Think About It: A "Deathly" Attitude
Well, guys, a decade-long journey ends tonight. All those big questions will be answered: who will live, who will die, will the forces of good triumph over incredible evil? What and where are the final Horcruxes, will the school reopen, and what will happen to the Boy Who Lived when he finally comes out of the other side? That’s right. Tonight is the premiere of the feature film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
Also of some marginal interest is the fact that tonight at midnight marks the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and with it, the epic conclusion to a series that has changed the publishing world over the past ten years. Harry Potter has become a legitimate phenomenon, drawing thousands of children to put down their video game controllers and pick up books and engaging the imaginations of people from all walks of life. There can be little doubt that this will be one of the highest-selling books in the history of publishing. And of course, that makes it a prime target for jackasses.
With a book this eagerly-anticipated with this big a print run, bookstores have had to sit on boxed copies of the book for some time now. Every distributor and retailer who has handled the book has had to sign carefully-worded contracts preventing them from even opening the boxes the books are in until midnight tonight. J.K. Rowling and her publishers have been meticulous about preventing spoilers for the book from leaking out. Which is what makes it so appealing to the jackasses.
Now I can understand, to a degree, the mentality of someone who would want to get the book early, even someone who would download it illegally. I don’t approve of it, but I can understand that kind of impatience - people have been waiting for this book for years, and with that carrot dangling right in front of their faces, some people will break. It’s to be expected. But what I don’t understand are the people who get the book not out of any desire to read it, but simply out of a desire to ruin it for other people. These are the guys who post the end of the book and the fates of the major characters all over the internet and the people who drive by bookstores just as the release parties are letting out shouting out who dies at the gleeful children walking to their cars. They get their jollies by ruining things for complete strangers.
There is a term for people like this, but as I try to keep this column at a PG-13, I’m going to replace it with a less harsh term: dillweed. I’m no psychologist, I don’t pretend to know why someone would derive pleasure out of ruining things for people they don’t even know. I just know that these people are jerks. In a just universe, when one of these guys inevitably pulls up outside of a Barnes and Noble tonight, printout of a download in hand, ready to blab about how Hagrid winds up running off with Crookshanks or something, there would be someone there to stop them. I’m seeing a literary superhero, with the bold jaw of Hemmingway, the dexterous hands of King, the superhuman strength of Maya Angelou. Clad in red and black, with a cape woven from pages of Fahrenheit 451, this Gutenberg-Man would grab the Spoiler Patrol, tell them that wrestling is fake, crack their skulls together and them leave them to be poked senseless by hundreds of ten-year-olds wielding replica wands.
Sigh.
Sorry, I was caught up in a blissful fantasy there. At any rate, I’ll be avoiding the internet for the next few days, simply because I don’t trust people. I’ll probably get deluged with e-mails from people who get mad at me for calling them “dillweeds” who will try to slip past my radar letting me know that someone gets killed on page 555 or something. So I’ll just avoid suspicious websites and e-mails from people I don’t absolutely trust until I’ve read the book and taken away the power of the Spoiler Patrol. And I will be better for it.
And they’ll still be dillweeds.
Blake M. Petit is signing off until he finishes reading Deathly Hallows. Probably see you sometime Sunday.