HARRY POTTER vs. Bullies

i'm jonathan decker this stays in this is going in the show i'm jonathan decker i'm alan searight that's chewbacca so we got rid of we got rid of chewie chewie's no longer our co-pilot i'm jonathan decker and i'm alan searight and we are big harry potter fans except uh jono over here doesn't really seem to understand the fandom look that was college i needed the money you needed the money we were going to a premiere of a movie it was good times at least that was fun at least i wasn't wearing a horrific red wig to be fair it wasn't red it was orange it was sparkly and i was a weasley all right so back on track back on the hogwarts express today we're going to talk about harry potter and how to handle bullies now a lot of people see how you handle bullies is you go from running and hiding or saying yes sir and trying to get out of the way like most bully stories end with standing up for yourself right like back to the future you think of george mcfly punching biff out so many bully stories about standing up for yourself right but we were talking about how harry potter jk rowling takes it one step further harry potter goes from being bullied to standing up to his bullies to you know the next step which is compassion for and understanding of his bullies you have your mother's eyes yeah and when he does that it seems to me like from a storytelling standpoint that he takes away all their power to do anything to them is that is there any truth to that no that that's very true in real life because bullies are people and you know the old saying like hurt people hurt people right anybody that was a lot of was there supposed to be a comma in there hurt people so one of them's an adjective and one of them is a verb exactly if i'm hurting then i hurt other people got it and so and that's what harry comes to realize with every single one of his bullies is that underneath that as a person to be if not loved at the very least pitied and once he pities them he doesn't fear them anymore right but let's go back to the start of this at the very beginning harry does what any of us would do he just tries to keep his head down and tries to like not cause trouble and you think about i mean what were some of the bullies we were talking about harry who are the bullies so i mean starting off he's got the dursleys and you know the the filmmakers do a great job very early on of establishing that not only is harry getting bullied but he has no power in the situation a lot of the shots of the dursleys are looking up at them so they're large and intimidating and he's small and he's stuck in a cupboard and he's a little person and it just makes him tiny and insignificant and he just tries to hide and harry like anybody it's not just kids like bullying doesn't just happen on the playground bullying happens at work it happens at church it happens in marriages it happens between parents and kids or even kids and parents like it happens all over the place when you have somebody who's trying to coerce or intimidate or harm another person who's perceived as vulnerable and the dursley is just steamroll over harry and they deny his value as a human being it's mine yours they'll be writing to you who'd want to be friends with you every time they belittle his parents and you know talk about him as being less than because of his parentage is you know denying right i was the only one to see her for what she was a freak then she met that potter and then she had you and i knew you would be the same just as strange just as abnormal and marge comes over and she's like boy yeah right so everything with the dursleys is telling harry that he's worthless and that is the message he's fed for 11 years and so what does harry do he tries to not cause trouble right he knows that if he talks back if he stands up for himself he's going to pay for it and you i'll be in my bedroom making no noise and pretending that i don't exist and that's where most people find themselves with bullies is like they're just going to take it because they don't want to rock the boat and then he goes to school and we'll talk about malfoy next in a second because malfoy is actually an exception he stands out to malfoy immediately right off the bat but he goes to school and who does he meet but alan rickman as severus snape the possibly greatest bully in cinematic history he's so cutting and snide and he just finds exactly the pressure point and just twists yeah the knife mr potter our new celebrity and we learned the story later on of why he hates harry so much yeah but harry doesn't know and even if he knew i don't think he would make it okay as an 11 year old you're never gonna be able to separate out like why is he doing this versus what he's doing right what he's doing is so bad that it doesn't matter and that's the thing about bullies is it's a power differential right right and snape has this he's the professor he's taller he's meaner his clothes are blacker right and so he just comes in and immediately dresses down harry in front of his schoolmates and what is the difference between monk's hood and wolf being i don't know sir clearly fame isn't everything is it mr potter what do you think about harry in this clip how is he handling this you know it's classic evasion right he's he's doing everything he can to just make it go away as quickly as possible yeah when we get into conflict resolution one of the types of styles of conflict resolution is known as avoidant conflict avoidant and people who are conflict of wouldn't do exactly what harry does right here soft tone hunched over non-threatening non-challenging