Harry Potter; or The 18th-Century in a Modern Cinema

As I mentioned last post, I'm rather busy at the moment and haven't had much time to go through my materials to put together a really theoretical post-- our next major topic to cover is going to be either "History and Memory" (one of my favorites!) or "Public History" (also really fun!) depending on how I feel once I sit down with my old papers/notes/articles/experiences.

But for now, I don't want to leave you without some historical fun, so here it is-- The Harry Potter midnight opening as an 18th-century playgoing experience. What? you think. It's a cinematic release. Cinema didn't exist in the 18th century. And the movie takes place in a very modern world despite the magical aspects. How is this at all 18th century?

In the 18th-century, audience members attended the theatre to see-and-be-seen. The lights remained lit through the entirety of the show, so wearing your best clothes, sitting in the best seats you could afford, and speaking with the best people you knew ensured your position in society. Whether an aristocrat in a box seat, an artisan who saved up for a seat in the pit, or a chimney sweep in the gallery, the theatre was about seeing and being seen. Additionally, like in the modern cinema (though not in the modern playhouse) food was allowed in the theatre. Thomas Jefferson paid for bowls of punch to be served in the pit with his friends, and Richard Cross, the prompter at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London, writes about actors being pelted with food from the rabble in the galleries-- or, alternately, not being pelted with food. And, though not exactly a sentimental age, in the 18th-century the plays made people really laugh and really cry. Men note in their diaries how this or that tragedy reduced them to tears; the idea of a stiff upper lip or stoic manliness had not entered into the collective mindset. Perhaps most alien to us, people talked during the show. Aristocrats often carried on with games of cards in their boxes during the mainpiece, leaving your seat to visit with friends during the performance was not unheard of, and the "gallery gods," as the poorer sort were known, dictated what they wanted to see on the stage. Often they were the fruit-throwers, they called for encores, or certain epilogues, and they cheered or jeered every actor on the stage. Audience members also shouted out well-timed jeers, praises, or heckles which could sometimes get as big a laugh as the actor onstage; sometimes the actor responded back, much like at a stand-up comedy show. Also, audience members knew the actors on stage-- if not personally, they had seen them perform any number of times live, before their eyes-- and they had seen most of the plays probably a dozen times. The idea that they had some kind of personal connection to the performances, actors, and characters permeated theatrical events. The theatre was a noisy, rowdy place compared with our ideas of quietly observing a show.

(Hogarth's print of an 18th-century audience)

So how does this connect to Harry Potter?

I'll grant you, the cinema aspect changes things a bit, and so does the sitting in the dark. In fact, there are 100 thousand differences-- this is the 21st-century after all, and that was the 18th. I'm not trying to say that I felt transported back to an 18th-century theatre because trust me, I know, and I didn't.

But overall, I think the Harry Potter midnight openings might be the closest approximation to experiencing what it felt like to sit in an 18th-century audience of anything else available today. Sure, there are recreated 17th and 18th century theatres that would give us an idea of what it looked like for the audience members, but we still retain our 21st-century sensibilities while attending those shows-- we respectfully, almost passively, watch the action on stage. We clap politely during the curtain call, perhaps giggle at funny bits, but otherwise we remain an orderly, quiet audience. This is especially true in movie theatres, where the experience is one of anonymity, entering with the theatre already rather darkened, sitting quietly munching popcorn, glaring angrily at the teenage girls carrying on a conversation in the middle of the film. Even the idea of dressing to the 9's in a theatre or cinema has disappeared; on Broadway jeans are now acceptable. Moreover, during most professional plays that we see we do not know the actors or the characters; even during most cinematic releases, even if we like a particular actor, we have only two hours in which to come to know a certain character. It's only after buying the DVD and watching the film ten more times that we really, really love the characters on screen.

But at the midnight opening of the 7th Harry Potter film, the entire audience knew the characters on the screen. We love Harry, Hermoine, and Ron, we hate/love Voldemort. We know what to expect from the story since we've read the books, we feel as if we know Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson personally; they grew up in front of us. Each of us feels some sort of personal connection to the movies because for most of us in that theatre, Harry Potter defined our childhood and young adulthood. I know I started reading the books at 11 years old-- the same age as Harry Potter in the 1st book-- and here I am at 23 excited to see the boy wizard I grew up with in his second-to-last film. But it's not just that we have a personal connection to the performance, it's that we flaunt it.

Even before the show starts, something is different. Instead of wearing normal jeans and a t-shirt, most of the audience members are dressed up. Some theatres even have costume contests. Here, the movie becomes not about seeing the performance, but also about observing your fellow audience members. Who has the best costume? The most creative? Who knows the books well enough to understand the Luna costume or the Tonks costume? And inside the theatre, groups of friends laugh and talk loudly before the show, popcorn and candy and soda abound. Every time the theatre manager (who knew most of us, actually, since I saw it in a very small town) entered to make an announcement the packed theatre erupted in cheers. Once the film started the cheering almost never stopped. We cheered the Warner Bros. logo, we cheered when Harry, Ron, and Hermoine all appeared on the screen together for the first time, we whimpered in sadness at the vaguely heartwrenching moments, we screamed at the top of our lungs in fear at the scary moments, we laughed uproariously at somewhat lame jokes (because it's George and Fred Weasley, and we love them and want to support them!). And, when a certain character which most people like died, at least half of the theatre cried audibly. A few people even shouted things at the screen (which did annoy other theatregoers, as it did in 18th-century theatres, if we can judge from personal letters and diary entries).

And can you imagine if the projector had broken or something? There would have been a riot (very 18th-century).

At the end of the night, I realized that going to see a play in a recreated playhouse would teach me much about the technical and practical aspects of theatricals in the 18th-century, but no modern audience would ever treat actors on stage with the same noisy, loud, and what we might consider 'disrespectful' attitude of an 18th-century audience. We don't allow plays to throw us into a passion-- how many people proudly claim that movies don't make them cry, or shamefully admit they do? But for some reason-- maybe the movie, the hour, the audience composition-- the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had just such an audience. They were loud, excited, passionate, and involved.

By positioning the Harry Potter opening in such a historical context, I felt that I, and all of us in that theatre, were part of a larger, ever-continuing human experience. While I don't recommend that we start playing cards during plays again, or walk across the stage to greet our friends, maybe every now and then letting ourselves be collectively taken over by a performance experience might be a good thing. What actor wouldn't appreciate an entire theatre crying over his character's death scene? What actor doesn't love to hear laughter and applause during his funniest moment? What audience member doesn't like to imagine that just for the night they are part of something larger than a solitary, passive moment?

(Photo from here)