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Keywords: Harry Potter

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Stepping out of the way of the next generation

    • Fatima Measham
    • 01 March 2018
    10 Comments

    I've been thinking about my former students lately. Anyone who has ever spent time with young people over the past ten years would see something inevitable in the current moment over gun control in the US, where Parkland students are charging at the seeming edifice of the NRA - and leaving cracks.

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  • RELIGION

    Confessions of a literature addict

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 14 August 2017
    12 Comments

    Was Harry Potter’s 20th birthday to blame? Or the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death? Or merely the ageing process? It’s hard to decide, but in a life quite possibly ruined by literature, I have started remembering some of the books I read in childhood.  

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    What writers festivals say about culture

    • Tseen Khoo
    • 08 August 2017
    6 Comments

    The Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) starts on Friday 25 August. It’s a good time to consider what such a festival says about our local cultures, as well as being a perfect time to think about how you relate to that culture. 

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  • MEDIA

    Wherefore art thou women on film?

    • Francine Crimmins
    • 03 April 2017
    4 Comments

    I can think of many films I saw in childhood which still resonate because of their morals and characters. The dark and dangerous fire swamp of The Princess Bride, where Westley must wrestle with rabid beasts to save the damsel in distress, taught me about bravery. The Harry Potter series shows a boy who has suffered a great loss but finds community and purpose during his time at Hogwarts. There's something all these movies have in common: they were all about men.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    History comes to strife in Stratford-upon-Avon

    • Patrick McCabe
    • 29 November 2016
    3 Comments

    Someone I read in high school, so probably Shakespeare, once said 'The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.' Well, whoever it was clearly hadn't been to Stratford-upon-Avon (so maybe not Shakespeare then). Here, you truly can visit the past, without a passport. As one peruses the shops, houses, supermarkets and ATMs, one cannot help but speculate as to the links between Shakespeare's works and what must have been the commonplaces of his everyday life.

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  • RELIGION

    Atheist Pratchett's Discworld has lessons for Christians

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 16 March 2015
    4 Comments

    'You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world. Otherwise it's just a cage.' When I heard English author Terry Pratchett had died, I immediately jumped online to start looking through some of my favourite quotes from his books. The above, from Witches Abroad, is one of many that have accompanied me over the years.   His 44 Discworld novels could be broadly described as comic fantasy, or fantasy satire, and yet that's really just the starting point for the immense variety of complicated ideas they explored in such a fun, joyous way. Perhaps strangely for someone whose work is so grounded in atheism, Pratchett has had a profound impact on my religious faith. Read more

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Timely liberation

    • Anthony Morris
    • 04 September 2014

    While not everything always turns out for the best in Boyhood, the stakes aren't high in any traditional sense. Instead, time gains power from its sheer passage on the screen. For Mason, the central character, it is a liberation. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Exceptional Thatcher and the feminist fallacy

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 15 April 2013
    26 Comments

    Whereas feminism realises the inherent potential and worth in all women, Exceptional Women succeed because of their perceived likeness, not to other women, but to men. Consequently, they make things harder, not easier, for other women. Margaret Thatcher was many things, but she absolutely was not a feminist.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Harry Potter's victory over Christian wowsers

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 July 2011
    13 Comments

    Harry Potter has been with us for nearly a decade and a half. Contrary to the predictions of some wowsers, the series has not led generations into paganism. Instead they have been exposed to a simple but profound message lifted straight from the gospels.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Harry Potter's dark days

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 18 November 2010
    1 Comment

    The youths take fearful strides into adulthood, embracing responsibility through necessity, unprotected by parents, teachers or mentors. Like many fictional 'chosen ones', Harry Potter is an allegorical Christ figure.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Not just war as teens fight back

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 09 September 2010
    3 Comments

    The characters voice implicit moral concerns about the right to kill in self-defense, and rationalise why it might be right to take up arms against the invaders. When Ellie is confronted by a mural depicting an encounterbetween Captain Cook and a group of Aboriginal Australians, she ismomentarily arrested.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    New Moon and other dumb films for women

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 27 November 2009
    13 Comments

    It may be a box office boon, but critics have slammed the Twilight series, and feminists complain that lead character Bella is a subservient drip and the vampire she loves, Edward, is a stalking patriarch. Why are smart films for women in such short supply?

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