There is a rule in movies: the Good Guys like Modern Art. It is subtle, just part of the sets. The good guys have a Picasso postcard taped into their locker at school or something like that.

There’s a valid historical reason for this. The WWII era Fascist governments in Europe – Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany- all cracked down on anything avant garde and in the visual arts, those governments encouraged different kinds of traditional, Neoclassical revivals. The art varied in quality- but the politics were, of course, totally horrible.

And after WWII was over, abstract and avant garde art came, more or less, to symbolize freedom.

We went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Sunday.

In the Weasley’s ramshackle cottage:

The Cubist painting on the wall behind the action. (Of course there’s no way the Weasley family could afford a real Picasso.)

And after the Ministry of Magic goes to the bad and starts persecuting innocent people, look at the scary Fascist-Neoclassical fountain they come up with, showing their victims squashed by the block of oppression:

Fairly appropriate since the central conflict of Voldemort vs Harry basically replicates the whole Nazis vs the Allies thing.

(Sorry the pictures aren’t the best. I had to steal them off the internet since they won’t let you take cameras into movie theaters.)