Harry Potter Movie Text Analysis Project
Initial Idea
While I will not be directly using two completely different works of art, for my corpus analysis I wanted to used Harry Potter as
my texts of choice. I specifically wanted
to use this series because of the big words, the South-Eastern British accent, and the use of fiction words in the spells and charms.
Thinking back on the movies, I seem to remember a tonal shift throughout the books. From memory, I felt as though
the earlier books had a more childish lighter tone and as the story unfolded over the course of the series, the tone became darker and more serious.
I want to analyze the text throughout the series and see if I can find trends or data that supports the tonal shift I hypothesized.
I will be using the screenplays from
all 8 movies as it is difficult to get the text from the books
without paying money. The screenplays/scrips were provided by a former student.
Thanks to Bianka Alexander and others involved for providing clean, solid versions of the screenplays for me to analyze.
See the source texts here.
The Plan
Searching for a tonal shift by pure text analysis seemed difficult to fully explore to me.
I feel as though what sets the tone is more than only a few or less words.
For this reason I have chosen a few tactics to proceed with my analysis.
I will be searching for more unique results that can be expressed within only a few words,
but still relate to an emotion, feeling, tone, or other meaningful terms.
The criteria I will mainly be searching for is as follows:
- Names that invoke a tone
- Spells that relate to emotions, action, or tones
- General words that incite themes
Using these terms, I feel as though I will be able to identify themes throughout the movies that suggest certain tones.
Criteria
In order to distinguish certain tones we must create certain criteria that our search terms will fill. These four categories will attempt to represent different themes throughout the books.
Playfulness
A lighter tone. Typically terms relating to jokes, pranks, friendship and more.
Utility
Possibly relating to mischievousness, terms that fit this category may suggest a lighter or darker tone.
Combat
With a more serious quality, combat represents only dangerous situations or serious instructional settings.
Destruction
Used only in a dark setting. Terms like, these when mentioned in the movies, cause a tonal shift by themselves to a more darker theme.
Using these categories, I will be able to organize my findings and weave my data together to find a result.
Analysis
With my categories created, it was time to find and decided which terms in the screenplays
accurately represent such tones. While watching all 8 movies over the course of the past week
I wrote down notable terms that stuck out to me. Secondly I used an
online resource that
listed all the spells that were used in the movies.
After picking from the lengthy list of spells and my own experiences while watching the series,
I have placed a number of terms into the categories listed:
Playfulness
- Laughter
- Riddikulus
- Slug
- Quidditch
- Dudley
Utility
- Accio
- Alohomora
- Marauders
- Lumos
- Oculus Reparo
- Wingardium Leviosa
Combat
- Bombardo
- Confringo
- Expecto Patronum
- Expelliarmus
- Stupefy
Destruction
- Avada Kedavra
- Cruciatus
- Horcrux
- Imperio
- Voldemort
- Bellatrix
- Sectumsempra
Results
With the terms above, I began searching. I combined all 8 movie screenplays into one text and searched the different key terms. The data will be represented in a trend line that spans the course of the eight movies For each category I will be showing the results for the best 2 or 3 examples of a trend and possibly outliers that appears as I search the terms.
Playfulness
For the playfulness terms, I normally saw peaks in the earlier screenplays and a decrease in uses towards the final movies. Such terms that were associated with fun times, jokes and pranks, joyful expressions and more seemed to be either lessened or completely gone by the end of the series.
Quidditch
From the start, the frequency of the term "quidditch" was by far the highest at the beginning of the series. Representing a fun, entertaining sport that brought enjoyment and an out from the cruelties of the wizarding world, the activity slowly vanished as the series focused on the more serious matters at hand.
Dudley
Being the comically rude and neglectful parents of Harry, the Dudley family was often used as comedic relief.
While they can be considered minor villains in the series, their appearances are always surrounded by a light
hearted and joking manner.
While this trend line was more peaked than quidditch, it as well showed a decline in uses by the last movie.
From just these two examples you can see a decreasing trend, additionally the other terms in the playfulness category also showed a decrease in use over the course of the movies. Riddikulus, a spell used to turn a fearful creature into a comical laughing stalk, saw use in only the earlier movies. In addition to this, slugulus eructo, a prank spell and reoccurring joke in the series, showed a decrease in appearances. The term "slug" completely disappeared by the end of the story.
Utility
The results for terms in this section were often difficult to distinguish meaning from. The utility category seemed to be mostly consistent throughout the series. Data was sometimes spiked meaning the terms were all used in specific manners. This makes sense as utility spells were usually reserved only for instructional settings and situations that required their use. Being arguably the most specific category, it makes sense why these terms did not yield definitive results relating to tone.
Utility Overall
As mentioned above, this category related less to tone and more to situations. Trends showed a relative amount of frequency throughout the movies. Spells in this category often implied the characters being mischievous or exploration. While this can be seen as a tone in and of itself, it is not one that quite relates to dark/serious or light/joyful.
Marauders
Potentially the most interesting from the utility category,
the term marauders showed peak use near the beginning, a smaller peak near the middle, and a return to high at the very end.
The Marauders Map was a device used mainly by the central characters to explore, pursue, or to mischievously act on
phenomena around Hogwarts.
