Class 11 : presentation

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I’m going to talk about something very different from what we’ve seen in class : Harry Potter. The saga written by J.K. Rowling offers lots of hybrid and marginal bodies such as wizards obviously, but also centaurs, mermaids, giants, werewolves…

Here I’m going to focus on the third movie, The Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. The movie came out in 2004. In this one, the magical world is afraid since Sirius Black, a notorious killer, has escaped from the magic prison Azkaban.

First, we can say that all wizards and witches are marginal. They live amongst people without magic (which they call “muggles”) but they have to hide from them, and by doing so they don’t have a very large free will and freedom as long as they’re mixing with muggles. They have to be cautious of their behavior, and to hide their magic, which is what makes them who they are. It’s a huge part of their humanity that they have to hide.

Sirius Black

But the character of Sirius Black is the real marginal in this movie : he is an innocent falsely convicted for murdering 13 people. He's supposed to represent the part of the magic world that despises muggles because they force wizards to hide. The fact that he’s a marginal is already present in the way he’s represented: dirty, with long hair, he has tattoos all over his body etc. which contrast with the aspect of the other adults in the movie (like Dumbledore, MacGonagall etc.). Even in the magic world, having tattoos means you're a rebel. He’s dangerous and not common even for a wizard. Even if he escaped prison,  he’s not free anymore. He’s not part of the community anymore, and he will run for the (short) rest of his life.

At the end of the movie, he escapes another time with the help of a classic mythological hybrid figure: the hippogriff. The hippogriff is a legendary creature which has the front quarters of an eagle and the hindquarters of a horse. This hybrid creature is sometimes seen as a symbol of love since his parents, the mare and the griffin (another hybrid mythological creature that mixes the eagle and the lion) are enemies. Here, it’s considered as an hybrid, weird yet powerful creature that inspires respect and is, in some way, dangerous. He too is force to live hidden. 

Another hybrid figure that follows the entire series is the half-giant half human Hagrid. Only his size makes him different from others human, marking him as a hybrid. In the book, his difference is more discussed: we are explained that giants are violent creatures, which makes him potentially more dangerous than Buck the hippogriff or Sirius Black. Yet, he is accepted and respected by the majority.

Remus before, during and after his transformation into a werewolf

Fenrir Greyback

The major marginal and hybrid figure of this movie is the werewolf Remus Lupin, nicknamed Moony. He’s the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. He’s looks make him look weird: he looks poor, and much older than he really is with grey hairs and scars. He disappears once every month. It’s the revealed in the climax of the movie that he’s a werewolf. Werewolves are mythological creatures, humans with the ability to transform into a wolf at the full moon. Lycanthropy is a disease: when the full moon appears, the subject can’t control his transformation and loses his humanity : he can’t remember his friends, those he knows, he turns into a killing beast. What makes him still a human is his ability to turn again into a human after the full moon. Humanity is therefore associated with appearences but also with the ability to feel various emotions and having a memory. However, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we meet another werewolf, Fenrir Greyback, who chose to live forever, physically, as a hybrid: he looks half human and half wolf, whereas Remus looks human most of the time, which makes him more human than Greyback. 

To finish on what happens when magic meets the idea of hybridty, we can talk about animagis : to assist their friend Remus with his werewolf condition, Sirius Black, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew developped, thanks to magic, the ability to change into animals. But unlike Lupin, they can choose when they want to change form. It's not a real hybridity, it's created through magic.