Defending Harry Potter

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Re: Radcliffe “outrage” all smoke and mirrors (see Harry, this is not a good image).

Come on, are you journalists fucking joking or what?

Daniel Radcliffe takes a non-clichéd role (or maybe “unusual role for him”, since nude smoking bad boy is itself fairly clichéd) and people are outraged?

Regardless of whether you think he’s a good actor or not, Radcliffe is an actor. He makes his living from it. To say he can’t choose a role because of the “image” it generates (in his position as “child role model”) is like telling a popular journalist, “I’m sorry, you can’t report on this murder trial because, well, murder is a bad role model for the kiddies and might encourage them to murder”.

Can you imagine what would happen if journalists had their livelihood taken away like this? They’d jump up and down and bitch and moan like arseholes.

But when a journalist suggests it for someone else, it’s okay it seems.

Here’s a great opportunity for parents to highlight to children the differences between an “actor” (who is usually, but not always, a real person) and a “character”.

It might stop some of this god forsaken celebrity hero worship bullshit that the whole western world seems to suffer from these days.

No one should make a role model out of an actor. Enjoy their work, sure. Get interested in who they are, what they do on the weekend, hey, why not?

Take up smoking because your favourite actor smokes a cigarette in a stage production? Give me a fucking break, and give kids some credit to make their own decisions (which will be wrong, but who cares?)

This story is a slow news day beat up and nothing more.