Student body makeup of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons

[Steve]

--- "Aleta Turner" <aletamosquito at ...> wrote:
>
> I agree with Anne.  It seemed clear to me that, in the film,
> Beauxbatons was an all-girl school; Durmstrang, all-boy.  
> That just does not fit with the way the world exists as JR 
> created it, ...
> 
> Steve, I can not agree with your assessment: by showing only 
> one sex from each school (and not even mentioning any of the
> other sex left back on the home campus), the film-makers 
> clearly imply that one is a girls' school and the other a 
> boys' school.
> 
> Aleta
> 

bboyminn:

Fair enough, but I don't think it was so much 'all boys' and
'all girls' they wanted to emphasize as it was masculinity 
and femininity. 

They needed to establish very quickly the apparent extreme 
femininity of Fleur DeLacour, and the fastest Hollywood magic
way of doing that was to make the entire school, or represented 
students, all girls. 

Personally, I think they should have emphasized the Veela
aspect of Fleur by always filming her in soft focus and 
moving in slow motion, while everyone else moved in real-
time and standard focus. That would have singled her out as
something very magically special even if that specialness
was never explained. But I think that might have broke the 
special effects budget for such a minor character. 

Still, because they weren't going to get into the Veela
aspect, they needed some on-screen way to hyper-feminize the
Beauxbatons students and the easiest way was to make them
all girls. 

I think that was the decision process they used, and to some
extent, I agree that tended to imply that it was a girls 
school, but logically that makes no sense, so I created an
alternative logic that makes it make sense.

Just doing my part.

Steve/bluewizard