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]

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).

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

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

That would definitely make sense, but it seems pretty silly to divide them up at age 11, rather that letting them at least first learn enough about the different choices that are available. If I had to pick a career at that age I would have been a princess lawyer veterinarian. ;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, it doesn't work very well any more, that's for sure! That's what happens when traditions fossilize and no one remembers the original reason for doing it...

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

This is reminding me of 'The Lottery' for some reason. Although at least in that story people could state a reason for what it was that they did, even if it seems like a pretty perverse one.

[sunnyskywalker]

*shivers* That story is so creepy.

I wonder whether they used to associate personality traits with different disciplines, maybe based on humoral theory or something? Transfiguration is warm and... well, I suppose it could be moist or dry, depending on what you're transfiguring... therefore you're either choleric or sanguine and thus bad-tempered and courageous, or something. Probably it would require a lot of ridiculous backbends to make it work, but then, that's kind of par for the course for humoral theory anyway.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting idea! I hadn't thought of it that way.

And yes, it's a fantastic story, isn't it? I think what really makes it work is the rather mundane way in which Jackson leads up to it, so that when the reader finally catches on it's absolutely horrifying.

[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?