A/N: All right, y'all, here's the second part of three... it REALLY starts to get interesting here, I think. ;)


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After we’ve looked at the changes that were made for the sake of the voyeuristic eye and the visceral eye, we’re still left with the category of the vicarious eye. It really needs to be explained before we can move on to the few changes that cannot be put into any of these three boxes. When we look at what was changed in order to better and more clearly appeal to the vicarious eye, we’re really talking about the way that characters are written for film so that we, the audience, become emotionally invested in them to the greatest degree possible. This is a rather tricky category because it does contain a few changes that have seemed to some to be “non-canon.” If they actually do represent major departures from the books, then the argument that the few remaining changes must have been approved by J.K. Rowling is weakened to some degree. After all, if Warner made Hermione over into a Pink Power Ranger just because they felt like it, then there might not be any decent rhyme or reason to anything that was changed. However, we will see that the vicarious changes do not represent any real difference from the book characterizations. They have only changed in order to better translate print into the language of film.

First, let’s start with the non-controversial changes. For example, James Potter is not revealed to have been an Animagus in PoA, as was the case in the book. Instead, this is revealed in GoF.. This delayed revelation causes a greater and more dramatic impact on Harry, which causes us to have a greater emotional identification with him. Also, Harry apparently doesn’t get as many opportunities in OotP to get to know Sirius as he does in the book, since some Harry/Sirius scenes are cut. On film, however, it really isn’t necessary to keep them all. The emotional bond between Harry and Sirius is shown in the same way, but it can be done more effectively in fewer scenes because this is the kind of thing that film does best.

Cho Chang was cut entirely from PoA, and she certainly plays a role in the next two films. But since we know that she’s not going to be the final love interest, putting her in PoA as well would really have been overkill. It seems to have been a balancing act with Cho, and cutting her from PoA was part of the choices that were made to bring her character’s importance into just the right equilibrium.

Neville’s character has always been highlighted in the films, particularly in GoF. Apparently, this is more true than ever in OotP. Certainly, he has appeared prominently in promotional material. His role has also been changed subtly in previous films to make it more significant, such as in GoF, when he, rather than Dobby, gives Harry Gillyweed before the start of the second task. This isn’t really a departure from the books at all. On film, however, this places greater emphasis on Neville’s character, and to cause us as viewers to be more emotionally invested in him. This is an interesting issue, and will be further taken up in the Ginny Weasley section.

In PoA, the backstory of the Marauders is told much more clearly and in more detail in the book than onscreen. While some of this is undoubtedly for condensation reasons, I don’t feel that this reason is the whole story. It’s still hinted at in PoA, and that did take screen time. If the entire story is revealed in OotP, however—which does seem to be the case—then its emotional impact on Harry is greater. He learns it all at once, rather than piecemeal, and we will feel what he feels.

There is another issue operating in the vicarious realm, though, and it’s very important to understand its implications. Since the HP films are mainstream Hollywood productions, there are definitely times when this means that characterizations become simpler and more “black and white”. There have been chances that Warner is simply not willing to take with some of these characters, and an independent film company might very well have chosen differently. However, since we are talking about the Hollywood aesthetic, we need to know that it informs many of the choices that were made. It explains the changes that have seemed to some fans to be “non-canon,” and it reveals that they are really no such thing.

The most obvious of these issues, of course, is Hermione’s film characterization, which has received a certain amount of criticism from hardcore fans. Certainly, Hermione’s character has been steadily glamorized since the second film. She somehow seems to be prettier, better groomed, better dressed, and perhaps even more self-assured than in the books. At GoF’s Yule Ball, her appearance is not a startling change from the way she looks every day by her fourth year. Her pink dress, complicated hairdo, and earrings that were later sold in the Skymall catalog all seem made for Hollywood—and they are. This is the key to understanding how Hermione is portrayed onscreen, and why.

