[HPFGU-Movie] Re: WorkoutDan and Study Hall

[Shaun Hately]

On 29 Jan 2006 at 13:31, laurenmcoakley wrote:

> --- In HPFGU-Movie at yahoogroups.com, "alchemillalady" 
> <alchemillalady at a...> wrote:
> 
> SNIP
> >I think Mike Newell's attempt to convey the British Boarding school 
> >environment included the notion that these closed environments could 
> >be rather brutal.  Teachers did not refrain from physical punishment  
> >(some were almost sadistic with it) and students were sometimes 
> >horribly cruel to one another, as only unsupervised children can be   
> >(such as the scene in the cloister where every passerby is taunting 
> >Harry, including Cedric's friends).
> > 
> > --alchemilla
> 
> And now Lauren:
> Is this really ONLY characteristic of British boarding schools?  I 
> went to school in the states, and before there were laws about 
> teachers handing out corporal punishment, I seem to remember being hit 
> on the hand with a ruler once.  And kids being horribly cruel to each 
> other I think occurs in every school environment... I remember some 
> that were horribly cruel to me... I went to public school, by the way.

It's certainly not only characteristic of British Boarding Schools, 
but, it's *very* common as a stereotypical view of British Boarding 
Schools, particularly the Public Schools. And even more so, it's a 
very common feature of the fiction based on those schools.

Honestly, speaking as someone who attended an Australian school 
heavily based on the British Public Schools, I don't think what was 
seen in that scene is at all brutal or sadistic. It's very mild 
actually. It might be somewhat inappropriate, and certainly, I'm not 
sure that it is character for Snape. But brutal and sadistic - no. 
It's nothing like as bad as I got at school - and my school was 
actually far milder than some of the schools of even a few decades 
earlier (I was at school in the late 80s/early 90s).

A news story that was in newspapers all over the world in November 
last year, just as the movie came out gives a little insight into 
Newell's thinking on this:

"Much as he admires the first two 'Harry Potter' flicks crafted by 
U.S. filmmaker Chris Columbus and the one made by Mexican director 
Alfonso Cuaron, Newell felt he brought the one thing his predecessors 
lacked: Intimate knowledge about the quirks of a British education.

'It wasn't possible for them to get that right. They'd never been to 
such a school,' Newell said. 'English schools are very, very 
eccentric. They're not like any other. I know they've changed now, 
but when I was in school in the '50s, I was beaten with a cane, a 
rattan cane, as thick as my little finger.

'And that was a very common occurrence, and so they were kind of 
dangerous and violent places, but they also were very funny and 
anarchic places. I wanted to get the sense of the school as a 
character, having a character, so that the kind of crazinesses that 
she, Jo (Rowling) is so good at, I wanted to find an organization 
into which that kind of stuff could fit and bring the two things 
together. Bring the individuals and the institution together. So I 
think that's something I could bring in a major way to the table.'

To that end, Newell rewrote a scene to add a glint of schoolboy 
mischievousness and the corporal punishment it provokes, in which 
dour Professor Snape ( Alan Rickman) bonks Harry and Ron in the head 
with a book for goofing off during a study period."

Believe me, I don't think many people who have been caned are likely 
to see what Snape does as all that bad. (-8

Incidentally, I think Newell really did succeed in given a proper 
'school feel' to Hogwarts in Goblet of Fire - I was very glad to see 
that he did take the issue of making it seem like a real school in 
line with its roots, so seriously, because *to me*, that is important 
- it's something I liked about the books, I could see the tradition 
JKR was drawing from - and so I like to see it in the movies. I think 
Columbus did a pretty good job (although his Hogwarts was a rather 
'sanitised' version), but I thought Cuaron - no matter how much 
better he is in general terms as a film maker - missed this.

Newell, I think did a very credible job - but I am probably somewhat 
unusual in how important this is to me. 
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/HSWW.html is evidence of that 
(and in my view worth reading if people don't know that much about 
the British public school tradition and how (I and others think) it 
has influenced Hogwarts.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia