Should we rewind perhaps?

[roleplayer_m_uk]

--- In HPFGU-Movie at y..., "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:

> Er, would you really call the World War II era a less complex time 
> than now? > 

well, i wasn't really talking about international relations. though 
you could argue that politics is more complex now. certainly the 
european, consensus approach seems to acknowledge previously ignored 
complexities. in the us though, it seems that imperialism still 
prevails. i guess it depends where you sit.

i was thinking more about things on a social level. society from the 
thirties through to the fifties was much better behaved. in britain 
(and both writers are british so that's where the influences come 
from) in the 30s-50s the emphasis was on conformism, fitting-in. any 
abnormalities - homosexuality for instance - were to be hidden.

now, after the advent of teenagers, drugs, an explosion of popular 
culture, an increase in leisure time, things have changed. and one of 
those things is the notion of right and wrong. up until the sixties 
right and wrong was defined by those in power - now the lines are 
blurred. in many areas of life people make a sense of right and wrong 
for themselves.

my thought was simply whether anyone else thinks that tolkien and 
jkr's books reflect those changing notions of right and wrong. in 
jkr, rule-breaking is sometimes ok, not everyone who helps you is 
doing so because they share your cause and so on. in tolkien, 
regardless of the flaws and peccadilloes of individuals, every 
character is either for good or for evil.

of course there are a lot of generalisations in that but like i said, 
it was just a thought.
 
> in the HP movie Snape's loathing of Harry is softened.

the simplification of character traits was one of the things that 
bugged me most about the movie. thus snape is nicer, dumbledore is 
humourless, and harry - and here was my biggest problem - is the big 
hero.

in the books harry doesn't actually ACT very much (certainly not 
until PoA at any rate) things simply happen to him. it's harry who 
figures out most of the plot - which is not the case in the books. 
when snape is picking on him we see that he was actually taking notes 
on snape's speech. whereas in the books, harry often isn't paying 
attention, often snape is quite right to question him (though not so 
maliciously as he often does).

this loss of complexity is one of the saddest things about the movie. 
and it didn't have to be that way - i've seen movies with complicated 
characters, honest! it can be done mr kloves!