In canon, Hermione is an incredibly important character, but not in terms of any romantic relationship she has with Harry. This is just as true onscreen as it is on the page. The difference is that these films are mainstream Hollywood productions, and as such, they follow very specific rules about the ways in which characterizations are visualized. The way to show that a girl is important is to make her prettier, spunkier, “pinker,” and this is what happens to Hermione. It makes sense in terms of the convergence of print and film techniques used for getting across the same idea. However, this is why it has always been a little confusing to both audiences and professional reviewers.

We normally expect that a girl who has been built up onscreen as Hermione has been is being prepped for the role of the hero’s love interest; that’s part of how the vicarious eye sees things. But this is not what’s happening in the HP narrative. Hollywood frankly doesn’t know how to deal with a female character like this, and never has. How to show a major female character who is young, attractive, and important to the plot, but does not end up with the hero? The only way to do it was to show H/Hr interaction juxtaposed with a lot of R/Hr romantic foreshadowing. And that’s just what Warner did, although viewers can almost see studio executives scratching their heads in befuddlement. Given this conundrum, it was inevitable that this kind of confusion would occur over Hermione’s character. It certainly happened with the books as well, and it really can’t be said that it was illogical to theorize that Harry and Hermione were going to be a romantic couple at some point. Many clues were there that normally would have meant exactly that. In this case, however, they did not, and that was because of the choices that J.K. Rowling made.

Seen from this entire point of view, the subtle changes in Hermione’s characterization from book to screen make sense. None of it is a departure from print canon, but rather an emphasis of certain aspects of it. We know that Hermione can be very attractive if she takes the trouble to make herself so; in the films, she simply looks a lot closer to her “Yule Ball self” much more of the time. Onscreen in PoA, Hermione worries about her hair; although this line is not in the book, we do know that there are times when she has cared about her appearance. In the films, Hermione gets more of the lines, but in the books, she has already been established as the sort of character who likes to know everything and to provide information, so it’s not really much of a stretch. In PoA, Hermione punches Draco Malfoy, whereas in the book, she slaps him. This has seemed like much more of a departure to hardcore fans than it actually is, since onscreen, the more dramatic punch is more effective and carries greater dramatic weight. We feel the emotional truth of this scene more strongly, and the vicarious eye is satisfied. To us, this may feel like overkill. But Warner knows that the average viewer, while familiar with the books, is not a hardcore fan. And so on, and on. The main point, of course, is that J.K. Rowling herself has repeatedly stated that she is very satisfied with the film portrayal of Hermione.

This is one of the reasons, though, why the film portrayal of R/Hr is more than worth taking a very detailed look at as well. Whether or not all of the clues for R/Hr should have been obvious in the books, they definitely were very clear onscreen. In fact, we’ve seen R/Hr foreshadowing in a romantic sense for several films now. In many cases, material has been added that was never even on the page.

In PoA, a rather crucial change was made, and it’s often overlooked. Ron and Hermione do argue over Scabbers being supposedly eaten by Crookshanks, and their bickering is ongoing. However, in the book, Harry also is angry with her for this and several other reasons, and onscreen, he isn’t. Ron and Hermione’s interaction is thus made much more obvious, and in a way that reads as film foreshadowing. There are even clearer examples than this, however. When the Trio hears the axe falls after leaving Hagrid, Hermione suddenly begins crying and hugs Ron. When Harry tries to approach Buckbeak, Ron and Hermione reflexively grab each other’s hands, glance down, and look nervous. In addition, there is some suggestive conversation when the two are alone outside of the Shrieking Shack and Hermione asks Ron if he wants to “move a bit closer.”

The interaction between Ron and Hermione in GoF is even more obvious than in the third film. The scene after the Yule Ball is changed in ways that recast it into a Hollywood mold of romantic foreshadowing, and it’s a good example of the kind of thing that was done overall with R/Hr. We may believe that it’s rather OOC for Hermione to break down and cry uncontrollably on the steps after this scene, but for film, it makes more sense—if it’s meant as R/Hr foreshadowing. These observations do not constitute either criticism or praise of the R/Hr relationship as such. But it’s impossible to avoid the fact that on film, it is massively foreshadowed.

