioned that the books do go upwards in reading maturity; she might not want her kids exposed to the latter books yet, but the earlier books would be fine. She seemed surprised, and rather satisfied.

(As an aside, later on both of these people thought the war was bullshit, and that we should never have gotten involved)

I think, I HOPE that I may have educated someone today. Not just about Harry Potter, but about knee-jerk reactionism to anything involving stuff they don't know about.

[lazarus]

1. I've never understood

the furor about the Potter books. I avoided them for years because I thought they were a fad. A good friend convinced me to try the first two, and I was hooked. Happened a couple of weeks before Hallows came out. I now own them all in hardcover, including the British edition of Philosopher's Stone.

For some reason, the fundies don't seem all that put out about the vampire nonsense in Twilight, do they?

I wonder if the Potter business is because, given that they're already using magical thinking, they just assume that all magic is real? I remember something like this about D&D, too.

[darkstar3]

2. The dichotomy you see has two sources.

1. In Twilight, no one is using actual magic. It's just a bunch of blood-sucking sparkly vampires. Fundy Christians have a serious problem with anything involving magic, because, if I remember the quote correctly from my MIL:
That kind of power only comes from two places, and God only gives it temporarily in a way that gives glory to him. What these people are doing is Satanic.
yeah, that's paraphrased, but it's damn close.

2. According to darkspouse, who actually read the books in order to mock them, they qualify as a kind of Mormon wet-dream. I don't know much about the series, but apparently Edward is supposed to be a Joseph Smith analog, and young Bella is a Mary Sue. Basically, Meyers wants to bone her prophet. Aside from that, though, it makes sense that fundies would have less problem with this movie since all the men are powerful, the women subservient, and from what I hear the books back the idea of abstinence.

[realisticphish]

3. Meyers is indeed Mormon

and when deconstructed, Twilight is pretty horrifying, both in the ways it represents relationships, and making vampires fucking SPARKLE

[realisticphish]

4. they really do

I've heard so many people say, "just wait until your kids learn to cast spells!"

They believe witches EXIST. And not only do they worship the devil, but their magic WORKS. Jack Chick addresses this several times; in one tract he shows a girl casting a spell on her father that she learned from D&D (apparently rolling dice casts spells in the real world)

[Odin2005]

11. A D&D spell? REALLY? Dog, these people are STUPID!

[charlie]

6. Fundies are too strange for words

A kid with a wand makes them go mental, but this freaky shit doesn't faze them?:

...The baby in Bella's belly starts growing incredibly fast. And it starts hurting Bella, as each kick it gives has the super strength of a vampire behind it. As it grows, Bella gets sicker, and then the good stuff starts. The baby kicks so hard it breaks Bella's ribs and then severs her spine. Are you imagining Kristen Stewart wearing a fake pregnancy belly and pretending to have been suddenly crippled by her own fetus? Because I am and it's making me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Oh wait, I missed something. Edward is completely freaked out about the baby, fearing it will kill Bella. He tries to convince her to get an abortion (but seriously, how could she? Vampires are tough to kill even in this shitty series), and goes so far as asking Native American wolfboy Jacob to impregnate his wife so that she can have the baby she desperately wants. I'm dizzy with how ridiculous this is, and we're just getting started.

Eventually the baby starts to get born and Bella is dying. The baby has telepathy, by the way, so everybody can read its thoughts while it's in the womb, and it turns out to have an essentially adult mind. Like Alia in Dune; I would accuse Stephenie Meyer of ripping this off, but anyone who thinks that Meyer might have read Frank Herbert has never been within spitting distance of Twilight. The woman is a moron.

In a moment that demands to be shown on the silver screen, Edward gives Bella an emergency C-section with his fucking teeth. It's like something out of XTro, for the love of God. It's so horrible it's brilliant, and this scene alone is why I remain firm in declaring that David Cronenberg must direct Breaking Dawn. This is surely his movie...

http://chud.com/articles/articles/21684/1/THE-DEVIN039S-ADVOCATE-WHY-BREAKING-DAWN-MUST-BE-MADE-INTO-A-MOVIE/Page1.html

There's more in the article. It gets worse.

[Warpy]

9. I read the first two out of pure curiosity, but those

endless games of Quidditch did me in and I never managed another one. I've also seen the films, mostly because I wanted to know how they'd manage to stage Hogwart's.

It's amazing how the fundies all have their knickers in a twist over those incredibly benign books. Sensible parents don't give a rip what their kids are reading as long as they're reading, and to hold a kid's attention for 300 pages with no pictures is nothing short of miraculous.

You did a good thing.

[realisticphish]

10. yeah, not a quidditch fan

For one thing, the rules are ridiculous... the snitch is worth 150 points, and goals are only worth 10? It's like having someone play whackamole on the sideline at a football game, and the first one to win gets 35 points.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

12. The fundies are upset because

they only want people to believe in their version of magic. Harry Potter is a serious competitor to their own brand of magic.

And BTW, I absolutely abhor Harry Potter, and I'm a total nerd too. I'm more of a Bob Salvatore fantasy book guy - the D&D worlds.

[onager]

5. My book-store incident...

From a few years ago, in a Borders.

Guy customer, picking up one of the Left Behind rolls of square toilet paper: "What's this about?"

Borders clerk, a young woman with a whamangous crucifix around her neck: "It's about...(drumroll pause)...JE-SUS!"

Me, overhearing this: "It's a bunch of nasty Fundamentalist propaganda about the end of the world." (Or words to that effect.)

Customer: "Thanks." Puts book back on rack and keeps browsing.

If hell existed and looks could send me there, the glare from that clerk would have had me roasting in a nanosecond.

[TZ]

7. I was going to make a scathing remark about Ohio/Jesusland

but then I remember that my BIL's ex wife wouldn't allow their son to watch Batman because Batman is apparantly a spawn of the devil. Ugh.
I think that imagination is frowned on big time in the fundie community....

[realisticphish]

8. The funny thing is

this was not only in Columbus, which is fairly liberal, but in Grandview Heights, which is VERY liberal. Though I guess she cuold have lived somewhere else


*she probably things the bat ears are devil horns, or something. Or maybe she thinks Adam West is the anti-christ

[and-justice-for-all]

13. Fiction is fiction, bible or Potter...nt