Mentoring in Media 1: “I Cried When Dumbledore Died”
My experience with the Potter stories did not begin with the popular Warner Brothers Pictures film series; it started with the books. This is probably a little bit of Potter snobbery that seeks to say: “hard mental effort within won me my emotional connection with 'The Boy Who Lived,'
not the passive reception of some artistic director's vision of how the story should play out before my eyes.” In fact, my connection began when a careful grandfather—a kindly biblical studies professor who’s office was next to mine for years—asked if anyone knew the story behind “this Harry Potter.” He had heard from a popular TV evangelist that the books were about devil worship, Wiccan religion, and demon possession. He was concerned whether his grandson, now his ward since his own son was faltering in fatherhood, should read the books. “All the kids seem to be carried away by these books,” he dreaded aloud.
At that time, in 2002, I had only seen one of the books (the 4th story). It looked like an encyclopedia, boasting nearly 900 pages. It's metric weight alone told me, ‘it would take gods, not devils, to get ANYONE to read that block of wood.’ Then, I did some homework and discovered this block of wood was already in 70 languages and more than 600,000 children had already read it! Few books in history, including the bible, had that draw upon the youthful mind. It seemed like I should get acquainted with what this was, at least from a cultural studies point of view.
I did. I read (and read, and read, and read). Soon, I read to my boy. Then my boy read to me. Then we found the Jim Dale Harper Audio readings of J.K. Rowling's brainchild. When I was satisfied that Potter was no closer to a Wiccan than a child wearing a sheet with two holes on Halloween is close to a ghost, I made my report to the grandfatherly professor. Knowing the grandson in question shared the same orphan-esque plight as the protagonist at Number 4, Privet Drive, I assured the professor that not only is Harry not from the devil, he is good, courageous, and a boy that makes friendship and childhood's naïveté look good again in our grow-up-too-fast cynical mini-adult society. By the time the first Potter film hit the big screen, it was flanked by The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and the “prequels” to George Lucas' 1970’s Star Wars series were in production. A sequel for the Potter film was promised for all the published books and any future books would have scripts written for them as well.
I was asked to present my findings at our seminary’s chapel. I called it “Wild About Harry: The Coming Decade of Fantasy and Faith.” I approached it as a communication scholar. I think books sales (if not movie ticket sales) went up that day.
So, unapologetically, I must say...now that the fervor has died down, the franchise has milked all it can from the films through DVDs and merchandise, and Universal Studios offers it's chilly ride through the rafters of the Great Hall chasing dragons and avoiding Dementors, and the boy's author has moved on to more adult themes and projects...I still am wild about Harry, but not as a mere nerd-fodder. The story of Harry Potter is every emerging leader’s story, as they must reckon with their part in the narrative of obscurity, opportunity, and ownership. In most of those narratives, a shaded figure stands: the mentor.
My keen interest in Potter is the role of adults that circle the boy in his successive stages of development. There's Professor McGonagall (the surrogate mother, coy with rigidity and gentleness while allowing the boy almost to never consider he is her favorite, although we all know he was), Sirius Black (the never-wants-to-grow-up god-father who hosted the father-son/man-to-man talks in the stead of the deceased father and his own best friend), the parental Weasley parents and older sons (who validated that “boys will be boys”), the Dursleys (those iconic introducers of the world of muggles, the dysfunctional extended family who exudes “your flaws are never safe with me,” generally off-putting difficult people with whom every one of us must practice more maturity and self-control than they deserve), Hagrid, (the oafish but protective teddy bear giant), and even Snape (the unflinching nemesis of the boy) comes to be understood as someone who cared so much for what the boy represented, that he was faithfully disappointed when Harry under-achieved it...which was most always. These characters will live on famously for a generation.
None were as entrancing to me as one personality who seems to physically (and spiritually) tower over all the rest in his attentiveness to the boy and his formation: Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
In Dumbledore, the best mentors of the ages converge into one:
Dumbledore, the Mentor, Affirms Belonging to the Guild. He knows his craft. He knows talent. He busies himself inducting the gifted, the under-developed, and the not-done-cooking ones.
Dumbledore, the Mentor, Seeks the Uninitiated. He is comfortable with novices, their ambition, their questions, their goofs, and their arrogance. His eyes are on the horizons they will one day explore, not the shore upon which they stand. Beginning is the necessary thing.
Dumbledore, the Mentor, Cultivates Native Powers of the Protégé. He sees what is there, hiding in plain sight to eyes, poised to ferret out potential. Looking beyond the defects, surfacing and assuring the inner resources of character and competence is the stock and trade of old school mentors.
Dumbledore, the Mentor, Enrolls the Emerging Leader Into a Story. Nothing is more exasperating as a protégé who is unaware or unappreciative of the story in which she or he is a main character. The best mentors draw out the “Once Upon a Time,” the “But Then...,” and the crucial, “But What Will Our Heroine/Hero Do Now, Do Next?” The mentor presses home that “Happily Ever Afters” are the by-product of the protégé’s best choices, informed by their sure character, today.
Dumbledore, the Mentor, Tells the Truth About What's at Stake in the Training. Perhaps everyone is precious. But not everyone is strategic. It's not that some people should be ignored, but some must NOT be ignored. Destinies of families, friends, and fortunes can hang in the balance when protégés fail to grasp how their choices affect the working out of things.
Dumbledore, the Mentor Goes, Confidant of His Investment. [Spoiler alert, though maybe a little late if you read the title of this post] Dumbledore dies. Harry must live though. Mentors must take seriously the generational importance of the emerging lives that live before them. Legacy leadership is not mere self-interest, it's leveraging today for tomorrow's sake. It even says, “I'll take less, so you can grow into a kind of solution for tomorrow.” Succession planning and the implied relational investments are the high ground of the mentoring craft.
So, I cried when Dumbledore died. Yes, real tears. I cried when he sacrificed his life for his protégé, Harry.
Listening to the audiobook version of the story during travels, I recall pulling over my car on a busy Cincinnati street and letting the tears pour down my cheeks because the author made poignant to me, in the persona of Albus Dumbledore, the epitome of what mentors have been, can be, must be.
What mentors, from literature, art, or film, have so made claims on your emotional imagination?
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