Once again, of course, we come back to the contrast between all of this and the onscreen interaction between Harry and Hermione. It has sometimes been read as a kind of weird foreshadowing for a relationship that is clearly not going to occur, but I believe this interpretation to be a serious misreading of what H/Hr actually is. These two characters interact as genuine friends who communicate their thoughts and feelings to each other, as in the added scene in GoF where Hermione tells Harry about her relationship with Viktor Krum. In fact, the screen portrayal of their interactions forms a remarkably faithful adaptation of their friendship in the books. It’s true that showing a relationship between a teenaged boy and girl onscreen without sexual undertones coming from the boy is rather unusual, but that’s precisely what it is in print, as well. When we see how much non-canon material is added to foreshadow the R/Hr relationship far more clearly onscreen than in print, the distinction becomes obvious.

Now, of course, we come to the most controversial part of this essay: the very few major changes from print to film that cannot be explained away by any of Boorstin’s three categories, or by any book-to-film necessity. Nearly all of these center around one character: Ginny Weasley. In this case, we actually have five films’ worth of evidence. Many, many scenes involving Ginny were eliminated or changed, even as others were sometimes added. As we will see, there is a very consistent pattern to the way in which this was done, and the purpose it served.

In SS, Ginny’s character is introduced. Since she is not yet attending Hogwarts, her role is not large, although it was not written out of the script, either. Yet the subtle ways that her role was changed in this film are important to look at, since the later films only continue and expand on what began here. In general, Ginny’s interest in and crush on Harry is not nearly as clear as it is in the book; her behavior at the train station is actually rather different. In the book, she runs after the train, “laughing and crying,” clearly quite emotional. In the movie, she says “Good luck,” and the way she does this is cool and collected when compared with the print scene. In fact, this is her only line in the film, so we do not see her detailed conversation with Molly Weasley about Harry. We really don’t know why these changes were made. It’s possible to argue that they saved time, but J.K. Rowling had fought tooth and nail in the first place to keep the first two books from being condensed into one movie. If the H/G content was important enough to keep in the film, it would have been done. (Conversely, however, if Ginny had been completely unimportant as a character, she would not have made it into the script at all.)

In CoS, we begin to see major differences in the scenes involving Harry and Ginny interaction, but not necessarily in the ones focusing only on Ginny. Virtually all of the foreshadowing clues showing that Ginny is being possessed by Tom Riddle were filmed, but left out of the final cut. It’s not hard to see why; they really didn’t add anything to the film and they did take up time. However, they were at least filmed in the first place, and so did make it into the script. Ginny’s discussion with Dumbledore where she was afraid she would be expelled is also missing, but it could be argued that the same thing was true of this scene: it didn’t add anything vital to the film, and it took up too much time.

In this way, these Ginny-only scenes were completely different from the missing book scenes involving Ginny and Harry. At the Burrow, Ginny sees Harry briefly and runs back upstairs. Ron mentions that she’s been talking about Harry all summer. The rest of the content, however, is cut. Harry does not ask Ginny if she's going to Hogwarts, Ron does not say anything more about her, and Ginny does not put her elbow in the butter dish. All we really get in the film besides this is Draco’s line, “Potter, you’ve got a girlfriend!” and Ginny’s answer, “Leave him alone.” We do get just enough clues to piece together that Ginny is interested in Harry, but we absolutely do not get the amount we saw on the page.

