Pottermore’s Sorting Hat: The Dark Triad Dirty Dozen (& MuggleNet’s March Madness ‘Best Potter Chapter’ Contest!)

March 17, 2016 by Leave a Comment

Ever wondered about the science behind personality tests, to include the Pottermore Sorting Hat? Tune in to this installment of Academia to hear Professor Laura Crysel reveal all (to include whether the tests really uncover your House colors and secret temperament…).Bracket-RoundOne

And Keith Hawk at MuggleNet wrote me today to invite you to participate in their ‘March Madness’ competition, with a bracket and everything:

MuggleNet is running a fantastic competition in tandem with the American NCAA Basketball March Madness tournament.

We have pitted 64 Harry Potter book chapters against each other, in four divisions named after the Hogwarts houses. Users can vote as many times as they like, and are encouraged to do so! It’s a single elimination tournament, run exactly like the Muggle sports version.

Read all about that here!

Filed Under: MuggleNet Academia

Mailbag: Washington Post OpEd argues ‘It’s Time for J.K. Rowling to let Other People write Harry Potter Books’

March 14, 2016 by 7 Comments

Newt s.A dear friend of HogwartsProfessor sent me a link to an op-ed piece that appeared in today’s Washington Post. Under the headline ‘It’s time for J.K. Rowling to let other people write Harry Potter books,’ it tries to make the case that Rowling needs to open the Fan Fiction Gates a la the Star Wars and Marvel Universe Franchises so that starving fans can get what they want, namely, more Wizarding World stories and films.

We’ve talked about this here before, if only in brief. I confess to being unimpressed by the pitch made in this opinion piece and startled that it appeared in such a well-read venue. It appears to have been written by someone intentionally ignoring the obvious and I thought WaPo editorial page standards were higher.

First, comparisons with George Lucas and Stan Lee are inept and inapt.

SW3The Star Wars dis-enfranchisement from Lucas, for example, took decades and then only after the original auteur had a “second bite at the apple.” Making a Lucas-Rowling parallel and then urging her to get on with it seems more than a little hasty, testy even. And I’m no Treebeard. The comic book universe roll out onto film also is not something that happened suddenly or within the first ten years of Spiderman #1 or the advent of The Uncanny X-Men or The Fantastic Four as American myths. And both LucasFilm and Marvel have been allowing others to write EU stories that did not and could not undermine their core money maker, films and comic books for a very long time.

Second, Harry Potter readers are starved for more stories about Harry and Company? Really?

No doubt, the world would quake if The Presence were to announce that she had penned a novel, prequel or sequel to the Hogwarts Saga, akin to Cursed Child. Failing that, however, it’s not as if Rowling has become a second Harper Lee or J. D. Salinger in closing down access to beloved characters and stories. You may have heard that she has launched a second Wizarding World film franchise in Fantastic Beasts and, yes, there is Cursed Child, if it is not a Rowling product per se. That play (and the script we will be able to read), one that she did not write but from which she will profit, seems to be evidence of her having taken a strong step in the direction this op-ed piece urges her to begin.

We’re in a relative glut of Rowling writing about the Wizarding World today. Why is this the time to call on the author to let go the reins of creative control and story writing?

2015 aThird and last, I’d note, too, that Rowling has been remarkably shy about bringing copyright suits to court since the Warner Brothers/Vander Ark debacle (the rumor is she was told that she can only lose her rights if she insists on them too zealously — and that the judge thought she was approaching that line). Considering that novels have been published for sale that feature the Potterverse already with no objections from WB/Bloomsbury and fans are kickstarting film projects that do the same, I’m left to wonder ‘Whence the push for Rowling to loosen up?’

Best to leave this sleeping dog alone, lest it awake from its nap with distemper or just a bad temper.

Thanks to James for sending the link — and thanks in advance for those of you who share your thoughts on this subject below! Is it time for Rowling to dis-enfranchise? Why or why not?

