October 15, October 22, 2007

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling says that she intentionally wove biblical themes into her stories, though not explicitly until the final book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Speaking at a book-tour press conference in Hollywood, Rowling said, "To me, [the religious parallels between Harry Potter and the Bible] have always been obvious. But I never wanted to talk too openly about it, because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going. ... They're very British books, so on a very practical note, Harry was going to find biblical quotations [Matthew 6:21 and 1 Corinthians 15:26] on tombstones. I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones at Godric's Hollow, they sum up—they almost epitomize the whole series." Rowling compared her own sometimes faltering faith to that of British novelist Graham Greene, whose Catholic convictions influenced his writing. "The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot. On any given moment if you asked me [if] I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes—that I do believe in life after death. It's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books." Rowling shrugs off Christians who've denounced her work's potentially negative influence, saying, "I go to church myself. I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion." [mtv.com, 10/17/07]

At Carnegie Hall, the last stop on her U.S. book tour, Rowling also dropped this revelatory bomb: The master wizard Albus Dumbledore "is gay." She told a young reader that the Hogwarts headmaster had been in love with his rival, wizard Gellert Grindelwald, years before. [AP, 10/21/07; nydailynews.com, 10/21/07]

QUOTE: "Jo Rowling calling any Harry Potter character gay would make wonderful strides in tolerance toward homosexuality. By dubbing someone so respected, so talented and so kind as someone who just happens to be also homosexual, she's reinforcing the idea that a person's gayness is not something of which they should be ashamed." —Melissa Anelli, webmaster for the Potter fan site The Leaky Cauldron [AP, 10/21/07]

The Portland, Maine, school board recently approved a measure that will allow students at King Middle School (where most students range in age from 11 to 13 years old), to have access to prescription birth control medications without notifying their parents. The school's principal, Mike McCarthy, said that about 5 of the school's 500 students had identified themselves as being sexually active. [nytimes.com, 10/18/2007; AP, 10/18/07]

QUOTE: "You could argue that every year on TV is the season of sex. But this year, the sex gets more graphic and more exploratory, which might make you think that we are becoming ever more perverse and deviant in what we'll tolerate on TV. However, there is a case to be made that, on the contrary, we're getting bored—that the depictions of sex are now so pervasive, have so drenched the landscape, [that] they are becoming so much white noise." —MSNBC contributor Brian Alexander [msnbc.com, 10/11/07]

QUOTE: "The show-closing 'This season on A Shot at Love' montage promises thrilling times ahead. Hook ups, screaming matches, catfights, ambulance rides, drunken sobbing, stripper-pole mishaps. This series would seem to have something for everyone with a taste for the new sleaze, an arena where sexual identity is nothing more or less than brand identity." —Slate TV critic Troy Patterson's closing assessment of MTV's reality show A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila, which features 16 straight men and 16 lesbian women vying for the attention of the show's star [slate.com 10/10/07]

QUOTE: "Standards [about onscreen sex] do seem to be shifting, based purely on the volume and explicit output in film and TV. The most respected films to receive the old X rating, The Last Tango in Paris (1971) and the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy (1969), seem more in line with R and PG-13 ratings today. After all, the MPAA ratings board considers the pervasive, psychopathic violence of Wolf Creek or the Saw series more fit for public consumption than the occasional glimpse of bohemian sexuality in [the NC-17 rated] Henry and June or When Night Is Falling. And those latter films don't approach the explicitness of [Ang] Lee's Lust, Caution. ... While NC-17 may be the equivalent of the X rating, it doesn't have the same stigma attached, leaving Lust, Caution, perhaps, to pave the way for even more widespread acceptance of explicit sexual content in mainstream films." —Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Ordoña, on the trend toward ever-more explicit entertainment fare [latimes.com, 10/17/07]

QUOTE: "I am one of those [moms] who is disgruntled with the film industry. Every Friday, we think, 'Wouldn't it be great to go to [the movies]?' But you go down there, and 13 of the 14 films are PG-13 or R. It's really difficult if you don't believe in super-speeding up your child's rearing." —actress Teri Hatcher, one of the stars of ABC's Desperate Housewives [People, 10/22/07]