he does it with the dursleys he does it with snape and then later on he does it with umbridge right she's making him write i must not tell lies yes okay so let's talk about umbridge in this scene nothing that's right oh i think for a lot of fans she's worse than voldemort yeah because she's so unfair voldemort has a goal it's evil and it's terrible but you can understand it he doesn't care that much about harry he doesn't care enough about individuals to hate them individually right and umbridge is so calculating and unfair and it seems completely arbitrary well i think i think there's that but i think on her end it's like i uphold the ministry we saw your lies for what they were a smoke screen for your bid to seize control of the ministry yeah and i uphold fudge she was at my hearing she works for fudge and for her it's about the power trip like fudge has given me this position and a lot of bullies it's it's a quest for power but it's also if you disagree with me it's a challenge and it must be snuffed out right and i have to make you feel like you're the idiot or you are the person in the wrong you have been told that a certain dark wizard is at large once again this is a lie it's not a lie i saw him i thought detention mr potter and that's when we talked about conflict resolution styles we talked about avoiders this is an attacker style sure attackers thrive on conflict they don't back down they don't take responsibility for their own actions they put it on somebody else they're going to be meaner or louder or in umbrage's case this passive aggressive sweetness and how lovely to see all your bright happy faces smiling up at me i'm sure we're all going to be very good friends that's right and a lot of bullies don't seem like bullies and people won't believe you when you tell them right because they come across so sweet well she's a gaslighter she's just gaslighting him yeah it's bullying but it's more insidious than just your standard bullying now i'm not the filmmaker but i look at the set design of this scene and i'm like this is interesting what do you think they're telling us about umbridge here well it's i mean this set design is also straight out of the books right she's obsessed with pink everything's pink everything's cats everything's doilies it's all cute it's all fluffy and nice i don't know if that's actually her taste or if that's a calculated decision that she's putting this look forward into the world because she knows it can mask and hide who she really is yeah and the terrible things that she's willing to do you haven't given me any ink oh you wouldn't need any ink to get and maintain the tiny insignificant amount of power that she has i mean well i look at that but it's a power trip i think bullies generally have low self-esteem absolutely and so any little bit of power they can get they make it bigger i'll do this actually i can so that it gives them worth and i wonder if like you're saying maybe she's doing the pink to throw people off to hide what she really is or if she actually sees herself as this benevolent nice woman because there's evidence of that when she says to harry because you know deep down you deserve to be punished that it does really raise the question of whether or not if she's putting on a front deceitfully yeah or if she really truly believes that that's what she is and that the ends of this nice sweet ordered yeah perfect ministry approved life you know all the means to get to that end are justified and harry here he does what he's done with the dursleys he does what he does with snape he tries to keep his head down he tries to be respectful he tries to not make this person explode or punish him students will raise their hands when they speak in my class but he doesn't handle the dementors that way and he sure doesn't handle voldemort with that way in those cases it's a run-and-hide situation that's how he's dealing with those bullies the transformation that happens with harry is with all of these characters when he finally stands up to them uh and this happens with draco malfoy as well because he stands up to malfoy immediately right out of the gate but why does he stand up to malfoy pierre blonde what because malfoy is blonde yes everyone hates blondes uh no he stands up to malfoy because malfoy is picking on his friend he's picking on ron i think my name is funny do you i need to ask you yours red hair and a hand-me-down robe you must be a weasley and then he also picks on hermione a little bit later the first time that harry stands up to nearly any of his wow attackers is because he's standing up for someone else i can help you there i think i can tell the wrong sort for myself thanks the first time he stands up to the dementors to protect sirius every other time he runs and hides but as soon as he stands up to them is to protect someone else yeah especially in the books like he stands up to snape because snape's being tough on neville right and so he pick he stands up to snape right there i mean initially with the dementors he he just flees right and with voldemort he runs and hides yeah and this is just how he handles it but you're right with draco right out of the gate he stands up to him and i think that's where harry even early on starts to find that i can stand up to bullies sure now where he makes in my opinion the real transition point is with sirius black only one would die tonight then it'll be you this is harry had his darkest point frankly because he believes sirius black betrayed his parents to death are you going to kill me and harry is contemplating becoming a murderer and a bully himself