On clothes and the time of the action in POA

[torillgrnhaug]

Hi - I have been lurking here for a while, this is my first post. 

I agree that the uproar among some about the "muggle clothes" is a
little amusing. The clothes they wear or don't wear doesn't matter
that much to me - I always found it hard to imagine just what the
"robes" in the books looked like anyway. From Rowling's description I
get a sort of monk's outfit feeling, but that doesn't look good to me
- I can picture the adults like that, but on kids it seems kind of
akward. So I agree with the choice of the films so far, an outfit more
like British school uniforms, and the British tradition of ordinary
casual clothes worn out of school hours. And we have seen a picture
with the trio in school uniforms, so this way of doing it seems to be
kept up in this film as well. Fine.

But I disagree that their casual clothes have to be according to
actual early nineties clothes, making the films some sort of "retro"
films. To me there is a difference with the impact of what in the
fandom has come to be called  "canon", and the actual literary text of
the books. Canon, as everybody knows, also includes everything Rowling
has said in interviews etc. about the Potter Universe. This is
important when discussing various hypotheses as to what might happen
in future books, but not necessarily important when making the films.
Rowling stops them if they change anything that is vital for later
plots, but as long as they don't do that, the filmmakers don't have to
bother about "canon", only the text of the book. I actually think it
is important to read a book independent of whatever the author has to
say about how it was intended - it's the text that's supposed to speak
to you, and it can be read in many different ways, some of whom might
even surprise the author, but still be possible from the text. This
makes reading interesting, and means that we can all create a Harry
Potter of our own from reading, as correct as anyone elses. And thus
the interesting thing with a change of directors, is to see another
artist's vision of Harry's world. That could add to your own, instead
of just being a copy of it. (Whitch is not possible of course). 

In Cuarón's mind it seems, the action takes place today. And why not?
Because after all, where's the source for the "early nineties" idea?
Based on some clues in the books, like the Deathday Party, fans have
been calculating a timeline and decided the action must take place in
the early nineties. Then a timeline is added to the special stuff on
the COS DVD, confirming some of this calculation. 

OK. But the TEXT - the books as litterature, never mentions any dates
at all. The actual time in the muggle world is thus obviously not
important to the story. I like that, it means that every new
generation reading the books can imagine Harry as their contemporary,
and the books as happening Right Now. That's good. If the story was
supposed to be realistically situated in the early nineties, then we
could all scream about mistakes, as some has done already about a
thing like Dudley having playstation. Things like the colour of
Harry's eyes are in the text, but not muggle time or a description of
exact muggle fashion. In fact, Rowling very seldom bothers with
descriptions of clothes, except on some rare occcation as when
describing Mrs. Weasly's knitwear. People just put a jumper on, that's
it, the style or colour of that jumper usually doesn't matter at all. 

Therefore, I see absolutely no reason why the filmmakers should waste
time and energy on getting clothes and hairdos to look according to
historically correct fashion from the early nineties. It is of no
consequeence to the story whatsoever. Not that it necessarily would
have bothered me if they had - I might have worried a little about
getting their priorities wrong, but if the film otherwise was good, I
wouldn't have cared. 

But there is one special reason why the 2003 look is good, though, and
that has to do only with the films. What is unique about the Potter
franchise is that we actually get to see Harry grow up in Real Time in
front of our very eyes. I don't know if this has ever been done in the
film history before - perhaps some of you know of some examples and
can enlighten us on this, but I personally have never heard of it. So
the film Harry we see at 13, IS as the Harry we saw at 11 ACTUALLY
developed.  This is a little miracle in itself. In the Potterverse of
the films then - which is and must be a different universe from the
Potterverse of the books - Harry Potter is Daniel Radcliffe's
contemporary. That's the one very important reason to keep Dan in the
films as long as he wants to do them. If Harry in POA wears the same
kind of casual clothes as Daniel does, then, that's just fine with me.

Cheers!

Torill