Is the nude scene appropriate in the Harry Potter 7 movie?

(I wrote this nine years ago, and Cal did the marvelous cartoon, when there was a decidedly minor furor over a "nude" scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1.)

OK, it’s not really a nude scene. It’s a little like Jane Fonda’s “Barbarella” dancing in that infuriating almost-nude scene from the cult classic. In the new film, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1,” Ron Weasley (If you don’t know the story, sorry) is getting ready to destroy a Horcrux. The Horcrux gets inside Ron’s mind by exploiting his fears that Hermione Granger, whom he loves, really prefers his best friend, Harry Potter. In the scene, which is sort of faithful to the novel, after taunting Ron, the faux Harry and Hermione appear to embrace nude, although no “interesting” body parts are shown.

There has been a campaign against the “Harry Potter 7” scene locally; I saw a couple of letters in the LDS newspaper, The Deseret News, along the lines of “I’m making the choice not to support nudity by boycotting Harry Potter 7.” The story gained some steam when the Salt Lake Tribune’s Sean Means debunked the idea that the scene was of the R-rated type.

However, Chris Hicks of the Deseret News, followed with a column that addressed this question: Why exactly was a semi-nude scene inserted into the Harry Potter movie franchise, particularly since a majority of the movies’ fans are children, and was it artistically necessary. Hicks wondered if the scene is appropriate for children who were used to images of the trio — Harry, Ron and Hermione — as children and classmates.

It’s an honest question to ask. I have to admit that I glanced uncomfortably at my three children, two girls ages 13 and 9, and one boy, 5, during the scene. It is a sensual scene that ends with Ron overcoming his dark fantasies by destroying the Horcrux.

So, yes, I was a bit uneasy by the scene’s insertion when it occurred.
I have read all of the Harry Potter novels (several times) and I think I understand why the scene was included; and why it had author J.K. Rowling’s approval, since she exercises that right. The Harry Potter trio are no longer children; they are adults (in the wizarding world adulthood is reached at 17). They are fighting  for their lives and leaving girlfriends and boyfriends behind — perhaps forever — as they face real danger and their own fears. Indeed, Hermione is beaten and tortured savagely in the film, although it is not as brutal as the final Potter novel depicts her torment.

And that brings me to a final reason as to why the “nude” scene was inserted. In the novels, which have far more detail, characters, locations, and character maturity than the movies permit, the Harry Potter series ceases to be childrens’ literature after the third novel. Beginning with “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the books assume a more somber, adult feel; this correlates with the growing strength of Lord Voldemort and the slow collapse of the Ministry of Magic.

The fifth novel, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” handles Harry’s rough transition into maturity masterfully and all three of the main characters fall in love and experience a crushing, demoralizing loss in the sixth novel, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

But these child-to-adult transitions are not as effective in the films, which have to cram several hundred pages into 150-minute, or shorter, films. The fifth film, “… Order of the Phoenix,” for example, is almost like a Cliffs Notes version of the 810-page novel.

That’s my take on why the “sexy” scene was included in “Harry Potter 7 part 1.” Overall, it was a marvelous adaptation. Producing two films for the final Harry Potter novel is more than just a ploy to make more money — it provides a richer, deeper adaptation of the finale of a timeless series for children and adults.

Mormon prophet Woodruff crossed the Rubicon often

“Things in Heaven and Earth,” Thomas Alexander’s exhaustive biography of Mormonism’s fourth prophet, Wilford Woodruff, provides justice to the early LDS leader, who tends to take a back seat to more colorful contemporaries, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Woodruff, however, was a transitional figure in Mormon history, one who created bridges that allowed the Utah church to defy chasms that separated it from the rest of the world. In fact, Woodruff made decisions that Smith and Young would have opposed, but were necessary for the young church to grow and prosper.

The massive business and ecclesiastical empire that is Mormonism today owes its 110-plus years of prominence to Woodruff, who made the tough calls needed to eventually turn Mormonism into a religion that garnered, even demanded, respect from what Woodruff and his peers once called “gentiles,” or non-Mormons.