but this begs the question like harry finds his courage when he's not standing up for himself when he's standing up for other people right right so the dursley's mocked his parents who stands up to him umbridge is to save serious because sirius is trapped in the department of ministries he he's got padfoot at the place where it's hidden he stands up to draco malfoy's dad lucius malfoy to protect dobby you lost me my servant sometimes if bullies are picking on other people like it's it's easier to stand up for somebody else than for yourself yeah so begs the question and i have thoughts as a therapist but i'm just interested in your ideas as a person how do you find the courage to stand up for yourself to other people you know like most people do i think i tend to be pretty conflict avoidant and it's it's really interesting because i'm a big guy right i'm six five and i'm like and i constantly find myself making myself small like i purposefully act a little younger and a little less threatening and less intimidating because i don't want to step on people's toes i don't want people to feel yeah you know like i'm i'm taking advantage of them because it's so easy for me to come across as a bully yeah and like you're very mindful maybe i'm over correct i i dramatically over correct and because of it i get not like constantly but there are people especially in my profession who've stepped on me any number of times yeah uh and i just kind of take it yeah um and it's it can be hard to find the value in yourself and it's honestly the the turning point for me the thing that helps me is the same thing that helps harry to finally figure out that he has worth and just stand up to bullies basically permanently and that's thinking about the people who love me he thinks about his family he thinks about his parents yeah who sacrificed everything yeah are you here it is every freaking episode harry potter and pixar every episode man it's gonna be yeah a spit oh harry potter and pixar are gonna no but thinking about the people who love him thinking about the people who love him and that they value him has anyone else got a problem with harry and because he's so willing to stand up for them maybe you don't have to do this all by yourself mate if they're willing to stand up for him it's an easy logical connection that you can make where he has i can stand up for them but they're willing to stand up for me so maybe i should stand up for me sweetheart you're ready let's go let's go yeah i have worth i think that's beautiful and we're gonna we're gonna circle back to that concept a little bit later in a major way but having that confidence we talk about avoiders we talk about attackers these are the conflict resolution styles that come naturally right people avoid conflict or they come out swinging i think a lot of people avoid conflict because they don't want it to get ugly right they don't know how to do it without it getting ugly now in harry potter sometimes just their battles he has to fight but in real life we can do something called being an affirmer and what's beautiful about being a firmer it's a learned skill it's a practice skill it doesn't come naturally but if i'm in a firmer i take ownership for what's mine but not what belongs to anybody else okay if i'm an affirmer i disagree i can disagree with somebody and still see their value instead of like these bullies you disagree with me it's a threat it's a challenge and it must be quashed right squashed quelched i put squashed and crushed got quashed quaffled quashed is a word yeah is it it is you did it you englished like english i won i won me fail english that's unpossible so anyways i look at this and and being an affirmer is what harry ultimately learns to do how do you balance strength with compassion how do you have kindness but also be able to fight because far too often if i'm going to be kind that means i'm not a fighter right right or if i'm going to be a fighter then i lose my empathy my and i lose that humanity and harry threads the needle there if you're looking at bullying the big thing to build towards is i want to stand up to a bully but going one step further actually having compassion for your bullies robs them the power to hurt you so here's voldemort he's in the department of mysteries he's invaded harry's mind and he's tormenting him with all his visions of people dying of all of harry's failures and he's telling him so weak so fun and harry's trying to fight back but it's not happening and who does he see all of his friends come running in and they're looking at harry with such sympathy and then harry starts to think of all the people who love him and this is one of my favorite moments in any movie ever is when harry says to voldemort you're the weak one and you'll never know love or friendship and i feel sorry for you'll never know friendship and you'll never know love and i feel sorry for you and in that moment cast them out see until this time voldemort's been he who must not be named yeah right everyone's terrified of him harry graduates to speaking his name but from this moment on he calls him tom yeah because he's no longer a monster he's a hurting miserable person and for harry whose connections are the most important thing in the world to him to think of somebody who doesn't have that it makes him feel sad the filmmaking leading up to that scene is one of the things that makes it so powerful yeah we have the entire you know crazy battle sequence down in the department of mysteries yeah serious dies there's all of this mayhem and craziness going on right and then we go upstairs voldemort