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More People Need(ed) to Read Harry Potter
Nov. 23rd, 2016 02:24 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
annoni-no.livejournal.comI 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.
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.
A Harry Potter play...?
Oct. 23rd, 2015 05:51 pmsweettalkeress.livejournal.comSo it looks like there's going to be a sequel to Harry Potter, and it's a play. It's going to be mostly about Harry's son.
It seems like the biggest concern among most of the people on ONTD is the relative exclusivity of the medium, since a play is much more difficult to make time and money for than a book, and even if it travels, it probably won't reach every country where Harry Potter fans live.
There's also a concern that the story seems a bit cliche, and one very real danger is that it will come across as too similar to the main series. It's my experience that a story that attempts to introduce a "second generation" very often just ends up reusing the same tropes and devices that had been a mainstay of the series from the beginning. Another problem I can see arising is that the play might be caught in a conflict of how much time to spend on the older characters that we've been following for seven books and how much to include about the new generation. Since Harry Potter started as a children's series, any modern children will probably have an easier time relating to little Albus Severus and might be bored by spending time in the presence of adults like Harry; on the other hand, adults who go to see the play might be hoping to see characters they grew up knowing and loving, like Hermione or Neville, and so might be bored by the new characters they haven't had a chance to build up a relationship with.
In any case, it's hard for me to see how this play will necessarily improve upon the mythos (because it's not like we were particularly clamoring for MORE of Rowling telling you how to interpret her characters), though I suppose anything's possible. I really REALLY hope that the "curse" doesn't have to do with Snape's ebilness--leave the poor man alone why don't you!
You can find more information on Twitter here.
It seems like the biggest concern among most of the people on ONTD is the relative exclusivity of the medium, since a play is much more difficult to make time and money for than a book, and even if it travels, it probably won't reach every country where Harry Potter fans live.
There's also a concern that the story seems a bit cliche, and one very real danger is that it will come across as too similar to the main series. It's my experience that a story that attempts to introduce a "second generation" very often just ends up reusing the same tropes and devices that had been a mainstay of the series from the beginning. Another problem I can see arising is that the play might be caught in a conflict of how much time to spend on the older characters that we've been following for seven books and how much to include about the new generation. Since Harry Potter started as a children's series, any modern children will probably have an easier time relating to little Albus Severus and might be bored by spending time in the presence of adults like Harry; on the other hand, adults who go to see the play might be hoping to see characters they grew up knowing and loving, like Hermione or Neville, and so might be bored by the new characters they haven't had a chance to build up a relationship with.
In any case, it's hard for me to see how this play will necessarily improve upon the mythos (because it's not like we were particularly clamoring for MORE of Rowling telling you how to interpret her characters), though I suppose anything's possible. I really REALLY hope that the "curse" doesn't have to do with Snape's ebilness--leave the poor man alone why don't you!
You can find more information on Twitter here.
sweettalkeress.livejournal.comI recognize that this is several months after the fact, but as a Jew, I can't help but be a bit miffed by the fact that people felt the need to ask Rowling if there were Jewish students at Hogwarts. Surely that's something they could have inferred themselves, if they so chose? Yet, they were so thrilled to learn that Anthony Goldstein was Jewish straight from the author's mouth. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Anthony Goldstein never says or does anything, ever, in the entire course of the series (and is a Ravenclaw, note, not a Gryffindor), to me that's a bit like a Jewish metalhead going up to the guys in Iron Maiden and asking permission, as a Jew, to be a fan. It is true that the members of Iron Maiden had said they'd welcome Jewish fans--which near as I can tell was without a prompt, and in any case didn't focus specifically on Jewish fans but was more a blanket "We're so accepting and welcoming that we take all types of fans!" thing. Either way I have never, ever, ever heard of anyone asking the members of Iron Maiden if they accept fans of their racial or cultural background, because that's simply not how it works--either you like Maiden's music and consider yourself a fan or you don't. Likewise, if you think there ought to be Jewish students at Hogwarts you're well within your rights to imagine there being, and the author's own ideas on the subject don't and shouldn't have to play into this at all.
