Harry Potter and the Remote Revelation

It’s been awhile since the UK went into Lock-down, and the boredom, for me at least, is really starting to set in. My ‘one prohibited form of exercise each day’ is not enough to sustain my current need to see something other than the four walls of my house, and hey, if we were gonna be honest, my bedroom is a little closer to the truth on that one.

I mean, what more is there for a girl to do in Quarantine, other than contemplate her existence and make her way through her fourth bag of Chili Heatwave Doritos? Preferably without making it from under her duvet? *Coughs*

I mean, you can’t tell me you haven’t been there.

It’s difficult to really feel motivated to do much of anything except wallow, but recently I rediscovered a cinematic joy that has left my creative juices flowing. Yup, if you haven’t yet guessed from the title, it’s Harry freakin Potter. (I apologise for the nerdy use of freakin but it felt appropriate to the general vibe of this article). Re-watching the franchise that pretty much dominated my childhood bought back waves of nostalgia and helped me to rediscover my general passion for films, something that I actually studied way back when.

It almost feels appropriate to suggest that these franchise films encapsulate a certain amount of ‘zeitgeist’ when it comes to the noughties, even the 2010’s. The ardent love felt by fans of high fantasy that fueled the Lord Of the Rings trilogy, as well as contributing to the Potter films themselves helped to alter the course of cinematic history with innovative CGI and genre shifting that subtly altered the rule book. Even the Dark Knight Trilogy, a glorious staple of Director Christopher Nolan’s work and finesse helped to bring live action sequences coupled with drama and even tragedy to the forefront of audiences minds and imaginations.

(Also, all of these franchises are available on streaming platforms right now by the way, and you will NOT regret checking them out, even if doing a rerun).

All I knew was sitting on my sofa and trying to be productive wasn’t happening for me in isolation, and I was ashamed every time I picked up the remote with some misplaced guilt that watching TV was only wasting the time I was being given to do something else meaningful.

WRONG. Forcing myself to be my own worst enemy only made it harder to concentrate and figure out what to do with my time. I had up until recently been applying for grants for University, writing for my online project, even working at a restaurant that allowed me to feel more in control of my routines and schedule, more whole and semi satisfied than waning with half smiles for my parents and my glass looking pretty half empty. Yes, it’s true, Television for sure is a luxury that we take for granted everyday, but we don’t have to meander with shows and idly take them in just to pass the time. Television is a process, films are a process, and it takes a whole lot of effort and hard work before it reaches anyone’s screens.There’s so much to think about, and if that piece of media is almost undisputedly a work of art, or art for you, than feast your eyes upon it and don’t feel ashamed. Good cinema, good movies teach us something about our humanity, and in my attempts to bully myself into allocated writing hours and re-edits I’d forgotten that they could do that, and ended up, unsurprisingly, with a headache.

That’s the great thing about franchise films. If they’re done right, that extra movie can take it’s time to add layer and depth to it’s characters, allow the story to be more interesting and inviting, sucking you into its universe. A great example of this in recent years is the MCU, which has been spun finely by a wide web of Marvel movies that span character motivations, background stories and crazy multi-dimensional crossovers. It’s fun, vivid, and it helps you to forget the things that are broken about reality, even if only for a short time. These films almost always attract a cult following centered within a mainstream audience, because to enable a franchise, the studio has to know the film will make money, and they can figure out a rough estimate based on box office earnings and ticket sales overseas. The popularity is boosted time and time again, revitalized every time a new movie is released, all though I would say in Marvel’s case, the franchise is almost inundated with new movie releases every year making it difficult to follow unless you watch the films as they are released.

You need a captive audience for success, but you don’t necessarily need one that’s willing to pay any real attention, and that’s where for me at least Harry Potter comes in.

I felt like switching off because I had no real energy to move forward with everything that has been going on, and my fear of becoming a literal couch potato was only heightened by the fact that I might get there sooner than I’d like because I was actually taking time to watch the news. When I decided the other day to just turn it on and watch out of comfort, I remembered why I loved the movies so much, and why the characters had enabled so much in me growing up. Hermione, the whip-smart book lover who was fiery and loyal, had inspired me to try harder in school, to be competitive and to not shy away from that. That then reminded me of how much I had loved books as a kid, and recently I’d been struggling to read books because my heart wasn’t invested in any new stories.I then re-read The Philosopher’s Stone, and afterwards was able to finish the book I’d been struggling with for the past few weeks because my head was spinning so much. It gave me a boost, a lifeline almost, encouraging me like a friend might if I had real access to them right now, to not give up and to keep enjoying the little things.

I’d been so concerned with being captivated momentarily so that I could hide from my problems, that I hadn’t realized that by paying attention to movies, to the dialogue between characters and amount of attention to detail that went into the settings and locations could offer me a solution to my creative funk. It wasn’t even hard work, paying attention because the movies were enjoyable and they offered such an escape. It just put things into perspective for me as good movies often can, that something always comes from nothing, but you just have to make the best of what little you have and work your way up to something worthwhile. I was able to fall in love with my writing again, to not find it such a chore, and to actually wake up and remember there was nothing wrong with being hopeful, that this isolation wouldn’t be forever, and that I could make the best of it.

Movies are made for money. It’s a fact that sometimes by lucky coincidence aligns with a director’s artistic mindset and big idea to shape something that in ten years time could still stand as a gem, still be something looked back on with fondness and adoration. All of the franchises I have named in this article were provided only through great source material, and without having made the leap that I did from film to book I don’t think I would have been able to just be happy in my work and try to be positive. If you have a creative mind, then it’s worth doing because it can give you so many ideas for your own work, so many things that can help ground your possibilities and allow you to come up with the next big idea, the next big motion picture. Not that I’m reaching that far.

Of course everyone's brain works differently and you can’t foster productivity by always making grand leaps and thinking on different levels, analyzing how things truly present themselves as art. I don’t pretend that my insecurities with my own work and my problems are solved by sitting back and watching films because they aren’t. But I’d also be dishonest if they didn’t help, even for a little while. You don’t have to be consumed by fan-girl mania to watch something and appreciate it for what it is, because its state of being, the medium with which it is presented to you, it all encourages your own subjective view of masterpiece, of brilliance. Sitting in my parent’s house and longing for days by the beach with my friends, for new adventures and the enticement of the future has left me feeling empty, and sometimes, honestly, feeling some despair because I don’t know what it is that I’m left with. It always gets blown out of proportion, always because I don’t focus on the things that can aid my focus and hone my skills as a writer.

Watching over ten hours of fantasy melodrama has not been a waste of my time or my quarantine snacks. It’s left the emptiness I felt not being able to fully interact with the world, some refreshment, some more things that I can think about that in some way help me to improve what it is I’m doing, how it is I’m feeling. Whatever gets you there, right?

It’s NOT selfish to take a moment, a few moments to collect yourself, and sometimes a singular movie just isn’t gonna work it out of your system (I speak from experience). As Hagrid says ‘what’s comin will come and we’ll meet it when it does’. I think I was so afraid to meet my problems, so afraid what this pandemic would do to jeopardize my life in the long run that I wasn’t willing to push myself and to take time. I watched. Then I read. Then on my exercises, my runs I listened to podcasts, felt rejuvenated, felt hope. Then everything I did felt heightened, like there was more meaning, more promise of something good.

And then, I sat down, and I wrote, I wrote properly and truthfully, and tried to figure out how to live by the strength of my own convictions.

Movies can do that to you, and franchise films? Don’t hate on them if they have the power to knock it out of the park!