Prisoners X Harry Potter Part 1: The Villains

Prisoners x Harry Potter Part 1: The Villains

These are notes from a conversation with @snapesnailtape:

While I was watching the 2013 thriller Prisoners, I noticed the series’s main villain Holly Jones has many parallels with Lord Voldemort, the villain of Harry Potter. In this meta I will be exploring their respective life experiences which formed their ignorance, disillusionment in positive supernatural forces, and the methods which they use to subjugate people into darkness. 

Prisoners, directed by Villeneuve, utilizes the imagery of the maze to deconstruct the process by which characters in the film process their trauma or imprisonment, leading themselves or others to a doomed fate. (For the purposes of this part, I will be focusing on how Holly uses it to hurt other people).

The mythology of the maze dates back to the King Minos of Crete creating a complex labyrinth with his wife Pasiphe’s son, the Minotaur (a half bull), in the center to devour any prisoners who were placed into the maze. Famously, the Athenian Theseus defeated both the labyrinth and the beast by using the golden thread gifted to him by Princess Ariadne.  While the origins of the labyrinth are a myth, the symbol itself is now regarded as an object of fear and damnation by the population. 

Keeping with the imagery of the labyrinth, the villain in Prisoners uses it as a spiritual compass. As context for the adoption of the labyrinth as seen in the film: the plot follows the Jones family consisting of Holly and her husband who were once devout Christians, until they lost their beloved son to cancer. After he had passed away, they grew disillusioned with the power of Christ as a supernatural force and adopted the pendant of the maze in lieu of the cross, thereby rejecting the positivity and faith associated with Christianity with the despair and evil of the labyrinth. 

Similarly, in the Harry Potter series, the primary villain Lord Voldemort frequently mocks and underestimates the supernatural power of love which leads to his downfall two times. His actions, while irredeemable and wholly evil, are not without a sympathetic background much like the Jones’s.  In fact, Voldemort or Tom Riddle, as he was known before his formal ascent to power, was conceived in a symbolic loveless union, orphaned and abandoned at an early age, and forced to grow up a penniless orphan during the 1940s. 

Secondly, the methods which Holly Jones uses in  Prisoners after her disillusionment with Christ are very similar to the ones Lord Voldemort uses in Harry Potter to both lure followers and handle victims.  

In Prisoners, Holly would drive to nearby homes and abduct children. Once the children were abducted, they would be injected with LSD drugs ensuring that they forgot their identity and sense of purpose before succumbing to the “Minotaur” death.

Likewise, Lord Voldemort was known to “trick, jinx, and blackmail” innocent people via magic into being loyal death eaters or otherwise appeal to  them with the illusion of grandeur and power they may have never hoped to have achieved otherwise. The targets of Lord Voldemort are either immediately greeted by the “ignominy of death” or treated to a show of “torture” or fright before being murdered. 

However, there are a couple people who manage to theoretically escape the restraints of both Holly and Lord Voldemort, but none of the people who escaped were able to live their lives completely rid of their abuse, sin, or guilt. 

Two victims of Holly’s–Bob Taylor and Alex– are examples of how the effects of abuse manage to permeate their actions during their lives. In the case of Bob Taylor, he manages to escape Holly’s house physically but recreates patterns from the home in which he was kept captive by stealing clothes from other abducted children of Holly’s, covering them in pig’s blood, burying mannequins of children in yards, and drawing mazes on the walls in his home. In a somewhat similar fashion, Alex Jones is physically given the freedom to escape from her house via an RV, but ends up returning to her house to sleep every night. 

In Harry Potter followers of Lord Voldemort’s are branded with the Dark Mark which functions as a Protean Charm, meant to burn the bearer’s skin whenever Voldemort desires his followers to answer his summons. Two former Death Eaters, Igor Karkaroff and Severus Snape both infamously feel the dark mark both grow clearer and burn during the installation’s Goblet of Fire. For Snape, however, the mark also serves as a manifestation of his deep seated guilt in joining the organization and his role in Lily’s death. (Note: I’m keeping this section superficial since this will be a separate meta). 

Finally, both Holly and Lord Voldemort meet their ends by the Christ or God figure of their creations via Loki–named after a Norse God–and Harry respectively.

Bibliography:

Loyola University Chicago. Labyrinths: Their Origins & Development: Medieval Studies: Loyola University Chicago. (n.d.). Retrieved August 27, 2022, from https://www.luc.edu/medieval/labyrinths/index.shtml

Amazing. Another way Harry and Voldemort are foils for each other is by looking at their wand woods: Holly and Yew respectively. Holly is considered to be a symbol of protection and prosperity, Jesus’s sacrifice, and has symbolism connected to Christ’s Crown of Thorns.

Yew, on the other hand, is a tree known for its ability to regenerate once it’s branches touch the ground. Its berries and wood are also known for their poison: in fact it was planted in churchyards to ward off animals from grazing there and has been used in literature to represent darkness.