One more very interesting omission, however, is the scene where Harry notes that Ginny seems to be perfectly happy after her possession. We really don’t know why this was cut, but the possibility remains open that it wasn’t only in order to save time. For one thing, it’s about Harry’s reactions to Ginny, rather than only being about Ginny as a character. This is echoed by the way that even Tom Riddle’s lines in the CoS were changed, leaving out any reference to how Ginny had been afraid that Harry would never notice or like her. The important difference here is that several of the scenes that were only about Ginny and her importance as an individual were indeed in the script, were filmed, and were only cut because of time. The scenes showing her crush on Harry—and his reaction to her-- were clearly severely trimmed for some other reason, since those were never even shot in the first place.

In ]PoA, Ginny barely appears, which is completely faithful to the book. However, there is one missing scene involving her that is more than worth examining in some detail. In the book, she is present in the compartment during the Dementor scene. In the film, she is not. This means that Ginny’s reactions to Dementors is not shown. This is important because it’s a scene that seems as if it could have focused only on Ginny. On further analysis, however, it really couldn’t have, and this has a great deal to do with how the vicarious eye sees things. We will look at this point more closely a bit later.

In GoF, we see that the changes start to become truly dramatic. Onscreen, Ron does not offer Ginny as Harry’s date to the Yule Ball, as he does in the book. Ginny does not get upset because she already agreed to go with Neville, since she has no onscreen opportunity to do this. All those mentions in the book of Ginny going “scarlet” and looking “extremely miserable,” with “her head bowed,” fail to appear in the film. A scene that has been repeatedly trumpeted as “H/G foreshadowing” is simply gone. Neither does Harry specifically notice that Ginny is at the Yule Ball with Neville; unless the viewer freezes on that exact frame, it’s impossible to see it. We do not have a POV shot from Harry, so his reaction to seeing Neville and Ginny together is not being specifically pointed out to us at all. However, it’s important to see that in print, Harry has no reaction to learning that Ginny is going to the Yule Ball with Neville, either. The only difference is that he doesn’t find out in the same way. From Harry’s point of view, the emotional center of this scene is exactly the same. So cutting material in this way was exactly what caused the scene to work as it did in the book with less screen time. And because we can see what deleted scenes were included on the GoF DVD, we know that no Harry/Ginny scenes were ever shot at all. They do not exchange so much as one single word or glance in the entire film. She is in scenes with Harry where she looks at him; he does not look at her. She speaks when he is present, sometimes actually to him; he does not reply to her.

And it’s vital to understand that the “simple condensation” argument simply does not work if applied to the omitted Harry-Ginny interaction in GoF. The biggest reason is that another scene is actually added after the Yule Ball, and was kept in the final cut of the film. Neville returns to his room and happily rhapsodizes about dancing with Ginny Weasley “all night long.” This scene was not in the book, and it certainly took up extra screen time in a film where every second was at more of a premium than ever before. Anything that could possibly be cut, was cut—and then this scene was added. (For that matter, Ginny’s comments about robes are included in the film, but not in the book. Once again, they get no response from Harry, although he’s in the scene.)

The way in which H/G interaction was portrayed in GoF is especially strange when we take one more factor into consideration: this film had not yet been finished when HBP was released. In current Hollywood films, the digital editing process continues literally until the final release of the film. It would have been extremely easy to re-edit scenes so the entire emotional thrust of H/G was brought in line with the supposedly “genuine H/G relationship” in HBP. In fact, it would have been necessary—if this were the true meaning of HBP’s H/G.

And now, of course, we come to the curious case of OotP. Several scenes in the book had been broadcast far and wide as “foreshadowing H/G.” Also, they supposedly constituted final proof that H/G in HBP had to be genuine and lasting—after all, it had been “foreshadowed” by the meaningful emotional content of these exact scenes. These scenes were the foundation of lasting H/G, the centerpiece, the linchpin on which the emotional heart of the relationship supposedly turned.

And then they were all completely cut from the film.

