sex sex sex
I loved Cuaron's deft hand with sexual metaphors in PoA; it worked so well with the sexual metaphors and imagery in the HP books themselves, too, which are often charmingly blatant. One of my favorite things is Cedric Diggory in GoF talking about how he polished his wand just last night. I bet he did. GoF is really full of... stuff. Like the Blast-Ended Skrewts ('Its end exploded!'), and Divination silliness ('Can I have a look at Uranus, too, Lavender?'), and maybe I'm reading too much into all the wand stuff, being of sound and dirty mind ('We have to make sure that your wands are fully functional, no problems, you know, as they're your most important tools...').
And in OotP, Neville! Neville and his little cactus that he can't quite control at the beginning of the school year and it splurts everywhere when he touches it and is all embarrassing, and then Neville spends the school year learning and working things out - and, you know, the name of Neville's cactus is the password to the Gryffindor common room, so really this goes for all of them, all the children growing up (hee, can you imagine all of them having to say Neville's penis in order to get in?) - and he faces Death Eaters and generally grows into himself, and on the trip home, his cactus has grown quite a bit and he knows just how to touch it.
Okay, so I'm not saying the entire book is about Neville learning about and coming to terms with his sexuality, but hey. Neville's background thread is in its metaphorical way a lot more explicit than Harry's foregrounded romantic fumblings, which, frankly, end up looking a lot like dude, I don't like girls that way, I want my handsome dead godfather back. Come to think of it, Harry thought Cedric Diggory was handsome (extremely handsome, even), and he's dead, and he thought Sirius was handsome, and he's dead. Harry? Please keep it firmly in mind that you think Remus Lupin is a very ordinary-looking fellow, nothing special at all, okay? And that Wheezy of yours, plain as a button, not even remotely cute. ssh.
Poor Harry. It's really like a Doomed-Babe-of-the-Week kind of thing, except he doesn't even get to snog them.
And in OotP, Neville! Neville and his little cactus that he can't quite control at the beginning of the school year and it splurts everywhere when he touches it and is all embarrassing, and then Neville spends the school year learning and working things out - and, you know, the name of Neville's cactus is the password to the Gryffindor common room, so really this goes for all of them, all the children growing up (hee, can you imagine all of them having to say Neville's penis in order to get in?) - and he faces Death Eaters and generally grows into himself, and on the trip home, his cactus has grown quite a bit and he knows just how to touch it.
Okay, so I'm not saying the entire book is about Neville learning about and coming to terms with his sexuality, but hey. Neville's background thread is in its metaphorical way a lot more explicit than Harry's foregrounded romantic fumblings, which, frankly, end up looking a lot like dude, I don't like girls that way, I want my handsome dead godfather back. Come to think of it, Harry thought Cedric Diggory was handsome (extremely handsome, even), and he's dead, and he thought Sirius was handsome, and he's dead. Harry? Please keep it firmly in mind that you think Remus Lupin is a very ordinary-looking fellow, nothing special at all, okay? And that Wheezy of yours, plain as a button, not even remotely cute. ssh.
Poor Harry. It's really like a Doomed-Babe-of-the-Week kind of thing, except he doesn't even get to snog them.