November 14th, 2001
Some Potter Fans Skip Film to Preserve Magic
By Deirdre Donahue
USA Today
Juvenile hysteria over the upcoming Harry Potter movie may resemble a volcano nanoseconds from eruption. But there are holdouts.
Steve White of Washington, D.C., turns 10 on Friday. To celebrate, his parents asked him whether he wanted to attend the new Harry Potter movie, which opens that day. The fourth-grader had read and enjoyed all four Potter books.
His answer: No.
“I might rent the movie after I’ve read all the books, but until then, I don’t want to see the movie,” he says. Steve says he wishes the filmmakers had waited to make the movie until J.K. Rowling had finished the expected seven books.
His brother, William, 12, agrees. “I want to be able to imagine the characters the way I see them in my head when I am reading the books. I don’t want to see (the movie director’s) vision,” the sixth-grader says. William, whose favorite book ever is the first, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, notes that two years ago, the Harry Potter Halloween costumes he saw were “homemade and a lot more original.” This year, “the cape, the wand and the glasses just came out of a box.”
The little wizard always has attracted controversy. According to the American Library Association, the Harry Potter series was the most challenged book of 2000, with people objecting to “occult/satanism and anti-family themes.”
But criticism is now coming from a different direction.
“Harry Potter is being sullied,” says Kalle Lasn, the editor of Adbusters magazine and the author of Culture Jam. An admirer of Rowling’s work, he is repulsed by the tsunami of Potter-related merchandise. He calls it the “commodification” of a magical book.
“The marketing onslaught is just starting,” says Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, which opposes excessive commercialism. “It’s like SenSurround. It comes at you from every direction. Media companies are crowding out children’s imaginations.”
Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), will be taking his daughter to the film. But his non-profit group has a Web site, http://www.saveharry.com, that urges visitors to e-mail Rowling to protest the deal between Coca-Cola and Warner Bros. The soft-drink giant paid an estimated $ 150 million for global marketing rights to the movie.
“They are using the wonder of Harry Potter to tell children to consume more junk food,” Jacobson says. “Soft drinks have a big effect on health and fuel the obesity epidemic.”
“There is no Coca-Cola in the movie,” says Coca-Cola spokesperson Susan McDermott, who describes the CSPI effort as “sensationalism.”
And a marketing report suggests that the White brothers are not in the majority. According to NPDFunworld, 79% of kids between 6 and 17 who have read the books plan to see the movie.