Specifically, two major “H/G foreshadowing scenes” were definitely cut, and almost certainly a third. The first involved Ginny bringing Harry chocolate eggs in the library, and trying to get him to talk about Sirius. The second was the infamous “Lucky You” scene at Grimmauld Place, where Ginny tried to talk to Harry about her possession by Voldemort. (The third is the final scene on the train, where Ginny revealed that she had broken up with Michael Corner and had now “chosen Dean Thomas.”) There is every reason in the world to believe that these scenes were not simply cut in order to save time.

As many reviewers have noted, OotP’s Harry “is a much darker Harry than we’re used to seeing.” He becomes more and more withdrawn from his friends, and is plagued by constant nightmares about Voldemort. This is really only a faithful onscreen portrayal of what was in the fifth book, but there is a fascinating point here specifically relating to the lost Harry/Ginny scenes. The filmmakers have chosen to show all of Harry’s emotional turmoil, and to vicariously draw us into his anguish. Because of this, the deleted Harry/Ginny scenes could have so easily been used to show Ginny comforting Harry, or alternately, challenging Harry to pull himself out of his misery, and showing that she understood him as no-one else did or could. Indeed, this is precisely what many pro-H/G arguments claimed was the real meaning of these scenes in the book. This was a huge reason why they supposedly “foreshadowed meaningful H/G.” Untold amounts of bandwidth were spent on making exactly that argument.

However, the “chocolate in the library” and “Lucky You” scenes never actually did any such thing. Instead, they very pointedly showed Harry ignoring, brushing aside, and at most casually and momentarily acknowledging Ginny’s attempts to reach out to him. When read for the content they actually contained, these scenes were painful. If they had been shown onscreen exactly as they were in the book, they would have been much more painful to watch.

There is an extremely literal and unambiguous quality to emotional scenes in film, which is one of film’s great strengths. In this case, though, it would have been more of a weakness, just as it would have been in the missing Ginny-Dementor scene in PoA. As Boorstin writes, “We’re proud to feel what stars feel.” Dan Radcliffe works in the role of Harry Potter because he pulls us into Harry’s emotional center, and he makes us want to feel what Harry feels. However, as Boorstin also notes, “Our vicarious eye scans our environment for emotional beacons. When we find one, we lock in.” We’re watching to see how Harry reacts to the behavior of other characters; this is one of the main ways we define him as a good and admirable person. If we saw Harry’s lack of reaction to Ginny’s temporary breakdown over the Dementors, his casual brushing off of Ginny’s eager attempts in the library, and his callous ignorance about her possession by Voldemort, it would all come across completely differently from the way it does on the page. Frankly, he would look like a jerk. There isn’t room for that kind of ambiguity in a mainstream Hollywood film.

Even more importantly, we, the audience, might have become distracted in a different way. We might have been struck by just how much of an uncaring jerk Harry seemed to be, but we would have seen Ginny as the underdog and rooted for her to eventually “get her man,” because we have been conditioned by the structure of Hollywood scenes that foreshadow romance to expect exactly that from scenes just like this.

This is actually even more true of the third missing scene at the end of the book. Hermione says that Cho is dating someone new, Ginny reveals that she has broken up with Michael Corner, and Ron makes it clear that he’d love to see her dating Harry. It has certainly been claimed that this was clear “H/G foreshadowing.” Because of the way that the language of mainstream film works, there is no way on earth to shoot this scene without making it look like foreshadowing for H/G; audience expectations simply won’t permit it. And it was almost certainly not included in the film. No reviewer has mentioned seeing it.

One very easy way to shoot all three scenes, of course, would have been to treat them like scenes that actually did foreshadow meaningful, lasting, romantic H/G. It would have been extremely simple to write, shoot, and edit them this way. But this choice was not made. Actually, no matter how these scenes were shot, they were all going to seem to foreshadow this particular kind of H/G. This was not because they ever actually did so, but because viewers expect these kinds of scenes to carry certain emotional meanings when seen in mainstream films. It was probably impossible to include any of these scenes and not imply “genuine H/G” foreshadowing. So they were not included at all. As David Yates stated in a recent interview, “The thing that was so obvious and right to every single one of us on the creative team was what we felt we wanted to keep in and what we wanted to move out.” And getting rid of every single scene that had been so ballyhooed as “H/G foreshadowing” simply was one of the plot choices that seemed “so obvious and right to every single one of us… to move out.”

