Against my better judgment, a friend talked me into going to see the new Harry Potter movie today. Turns out my friend had a good idea: since I had read approximately three zillion reviews of the movie on LiveJournal and knew exactly how problematic it was as an adaptation of the book, I was mostly able to shut the analytical part of my brain in a corner with popcorn and have fun watching nifty things happen onscreen.* The kids are adorable, the grownups are obviously getting a kick out of their roles, the special effects were mostly great, and the New Dumbledore cracks me up. My friend and I and half the line in the ladies' room after the show all agreed that the movie made very little sense if you hadn't read the book first; fortunately, we all had. (Rather like audience reaction to The Passion of the Christ, really.)

Also, the scenery is even better than I'd realized from all those screenshots people kept downloading on LJ: now I really want to jet off to Scotland for a vacation. With an umbrella. However, there is one little thing -- I mean, besides the weirdness with Hermione's wolf-call and Ron not getting enough lines and Harry's Boggart manifesting in class and the disturbingly obvious full-moon Boggart and the bizarrely unconvincing werewolf and the way they spent all that time on sweeping panoramas of flight but couldn't take thirty seconds to explain the identities of Mooney [sic], Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. (Sorry -- I've run out of popcorn.) The one little thing has to do with pop-culture and academia, which is why I am putting it here instead of in my LJ. And it is easy enough to sum up in a question: what the heck is up with Professor Lupin?

For anyone who has not read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, hereinafter "the book," Professor Remus J-for-John Lupin is Hogwarts's new Defense Against The Dark Arts instructor in Harry's third year. He turns out to be a talented teacher, caring mentor, former pal of Harry's dad, former pal of the eponymous Prisoner Sirius Black, former Hogwarts mischiefmaker extraordinaire, and closeted werewolf -- in approximately that order. Not surprisingly, many adult readers of the book (including yours truly) took a shine to him at once. He is initially described as wearing shabby wizard's robes and seeming "quite young" but having grey flecks in his light-brown hair; since we know by the end of the book that he and Black and Snape and Harry's parents were all in the same Hogwarts class, we can do the math and figure he's about thirty-three or thirty-four at this point in the story. I mention all of this because there is simply no way to deduce it from the movie, where Lupin is an affable moustached gent who appears to be on the sunny side of fifty and favors cardigans, swing music, tweed, and incredibly baggy trousers.

Now, Rowling's Hogwarts is deliberately anachronistic in many respects, but its anachronisms tend toward the Fantasy Medieval (torches for lighting, quills for writing, dungeons for classrooms, sweeping robes for school clothing, and so forth). I have a fairly clear idea of what music would serve as soundtrack to the Fantasy Medieval (or the Real Medieval, for that matter), and Glenn Miller it ain't. Besides, the PoA movie and assorted of the books allow Harry's generation to wear unexceptionable Muggle clothing from time to time, so it's not that the entire wizarding world is stuck in a severe cultural timewarp (just parts of it). In particular, Lupin is (as far as we know) one of the few instructors at Hogwarts under age 75, and later books inform us that he can blend into mid-'90s Muggle society with shabby yet unremarkable clothing: he should be prone to neither inadvertent nor deliberate anachronism.

What the movie's Professor Lupin wears wouldn't cause me to look twice if I passed him outside King's Cross, but I know rather a lot of male teachers in their mid-30s, and more than a few who hail from some part of the United Kingdom. They are my graduate-school cohort, the men I socialize with, the men I'm likely to befriend or date or work with. Given the wizarding world's lack of higher education, Hogwarts instructors seem to be an odd amalgam of private-school instructors and college professors, but my experience extends to both ends of that spectrum, and I will cheerfully assert that male teachers in their mid-30s do not generally dress that way. They may listen to swing music (with proper retro appreciation); they may wear baggy trousers, although they have as much familiarity as the next man with blue jeans, especially when they are hiking around school grounds with their contemporarily dressed charges as Lupin does in the movie. But that moustache -- I know one man under 40 (I think) with a moustache like that. And the only mid-30s teachers I've ever seen wearing cardigans and tweeds semi-regularly are female (we also have proper retro appreciation, y'see).** And all together? No. Just -- no.