 

Filed Under: Mailbag

J.K. Rowling and the Phantoms in the Brain

March 11, 2016 by 7 Comments

BrainsAs best I can recall, brains only came up once in the Harry Potter series. There was a “Brain Room” in the Department of Mysteries in Order of the Phoenix, that contained a tank with green liquid and a number of “pearly white” brains floating in it. When a mentally-addled Ron foolishly Accio-ed one out, it flew through the air, attacked him with tentacles that “looked like ribbons of moving images” and left scars on Ron’s arms that even Madame Pomfrey was hard-pressed to remove. But the message is clear: in the wizarding world the study of the brain, and, by extension, the mind, is relegated to the Unspeakables, and considered an area of scholarship too dangerous to be shared with the general public, putting it in the same realm as other mysterious forces of the universe such as love, space, death and time. Thoughts, according to Madam Pomfrey, “leave deeper scarring that almost anything else.”

career_of_evilIn the Cormoran Strike series, Rowling moves the study of the human mind into the scientific realm, by making its female protagonist, Robin Ellacott, an ex-psychology student, intent on a career in forensic psychology before a sexual assault interrupted her university studies. As a professor of psychology and neuroscience, I have already documented through Harry Potter that Rowling seems familiar with the diagnostic criteria of multiple Muggle psychiatric conditions.  She also seems to have provided a realistic account of Robin’s mental breakdown after her assault and the way she overcame it.

VSRamachandran_zps47ada994As we know, Rowling does not write anything without doing a “ridiculous amount” of research, so it is hardly likely that she would write an entire series of novels about an amputee without educating herself about the medical facts regarding such an injury. After reading the first three books of the series, I am now convinced she consulted one of my favorite neuroscience writers, Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, author of Phantoms in the Brain (1998), A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness (2004) and The Tell-Tale Brain (2011). Ramachandran’s books present fascinating case studies about people with seemingly bizarre neurological conditions. So far, three of the conditions he describes have turned up in the Comoran Strike series. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Louise Freeman

Rowling’s Gift of Expecto Patronum

February 13, 2016 by 4 Comments

200_sJoanne Rowling is well-known for reaching out to fans in need, often through social media.  So it probably shouldn’t surprise us that, when a depressed young Brazilian fan tweeted her asking for help in banishing his own dementors, she responded with encouragement, as did many other Potterphiles.

tumblr_o0t5oj36ed1qkvbwso1_500Rowling has always been open about creating the dementors from her own experience with clinical depression. The two major effects of depression, intense despair and the inability to feel happiness, correspond to the first two symptoms listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s official guide, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.  But, the dementors also induce the rest of the nine symptoms.  Harry is often confused or unable to concentrate cntped0713_Feature-2_Table-1when confronted with dementors, and Sirus tells us that Azkaban prisoners stop eating, have sleep disturbances and “go quiet after a while,” representing the symptoms of loss of appetite, insomnia and psychomotor retardation.

Dementors sap the prisoners’ mental and physical energy, so that they lose the will to escape.  As Lupin tells Harry, “They don’t need walls or water to keep the prisoners in, not when they’re trapped inside their own heads.”  Harry guiltily relives his parents’ deaths under dementor influence and, during the Battle of Hogwarts, comes close to a type of suicide.

Fred was gone, and Hagrid was surely dying or already dead… How many more lay dead that he did not yet know about; he felt as though his soul had already half left his body…A hundred dementors were advancing, gliding toward him, sucking their way towards Harry’s despair… his own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling…

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Louise Freeman

Shared Text: Donald Trump called Voldemort?

February 2, 2016 by 4 Comments

AngryTrumpThe Muggle World Daily Prophets are today abuzz over the supposed latest step in the Megyn Kelly/Donald Trump duel, where Ms. Kelly allegedly compared the Presidential candidate to the Dark Lord Himself, Voldemort.  However, the headlines seem to me to be a bit misleading, and the writer of this article seems to have missed the point when she concluded, “so the revelation that she referred to him as such an evil character will probably only worsen their feud.”

Voldemort_angryThe actual quote was from Iowa Caucus winner Ted Cruz, who said to Ms. Kelly, “Well, you know, you were joking just before we went on air that it was sort of like Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named.”  In that context, it seems that what Ms. Kelly was noting was not Trump’s villainy, but the reluctance of the other candidates to mention him in the last debate. In which case, her remark would have been not so much a dig at Trump, but a jab at the rest of the candidates for their timidity in the face of Trump’s bluster.

Donald-Trump-1I guess it depends on how much of a Potterphile Ms. Kelly is.  And I’ll leave it to John to remark on what it means for a staunch Evangelical candidate to acknowledge familiarity with Harry Potter; I suspect there was a time when that would not have happened.

gilde smileBut anyway, I think the Donald’s trademark coiffure is too much a part of his image for him  to be a truly convincing Voldemort.  Perhaps more of a Gilderoy Lockhart, with his own line of hair care products.

Hat tip to John!

Filed Under: Potter Fandom, Shared Text