LDS Cinema Online

I recently had the opportunity to do something I’ve never done before and may never do again: attend the midnight screening of a popular film, opening night. See, my sister somehow won two tickets to an event called “Potterpalooza” at a local theater. As you can probably guess, this was basically a big pre-screening party for the latest and last installment in the Harry Potter franchise. However, my sister had to go to her ward’s Girls’ Camp (as an advisor) and couldn’t make it. Her husband, while not particularly a Potter fan, decided to go and invited me because we basically enjoy doing anything together, and he couldn’t think of anyone else who would want the tickets more. So the two of us ended up meeting at Jordan Commons in Sandy, UT around 11:00 that night (we couldn’t make it earlier) for the big event.

We must have been an odd couple. Although I’ve read the books and seen all the films, I think the most fascinating thing about Harry Potter is the cultural phenomenon it has become. It doesn’t rank up there as a favorite of mine by a long shot, although I have no serious issues with it. My brother-in-law, on the other hand, had read none of the books and seen only half of the films at that point – the first half. Neither of us was the kind of person you expect to see at such an event.

What we did see was a lot of people in costume. There were wizards and witches, professors and aurors, Death Eaters and dementors, and for some reason an Imperial Storm Trooper. Also, in a fairly clever crossover costume, there was Lord Vadermort (in a monument to poor planning, there apparently was a Star Wars event that night too).

At the event we were given a bag of several “gold Galleons”, which in reality were plastic Roman looking coins, that we could use at the booths to get things like horcrux pins, butterbeer (ginger ale with creme), and other novelties. We could also pay one Galleon to be sorted. I couldn’t see the point of coming to the event without getting sorted, so I did. I got to wear the hat, take a picture, and have a house name randomly drawn from another sorting hat. I ended up in Ravenclaw, incidentally.

There was also music and dancing. The overall effect was sort of like a glorified high school stomp: a fun idea and great for some, but generally sort of lame. The really enthusiastic people were completely engrossed, and everyone else was just kind of there. It reminded me of another event I once attended where participants dressed up like people they were not and reenacted things they would never otherwise get to do: Pioneer Trek.

For any readers who don’t know, Pioneer Trek is an increasingly common (or was last I knew) youth event sponsored by many stakes of the Church. Young men and women pick either a personal ancestor who crossed the plains with the Mormon pioneers (or otherwise showed a pioneering spirit) or sometimes an unrelated pioneer who interests them and spend anywhere from a day to a week visiting historic sites and/or reenacting the kind of life those people experienced. This can involve long walks, pushing handcarts, sleeping outdoors, isolation from all modern conveniences, etc. Participants are often divided into “family” groups in which they eat, sleep, and travel. At the Trek I went on, there was also dancing.

It’s not my purpose to draw parallels between the world of Harry Potter and the Pioneer Trek.* Instead, what struck me as I was milling around Potterpalooza was that the fans in the crowd were doing more or less the same thing that thousands of LDS youth do every year: representing in real life something not now existent that nevertheless means something to them. Granted, the LDS version celebrates the real stories of actual people who made difficult, often heartbreaking sacrifices while the Potter version celebrates, well, fantasy novels. No one in the Harry Potter stories ever actually existed, and the things they do cannot actually be done. There’s a very strong element of play-acting whereas the Trek is about commemoration. But why do we feel inspired to celebrate either? Basically, it’s because at some time in our lives we heard, read, or saw portrayed a story that touched our lives: a story that we want to remember and internalize in a more powerful way than we ordinarily do.

We do it by externalizing that story. We dress up like one of the characters. We adopt patterns of speech, thought, and behavior that reflect our ideas about that character. We reenact things that he/she has done (whether real or not) or try to represent what she/he would do in an imaginary scenario. We talk and debate and testify about that character’s meaning to us. We get inside the character’s head and try to become part of the story. In so doing, we allow the story to become part of us.

In many ways, this is the same reason a lot of films (though obviously not all) get made. The film’s creators try to recreate in another medium a story they found to be personally powerful. With the folks I’ve seen at events like Pioneer Trek and Potterpalooza, that medium is real life. It can be a sort of spontaneous, live performance, sort of like the one we all give every day. Unlike the general crowd of humanity we daily encounter, however, the crowd at the Harry Potter screening had a common bond – a love for the stories they cherished – that made them a community. At Pioneer Trek the same thing happens. Youth go and gain an appreciation for the things that their forebears have done by learning and recreating their stories. Then they feel closer to both the men and women of the past, and the others with whom they shared the experience.

In real life, we often overlook the things that make us the same  - our common loves – and focus on the things that separate us. It’s wonderful to see stories both real and imaginary uniting people in ways that are hard to accomplish. It’s wonderful to see film having this effect, even if the films in question are pure fantasy.

*Doesn’t Harry Potter and the Pioneer Trek sound like a great title for a Mormon/Potter crossover story?