More People Need(ed) to Read Harry Potter

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

I know, a provocative title in this community, but we have concrete evidence that reading Harry Potter leads to a small, but significant, increase in antipathy toward Donald Trump and his policies.

https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/new-study-shows-reading-harry-potter-lowers-americans%E2%80%99-opinions-donald-trump ; (Link through to the actual study in article.)

A while back I posted about a study that found that identifying with Harry Potter led to decreased bias toward stigmatized minorities.  At the time, I wondered how reading the series led people to feel about how to deal with their enemies given the vindictiveness the series shows in a close reading.  As it turns out, the more Harry Potter books someone has read, even controlling for "party identification, gender, education level, age, evangelical self-identification, and social dominance orientation," the more opposed they were to violence and punitive policies (like torturing their enemies as advocated by Trump) and authoritarianism.  This is in addition to confirmation of the decreased bias against outgroups.

You don't have to like Harry Potter, and I completely agree that the books have a lot of problems.  But let's not loose sight of the fact that the world is entering a dangerous, if not outright fascistic period.  There's too much hatred and divisiveness driving our politics; hate crimes have risen by several hundred percent since Trump's election.  If reading Harry Potter does help lead people to greater tolerance and mercy, we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Comments

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

You mean the "democratically" elected president who lost the popular vote?

Yes.

Who only won because of an archaic electoral institution specifically designed solely to ensure the continued political dominance of the American nobility-in-all-but-name?

That's bull. The US electoral college is very (very very) roughly similar to my own Australia's system of electoral representation. We map out the boundaries of our seats to give each region roughly the same number of electors. The USA starts off with its sacrosanct states and so alters the number of college votes to suit. Weird how the USA requires human 'electors', though ... maybe if you didn't you wouldn't have the spoilt whingers-after-the-fact that we're seeing. Here in Australia we have often had governments voted in who didn't win the popular vote. And we're two centuries less 'archiac' than the USA.

Everyone has unique experiences and perspectives ... those surface readings do, in fact, have textual evidence supporting them in the broad strokes.

No. Of course, a lot of literary analysis has some element of subjectivity, which then invalidates any claim as to 'absolute' merit. But there's no 'rule' in literature which states that such *always* applies, and I'm quite tired of those in the HP fandom who run away shrieking 'Subjectivity! Individual perspectives! Context!' and pout that it's too hard to look at the canon objectively, so just don't try, okthankxbye. They're just intellectual cowards. Claiming that 'broad brush strokes' suffice for any proper assessment is just lazy. The laziness required to absorb a lot of the left's identity politics doctrine. :-) And not worry about an election until it doesn't go 'the way it was supposed to go'.

And let's be frank, Harry running after Lucius Malfoy ... is a lot more memorable than Harry not jumping into SPEW with both feet ...

And let's be frank, Harry's impulse saving of Dobby requires much less mental effort and thinking than carrying his weight in SPEW. Sort of like an SJW sending a quick tweet before coffee versus an activist getting down and dirty and, like, studying the issues in detail.

Also, Harry's save of Dobby is memorable, yes, but also for the fact that only ONE of the innumerable poor enslaved house-elves were thus saved. A lot of house-elves were happy, sure. A lot were treated badly. If you want to claim - before you sip your coffee - that Dobby was the only one, no further effort needed, then I think you run the risk of ignoring a lot of poor souls that you otherwise could have helped.

Finally, no matter how wonderful you think Harry's impromptu saving of a single house elf, no matter how 'memorable', the paper is still incorrect in saying that "Harry and his friends advocate for oppressed house-elves". Tcch, these pesky details!! Sorry, house-elves.

Perhaps we should ... say that no one has enough time to study everything in depth and sometimes can only skim the surface while maintaining a healthy life.

No. Never. That way is the intellectual laziness and arrogance of the left; those who slam any opposing view as verboten rather than actually bother to *study* the argument and rebut. Those who are now surprised at the outcome of the election. Who have only now discovered what an 'electoral college' is. Who are realising they could have done much more to foil Trump. Who wish they didn't just 'skim the surface' ... a quick look at facebook, their twitter feeds, cool, everyone I know is thinking just like me ... before.

The American election was a triumph in disclosing what lay beneath the surface.

What you've said reflects what I said before; I think those whose attitude to Harry Potter are like that which you advocate - skim the surface, have a cappuccino - are also the ones most likely to sit, absorb and parrot back the left-wing doctrine at universities. No hard mental effort required, annoni_no says you don't need to study the material in any detail, just take note of those broad brush strokes before the exam.

