HARRY POTTER HAS A PENIS


and he's not afraid to use it.

When the news broke a few months ago that Daniel Radcliffe, the titular star of the Harry Potter movies, would be appearing in a West End revival of Peter Shaffer's Tony-Award-winning Equus, a brief titter arose from the corners of the culture that had actually heard of the play and so knew that it would require the young actor to show off his magic wand on stage. Now that much of the rest of western culture -- which is to say, the great and muddled middle -- has learned this little tidbit, and especially now that they've seen one or more of the (pretty damned sexy) publicity photos...



...some people, sadly but predictably, are shocked and offended and so, so outraged by the idea. Taking great, imagined umbrage, they've begun to sound at least a little bit like Dolores Umbridge.

We as parents feel Daniel should not appear nude, wrote one parent to a Harry Potter fan site, where discussion boards have apparently been aflame for much of the last twenty-four hours. Our nine-year-old son looks up to him as a role model. We are very disappointed and will avoid the future movies he makes.

So, just to recap, this woman is disappointed in Daniel Radcliffe for having a body and not being afraid to use it in service to his art. For shedding his clothes and showing his skin -- which, last time I checked, we all had; though apparently some is thinner than others -- in a role that, while mildly scandalous in 1973, is central to an award-winning drama that, though never even gratuitous, is now less graphic than half of what you might see on cable any given night. For daring to think that he might be able to grow and stretch and take on new, provocative roles and not be content merely to be locked into the role of an adolescent wizard. For understanding that he is an actor, not a single character or some static, stilted "role model" for precious little children and so seeking out new creative and artistic challenges.

Oy. What a bastard.

It is also worth noting that this woman, and a whole lot of other lunatics like her, have no problem with a nine-year-old seeing a series of films in which a young boy whose parents have been brutally murdered is constantly besieged by trolls and demons and werewolves and soul-sucking apparitions, by fanged serpents and giant spiders and three-headed dogs and fire-breathing dragons, by legions of men and women who want to kill him and his friends and even his mentors, by a shapeless, faceless, finally noseless figure of pure evil incarnate who murders wizards and kills school boys for sport and tortures even his most loyal followers, in which lives are endangered and main characters are killed and bloody messages are scrawled upon stone walls and painful death and mortal danger hang everywhere in the air and in the narrative world, but is afraid that her nine-year-old, who no doubt has a subscription to Playbill and keeps tabs on all the latest London revivals, will be forever scarred by the thought that the young man who plays Harry Potter is in possession of his own body, is not ashamed of its naked form, and is willing to employ it in a way that helps give life to a work of art that someone whose age can be measured in double digits might actually enjoy and think worth contemplating.

I would be compelled to heap spells and curses and good doses of shame upon this woman and anyone else who shares her folly, but I think it far more helpful to wish sense and countercurses and full rations of pity upon her son. Who will, I hope -- just like Harry -- grow and learn and one day break free from the jaundiced, hysterical views of the silly people by whom he was reared.

Posted: Wed - January 31, 2007 at 02:13 PM          

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