Of the approximately three zillion PoA movie reviews I read on LJ, 2.9 zillion (give or take a few) have bemoaned the tragic unsexiness of Remus Lupin in his movie incarnation. The remaining 0.1 zillion bravely insist that cardigans are so sexy, ignoring the fact that if you ask most American Gen Xers to free-associate and prompt us with "man in a cardigan" we are extremely likely to answer "Mr. Rogers."*** Various people have pointed out that casting Alan Rickman as Snape in the first movie had inevitably skewed Harry's parents' generation a good five to ten years older than their canonical ages; others have questioned the casting choices for this movie, and some kind soul pointed to a fansite for David Thewlis, the actor who plays Lupin in the movie. Last I checked, the site had crashed under the weight of three zillion Harry Potter fans checking the pictures, but anyone not interested enough to Google for yourself can take my word for it that Thewlis is indeed an attractive man -- especially without the moustache -- and is perfectly capable of portraying youthfulness and/or sexiness in a whole series of movies I couldn't remember the names of.

So if it's not the book, and it's not a reflection of contemporary reality, and it's not the casting... why exactly have they turned Professor Lupin into Mr. Chips? When in doubt, blame society -- not wizarding society, our society. Our image of academics/teachers -- of which "kindly private-school teacher" is a subset -- is almost as anachronistic as Hogwarts. Academics are stereotyped as out-of-touch, dull, and unfashionable. The sympathetic ones are adorable fuddy-duddies, and post-WWII is clearly the last available era for that -- at least, by the lights of the people producing movies (they might receive a rude shock if they asked an actual teenager). The unsympathetic teacher usually stalks out of a Gothic novel -- if female, she can be mistaken for the Intimidating Housekeeper -- which explains why nasty Professor Snape stays dressed even more anachronistically than Professor Lupin in a movie where everyone else is getting their sartorial groove on.

On this side of the pond, at least, my students have figured out that I do not necessarily wear academic robes to lecture in (a pity, really); however, they are still occasionally shocked to discover that I have heard of Harry Potter (it's a terrifically useful source for teaching analogies) or that I have a life outside teaching (I resist telling them that only the senior professors have to sleep in coffins and avoid sunlight and holy water). Poor Professor Lupin's portrayal is just another tiny confirmation that nobody will ever cast and costume an otherwise unremarkable Good Teacher with royal-blue toenail polish (coordinated with the tank top she wears under her cardigan, since you asked). And as the years go by, despite any and all evidence to the contrary, my students will become more and more convinced that I was born sometime back before cable TV and/or the last ice age.

I'm more than half tempted to live up to that reputation and paint my toenails a ladylike pink (as I generally do during term anyway) while augmenting my tweeds and cardigans with perfectly coordinated hats. Let me see -- I have a few straw numbers, one blue thing with a little veil that my mother wore as a bridesmaid in the '70s, and -- oh, yes! -- a really nice pointy black one I sometimes use for Halloween. Just the thing to go with my robes.

* -- It probably helps that even though Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite book of the series so far, I do not love every word with a fiery passion. Evidently I do much better with lousy adaptations of stories I did not adore as a child.
** -- Although my cardigans tend to be rather more form-fitting, and my tweeds often wind up dyed in colors not found in nature.
*** -- Anyone who finds Mr. Rogers sexy is asked to please not tell me.

Every now and then I realize that I had a slightly irregular Jewish upbringing. I don't mean the occasional Methodist Sunday-school visit, either -- those gave me the impression that Jesus was a nice guy who spent a lot of time with kids, but not much else. No, what I mean is that the combination of Reform Sunday school every other year (or whenever I felt like going), High Holy Days choir practice, cassette tapes about all the holidays that Bubbie sent me (I was the eldest grandchild, so I got stuck with the Four Questions for a decade), and whatever books on Judaism my mother had lying around the house (mostly twentieth-century literature) made for a background strong in some areas but weak in others. I knew my Tanakh, and especially my Torah, fairly well. I knew my holidays, and I know some odd things about them (for instance, I knew from a young age that a sukkah was supposed to have 2.5 walls, which I have since learned is not strictly accurate but close enough for jazz). I knew the laws of kashrut as my grandparents practiced them. I knew my Reform Friday evening and High Holy Days services extremely well, along with a decent repertoire of alternate tunes; unfortunately, the one-synagogue nature of my Hometown didn't lead itself to a lot of liturgical comparison. Once I hit college and came into regular contact with non-Reform Jews, I realized how much I didn't know, and I started scrambling to catch up. But every now and then I'm hit by something that's patently obvious to anyone who grew up around Orthodox Jews but is new to me.

