Since I did not read the books, my first exposure to Harry Potter was through a 2001 movie called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I'd started to read the first book before seeing the movie, but didn't finish it until, well, until I read it with my son a few months ago. But that book was also called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.When I read it with my son, it was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. That's because we're in Australia, and Australia gets everything from England, and in England, this book and the corresponding movie were both called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
I always knew this, but it was something I always objected to. Sure, J.K. Rowling is British, and whatever she originally wrote back in 1997 was obviously what it should actually be. While we're on the topic of the world's introduction to Harry Potter, it's funny to think that this is only the 20th anniversary of Rowling's first book. I contend that Harry Potter is the last great massive industry to have been introduced to pop culture. Pretty much everything else we love with this kind of name recognition has been with us far longer than 20 years and has just been continually rebooted.
Anyway, I preferred the American title for two reasons, both of which were probably considered when making the change for American distribution: 1) "Sorcerer" is better than "Philosopher" for purely linguistic reasons, as it allows alliteration with the next word, "Stone;" and 2) What the heck does a philosopher have to do with magic?
A mystical MacGuffin like the stone in question should conjure images of Merlin or Gandalf, not Immanuel Kant or G.W.F. Hegel. A philosopher sounds like a person who sits around talking your ear off with existential ideas. A sorcerer, on the other hand, is a person of action. Just try to think of the word "sorcerer" without imagining a man in a robe and pointy hat gesticulating his hands in order to whip up some kind of fireball or colored smoke. Can't, can you?
So who knows why Rowling initially called it the Philosopher's Stone, except that the British are funny sometimes and they don't always want to be held accountable to what we might consider reasoned logic. Then again, it's also a matter of perspective. Americans have a bunch of different words for things than British or Australians do, and maybe to a Brit or Aussie, a philosopher is indeed someone who waves a magic wand and makes things explode.
The point of me telling you all this is that over the past two days -- this movie is pretty long -- the four of us watched Chris Columbus' 2001 movie, which, like the book, is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone here in Australia. Even though I accept that this is its proper title, I will still refer to it as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in my Most Recently Revisited section to the right, and in the tag for this post. At least the second of those choices is partly motivated by the fact that I already have a tag for the other title, and I'm not about to go back and rewrite history on my blog.
The thing that's interesting about this is that other sites are rewriting their own history. If you type Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in wikipedia, it will not bring up an entry for that. It will instead redirect you to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, informing you very early on of the alternate title for its American release. IMDB does a variation on the same thing. It will produce a result in the search area if you type in the American title, but it still takes you to a single IMDB page under the name Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Underneath that it reads "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (original title)." Which just makes things all the more perplexing.
This last kind of gets at what I think is unusual about the whole situation. There are any number of movies released with different titles in different countries, but in many if not most situations, the American title is considered the default title. That's especially so if the films are released simultaneously in the different countries, or staggered by only a small amount. If a foreign film is released in its country of origin, takes off there, then receives a title that's easier for Americans to understand or pronounce, we'd expect the original title to take precedence on the web, if only because its page on something like IMDB would have been created at the moment of its origin. But this is, for all intents and purposes, a Hollywood movie, something expecting to do the majority of its business in America, its British origins basically an afterthought in terms of marketing muscle and other logistics.
And yet I do think it's right that websites have recognized that the original text was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and that the only reason it was changed for anybody was that Americans were considered too unimaginative to expand the boundaries of their understanding of magic. Who knows how well the book would have sold in the U.S. with its original title; we'll never know. But we do know it became a sensation in this incarnation, so obviously it was well worth it.
As I was watching the movie, I was interested to see what kind of shenanigans might have occurred in order to substitute one word for the other. In a printed text it's pretty simple -- you just do a find and replace command, and there would be no false positives, as I'm sure the word "philosopher" does not occur in any contexts in the original book other than in discussion of this particular stone. But in a movie, characters have to mention it in dialogue. Would they go to the trouble of filming the scenes twice just for this small change?
Well either they did, which would not be so hard because it doesn't actually get discussed all that much, or they only filmed it the one way. I can tell you for certain that Emma Watson is making the word "philosopher" with her mouth in one clear instance of discussing it. It does get spoken off camera once or twice, but I think there was another instance where the actor was clearing speaking it.
What I don't know is whether Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has any instances of the word "sorcerer" being clearly spoken, since I don't have access to that version. Though the internet tells me they did film some scenes twice, and worked around it in other ways when they couldn't (having the actor's mouth not appearing in the shot when the word is spoken, for example).
The kids seemed to like it. The first book was as much a hit with my son as I'd hoped it would be, as we got it in this beautiful hardcover book with pictures:
The movie was pretty much perfect for him and his younger brother, containing some scary moments but nothing too crazy, as the characters themselves are just a few years older than the older one. And he seemed to really enjoy seeing the things he'd learned about in the book coming to life.
Me? I always defend this movie, my standard argument being that the movie has a special place for me because it was the first time we had seen Hogwarts, or quidditch. Of course, if the person on the other end of that argument is smart they can and often will say "No it isn't. We first saw those things in the books, in our minds." Damn. Great point.
And on this, my second viewing -- I had previously seen every Harry Potter movie exactly once -- I was a bit struck by its flatness, in general but also compared to certain movies that come later in the series. There are only a few I think are really distinctive, most notably Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and indeed this one is only really distinctive for being the first.
Still, it definitely works as a kids movie ... whether its MacGuffin was forged by a sorcerer or a philosopher.
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