From memory of watching the movies, I am aware that earlier uses of the map were used to carry out mischief,
while later uses, or the second peak, were used for only necessity.
As the weakest category of the four, utility terms did not show trends that specifically pertain to a serious or happy tone. Instead they possibly showed results for a different tone entirely; mystery. This does not support my initial claim, but is none the less interesting to see, what I perceive as a mysterious tone all throughout the series. While is difficult to draw conclusions from such an ambiguous category, the following categories will show much more telling results that exemplify a darker tonal shift towards the end of the series.
Combat
Combat terms are mainly spells used for offensive or defensive purposes. For this reason, results should highlight moments of action throughout each of the movies.
Stupefy
For this term I had to search both "stupefy" and "stupify" as there seemed to be a spelling error in the Order of the Phoenix. Regardless, the common spell used to stun an enemy saw use mainly surrounding the middle of the series while extending to a smaller occurrence rate in the final two films. Being a simple offensive spell, It was used numerous times in the Order of the Phoenix as Harry teaches his fellow classmates the incantation. I suspect a decrease in use nearing the ending due to its simplicity and therefore ineffectiveness towards much more dangerous foes. Regardless, the trend line may suggest a tone of preparation for the coming battle and a maturation of the characters as they begin to face the darker forces in the series.
Expecto Patronum
Expecto Patronum, a defensive spell used to ward of the deadly creatures dementors, was used most frequently at the end of the
third movie, The Prisoner of Azkaban, and at the beginning of the fourth movie, The Goblet of Fire. Similar to that of a utility
term, this spell can only be used in certain situations. This term has specific points of use because the spell can only affect
dementors, while at the same time dementors are only vulnerable to this spell. This creates a situational use that can lead to
less effective results when comparing trend lines of other terms. What can be derived from this graph is that the defensive spell
was never used prior to the third movie and was seen used several times directly after. This at least tells us of a certain time
when the darker enemies of the dementors overtook the story to a dark and scary tone by attacking the main characters.
The combat category provided us with data that suggested the need for offensive and defensive spells to be taught or used by characters in the movies. While this does not directly correlate to a darker theme, it does heavily suggest that playful spells used as pranks and jokes between students or others were now being replaced with spells used to attack. The increase in use also suggests a parallel increase in dangerous situations in which a character rely on these spells to either protect or ward off enemies that previously weren't at the forefront.
Destruction
The final category, and most compelling, is destruction. This category is reserved for words that are immediately evocative of seriousness, fear, and darkness. These terms consist of unforgivable spells that are viewed as pure evil and names that belong to fierce and malicious forces that oppose the protagonist. Consistency of such terms would indicate an overall dark theme
Horcrux
A horcrux is created when a wizard kills a subject and uses the energy to displace half of the wizards soul into an inanimate object. This allows the casters soul to technically live forever. Seeing as Voldemort used this very dark form of magic to create a total of seven horcruxes to serve as the literal embodiment of his soul, there is no question as to the dark connotation of this term. We see an increase in frequency during the sixth movie, The Half-Blood Prince, where the concept is first introduced. As the main characters search for the each horcrux, they stray further from the quaint lives they previously lived as normal students. They travel many treacherous paths and become enveloped in dark situations as they rid the wizarding world of these horrifying objects. The trend line shows that they remain surrounded by the dark concept up until the very end of the movie, implying a rapid increase and maintenance of dark undertones.
Voldemort
Who better to suggest fear itself than the main villain of the series. While occasionally mentioned earlier in the series as a dreadful foe, Voldemort's name alone instilled fearful, darkness, and evil undertones into any scene or situation. With such terror behind his moniker, even most characters in the movies refuse to say his name aloud. As the movies went on, he begins to appear more and more frequently even so much as to over take main characters such as Ron and Hermione. With Voldemort being seen as an all powerful evil, there is an undoubtable correlation between his escalating presence and a darkness tone and theme.
Destruction Overall
Bellatrix
Other terms in this category all showed a large presence in the last few movies in the series. The four shown together are all
highly destructive spells mean't only for cruel punishment or death to their victims. Bellatrix also showed a
sizable increase alongside Voldemort. Seen as an evil witch driven by madness, Bellatrix always delivered a dark, diabolical tone to
the movies.
As the strongest category of the four, destructive terms were always shown an increase towards the end of the series as previously looming threats grew ever closer. Characters synonymous with death appeared more often and created a dark dynamic that persisted until they were defeated. Other terms, like destructive spells, saw there only uses later in the series when characters were met with life or death situations.
Conclusion
The middle two categories, utility and combat, saw less definitive results than playful and destruction.
The terms in these groups, especially that of utility, were used often spread out more so throughout
the series rather than being localized near the beginning or end. Combat specifically saw slightly more use
in the later half due to the increasing amount of combat in the series. While words lists in the playful category
mostly had their appearances in the first few movies, I feel the most compelling evidence came from the final category.
The words within the destructive category often personified the evil threats in the series. Any time such a term was mentioned,
it was either surrounded by or brought a darkness tone to the scene.
Overall, based on the analysis, I feel as though we can see how innocence from the earlier movies slowly
became overshadowed by the evil forces at play. As darker terms appeared more frequently, there was less joyful
altercations amongst the characters as many moments became preparation for the coming battle.
Zack Dominick