Salon doesn't get Harry Potter

Back in the day, my younger sister and I were fond of handing out, at intermittent intervals, something we called the "Laaaaaaaaaame Award."

Allow me to explain this concept: we awarded it to things we thought were really lame.

I apologize for bringing the "laaaaaaaaaame award" out of retirement in a context like this one, because I guess the connection to "Ozy and Millie" is tenuous at best, but hey, that's often true of stuff I write here, and I saw something just now that I couldn't help thinking was truly and deeply lame.

I'm not actually even sure "lame" is the correct adjective, but "the Laaaaaaaaaaame Award" just has such a nice ring to it. I suppose if my major concern were accuracy I would dub it the "Pseudo-Hip, Pseudo-Freudian, Intellectually Masturbatory, Self-Impressed Smug Nymphomaniac Award."

I'm referring to an article I just read by the oh-so-with-it David Thomson, who writes for Salon.com. Thomason has written an article about the film "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone," based of course on the wildly popular book by J.K. Rowling. The headline and tagline are "Harry Potter doesn't get 'Blue Velvet': The boy has no profound psychosexual life, which keeps the film from being dangerous -- and important."

I should say here that I have mixed feelings about Salon. I enjoy the fact that they carry Tom Tomorrow's cartoons and Arianna Huffington's columns, and some of their other content. But some of the time I think their journalistic integrity ranks only slightly above "Amazing Bat Boy Eats Own Elbow!". (Full disclosure: their article on web comics didn't mention me.)

But "Harry Potter doesn't get 'Blue Velvet'"? The last two words are, of course, an utterly non-sequiturial reference to the seamy (but good) David Lynch movie. What this has to do with Harry Potter I can only guess randomly.

My roommate, Keith, made the following point: Thomson's writing on film generally doesn't review the movie that was actually made. Rather, it pines for the movie that ought to have been made, in the Thomson universe.

I also think you can never see any writer, or outlet for writing, as truly objective. First, consider that Salon has the same problem as any of us on the internet: their ad revenue money has fallen through the floor. Unlike news outlets further to the right end of the political spectrum, they don't have some rich conservative throwing money at them, no strings attached (unless you consider "you must claim that Bill Clinton is actually D.B. Cooper, Keyser Soze and a Hitler clone" a string). So they have to try to get attention to get the shrinking pool of advertisers to notice them.

Writers are not immune either. If you want attention, you don't say something thoughtful and significant, you say something titillating. I think a lot of writers who do this don't even know they do it. They notice what gets them attention, and assume, fairly but incorrectly, that it's the correct way to write. Let's face it, if you write a book claiming that Shakespeare's plays were written by William Shakespeare, you'll be right but everyone will yawn. If you write one claiming that Shakespeare's plays were written by O.J. Simpson, possibly with help from the Amazing Bat Boy, you'll have the opportunity to see up close and on national morning television whether Regis's teeth are actually real.

Then there's the Puritan factor. If a young person asked me for advice on sex, I would a) die of surprise, and b) instruct him or her never to listen to anything an American says about it. We're the intellectual and spiritual descendants of Puritanism, folks, and we're overcompensating badly for it to this day, which is why we can't shut up about sex and can't stop looking for it in everything and believing it should be everywhere. People in a lot of countries, who are not so inhibited by history, just have sex, and then they get on with their lives.

Reality check, everyone: Harry Potter does not have psychosexual overtones, and thank goodness for that. J.K. Rowling, being a Brit, has not felt the need to prove her own sexual hipness in a children's book, and I applaud her for it. Because, amid all the "Sex and the City" nonsense in this country, it's hard to shake the image of an adolescent staring wide-eyed at a condom machine, pretending to be hip enough to be fascinated by it.

If you haven't read "Harry Potter" yet because it's too popular for your taste (I have friends who think this way), let me assure you: it's popular for a reason. It's all the things a good escapist children's book should be, and among those is "not entirely escapist." But I'm not here to do a book review. It's just my recommendation.

Here's another recommendation: if you want to speculate about the bizarre, seamy psychosexual life of some confused adolescent, you should read something else. Maybe the movie reviews of David Thomson.

Peace love empathy,
D.C. Simpson