For instance, I don't think I knew much about kol isha until I moved to Boondoggle and got involved in interdenominational minyan worship. Kol isha, literally "the voice of a woman," is used as shorthand for "the halakhic idea that a woman's singing voice is a form of nakedness (more generally, conveys sexuality) and is therefore inappropriate in certain settings." Poking around online, I found that this page has a useful outline of some of the major sources. Now, as a matter of practical halakhah ("l'maaseh," as my Conservative friends like to say) I tend to view the whole business as advice not to over-orchestrate the service -- you know, those services where there's a choir for every blessed thing (so to speak) and you can't hear yourself praying unless you happen to be an opera singer in your spare time? -- and not to hire Britney Spears to perform at a Bar Mitzvah party. (That is, I am drawing on views from a number of the Rishonim, who point out that times have changed and a woman's voice is only a problem w/r/t specific prayers and if one is unaccustomed to or distracted by hearing it.*)

But kol isha as it applies to me personally doesn't exactly keep me up nights; in fact, those of you who've read this blog for long have probably noticed that I take great pleasure in singing during and outside of services. I chant Torah for fun (and am learning Haftarah trupp this summer), I lead prayers, I lead the Birkat (Grace After Meals) given half a chance, I pick up new melodies quickly, and once I figure them out I start harmonizing. If anyone finds this irresistibly sexy, I wish they'd tell me and give me a lift. I also sing prayers around the house and in my car (teaching at 8 am does not lend itself to leisurely morning davening), but it's definitely more fun in company, and I'm afraid there's no doubt that in the average group of Jews (that is, not a group of choir types) my voice is particularly audible. And services where I cannot sing -- the occasional one conducted entirely in mumbling undertones, for instance, or the above-mentioned over-orchestrated nightmares -- make me miserable. Depending on the situation, I may sing under my breath regardless, but I always try to defer (more or less) to the custom of wherever I am worshipping.

This brings me to my current kol isha problem, which has to do with etiquette as well as halakhah and which I am hoping some of my more traditionally-minded readers can help me out with. If I happen to be sitting among a group of Orthodox men after a Sabbath meal when everyone is ready to start singing the Birkat and/or other songs... what ought I to do as a matter of polite behavior? You see, even though I do not precisely buy into the idea that my voice will excite licentious thoughts in a man and therefore I should keep quiet, I would rather be hung up by my fingernails than commit an inadvertent solecism, and the cases in which I would try to offend another Jew in the context of prayer are few and far between.** In situations where other women are present, I might look to them for guidance, but it can be difficult to tell whether another woman is being quiet out of respect for halakhah, unfamiliarity with the prayer or song, or simply a dislike of singing. And in situations where no other women -- or no other women who evidently sing -- are present, I find myself at an utter loss. Furthermore, most of the people who would invite me to dinner are far too nice to tell me to shut up.

I do not wear a kippah when I attend an Orthodox service; if I am visiting an unfamiliar Conservative congregation in the morning, I may take a quick peek inside the sanctuary to check if any other women are wearing a tallit before I slip mine on. I do miss these items when I leave them off, but I prefer not to offend when I am invited somewhere as a guest.*** And it is certainly my habit to sing -- it is more central to my religious life than any ritual clothing -- but I would be willing to pray in an undertone (once in a very, very rare while) if I knew I was making my host uncomfortable. So what I am trying to figure out is the cultural and ritual cues which would let me know when to sing out and when to hush up. Do I check for black hats, or for people who avoid shaking my hand? Do I make anonymous calls to find out the customs of each of our area synagogues and conform to the custom of wherever my host family worships? Do I assume that any group where I am welcomed, or where I already sitting in the midst of a bunch of men, isn't too worried about this in the first place?

This would be much easier if there were secret hand signals, you know. Or if Boondoggle had only one synagogue -- but I would miss out on a lot of fun that way. And now I have to go sort out some more nifty details about sukkah walls iat a nearby shiur -- one of the few Jewish contexts where I don't sing, although I really like the way our teacher chants the Mishnah....

* -- That's the short version, of course, and explaining my halakhic decision-making process is another post altogether, but I am unlikely to satisfy the more traditionally-minded among my readership no matter what. (I will note that I think the original citation in Berakhot is the one to struggle with; the bit from Kiddushin is part of a larger halakhic contest between Rav Yehudah and Rav Nachman, and looking at that whole passage, I cannot believe we are meant to take Rav Yehudah's conduct as altogether exemplary or his many citations of Shmuel as universally applicable. I am also conscious of the fact that the presence of the line in question is a disputed reading among certain of the Rishonim.)
** -- I am of two -- possibly three or four -- minds about the whole Women of the Wall thing. I am not an especially confrontational person by nature, and I think confrontation particularly out of place in that setting, but I see no problem with holding a women's minyan and a mixed service along other parts of the Wall, and if those require confrontation I suppose I would be willing to cope with it.
*** -- I also wear long-ish skirts and make sure my shoulders are covered; in Orthodox settings I park a block away and walk for Shabbat and Yom Tov. I suspect that this attitude comes from the Southern side of my heritage, but I'll argue for it as darchei shalom in a pinch.