Why no Harry Potter, eh?

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So I looked at ONTD's "Ten of the most Epidemically Overrated Books," and was incensed to find that books like On the Road and The Great Gatsby made the list but the Harry Potter series didn't (though at least the Twilight series did). I mean really, Harry Potter is the epitome of an overrated book series, given that there are people seriously making the point that it's so deep and meaningful and needs to be read in AP English classes. Never mind that it's a children's book series!

Well, these were the people who said that a bunch of authors besides Rowling disliked the idea of fanfiction without bothering to consider WHY they might feel that way (specifically, that Rowling is the only one who's all that fandom savvy because she's modern in a way that the others aren't). Maybe they just think Rowling is their darling author too, and you can't say anything bad about her.

Comments

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense.

1. They reflect the present Zeitgeist - including some nasty things in it - really, really well. That needs analyzing,

I concur. I would love to see a critical analysis of the series from this standpoint.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say this was the definitive analysis - I don't think it's simply the case that the narcissism in the books reflects our society's narcissism. But there are some interesting ideas here.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/696992/posts

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Tried to reply below, and my comment got marked as spam because I included a link. The link was to a discussion of an article that appeared in "Culture Wars", entitled "Education as Magic: Harry Potter and the Cult of Narcissism."

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Got it, thanks!

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't agree with everything in that article - not by a long shot - but here is an interesting quote:

Quidditch, which is like soccer played on broomsticks, is narcissistic sports. Narcissistic sports is a contradiction in terms, but then again so is narcissistic education. Sports, by definition, pit desire against reality, and out of that conflict character is formed in the souls of the young people who participate in sports. Reality in this instance means the laws of the physical universe�gravity, inertia, etc.�as they affect the human body�s ability to move through space. By repeated effort and perseverance, which are moral traits, the young person who plays sports acquires skill, which allows him to overcome the laws of nature in ways which seem magical to those who lack the skills but are not. Anyone who has watched an upperclassman sail over the highjump bar knows what I mean. Anyone who has watched an upperclassman push off from the dock on a 18 inch-wide racing shell without tipping over and later learned to do the same thing himself knows that what seems to be magic is really a skill that can be mastered through perseverance and patience. The lesson that the young man learns is that I can be out in reality and I can learn how to deal with reality. I can run ten miles. I can row there and back without tipping over. I am not a god who makes things so by wishing they were so, but if I learn certain skills, reality can accommodate my desires. I can row across the lake without tipping over.

That is one of the lessons of sport. The other is learned in competition with other people. The same character building lessons that were learned in confrontation with nature get applied to the sportsman�s relations with other people. This means that winning, which is based on acquired skills, is a good thing, but not the only good thing.� In fact, the social collaboration which allows the game to take place in the first place is more important than winning and should always be treated that way. That means that sports should teach one how to be gracious in defeat, which means accepting the fact that, no matter how great our level of skill, our desires do not have hegemony over reality.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That's really well said and sort of exemplifies one of the main problem with Quidditch. I mean, what's the point of all the other players when apparently the seeker is the only one who can decisively win the game?

[oryx_leucoryx]

And what is the point of skill if the player with the more expensive broom wins (almost always)?

One could argue Ginny was the best Seeker in the series (yes, something she is actually good at), because from what we can see she caught those 2 snitches while riding a school broom.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I forgot about that. It seems like there would be no way to have a fair game when everything depended on the amount of money that was spent on the team rather than on their actual skill.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

And now I'm wondering what sorts of games the friendly neighborhood adults in the inner city put together to give the downtrodden kids friends and team spirit.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Do you think that there are people in the WW who are that selfless? ;-)

Maybe they can jury-rig together a homemade version with common household brooms and some clever enchanting.

[ladyzenobia.livejournal.com]

Well there ought to be some alternative to being on the Hogwarts team. In HBP (edit, got books confused) Ron, Harry, Hermione and Ginny play two against two and I'm not really sure how that's supposed to look, but it's not professional anyway. In canon it looks like if you're not on the Hogwarts team then you have no opportunity to play professionally and only seven kids from each house get to be on their house team, so what will the rest do? Given how popular quidditch is I'm surprised they don't resent the people on their team. Maybe there are Quidditch clubs outside of school, like we have basketball practice and so on...

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You have a good point, though I wonder when they would have the time to be in these clubs, since Hogwarts takes up so much of their time. Sure, there's the summer, but three months a year is still not that much time. Plenty of students would probably resent the special treatment that the house players get, and not just getting to use the brooms. I mean, they don't even have to do their homework when a big game is coming up! That is some serious favoritism right there. Essentially, the system breeds privileged jocks and a whole bunch of discontented other people. So, quite a bit like high school. ;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

I still cannot figure out why they don't have alternates. What kind of team sport doesn't have at least one extra person sitting in the bench for each position? And rotate them during long games and/or for various strategic reasons? Even I know you're supposed to do that, and I don't follow sports at all. (Why isn't Dean Thomas the West Ham fan all over this problem?)