And here's the thing: the UK is a fairly diverse, multicultural place already. Probably it has representatives of the majority of races, cultures, and creeds that have ever existed living there (granted, this is not to say that it's without discrimination or prejudice--but that's slightly off-topic). So...shouldn't it be reasonably expected, that if a group is represented by a cross-section of the UK's population (Hogwarts is the leading British wizard school, Iron Maiden are a British band and initially gained traction in the UK before going international...), that group will contain at least a few Jews by definition? Because there are plenty of Jews that live in the UK. I even met some of them when I studied abroad there.
I just think it's ridiculous that these fans can't come to their own conclusions about this, but instead have to ask the author about it. Can they not make their own decisions about anything related to the series at all?
And here's the thing: the UK is a fairly diverse, multicultural place already. Probably it has representatives of the majority of races, cultures, and creeds that have ever existed living there (granted, this is not to say that it's without discrimination or prejudice--but that's slightly off-topic). So...shouldn't it be reasonably expected, that if a group is represented by a cross-section of the UK's population (Hogwarts is the leading British wizard school, Iron Maiden are a British band and initially gained traction in the UK before going international...), that group will contain at least a few Jews by definition? Because there are plenty of Jews that live in the UK. I even met some of them when I studied abroad there.
I just think it's ridiculous that these fans can't come to their own conclusions about this, but instead have to ask the author about it. Can they not make their own decisions about anything related to the series at all?
Revisiting Dumbledore (again)
Mar. 20th, 2015 10:18 amsweettalkeress.livejournal.comThis is something that occurred to me as I was having a conversation with a friend. We were making fun of Harry Potter and he mentioned that he didn't like Dumbledore in the last few books because he was too perfect, too infallible, and absolutely everything went according to his plan. I brought up the potion in the cave as one counterpoint, and he said something very interesting. He said that although Dumbledore was caught off-guard there, he still managed to maintain some degree of control over Harry, and was able to convince him to keep giving him the potion, so even in that instance it seemed as though he had planned out the whole thing.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
sweettalkeress.livejournal.comWhile I was perusing Facebook, I found a link to a video which I thought was really cute and totally appropriate to this comm.
It's right here, if you want to watch:
I would say it's fairly on-target. The scene of the little kid with the fire extinguisher in particular.
It's right here, if you want to watch:
I would say it's fairly on-target. The scene of the little kid with the fire extinguisher in particular.
annoni-no.livejournal.comA recent paper published in Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that reader identification with with the main character of Harry Potter (and disidentification with Voldemort) positively correlated with reduced bias toward stigmatized minorities in real life. Researchers found this Harry Potter effect was significant even after controlling for the general amount of books read, which by itself is strongly associated with reduced bigotry and prejudice. So, it seems unfair to say the books are nothing but toxic.
What I want to know is the correlation between reading Harry Potter and how people think their ENEMIES should be treated. And what criteria determine what makes someone "bad" and how badly they deserve to be punished.
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/harry-potter-battle-bigotry-87002/
*Update
The linked article is correct in its general summation of the findings, but is sloppily written. I'm not entirely comfortable reproducing the entire paper, but if there are particular sections people would like to see I'll try to either excerpt or summarize them more accurately. The paper itself is hardly groundbreaking - it's been shown before that reading about foreign perspectives helps increase tolerance. This mostly showed that the same effect extended to fantasy fiction. The studies were also extremely narrow in focus (only looking at identification with Harry or Voldemort). Mostly I thought people would be relieved that SOME good came from such a widely selling series, despite its numerous flaws.
What I want to know is the correlation between reading Harry Potter and how people think their ENEMIES should be treated. And what criteria determine what makes someone "bad" and how badly they deserve to be punished.
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/harry-potter-battle-bigotry-87002/
*Update
The linked article is correct in its general summation of the findings, but is sloppily written. I'm not entirely comfortable reproducing the entire paper, but if there are particular sections people would like to see I'll try to either excerpt or summarize them more accurately. The paper itself is hardly groundbreaking - it's been shown before that reading about foreign perspectives helps increase tolerance. This mostly showed that the same effect extended to fantasy fiction. The studies were also extremely narrow in focus (only looking at identification with Harry or Voldemort). Mostly I thought people would be relieved that SOME good came from such a widely selling series, despite its numerous flaws.
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