But there is a clear onscreen corollary to this omission. As one reviewer stated, “Bonnie Wright, though hardly in it, did a great job. Ginny is a powerful witch and Bonnie knows how to play a powerful character.” Another reviewer remembered only a “redhead girl smashing a library full of crystal balls.” Although he seemed to be able to recall the name of every other character he saw, he did indeed remember something about her as an individual. This is fascinating because it actually sums up the entire situation with Ginny’s portrayal onscreen. So many of her scenes have been cut since SS, and yet this absolutely has not been done randomly, and she has appeared as a character in every film. Virtually all of the scenes that have disappeared in translation from book to film throughout the last five films have been the ones that showed her interacting with Harry. Yet going by all the information we have from the OOtP preview, Ginny does appear onscreen, and it seems to be either in conjunction with her brothers or hurling hexes on her own.

The door has been very much left open to show her as a powerful character in her own right in the final book. But the films have not left this option open for Ginny as Harry’s final love interest. In short, we can literally see for ourselves that powerful Ginny does not equal H/G foreshadowing, and it’s an extremely important point to make. H/G foreshadowing would equal H/G foreshadowing. It does not exist onscreen. Once again, the scenes involving Harry/Ginny interaction were the exact ones that got cut from OotP, and in that sense, it only followed the lead of the four films that came before it.

And it’s not as if romantic foreshadowing was simply eliminated from this film altogether. A number of reviewers noted the same phenomenon, and one summed it up as “the only relationship foreshadowing is Ron/Hermione.” This reviewer goes on to describe “subtle hints” in dialog, shared glances, attitudes, and behaviors. And we already know that R/Hr was clearly foreshadowed onscreen in both PoA and GoF, often adding extra material that was not in the books in order to do so. This is exactly the kind of foreshadowing that film handles so well, because it relies on the visual language of editing, and it really does not take extra time. It would have been incredibly easy to do the same thing with H/G, the supposed final, true, and genuine romance for the hero. However, this has apparently not been done.

The most interesting part of all is that there reportedly is one “H/G” scene, and only one. (Of course, this doesn’t include Harry addressing a word or two to Ginny, and vice versa, which we will probably see since she’s in the DA.) Furthermore, this scene was added to the film, and was never in the book at all, so it’s worth at least examining what we do know about it.

There are no specific details as of yet. However, it supposedly consists of Ginny looking sadly at Harry blithely going off with Cho. There is every reason to refrain from twisting this into an “H/G foreshadowing scene” similar to those that we know do exist for R/Hr. First of all, there’s no way to know the actual content of this scene, and it’s significant that the reviewers who weren’t interested in shipping one way or the other simply do not mention it at all. If it exists as reported, however, this is anything but positive foreshadowing for H/G. There is no reason to believe that the existence of the relationship in HBP will be cut from the sixth film, whatever its filmed nature may actually be. (And the final nature of H/G will, of course, be known by then.) So it makes sense that there should be some kind of “H/G foreshadowing.” In fact, it would make no sense at all if there were not, which is what at first seems so mystifying about the omission of all meaningful H/G interaction from OotP.

If this scene exists, it is apparently all the “foreshadowing” that we have, so its content is more important than ever. Showing miserably one-sided interest from Ginny while Harry simply ignores her is probably the most negative type of foreshadowing that could be done. And it is significant that this is the “non-canon” scene that seems to have been added, while all other scenes that actually showed real Harry/Ginny interaction were cut.

Finally, we get to the reason why it matters that H/G isn’t foreshadowed in OotP, and hasn’t been in any other HP film.

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To be continued...
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