I read an article that critiques the capitalist and consumer undercurrents in the Harry Potter universe today that intrigued, incited, and amused me. Take a minute and read it (it is reproduced in the extended entry portion of this post in case the link decays).
Even though this essay was written by a Frenchman (or perhaps its a woman, I can't tell from the name), let's resist taking the piss out of it for that. I was put off by the assumption that Harry Potter has "underlying messages" and the author's presumption that they've uncovered some hidden truth. I've always been bothered by literature and its pompous claim to represent something more than just being a story. I'm not disturbed by author's who clearly intend to make comments (one that came through clearly to me was Sinclair Lewis's commie book The Jungle. It was more than just the meat), that's cool enough.
But its when people make interpretations and fail to understand that they are just interpretations that gets my goat. Texts don't have meaning, they provide fodder for constructing meaning on an individual level. But don't get caught up in claiming that you've found something in the text: you've found something in your head.
In this case, I think the author is back-asswards. Is it surprising that an author from a capitalist consumer society writing for an audience in a capitalist consumer society writes about a world that has a capitalist economy? Imagine the outcry if Rowling had written Harry's world with pure Socialist economics. Do you think people would accept the explanation of "I just wanted something different than we have at home"? This author accuses Rowling of polluting readers minds for a long time, if not their lives, and I shudder to think of what would have happened to her if she'd written a book with benign and intentional non-capitalistic (they'd be seen as anti-, for sure) tones.
All this complaining by me aside, I think its interesting analysis in many ways. I read two kinds of books, fiction for entertainment and non-fiction for education. I don't like to read books that are devoid of entertainment value because its a veiled ficitonal presentation of educational commentary.
Just the same, when someone comes up with some interesting commentary or interpretation of an entertainment novel such as this, I enjoy it. I think it is interesting to notice how many of our societies institutions and values are reflected in Harry Potter, as they weren't obvious to me at first. I like having the veil lifted from my eyes or the curtain pulled back. I do learn something about the book but I also learn about myself and my tendency to miss fnord many elements or aspects of life. So much of our interpretations/ perspectives/ meaning-making machinery in our skulls works so effortless and flawlessly that we generally don't realize what it is doing and that by its very act of doing, we are excluding alternative yet plausible and valid representations.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting, amusing, and thought provoking. I hope you do too. Feel free to add your comments and commentary
Harry Potter, Market Wiz (French critique of Harry Potter)
New York Times ^ | July 18, 2004 | ILIAS YOCARIS
Posted on 07/19/2004 4:05:50 AM PDT by jalisco555
Editor's Note: The success of the Harry Potter series has provoked a lively discussion among French literary theorists about the novels' underlying message and the structure of Harry's school, Poudlard (Hogwarts). This article, which appeared last month in the French daily Le Monde, got particular attention, including an essay published in response arguing that Harry is an antiglobalist crusader.
NICE, France — With the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling has enchanted the world: the reader is drawn into a magical universe of flying cars, spells that make its victims spew slugs, trees that give blows, books that bite, elf servants, portraits that argue and dragons with pointed tails.
On the face of it, the world of Harry Potter has nothing in common with our own. Nothing at all, except one detail: like ours, the fantastic universe of Harry Potter is a capitalist universe.
Hogwarts is a private sorcery school, and its director constantly has to battle against the state as represented, essentially, by the inept minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge; the ridiculous bureaucrat Percy Weasley; and the odious inspector Dolores Umbridge.
The apprentice sorcerers are also consumers who dream of acquiring all sorts of high-tech magical objects, like high performance wands or the latest brand-name flying brooms, manufactured by multinational corporations. Hogwarts, then, is not only a school, but also a market: subject to an incessant advertising onslaught, the students are never as happy as when they can spend their money in the boutiques near the school. There is all sorts of bartering between students, and the author heavily emphasizes the possibility of social success for young people who enrich themselves thanks to trade in magical products.
The tableau is completed by the ritual complaints about the rigidity and incompetence of bureaucrats. Their mediocrity is starkly contrasted with the inventiveness and audacity of some entrepreneurs, whom Ms. Rowling never ceases to praise. For example, Bill Weasley, who works for the goblin bank Gringotts, is presented as the opposite of his brother, Percy the bureaucrat. The first is young, dynamic and creative, and wears clothes that "would not have looked out of place at a rock concert"; the second is unintelligent, obtuse, limited and devoted to state regulation, his career's masterpiece being a report on the standards for the thicknesses of cauldrons.
We have, then, an invasion of neoliberal stereotypes in a fairy tale. The fictional universe of Harry Potter offers a caricature of the excesses of the Anglo-Saxon social model: under a veneer of regimentation and traditional rituals, Hogwarts is a pitiless jungle where competition, violence and the cult of winning run riot.
The psychological conditioning of the apprentice sorcerers is clearly based on a culture of confrontation: competition among students to be prefect; competition among Hogwarts "houses" to win points; competition among sorcery schools to win the Goblet of Fire; and, ultimately, the bloody competition between the forces of Good and Evil.
This permanent state of war ends up redefining the role of institutions: faced with ever-more violent conflicts, they are no longer able to protect individuals against the menaces that they face everywhere. The minister of magic fails pitifully in his combat against Evil, and the regulatory constraints of school life hinder Harry and his friends in defending themselves against the attacks and provocations that they constantly encounter. The apprentice sorcerers are thus alone in their struggle to survive in a hostile milieu, and the weakest, like Harry's schoolmate Cedric Diggory, are inexorably eliminated.
These circumstances influence the education given the young students of Hogwarts. The only disciplines that matter are those that can give students an immediately exploitable practical knowledge that can help them in their battle to survive.
That's not astonishing, considering how this prestigious school aims to form, above all, graduates who can compete in the job market and fight against Evil. Artistic subjects are thus absent from Hogwarts's curriculum, and the teaching of social sciences is considered of little value: the students have only some tedious courses of history. It's very revealing that Harry finds them "as boring as Percy's reports cauldron-bottom report." In other words, in the cultural universe of Harry Potter, social sciences are as useless and obsolete as state regulation.
Harry Potter, probably unintentionally, thus appears as a summary of the social and educational aims of neoliberal capitalism. Like Orwellian totalitarianism, this capitalism tries to fashion not only the real world, but also the imagination of consumer-citizens. The underlying message to young fans is this: You can imagine as many fictional worlds, parallel universes or educational systems as you want, they will still all be regulated by the laws of the market. Given the success of the Harry Potter series, several generations of young people will be indelibly marked by this lesson.
Ilias Yocaris is a professor of literary theory and French literature at the University Institute of Teacher Training in Nice. This article was translated by The Times from the French.
Posted by Nutrimentia at July 31, 2004 07:40 PM | TrackBack