shows up and like it's lights out right everything's this is it harry's dead it's all going to end and then we get the big light show and most filmmakers would have approached this and i i would have been guilty of this too if i had seen that on the page i would have gotten two most powerful wizards in history there's going to be some fireworks and there are the fireworks suspects they lean into it for a couple minutes the fireworks are spectacular and this is in my opinion the best sound designed piece of film ever in film the sound design in this scene when voldemort and dumbledore fight is perfection it is exactly what you want from sound in a movie but the thing that this fight does most movies would make it about the spectacle of the fight right this is dumbledore versus voldemort david yates the filmmaker of uh order of the phoenix through the the last three films chooses to take this fight and focus it on harry's emotional journey yeah harry is seeing a terrifying display of power display of power and it's voldemort being a bully and dumbledore trying to contain and he's seeing this and processing the death of his father figure and comes out of it a completely changed person because he ran up there you've got to mean it harry she killed him she deserves it to kill bellatrix lestrange he was going to kill her you know the spell harry and he comes out of it changed and just wanting to help yeah just feeling bad for the guy who tried to kill him yeah you're a full harry potter and you will lose everything i love you man this is beautiful no this is this is seriously what's funny to me is i thought i would be the crier of the two of us have you met me yeah and and it's so true and i think from there on out you have this shift where harry starts to look at everybody in a different light right and so you go from the dursleys i mean there's this there's this moment where he obviously at the beginning order of phoenix he's trying to save dudley even though dudley's a piece of crap sure and then a deleted scene of deathly hallows is dudley i wish they kept it in the film is dudley thanking harry i don't think you're a waste of space thanks we transitioned from voldemort to now we have snape who's been the most vile person in harry's life like sure he hates voldemort for killing his parents but voldemort's not there every day right taking the piss out of him and just dressing him down in front of his peers and with snape harry goes from loathing him to when he actually sees inside snape's thoughts that snape was bullied and suddenly harry realizes there's a common thread here and i don't think harry's willing to yield it i don't think he's willing to give snape compassion until after he has this experience with baltimore he starts to step into it until snape kills dumbledore please have attica and now he hates him but look at this harry's now standing up to snape fight back you coward fight back how dare you stand where he stood harry stands up to snape but then when he goes into the pen steve and he sees snape's life and he sees that snape is the way he was because he was never really loved right right the only people who ever loved him well dumbledore was kind to him the only person who ever loved him was lily not romantic love but just loved him right and so of course he attaches to her his great unrequited love the one person and james potter the bully comes in takes her away so sirius hates james potter for the bullying but hates him even more for taking lily right right now of course sirius has some work to do on understanding that it's the lady's choice who she gets to be with there are some issues there yeah but harry sees okay snape hates me because he hates my dad but he has protected me time and time again because he loved my mom after all this time and he stood up to voldemort because he loved my mom and was a double agent at great risk to himself to bring baltimore down out of love for the one person who's ever kind to him and i love the 180 harry does on snape by the end albus severus potter you were named after two headmasters of hogwarts one of them was a slytherin and he was the bravest man i've ever known and harry does not does not only does he not hate his bully he loves him for what he did and and has the world's most unfortunately named child albus severus that's terrible i don't know we're in utah there's some worse names here yeah i'll give you that so i don't know what do you think about the hairy snape dynamic and harry finding compassion for snape harry learning to have some compassion for voldemort and then you know figuring out how to destroy his nemesis that's the story arc right that's the plot yeah snape is the character he's the one who changes him i think that's profound i think you're spot on we got to figure out where draco malfoy settles into here because we can all relate to we had a nemesis on the playground or we had a nemesis in school or we had an m at work we have our the other co-worker we were both going for the same promotion like we or our sibling right and harry never becomes malfoy's friend never they're never buddies they don't join the same bowling league or quidditch league or whatever like harry comes to realize that malfoy is the way he is because his dad's a twit you're closely if we are the ones to hand and there's always pressuring his son to live up to the family name malfoy inherited all of his bigotry from his father right but when malfoy is tasked with killing dumbledore please let me help you i don't want your help don't you understand i have to do this i have to kill you he's gonna kill me harry