Plot Summary

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The movie opens with Harry's cousin Dudley taunting him at a playground. Soon, however Dudley has problems of his own: Dementors from Azkaban attack the pair and only Harry's magic can save them. For the offense of underage performing of magic (and in the presence of a non-magic person), Harry is put on trial and only narrowly escapes. Early in the movie, three opposing groups are defined: Voldemort, the evil wizard and his followers; Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix, who oppose Voldemort; and the Ministry of Magic, personified by Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Umbridge, who claim that Voldemort doesn't exist and that talk of his return is simply a façade Dumbledore has contrived to conceal his own attempt to seize power. Umbridge arrives at Hogwarts at the beginning of the term and quickly rises from Dark Arts Master to High Inquisitor to Headmaster, while Harry and his friends suffer under her increasingly strict rules. Harry and his friends organize "Dumbledore's Army," sort of a student auxiliary of the Order of the Phoenix, so they can actually learn how to perform spells to combat dark magic, rather than simply reading about them in books. Harry has seen Voldemort attacking Phoenix members in a series of visions, and when he finally sees an attack on Sirius Black, he gathers several friends for the journey to the Ministry of Magic. There, they confront Voldemort and his followers in a final climactic battle. This is where we learn of the prophecy that neither Harry nor Voldemort can survive while the other lives. As the movie closes, Voldemort fails in his attempt to possess Harry, and the world is temporarily safe again.

Informal Definitional Argument

This isn't a formal Definitional paper, just a few thoughts that might turn into one.

When I was a boy, I was, like many boys, fascinated with cars. I often spent my pocket money on car magazines, so I remember the discussion about whether certain cars were "true sports cars." Chevrolet had their first Corvettes out, and Ford was selling its first Thunderbird (which shows just how old I am, since I was obviously reading magazines in 1956), so the automotive purists were debating whether these new cars could be called "sports cars." This, of course, led to the question, "What is a true sports car?"

• Two seats? (No. Several very unsporty cars, such as the Plymouth Business Coupe were two-seaters.)
• Built low to the ground? (How low is "low"? There were some pretty low Studebakers.)
• Floor shift? (Many European economy sedans had floor shift at the time.)

The purists were really trying to somehow keep out the Corvettes and Thunderbirds, but let in the MGs and Triumphs. They finally hit on door handles! If you look at pictures of old MGs, Triumph TR2s and Morgans, none of them had door handles. They had canvas tops and flimsy side curtains, and the driver was supposed to simply push that side curtain open, reach inside, and open the car with the inside door handle. That's what made it a sports car! You couldn't lock it. The Corvettes and Thunderbirds offered genuine hard tops, roll-up windows, and lockable doors.

Then Triumph (whose credentials as a sports car were unquestioned) came out with the TR3. It had more power and DOOR HANDLES!

Looking back, it's interesting that the definition never focused on the car's abilities or purpose. Cars such as the early BMWs and Volvos (which routinely won road rallies) couldn't be called "true sports cars" because they had rear seats, heaters, and door locks. It was all focused on a tiny bit of trivia.

Make It Go Faster by Yelling

The scene is actually quite common. It requires three players, minimum: the intractable object (flowers, furnace, or traffic light), the desperate person who needs some action now, and the amused (or frustrated) bystander who realizes that all the noise and action on the part of Desperate won't make anything happen more quickly. Consider these scenes (all from my personal experience in the past month):

A teenager who is frustrated at not being able to perform a tricky Nintendo jump yells at the TV screen and throws the controller against the wall. (Will a broken controller make the jump more effectively?)

A friend who was borrowing my apartment thought it was too cold, so he pushed the thermostat up to 80 to make it warm up faster.

Frustrated by my slow pace on the Interstate (only 70 in a 65 zone), the driver behind me flashes his lights, zooms around, cuts in front of me, and exits—so he can wait at a red light at the end of the off-ramp.