And thus Rowling makes a billion. And Trump wins an election.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Aaand your ignorance of the US political system is showing again. The electoral college is not truly proportional, which is why the candidate who won more than 2 million more votes than her opponent is not the current president elect. TWO MILLION. That is greater than the total population of about 40% of the US states. But because they come from people living in the "wrong" states they don't matter.

You also seem to have a reading comprehension problem - I never advocated that people should skim read the books. I said that people are not omnipotent beings with endless time and energy. Some people aren't going to choose to use what little they do have on children's literature. People having different priorities doesn't make them bad or stupid.

Not to mention it's a bit rich to hear you, of all people, criticize anyone else for not bringing critical thought to absolutely every inconsequential thing in their lives. There are many, many arguments on this very community where someone would, for example, criticize your waifu Hermione and you would reject without any evidence to back up your claim that no, she was perfect. At which point someone else (as in, not the ever rational and carefully considerate of all available evidence madderbrad) would hunt up the relevant text in question to prove their point... and you would brush it off as inconsequential. Truly, the hypocrisy shines. (And let's not even get into your Madonna-Whore complex with Hermione and Ginny which you claim is not sexist but have never presented a single scrap of evidence in favor of your position despite the multitudinous evidence I presented that it was. You never even made an argument besides, "Is not!" Truly, your rationality is a beacon to all.)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Aww, annoni_no, I remember you now! Last seen (when I last noticed you, anyway) stamping around in your jackboots trying to impose your rules on everyone about what people were allowed to post in this community. It's been two years and seven months and I've missed you! I'd say that you haven't changed a bit, but now you're trying to bully half your country!

I'm aware that your electoral college votes aren't evenly distributed per capita. That's the case in Australia too. Some of us think it's a good thing. There's something (good!) to be said about a system that doesn't allow its rural areas to be swamped by the urban throng, that still guarantees them a voice.

There's also something to be said about a person who unilaterally decides the voice of those small states is the wrong voice ... because they didn't vote the way she wanted them to vote. I think that latter would include phrases like 'sore loser'.

You said that "surface readings do, in fact, have textual evidence supporting them in the broad strokes" which makes them a 'correct and logical' reading. That's a defence based on wilful ignorance which I reject utterly. No-one should be able to say "I'm right because I just skimmed the books and didn't see all the errors you've pointed out which I'm going to ignore anyway". Or claim that a position based on ignorance is equal to that of one studied in depth. As I pointed out, that attitude - interest only in the superficial, a willingness to skip the hard parts, giving error-prone material a free pass - should be anathema to any person with pride and self-respect. Be it in the field of literary appreciation or left-wing doctrine.

Your third and largest paragraph was greatly amusing. Run out of things to say, I see; so you resurrect old grievances. For the record, everything you said is wrong. :-) Feel free to bring up solid examples and we can examine them in detail ... oh, wait, that's not necessary, right? Just a brief skimming is all that's necessary before the hanging. :-) Luckily I think anyone reading your little rant will see it for the content-free tirade that it is, written by a person who openly admits that depth or rigour isn't necessary in what she writes. Who said "no one's perfect" ... and apparently doesn't even try to be so.

You ignored everything else I said last so I guess we're done here. Toodles!

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Why should city voters have their voices over-ridden by (fewer) rural voters? Unless you're one of those people who use "urban" to mean "colored" and "rural" to mean "white" in which case everything becomes clear. Democracy means that all votes are equal, not that some are worth more than others depending on where they live (or who they are).

You also have a very odd definition of "bullying" wherein pointing out that someone has said something offensively sexist is trying to censor them and saying that it's wrong for the will of more than half the voters in a DEMOCRACY to be overturned by an archaic mechanism designed to disempower all but the wealthy, white elite is bullying the less than half of the electorate who voted for the technical winner. Which technical winners are the ones who went out and caused a several hundredfold surge in hate crimes once the election was called. Who's the "sore" bully here again? Victim complex? Or perhaps you're simply uncomfortable trying to defend unearned privilege.



And thank you so much for illustrating my point so clearly by running away like you do every single time someone tries to pin you down on an issue you can't defend. Flounce off saying they're stupid or it doesn't matter anyway. Good bye, authoritarian coward, fare thee well.