hears that and i think once again beginnings of compassion for an enemy right and then into there harry realizes that malfoy and he have something in common a mother who adores them and will do anything for them like that's the one thing harry and malfoy have an absolute comment yep i think at that point harry transitions to pity for draco and he does something he saves draco's life and i love what ron says if we die for them harry i'm gonna kill you he actually saves malfoy's life it's an act of kindness did i ever tell you about what my mom taught me uh there was a bully when i was a kid who was awful to me and how she helped me to handle it i don't think i've ever heard this story he was like atomic wedgie punch you into the swimming pool like loogy in your face like really just awful yeah awful bully and i was um overweight because i was an emotional eater and i come home from school and my mom would have the fresh baked cookies and she'd be like tell me about your name like the kids are so mean they say they call me butterball they did it's a terrible thing they call me butterball i didn't know you were overweight as a kid yeah because we were like college roommates and you were svelte and trans adults yes i was a regular sarah michelle geller anyways so he was cruel to me he called me butterball like all these terrible things yeah and i was crying to my mom about and she says uh can you let's look up i want to give his mom a call i'm like oh gosh mom no this is a bad idea yeah because if you dress her down he's going to beat the crap out of me at school just leave it all he says no i want to get she insisted so i he got his mom's phone number she called the mom and i figured she was going to chew this mom out because your son's awful and she says we'd like to invite him over to go get ice cream and so he comes over and i'm like what are you doing the whole time i was just terrified yeah she asked him about who he was what his interests were what his favorite like nintendo game was because it was original nintendo she's like mario 3. jono's favorite is mario too i think you guys could get along you know she started just showing an interest in him and it made me safe to just start joking around and doing the same with him and after that day we weren't friends he never bullied me again ever i think bullies expect a lot of times they're miserable because people have been cruel to them sure and they think that's how the world works it's all about power and cruelty right and when they provoke you i mean they're expecting you to fold or to lash out and be provoked kindness is a wild card and it doesn't always work it doesn't always change hearts what it does show is that you won't be changed right right but for a lot of people they're bullies because it's awful at home and somebody shows them kindness and they don't even know what to do with that and what i love about harry and draco even though they never become friends you can see it at the train station they regard each other with respect yeah and that comes from harry showing draco kindness but later on in life definitely i came to realize every person who's cruel to me has got something going on yeah and i think a lot of us realize that right like our childhood bully we we learn later on what was going on at home or whatever and we start to feel bad for them yeah especially when you know our childhood bullies are stuck in dead-end lives and we're on youtube huh subscribers we got them anyways that's affirmation in the form of a number like subscribe hit the bell if you want more stuff like this also please please please leave us comments below anything you'd like us to talk about from harry potter any other films or just themes in general that we can draw from for future episodes of cinema therapy and if somehow you don't own the harry potter films yet we've got a link in the description you can purchase or rent them we get a little kickback which helps us to produce this for you if you'd like some therapeutic help or online relationship courses i've got a free 15-minute consultation link there underneath last thing we are counting on you to help us grow so you've got friends they've got problems they love movies let them know what we're doing so once again stay connected be safe and watch movies how you doing bud and this is chewie who's a big fan of chicken nuggets

Channel: Cinema Therapy

Views: 950,957

Keywords: cinematherapy, cinema therapy, mental health, counseling, therapy, mental health therapy, Jonathan Decker, Alan Seawright, Harry Potter, Bullying, bullies, Prisoner of Azkaban, Sorcerers Stone, Philosophers Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, Deathly Hallows, online therapy, movies on healing, online therapist, online counselor, online counseling, therapist reacts, psychologist reacts, react video, compassion, Umbridge, Snape, Malfoy

Id: cVcPVn5Cwzg

Length: 29min 50sec (1790 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/napjerks]

https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/heexup/video_breakdown_of_how_harry_potter_handles/

[u/ykickamoocow111]

I strongly recommend people watch this video as it has some very interesting and in-depth analysis of bullies in the Harry Potter universe and how characters (mostly Harry) react to bullies and react to conflict. It is almost a half-hour long but it is well worth a watch.

[u/N3mir]

Movie characters/scenes and book character/scenes are different enough contextually if not just completely different.

This is not about bullying in Harry Potter, this is about bullying or whatever in the Harry Potter movies.