What is it about Harry Potter?
Aug. 10th, 2007 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenSeriously. Question.
I am still seeing lots of people reading book 7 on the trains and Tubes. In one amusing incident, on 2 consecutive seats, a frumpy and unhappy-looking late-middle-aged woman buried in it, and directly behind her, two trendy bouncy mobile-nattering teenaged girls, one also clutching a copy with a bookmark a good way through; when she wasn't giggling over stuff coming in on her phone with her mate, she was apparently enjoying in the book.
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antipope, I read the first 3 (& went to see the first 2 films) and also like him, I went to (in my case, a succession of) 2nd-tier British public schools, much of the ilk that Hogwarts is based upon. I have no nostalgia for the places at all; I hated my time there. I found them hidebound, stratified and intellectually constraining. Since they were all (except for the last few years in the last school) single-sex male-only institutions, they also rather crippled my psycho-sexual development for about my first quarter-century. They're quite good at turning out bank managers, bureaucrats and military officer material (in other words, when they occasionally succeed, they extirpate imagination and ingrain a deep need to conform and to obey higher command). Mostly, I think they fail even at this. I suspect they helped my education somewhat; I also went, briefly, to various state schools, where I was subjected to (even) worse violence and disorder. It would have been very hard to stick through that.
I find the Harry Potter books (and to a lesser extent films) to dull, very predictable, derivative and really not very well-written. I don't personally like fantasy much and I don't like juvenile fiction much, but nonetheless, I'm vaguely literate in fantasy and swords-and-sorcery. I am not a fan of Diana Wynne-Jones except for the "Tough Guide", but I agree with the small sign I saw in the Ottoman's in Douglas on the Isle of Man, which said, "read DWJ - like Harry Potter but better!"
I gave up before the 4th book, the first really fat one, when it was obvious from mere external observation that she'd become too hot a property to edit. I had to wade through the first - it was so dull, it remains a mystery to me how it started the franchise. The 2nd and 3rd picked up a bit but rose to only a pretty damned low level.
Presumably some fans are reading this; I know plenty of friends of mine like the books. And a great many of my friends are literate, well-read types.
So what is it that appeals about HP?
Is it the underage homoerotic fanfic? Is it some kind of proxy nostalgia for the myth of the Great British Public School? Is it pure escapism? (I love that myself but find much better, purer sources elsewhere.) Is it that it's grounded in contemporary Britain, rather than starting somewhere further off? Does it appeal to everyone's inner child wanting to be a rock star, movie idol or Nobel prize-winner, by giving them dreams of wizardry instead, ones rather closer than Ankh-Morpork?
Or is it just the lure of the crowd? "I read, everyone reads these, so I must read them! I must know what they're all on about!"lushattic spent some time last night trying to explain to me the appeal of football, of being part of a like-minded crowd. He failed but I think he came closer than anyone's done before, for me.
I don't seek generalisations, merely an explanation of why any single person reading this, who loves HP, does. 'Cos it's a mystery to me.
P.S. Don't forget, tonight,suaveswede birthday drinks, Market Porter.
I am still seeing lots of people reading book 7 on the trains and Tubes. In one amusing incident, on 2 consecutive seats, a frumpy and unhappy-looking late-middle-aged woman buried in it, and directly behind her, two trendy bouncy mobile-nattering teenaged girls, one also clutching a copy with a bookmark a good way through; when she wasn't giggling over stuff coming in on her phone with her mate, she was apparently enjoying in the book.
Like
antipope, I read the first 3 (& went to see the first 2 films) and also like him, I went to (in my case, a succession of) 2nd-tier British public schools, much of the ilk that Hogwarts is based upon. I have no nostalgia for the places at all; I hated my time there. I found them hidebound, stratified and intellectually constraining. Since they were all (except for the last few years in the last school) single-sex male-only institutions, they also rather crippled my psycho-sexual development for about my first quarter-century. They're quite good at turning out bank managers, bureaucrats and military officer material (in other words, when they occasionally succeed, they extirpate imagination and ingrain a deep need to conform and to obey higher command). Mostly, I think they fail even at this. I suspect they helped my education somewhat; I also went, briefly, to various state schools, where I was subjected to (even) worse violence and disorder. It would have been very hard to stick through that.I find the Harry Potter books (and to a lesser extent films) to dull, very predictable, derivative and really not very well-written. I don't personally like fantasy much and I don't like juvenile fiction much, but nonetheless, I'm vaguely literate in fantasy and swords-and-sorcery. I am not a fan of Diana Wynne-Jones except for the "Tough Guide", but I agree with the small sign I saw in the Ottoman's in Douglas on the Isle of Man, which said, "read DWJ - like Harry Potter but better!"
I gave up before the 4th book, the first really fat one, when it was obvious from mere external observation that she'd become too hot a property to edit. I had to wade through the first - it was so dull, it remains a mystery to me how it started the franchise. The 2nd and 3rd picked up a bit but rose to only a pretty damned low level.
Presumably some fans are reading this; I know plenty of friends of mine like the books. And a great many of my friends are literate, well-read types.
So what is it that appeals about HP?
Is it the underage homoerotic fanfic? Is it some kind of proxy nostalgia for the myth of the Great British Public School? Is it pure escapism? (I love that myself but find much better, purer sources elsewhere.) Is it that it's grounded in contemporary Britain, rather than starting somewhere further off? Does it appeal to everyone's inner child wanting to be a rock star, movie idol or Nobel prize-winner, by giving them dreams of wizardry instead, ones rather closer than Ankh-Morpork?
Or is it just the lure of the crowd? "I read, everyone reads these, so I must read them! I must know what they're all on about!"
lushattic spent some time last night trying to explain to me the appeal of football, of being part of a like-minded crowd. He failed but I think he came closer than anyone's done before, for me.I don't seek generalisations, merely an explanation of why any single person reading this, who loves HP, does. 'Cos it's a mystery to me.
P.S. Don't forget, tonight,
suaveswede birthday drinks, Market Porter.