Woodruff, an 1830s convert to the LDS Church, was as fierce a convert as Parley P. Pratt, Brigham Young, and others who survived the chaotic days prior to the Utah migration. He served missions, presided over missions, suffered poverty, persecution, dislocation, and allowed priesthood authority to dictate his acceptance of doctrines such as polygamy. Once in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young preferred to keep Woodruff in Utah, and he took and active role in local church leadership for decades. He also served in the territorial legislature. Nominally a conservative Mormon, he often took an interest in education, the economy, the arts and literature.

Woodruff, fewer than two years younger than Smith, became church leader in his early 80s in 1889 after John Taylor died. Taylor had taken a small, liberal step forward by allowing some church business practices with non-Mormons. Woodruff was to move the pendulum further than anyone would imagine during his nine years as LDS leader. As Alexander writes, “He (Woodruff) marked the path which led the Latter-day Saints to come to terms with the separation of the temporal and spiritual and to acceptance and respectability; and he reclaimed and deepened the reservoir of spiritual water that nourished the Saints through trying times.”

Separating the temporal and spiritual was most evident in the Spanish-American War during Woodruff’s tenure. At its outset, apostle Brigham Young Jr. issued the established church line of urging young Utah men to avoid war and instead go on missions to preach peace. Woodruff overruled that sentiment, endorsing the idea of LDS men serving in the U.S. military. As Alexander writes, “… crossing an immense intellectual Rubicon, Woodruff subordinated the ideal of the kingdom of God to the ideal of loyalty to the United States….” That once-radical idea is now accepted norm in today’s church.

Earning respectability seemed a tough goal at the beginning of Woodruff’s tenure, with the church assets seized by the government and members, prominent or otherwise, constantly being hunted for polygamy charges. At the time, it was not an extreme position to argue that Mormons were not patriots of the U.S. government. And, privately at least, most Mormons would have agreed.

The Manifesto against polygamy is what Woodruff is most famous for. The revelation, vetted before it was announced, effectively ended the threat of the federal government taking the church’s assets. Woodruff had hoped the Manifesto would ease pressure on Mormon men with multiple marriages, but the threat of jail remained. In fact, Woodruff was basically pressured into assuring secular leaders that polygamy would completely cease. It did not, of course, but future marriages were no longer public.

Woodruff also paved the way for Utah to receive statehood in 1896. He did through encouraging business relationships outside of the church. In fact, during Woodruff’s tenure, one constant agenda on weekly LDS leadership meetings at the temple were the status of LDS church business alliances, such as the Bullion Beck Mining enterprise. These endeavors, as well as Woodruff’s embrace of the two main political parties in the U.S., Republicans and Democrats, would cause a lot of friction within the quorum — one apostle, Moses Thatcher, was booted out of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles due to political fights — but it again provided an entry for the LDS Church into the corridors of economic and political power in the secular world.

The advantages of these decisions helped the LDS church leadership, and many of its businesses, during a severe national economic panic in the early 1890s. Despite capital essentially being closed to borrowers, the church was able to obtain a much-needed loan from a New York firm. These temporal moves were crucial to the church’s growth.

Alexander believes Woodruff learned how to compromise from witnessing the persecution the church suffered in Missouri and Illinois, and through his tenure of managing the British LDS mission. On doctrine he remained a conservative, although he ended the practice of saints being eternally adopted to church leaders in the temple.

Woodruff had little tolerance for those who questioned priesthood authority. He hounded out the Godbeites, a Utah dissident sect that snared an apostle, and later bullied the ill fellow apostle, Thatcher, out of his apostlehood after Thatcher objected, with good reason, to political meddling by the LDS leadership. In fact, Woodruff almost excommunicated Thatcher before the Cache County man, his spirit broken, apologized. Woodruff followed the early Saints mantra of handling misfortune — the death of numerous children, four divorces — with stoicism believing it all to be part of God’s plan. He was a remarkable, determined man, who built the path that Mormons trod today. Listen to an audio of an 1897 testimony, preserved on audio via YouTube.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs