The Half-Naked Prince

I hate to admit to reading AOL News, but recently, a rather controversial article popped up in its circulating headlines. Daniel Radcliffe—the precocious, Elijah Wood look-alike who plays the title role in the Harry Potter movies—will be starring in a London production of “Equus” this month. The play is famous for its combination of gruesome animal violence and sexual overtones—and its full-frontal nude scene. Publicity photos for the play feature half-naked shots of Radcliffe, now 17, sporting chiseled abs and bronzer, sensually stroking a white horse.

Yikes.

While I concede that Radcliffe has every right to branch out, these publicity images don’t sit well with me. Perhaps it’s because the Harry Potter series is still being filmed, or because he’s underage (by American law at least), but something about these provocative photos of the world’s favorite boy-wizard is just creepy. I have no objections to his being in this play—“Equus” is one of the best plays I’ve ever seen—but its publicity campaign somehow cuts a little too close to the bone. The problem is that his status as a pseudo-sex-symbol was suggested even before these photos were taken: Harry Potter was already a little too sexy.

Harry Potter as a literary icon, of course, is not a sex symbol for many of the series’ readers (except perhaps the tweens). But the transition from the page to the screen has led to the over-sexing of our young hero. The whole thing has become just a little too Hollywood, a little too perfect.

Harry Potter, in the novels, is a gawky nerd with huge round glasses who hangs around with a bunch of outcasts. He spent most of his childhood being pummeled by his meathead cousin; he had an embarrassing first kiss experience; and he doesn’t entirely understand how to keep his hair combed. He appeals to the nerd in all of us. Harry Potter as a character has never tried to be cool or sought to be in any way attractive—which is why we love him so much.

Granted, Harry is incompetently pursuing girls by the sixth book—most sixteen year-old boys are—but he is not intended in any way to arouse the reader. Harry’s sexuality is just as much as part of the growing process, and just as much a source of reader empathy, as is his cracking voice and teen angst.

So when, on screen, this loveable character is suddenly sporting a six-pack or made up to look gorgeous, it feels unnatural and cheap. In the fourth movie, for example, an entire scene is dedicated to a female character trying to spy on him in the bath, and all the action scenes glorify his physique. In transfer from page to screen, Harry has become the brooding teenage hunk, fitting into the cheap, star-studded framework of Hollywood aesthetics. In the novel, Harry is exceptional for being a bookish hero; in the movie, for being some sort of jailbait Adonis. Even worse, the supporting actors—creepy Alan Rickman and noseless Ralph Fiennes—are beautiful people who have fun dressing down. Yet for the child protagonists, good looks are a must.

The whole affair represents something sordid about our obsession with on-screen perfection. We have moved from adult admiration of Marilyn Monroe’s alabaster complexion to perfectly crafted and precociously sexualized children. I don’t like to think where Hollywood will take us next.

Sarah C. McKetta ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is an anthropology concentrator in Winthrop House.