Thoughts for the Serious Reader of Harry Potter
Just sayin.’ Not many book series and consequent film franchises inspire home decorating innovations like this one. And can you think of a better way to keep children away from the electrical socket or wasting volts with silly appliances?
Hat tip to James McG — and Semper Fi!
For those of us who are old enough to remember when dinosaurs walked the earth and the Hogwarts Saga was not yet finished, the ‘Red Hen,’ aka Joyce Odell, is a VIP of the first order. Her Red Hen Publications website was the online place to go for the most closely and cleverly argued speculations about the artistry and meaning of the books. My Ring Composition work, all of which was done post Deathly Hallows, owes a great deal to work that Ms Odell did as far back as 2003 (when she detailed all the Stone-Phoenix connections and parallels) and to her post Half Blood Prince work in which she predicted that Hallows would resonate in like fashion with Prisoner.
Did I mention that she predicted the Horcrux story line years before we knew there was such a thing? Check out ‘The Changeling Hypothesis’ for some amazing literary detective work — and browse through her fanfic publications while you’re there (the Red Hen is a graphic artist of the first order, as well). There’s enough fascinating Potter Punditry collected here and here to keep future academics (and serious readers of Potter canon) who really do their homework busy for weeks.
I was delighted, consequently, when I learned in our e-correspondence, that she updated her web site at long last to reflect Hallows realities and her disappointment with the finale. I asked her for a statement to publish here and she obliged me with this note: [Read more…]
MISTI-Con in Laconia, New Hampshire was a blast! This joint production of The Group That Shall Not Be Named and MuggleNet.com was set on a lake-side resort whose buildings, Big Top tent, and props (can you say, “Life Size replica of the Fountain of Magical Brethren”? Wow.) had a Hogwarts feel, especially with the nearly 500 attendees who all seemed to have five or six Wizarding World outfits to change into. The Beauxbatons uniforms were stunning and the spot-on Gilderoy Lockhart outfit Clay Dockery wore to the MNet podcast still makes me laugh.
And the live podcast with MNet host Keith Hawk and special guest Janet Batchler was a big hit. Janet is a long time friend of this blog and she blew the full house (well, tent) away with her insights and observations as a screenwriter about what worked and didn’t work in the film adaptations of the Hogwarts Saga. Listen to the whole thing; I’m no friend of the movies but I loved talking with Janet about Hollywood realities as well as the effects of the Franchise on Fandom’s experience of story.
Two other MISTI-Con notes below concerning Leaky Con and a delightful Potter Pundit I met with a mind-blowing idea: [Read more…]
The 2oth installment of MuggleNet Academia, a pet project to raise the quality of conversation in Greater Fandom, is an Anniversary Special. We invited the guests who joined the show in its first year to return for a second look at the topics of their program and Potter Punditry in general.
It’s a fun, rollicking conversation — twelve animated, intelligent people who know Harry Potter very well, talking with one another at full clip! — but I think if there’s one take away from the event it was John Mark Reynold’s observation that the Warner Brother films, while creating a second and much more populous wave of Potter Mania before the book inspired mania had even crested, may also have sowed the seeds of Harry’s demise as a Shared Text for those born after Generation Hex.
His argument is hard to refute. Simply put, most perhaps almost all young and older people who are discovering the Hogwarts Saga today are entering the story first through the DVDs of the WB movies. If a percentage of this horde will almost certainly go on to read the books, probably on hand-held devices, they are experiencing the text series as “expanded screenplays” rather than the “real thing.” Think of the Star Wars novels that were written after the first trilogy of the Lucas films. And that experience is not anything like the imaginative depth of the ‘Book First’ experience because it is tied to and imaginatively dependent on their ur experience, Daniel as Harry.
Prof Reynolds, the Provost of Houston Baptist University, a Great Books scholar, and a mythopoeic novelist himself, notes, too, that Harry Potter has become for middle and high school students, their older siblings’ thing. The movies do not create the identification the book experience did for the older brother or sister because, for one, the films are already stale and “dated” in terms of their special effects, film techniques, and consequent atmosphere. Not to mention the much lesser impact of a sense versus an imaginative entry into and engagement with story!
Please listen to the whole show — but let me know in the comment boxes what you think of Prof Reynolds’ ‘Potterdom Passe’ theory.
Have the films undermined not only the author’s hope that we “might imagine better” but the legacy of the books themselves?Your comments in response and your original thoughts are coveted, as always!
News from the Sookie Stackhouse fandom — the ending isn’t what the ghoul gallery expected or wanted, if it is faithful to alchemical story formula. Here is the HogwartsProfessor authority on the Southern Vampire Mysteries, Renee Jones, with the just breaking news:
Hi, John,
I wanted to let you know about the nuclear explosion going through the Southern Vampire Mysteries/True Blood fandom today.
In 2009 when I first contacted you about Charlaine Harris‘s series, I speculated that the protagonist, Sookie, was progressing through the alchemical stages, which were demarcated by her relationships with two vampires and a shape shifter. An enormous fandom revolves around the nigredo vampire, Bill and the albedo one, Eric. While rubedo shapeshifter Sam has a small following, no one has considered him a credible contender for Sookie’s happily ever after since book 3.
Bill’s window of opportunity ended early on, and debate in recent years has been about whether Sookie and Eric would have a happily ever after, she would wind up alone, or find someone new.
Today portions of the 14th and last book in the series were leaked on the internet, and the fandom has been blindsided with the rubedo ending of Sookie and Sam. The gnashing and wailing of teeth is really something. This is a huge alchemical backfire.
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