As the summer opening of the expanded Wizarding World Theme Park approaches, with its attendant Leaky Con convention, my inbox receives email on an almost daily basis from Universal Studios and the enthusiastic minions in service to the Leaky Cauldron empire. Regular readers of this site know from the several posts I have made on this subject that my misgivings about the direction of Harry Potter fandom, the reality we live in rather than a destination we may someday reach, center on this fandom being, not of imaginative experience to be had in literature, but of temporal sense experience that can be had in cinema, rock music concerts, and amusement parks.

The former requires effort, concentration, and intelligence beyond the skills of reading letters on a page — and it has a corresponding effect on the brain, believe it or not, to the one had by a person actually experiencing the event. The self-transcending sense experience of a movie, roller coaster, or dancing to loud, rhythmic music in a crowd, in contrast, requires no effort beyond showing up, a lack of concentration or interior awareness, and less intelligence than any of the participants want to admit. With a corresponding effect of an overdose rather than a guided transformation within what Updike called “the continuous dream” of story.

Today I received this ‘Sneak Peek’ at the new ride in Orlando, ‘Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts.’ I’ve ridden the old ride at the first park that takes the paying customer on a virtual broom flight alongside Harry. I expect this is much the same experience, which is to say, nothing like the world  we entered with our hearts inside the books and everything like the dis-enchanted world of the Warmer Brothers screen adaptations. Only with a three-dimensional spin you won’t get in theaters so losing your lunch and Butter Beer are real possibilities.

Your thoughts? I’m reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains and suspect that those who have read it will know what I’m after here. Our brains are being literally re-wired and re-configured via neuroplasticity and intellectual technology to accept the video, cinema experience as the greater reality of the Hogwarts Saga. I suspect, given the technological nature of our times and the online quality of everything to do with Harry Potter today that this was inevitable. Alas!

The professor is interviewed live here. Read the online print version of the same story here and here. Hat tip to Viktor.

And what’s with the prof’s bow tie? Who takes anyone wearing a bow tie seriously?

For those wanting to stop the clock on the Potter Panic period, I think we can take this story as a marker that the Harry Hating Era is officially over. Even theology professors in search of tenure now feel perfectly safe packaging courses about the “spiritual content” of the Hogwarts Saga — cue references to Joseph Campbell, et al — for Millenials. Just over ten years after Hidden Key to Harry Potter was published…

In similar news, another professor has figured out that Harry Potter helped elect President Obama.

For more on the effects of a PhD on the human mind, go here.

The professional Las Vegas odds-makers’ estimation of Luke and Harry’s respective strengths and weaknesses with simulated combat:

The real deal, live-action toe-to-toe battle between the Boy Who Lived and the Skywalker:

I was delighted to learn earlier this month that novelist Robin Johns Grant is a HogwartsProfessor.com reader. Before she could say, ‘Nope’ or ‘No, thank you, I’m really busy’ I sent her ten questions about her novel Summer’s Winter which, for reasons you’ll pick up, will be a challenge and delight for serious readers of Harry Potter, especially those All-Pros who think about literature and spirituality and the nature of film and books.

Which is saying too much! On to the interview —

(1) Thank you so much for agreeing to our HogwartsProfessor 10 questions interview! Here’s an ice-breaker t-ball question for openers: How did you meet Harry Potter?

I worked in a college library as the books came out, so of course everyone around me was reading them. I tried to avoid the books because the idea of children going off to school to learn witchcraft disturbed me—but Harry was like a persistent suitor that you just can’t refuse. It was the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that finally pulled me in. First, I saw the fans around me (including fellow librarians and students) excitedly discussing what was going to happen in the seventh book, and I wished I could be a part of that. I love being a part of a shared community built around some book or movie I love—I’ve always been a part of some fandom—and I felt lonely and left out. Particularly because that period of my writing life felt dreary and uninspired. I was trying so hard to publish a novel and make it fit into some genre niche that I was losing the joy of story. It had become more of a dry process—look at the writers’ guidelines, choose a character, give her a goal, three obstacles to the goal, etc., etc.

Then I went to a Christian writers’ conference right after Deathly Hallows was released, and I was amazed to hear the attendees discussing the Christian themes in it. So I gave myself permission to read—and I was hooked. And I was so grateful for the books, because Harry Potter reminded me why I was writing—the pure joy of imagination, and connecting with other people through a fantastic world.

(2) Did anyone in your family or people in your church community think the books were a “gateway to the occult”?

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