This is all a version of the old saying, "A watched pot never boils." With a given amount of heat, that quantity of water will take the same amount of time to boil, whether you are standing there yelling at it or doing something else entirely. Some things just are what they are (to borrow a cliché). The genius Japanese programmer who made the Nintendo game doesn't know (or care) about the kid's frustration, and neither does the game itself. It's made to do what it does, waiting for the exact sequence of keystrokes so that jump will execute. My electric baseboard heat is either on or it's off. Set it to 70 or set it to 90—it will cover the ground between 65 degrees and 70 in exactly the same time. And speaking of 65 and 70, the guy who drives an Interstate like a NASCAR race can rarely shave more than a few seconds off his trip because most of us travel about the same speed and we keep getting in his way.

We would like to believe we can intimidate the world into cooperation. It seemed to work when we were kids on the playground, so we keep trying it. Citizens yell at helpless government employees at the Welfare Department when a claim has been denied. Mothers yell at principals and school board members when their kids fail courses. But ask yourself whether it really works. When was the last time a baseball coach got an umpire to change a call?

For my part, I try to act the role of the Amused Bystander. When the computer (or video game) doesn't do what I want, I stop and take a second look. I ask how things like furnaces and stoves work, so I know whether to hope for more action if I change the setting. And I use the toilet before I leave work, so that extra nanosecond on the Interstate really doesn't matter very much to me.

Movie Review

Order of the Phoenix—only for members

I guess I'm an oddity among Harry Potter fans. I'm an English professor (which should mean that I always compare Harry with Shakespeare), and I saw the movies before I read the books. I'm not like one of my colleagues who has been complaining about the Lord of the Rings movies for years because they "left out the important stuff" and didn't match up with his imagined landscape. I had no imagined landscape of Hogwarts aside from the material in the movies. To me, Harry will always look like Daniel Radcliffe.

For a Harry Potter nut like me, a new movie is always a treat.

Last summer, a friend and I were among the first to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when it hit the movie houses. It was great stuff. Kids zoomed around on brooms. Fire shot out of wands. We updated the old cliché of smart kids triumphantly defeating stodgy adult stupidity. My friend whined a bit about inaccuracies, but I didn't let that bother me. I even overlooked the age discrepancies—Radcliffe and the other principals are all 18 (and look it), but they are playing 14-year-olds (and people in the movie keep mentioning their ages, apparently in an attempt to convince us that these strapping young men and women are still in their early teens).

Then I read the book.

Mind you, it's quite a book (870 pages) to cram into a movie, even a long movie. The book plods along slowly, but I think it's supposed to. It's the story of the bureaucratic machinery of the Ministry of Magic steadfastly eroding the fighting spirit of those who oppose the Dark Lord through an endless series of regulations and interferences. There's something about Cornelius Fudge that reminds me of Neville Chamberlain. Fudge's refusal to deal with Voldemort somehow parallels Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Adolph Hitler. It all makes for a richly-textured book, but one without a great deal of fireworks or magic until the end.

Then I got the DVD.

Eagerly I slipped it into the player, only half-remembering the movie from last summer. While it's a great tale and a lot of fun, I kept being amazed at how little the movie actually says. Who is that woman with the changing hair color? Why do people start believing in Harry again? Why is Harry so upset when he dreams about the snake attacking Mr. Weasley? Over and over—even more than in previous movies—details appear that only make sense to someone who has read the book.

I'm not like my friend the LOTR nut (who has never forgiven the movie makers for dropping Tom Bombadil). I realize that some complexities of the book (for example, the whole subplot of the centaurs) aren't even necessary for the main flow of the plot.

Movies are ultimately visual, and need to be simple and fast-paced. We would never have endured a movie that conveyed the long, grinding oppression that we feel in the book. But we are rewarded with the scenes of Mr. Filch nailing up dozens and dozens of framed proclamations and fruitlessly spying on the kids. And can anything ever be as deliciously scary as the noseless white face of Voldemort?

I just wish would stand on its own, though, and not act like a series of wonderful illustrations for the book.