The symbolism of the wand woods tie themselves back into the different methods of resurrection Harry and Voldemort undergo in the series, with Voldemort’s representing a darkness devoid of “willing submission and sacrifice” much like the symbolism of the Yew.

Yew Trees: https://www.ancient-yew.org/mi.php/trees-in-mythology/79

Holly Trees: https://www.flowerkingdom.com/blog/the-symbolic-significance-of-holly/amp/

“The Death Eaters" is not a lame name for a villainous group

I don’t think the name was supposed to inspire fear. While it did have that effect, its purpose was to inspire its members, and for the inner circle who truly aligned with Voldemort, it was the name for their purpose. Of course, I think few were ever as obsessed with defying death as Voldemort was, but I do think there’s something delightfully taboo about it. Eating death…we usually don’t care about what we eat–it sustains us, it’s beneath us, its only purpose is to fulfill our will. We bend it to our use. There are things we treat with respect for their strength exceeds ours, Death foremost. To bend Death to our will, to have no fear at all, to eat it–this is powerful in a way that breaks all taboos, just as Voldemort did in creating horcruxes.

Then there’s the irreverent context–the Death Eaters eat death for immortality, but in a perverse way, not as a religious or pious symbol. Or they are religious, but worship the works of their own hands. So to me it’s quite effective and perfectly capable of inducing fear, for those who bear the title of Death Eater do not play by our rules and care nothing for our laws. They are strange and fearless of the things we treat with reverence.

Then there’s the metatextual layer from the Christian undertones of the book, particularly sacrificial love unto death enabling rebirth. Harry and Voldemort are foils for each other (Snape as well, but I’ll save that for another day). Voldemort’s actions are the artificial or perverted inverse of the things Harry does: He survives by fleeing from death, not embracing it. He resurrects himself through a ritual based on mastering others, rather than being resurrected because of willing submissiveness and enabling sacrifice. Communion, one of the most important Christian rituals, involves eating and drinking in remembrance of Christ, the savior who willingly embraced death for the world to live and be free from spiritual chains. Death Eaters and Voldemort in particular are characterized by ignorance:

“That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.”

Yes, Taylor, it is exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero. You get into a lot of stupid internet arguments.

Thanks for the tag @turanga4:)

Hardcover or paperback, romantic story or thriller, fantasy or science-fiction , audiobook or ebook, slow burn or crush at first sight, happy ending or open ending, childhood friends to lovers or enemies to lovers (I can’t choose between these two lol) exes to lovers or fake dating, forbidden love or soulmates, au or crossover ?

Tagging: @snapesnailtape @alohaemora @ailec-12 and anyone else who wants to do it I guess?

hardcover or paperback, romantic story or thriller, fantasy or science fiction, audiobook or ebook, slow burn or crush at first sight, happy ending or open ending, childhood friends to lovers or enemies to lovers, exes to lovers or fake dating, forbidden love or soul mate, au or crossover?

@oneway-closet @chaserofstarsandtheabyss @somanydreams @abtyouandme @autistic-ace-bee @alonetogethermp3 @magalaga-buckley @elle-argents-pencilcase @anyone who wants to do this!

nikaworks

A few notes from our DMs that are relevant to wider discourse:

The boxing of POC characters as a monolith is something that is prevalent irl as well.

For example, on reality dating shows such as the Bachelor, there is a huge discrepancy between the number of white leads vs POC leads. Even when the average audience states they’re on board with a POC lead, said lead must still caveat to the status quo. Those who question it—discussing racism within the franchise or problematic behavior—are called to be disassociated from the show. (There was a wonderful Variety article published last year on this).

Another episode which points out the realities POC face in the entertainment industry is “Indians at Work” from the Master of None Netflix series. The Indians who auditioned for a certain role needed to adopt a stereotypical accent for the role. Furthermore, one of the people who auditioned received a leaked email about how the show would accept only one Indian actor. In this, the actor is stuck with either fitting a stereotype in order to pursue opportunities or to fight back against an unjust system where the opportunity would be lost.

The same episode later introduces a new producer who is “progressive,” and is interested in the original actor who auditioned-but to play a role in a spinoff of “Fresh off the Boat.” While the new producer may be “progressive,” the idea of their spinoff—which would still require stereotypical portrayals—and new methods of inclusion only serve to feed the same loophole. In that, it reminds me of people who register as “liberals” and tend to “vote correctly,” but have no concept of systemic racism.

An observation: I wonder if the same people complaining about inclusion ruining their fantasy shows are the same people who are ok with POC actors appearing in fantasy as long as it fits their racist narrative?

If you’re ok with the people of Mereeen being brown ( a city conquered by the white Danerys Targaryen), but not ok with Corlys Velaryon. And ok with the Hadradim (who are rooted in Orientalist stereotypes) but not ok with Princess Disa, you need to ask yourself some hard questions.