Yeah, I bet there are a lot of bitter kids who almost made the team at Hogwarts, and a lot of bitter kids who are involved in equally time-consuming activities offscreen who don't get out of doing homework. And for that matter, a lot of kids bitter that with the entire British wizarding world being Hogwarts alumni, there is still apparently never any kind of fundraising drive to replace the school brooms. Seriously, only one single parent ever donates sporting equipment? They can't get a dozen or so Gryffindor parents to chip in to buy even a couple of nice brooms for their team? For that matter, why can you even donate to a particular team rather than there being an all-House Quidditch fund from which all donations will be distributed equally?

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Well said. Looks like just one more thing that JKR didn't think through. *sigh*

I kind of wonder what the point of dividing the school up into houses is at all. Doesn't it just make the students even more cliquish than they would be anyways? It's hard enough to make friends at that age, even without the artificial separation. Especially since they have classes with people from other houses, so they could probably develop friendships with them otherwise. I can understand splitting up the dorms, but why make them compete against each other like that as well? And if they wanted to keep the competitiveness, why not have multiple Hogwarts campuses so that the students are not constantly antagonizing their rivals? It seems like the house system causes a lot of unnecessary strife.

I know that if I were in Gryffindor that I would probably be wanting to make friends in the non-jock house. ;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

Maybe it's a British thing? But then, I've heard some British people say that they were divided into houses but didn't have that kind of cutthroat competition, so I don't know. It sounds like originally, it was just that they had four teachers who divvied up the students according to their personal teaching preferences, and they thought maybe grouping students with similar interests or inclinations would be useful and so made the Hat. Which isn't necessarily a terrible idea, depending on the execution.

Given that you started university around age 14 in medieval times, maybe what was really happening was that Hogwarts was on the cutting edge of the university movement and they were grouping the students into different degree tracks - doctorate in potions, doctorate transfiguration, etc. (Well, given that they apparently took any magical kids, not just already-educated ones, they would have had to teach a fair number of them to read just to start because they would be statistically more likely to be farmers, so it wouldn't be exactly a university. More like a cathedral school with university tacked on for advanced students? Idk. There could have been some outside influence on their academic structure, anyway.) And there was some kind of strife between the houses due to "external deadly foes," so maybe that's what started the bitter rivalry. But they might never have intended for the houses to be quite so competitive (maybe friendly competitions now and then or something, but not so bitter and longstanding).

[oryx_leucoryx]

The Gryffindors actually had alternates before Harry arrived. In Lee Jordan's commentary in PS he mentions that Alicia Spinnet was a reserve player the previous year. I guess having Harry on the team blew Oliver Wood's mind too much.

They can't get a dozen or so Gryffindor parents to chip in to buy even a couple of nice brooms for their team?

I guess the problem was that none of the children of rich Gryffs made the team and nobody bothered to donate if their own child wasn't going to benefit?

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

The only extra-curricular activity ever mention is Quidditch or the DA.

What no Chess club? We know wizards play chess. Ron could join, but then it would interfere with Harry being the center of his universe.

Snape's mother was the Gobstone champion when she was a student. Is there a competition while Harry was at school? Or was it discontinued?

Or how about study groups? Why is Hermione is a study group? Silly me she has Harry why would she need anyone else?

The problem is if it doesn't involve Harry it doesn't matter.

Another example of JK poor world building. It would be easy to throw in a reference to some other activity. A Quidditch teammate worrying about a schedule conflict with another club. A house mate mentioning that they had to go because x club was meeting. When Umbridge bans groups have other students complaining about their group no longer being able to meet.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Now that would have been cool, to see the depth and breadth of extracurricular activities wizards could do.

If Rowling wanted Harry to see everything important, all it would have taken would have been for him to run into the wrong clubroom by mistake, for example. Or Rowling could have derived some humor from doing what I did in one of my stories, where I had the protagonist deliberately seek out a food club he wasn't part of so he could peek on the cute girls get new ideas for recipes he could try.

[sunnyskywalker]

What really rankles is that she actually made a joke out of anyone trying to start up another extracurricular activity in print. Remember that anecdote about the time they tried to stage a play at Hogwarts, and not being Quidditch the mishaps were not considered something one should overlook as part of the experience, and they never ever had a drama club again? Yeah.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

She said that? Good grief.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

where I had the protagonist deliberately seek out a food club he wasn't part of so he could peek on the cute girls get new ideas for recipes he could try.

My dad said he liked figures, that's why he took typing in High School. (That would have been in the 50s, when typing was full of girls)

[oryx_leucoryx]

There was a Charms club, one of the DA members worried about time conflicts. But Harry wouldn't join academic clubs so we don't know anything about them.

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

Well, I there was S.P.E.W., I suppose.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

I googled the article. Um, regardless of the author's stance on Harry Potter, I don't feel like he's a very credible source. Some of his understanding of psychology appears to be about 60 years out-of-date, and it's hard to take seriously someone who claims that homosexuality is the ultimate expression of narcissism.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Yes - It's a weird article, and, as I said, I certainly do not agree with it entirely. Unfortunately, someone who spouts prejudice the way this man does (he's not only homophobic, but also extremely anti-Catholic and anti-Irish - or at least, he quotes people who are) cannot be taken seriously. And yet - when he explains, as above, exactly why Quidditch is the anti-sport and an expression of narcissism, he makes an awful lot of sense. I wish there were a calm, coherent analysis of the narcissism in these books, but I haven't been able to find one, and have neither the knowledge of psychology nor the heart to attempt it myself.