Why's the world gone Potty?

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

By Gail Walker

But Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows takes the biscuit.

It may look and read like a book. But the latest offering in the Harry Potter franchise isn't actually a book at all.

It's a product, like Pokemon, Power Rangers and those electronic Japanese pets that wet themselves.

Potter is different because it's smarter, truly multi-media, backed up by the current fad for fantasy (like the Rings and Narnia), and is supposed to be good for us.

But rarely has there been a more relentless, cynical marketing ploy aimed at children. The book went on sale on the first day of the school holidays in Britain. A fifth Hollywood blockbuster, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was released on July 11. The whole enterprise supposedly opens the imaginations of children to the endless possibilities of the human spirit - though how it actually pulls that trick off when there are still exams to fail is something the blurb writers haven't explained yet.

Still, Bloomsbury expected 3m sales in the first 24 hours. In Belfast, 1,500 young people thronged one bookstore to be sure of their copy.

Now, I'm not one for going against the trend simply because there is one.

I'm as taken as anyone by the romance of penniless J K Rowling (right) sitting in a café, jotting down her first masterpiece.

But the rampant hysteria of the Potter phenomenon really has got out of control.

The garbage flogged within the covers passes itself off as 'a good thing' simply because it supposedly 'encourages young people to read'.

Yet it's exactly the kind of book parents even a generation ago would have binned had they discovered their offspring reading it instead of set texts or a serious book about serious things.

The biggest scam has been fostered partly by religious fundamentalists who see in the witchcraft theme an alternative demonic world created which can corrupt young minds.

In fact, the Potter Brand is all over the place morally - epitomised by the author herself teasing potential buyers with the promise of important deaths in the new one.

And, actually, continuing to do that all the way through the Deathly Hallows itself.

It would be too much to think any real book would provoke the kind of hysteria this series of 'pretend' novels has.

But it would be nice if the unsavoury sleight-of-hand that says children will be encouraged to move on from this moronic babble to The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men or even The Catcher in the Rye could be made to vanish into thin air. That's the real fiction of the Harry Potter adventure.

Even members of the cabinet are joining the queue, so to speak ...

So half the cabinet have smoked cannabis. After Home Secretary Jacqui Smith admitted she'd taken the odd toke at uni, we heard more confessions than the priests at Clonard Monastry as politicos lined up to say they, too, had 'done the weed'.

Indeed, it was hard to find a cabinet minister prepared to say that they hadn't been to an all-night garage looking for a packet of Rizlas.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in an hilarious, almost Freudian PR slip, was described as 'quite relaxed' about about the whole cannabis thing, ma-aan.

While confession is good for the soul, there's something like, weird, going on here. I know potheads tend to be repetitious but the on-message cabinet chorus was verging on the ridiculous. Story after story went something like this: I only smoked the odd joint at the odd party when I was at university. I was very stupid and I am very sorry. Seriously. Because drugs are bad. Look at my big sad face. My big sad ever-so-serious face.

But, really, what are the odds that the guilty men and women only smoked blow? Out of eight (or is it now nine?) former dabblers, not one of them ever experimented with cocaine, or ecstasy, or speed, or LSD?

Or would that be just a little bit too much honesty for the public to take?

None, heaven forbid, actually trawled bedsit land looking for a five or ten deck? Or met dealers in back alleys behind dingy pubs?

Nope, it was all just youthful - and oh so middle-class - indiscretion that stopped IMMEDIATELY after university. Perhaps BA Hons stands for BA - Honest, Don't Do Drugs Anymore?

Really, absolutely no post-graduate joints?

Of course, it would be absurd to say that there should be mass resignations or police investigations into incidents that allegedly (well, who'd put it past some ministers to own up to non-existent cannabis smoking just to gain badly needed street cred with the kidz?) happened decades ago.

But such chirpy confessions are a double-edged sword. Despite moves by the Government to re-classify (once again) dope as a more serious and harmful narcotic, the subtext of these mass mea culpas is that weed is a juvenile right of passage indulged in by almost everybody.

A trivial misjudgment of youth such as liking A Flock of Seagulls, joining CND or believing in socialism.

The new message that drugs wrecks lives is somewhat undermined. After all, it didn't make Jacqui Smith's life a living hell. Being Home Secretary is, no matter how you look at it, somewhat better than being a crack whore.

Also, many parents will argue that if it's ok for Jacqui & Co, why are their Justin and Chloe being hauled off to court on a possession charge and facing a criminal record? To which the answer seems to be: our Jacqui is in charge of law and order in this country. Then it was ok but now, now it's a different matter. Mmm ? Research suggests that cannabis is much nastier than previously thought. Toking can make you anti-social, schizophrenic, prone to depression and delusional behaviour, and can encourage rampant megalomania and paranoia, distancing the user from reality.

Er, I think I've just described the outstanding characteristics of the Government.

I hope they're not in the grip of reefer madness!

Last week was all about an hypocritical honesty.

Sometimes, one yearns for the old days of honest hypocrisy.

If you really love Ulster stay away

Love may indeed be a many-splendoured thing ... but a re-run of the Love Ulster rally is the last thing Bertie Ahern will want to see this September.

Yet signs are that Willie Frazer, of Families Acting for Innocent Relatives, is indeed intent on visiting upon the innocent relatives of Dublin something of the same mayhem that so disastrously hit the city last year.

Willie is keen to speak to Bertie to "raise instances of collusion involving members of the republic's state agencies with the IRA".

Now, yes, the rally last time was a legal one. And yes, FAIR may well have had some valid points to make about the forgotten dead and injured of the Troubles.

And yes, dissident republicans did ambush both the rally and the Gardai and turn the city centre into a riot zone, with shops looted and gutted and repair costs running into millions of euros. But, really, no one needs gesture politics any more, from any side of the fringe debates still going on about Northern Ireland.

I'm as fervent as anyone about justice for the dead and maimed and bereaved.

But right now people are tired. People are fed up. People are disillusioned enough. And Willie is no more the sole spokesperson for 'innocent victims' than dissidents are the sole representatives of grumpy republicanism.

Leave it alone. For once, please, just leave it alone.

Baby talk

If reports are to be believed, Kylie is about to get back with lover, Olivier Martinez, who was rumoured to have cheated on her. Apparently, she wants to spend a 'glorious summer' in Italy with him and, as one of the conditions, has promised to stop pestering him to have children, which is said to have driven a wedge between them in the first place. Charming. Of course, women everywhere will suspect that what Kylie really wants is to get him back first, let the children thing rest a while, and then re-visit it with renewed vigour.

Poor Kylie. One way or another she's going to have a big baby on her hands.

Light up to chat up

Early reports from the front line of the smoking ban indicate that a new social movement is taking place.

Apparently, complete strangers are inviting each other outdoors from hotels and bars across the nation - and not for a dust-up in the car park, but as a 'bit of company' for a smoke.

Yes, the very same strangers who would previously have sat sullenly sipping their Babycham or necking bottles of Bud while watching WWF wrestling with the sound turned down are now sidling up to each other and asking ? basically ? for a date outdoors.

It has, according to hoteliers and (albeit unreliable) barstaff, created a whole new ice-breaker for people of the opposite sex.

And it's a genuine reason, too, as opposed to the usual 'Haven't I seen you on TV?' stuff.

Oh yes. You can't beat 'Fancy stepping out for a fag and maybe we can grab some chemotherapy later?'

It's a winner every time.