Most people would probably agree that God played an important role in the giving of the Ten Commandments. But when it comes to advertising a new movie based on that biblical tale, Disney says no God-talk is allowed. Disney wrote to Promenade Pictures, the company issuing the new computer animated film The Ten Commandments, and told the company that its ads for Radio Disney would have to omit mention of God. "In connection with the Ten Commandments, I did find it offensive," said Promenade president Cindy Bonds. "God in our movie is the main character. You rip the whole guts out of the piece." [foxnews.com, 10/17/07]

QUOTE: "In this day and age, I feel we don't need that piece of paper. For myself, I don't need that to validate what I have with someone. It's about a spiritual commitment and finding your soul mate and really exchanging vows with one another, and I think that's enough for me." —Janet Jackson, on why she's not planning on tying the knot with rapper Jermaine Dupri anytime soon. But while she's against marriage, she definitely doesn't want any part in an "open" relationship either. "No way, not for me," she says. "Why get involved in a relationship if you want to mess around with other people? It doesn't make sense." [foxnews.com, 10/9/07]

QUOTE: "Getting married is a ball. Getting married is the most fun you can have in life. Being married sucks." —singer Kid Rock [Blender, 11/07]

During its first 12 days of availability in September, Microsoft's massive hit Halo 3 moved 3.3 million units. As predicted by many industry analysts, Halo 3 also catalyzed a sales surge for the company's Xbox 360 platform. Microsoft's gaming system ruled the roost in September, with sales of 527,800 units, topping Nintendo's red-hot Wii system, which sold 501,000 units. [wired.com, 10/18/07; usatoday.com, 10/19/07 stats]

The NPD group has released a study analyzing the video gaming habits of 2- to 17-year-olds. The report says that more than a third of American youth are playing more video games than they did a year ago. According to the report, PCs dominate, with the average child starting to use a computer for gaming at age 6. Among all kid gamers, approximately half are light users (five hours per week or fewer) and the other half are medium, heavy or super users (six to 16 or more hours per week). NPD industry analyst Anita Frazier said of children's video game usage, "When kids get to the 6- to 8-year-old range is when we see them turn into serious gamers. Not only does the amount of time they spend playing games increase dramatically, but they migrate from using 'kid' systems to using more portable and console systems as well. This appears to be the critical age at which to capture the future gamers of the world." [biz.gamedaily.com, 10/18/07 stats]

The popularity of virtual worlds for children is booming as well, and all that activity is attracting advertisers. Sites such as Webkins, Club Penguin and Barbie Girls allow users to interact with one another via avatars online—much like the often risqué adult site Second Life. Unlike Second Life, however, these online environments are purportedly much safer for children, which has given parents a certain level of comfort and allowed the sites to attract hordes of fans: Barbie Girls has 5.5 million registered users; Club Penguin has 1.6 million; Webkins has 1.5 million. In total, there are 8.2 million kids who belong to a virtual world now, and that's expected to more than double in the next four years. By 2011, experts say 53% of children on the Internet will be part of a virtual world. All that traffic is a potential bonanza for toy and clothing manufacturers, many of whom wouldn't think of creating a new product without some sort of virtual world tie-in. [adage.com, 10/8/07; news.com, 10/15/07 stats]

A new Mental Health Services Administration report states that on any given day, nearly 1.2 million U.S. teenagers smoke cigarettes, 631,000 drink alcohol and 586,000 smoke marijuana. The report also says that on an average day nearly 8,000 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 drink alcohol for the first time and 4,300 adolescents use an illicit drug for the first time. Trying to counter this trend, many high schools are testing students for alcohol consumption at extracurricular school events. Orders for breathalyzers have risen 120% in each of the last four years, according to Keith Nothacker, president of KHN Solutions, which sells the machines. [msnbc.com, 10/18/2007; usatoday.com 10/17/2007 stats]

QUOTE: "I was a pretty good kid my whole life. I never had to go behind my parents' backs. I would go to parties where there were people drinking or going off and doing drugs, but I would see how stupid they were after they got high or drunk—they seemed like they were just making fools of themselves." —20-year-old actress Blake Lively (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), one of the young stars on CW's edgy teen hit Gossip Girl. Lively also said, "I think some people who bash on the girls in Hollywood who are struggling with addiction or going into rehab aren't being totally fair; it's not solely their fault. When you don't have someone to model yourself after, you're going to make mistakes. There's no one there to tell them what's right or wrong or who is a positive example." [CosmoGIRL!, 11/07]