I have a problem with the Harry Potter novels/films.

You have this group of kids (and adults) who are “special”. Everyone else in the world is beneath them. Hell, everyone else in the world has to be kept in ignorance about them and about the dangers facing the entire world. (Kinda like the CIA?) They live in rich and special circumstances, petted, coddled, taught their proper roles. Isn’t this how the upper class views themselves, and views people like us, the hoiploi who they keep in the dark? True, there are a few “muggles” who pop out a kid who’s special, but that kid is sucked into the magic world, too dangerous to be left in the real world. Isn’t this how the upper classes view talented members of the lower classes. They are coopted, pulled into the world of privilege because there is nothing more dangerous than a brilliant member of the “people” who’s thwarted. Such people become assassins or lead revolutions. They cause trouble. The plutocracy has learned this. They give such people a hand up. Or kill them.

The Harry Potter novels symbolically show that world of privilege and show it as a good thing. I stopped reading them when I realized this. I do not celebrate those who rule over me, unelected. Or their class.

I also stopped watching the Harry Potter films.

I was watching one of them on TV. I was interested in it, enjoying it, then I had to go into the next room. I turned up the sound so I could hear the movie but I lost interest and never returned to watch it. This was because, I realized, it was all visuals. That was the only interesting thing about the film. The pretty pictures. There was no substance, no text, no subtext, no words to make it interesting. No layers. None of that in Harry Potter. Its only symbolism is the ideology that a few people are born superior to everyone else. All it has to offer is pretty pictures.

So screw Harry Potter.

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© alllie 2006

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where and this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.alllie.com/alllieblog/.

I’m in an artichoke phase. I go years without having one then start eating them regularly.

Once or twice a week I steam an artichoke, remove each leaf, dip it in a little butter and salt and then pull the bottom of the leaf through my teeth, removing the soft, buttery flesh at its base. I see them cook artichokes on TV and they cut everything away but the heart and use that. It’s such a waste. True, it’s hard to eat an artichoke the right way but at the end, my plate piled with leaves, I feel satisfied. And one artichoke will make a meal for me.

I know the origin of my artichoke appreciation: Three in the Attic, a movie from 1968. Christopher Jones (at his most beautiful) plays a womanizing student who sleeps with three different girls, played by Yvette Mimieux, Judy Pace and Maggie Thrett. When the girls find out he’s been sleeping with them all, they kidnap him, lock him in the attic and make him continually have sex to punish him. Yeah, some punishment.

It was a funny movie. Jones seduces one of the girls by telling her that he is gay and she sleeps with him to try to convert him. Jones muses that gay guys probably get more sex than straight guys because of girls trying to change them. If I saw Three in the Attic for the first time today I’d probably think it was stupid, but in 1968 I thought it was sweet and funny and sexy and daring, with its gay jokes and magic brownies and wheat germ on a platter to keep up the guy’s sex drive.

Anyway, at one point Jones and Yvette Mimieux’s character eat an artichoke, dipping the leaves in melted butter and slowing pulling the leaves through their mouths.

So I tried artichokes for myself and found I liked them.

I’m in an artichoke phase.

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© alllie 2006

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where and this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page,  Distribution: This article is copyrighted by alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where and this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page,  http://www.alllie.com/alllieblog/.

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