Propulsive, nice stock characters, not very thoughtful...
If we think of the Harry Potter series in relation to other published novels and the whole publishing industry at the time of its release, its eventual popularity is sort of mystifying.
But you're planting the seeds here, in my mind, of an analysis of the Harry Potter series as the forebear to the manga explosion we're currently seeing in North America (and everywhere, really).
I think a lot of parallels can be drawn, but I'll have to mull this over a bit more, first.
Yeah, I find the way it swept through the world very surprising after looking at these first two. Though the answer, I think, lies in the next book. That's my theory, anyway!
Interesting idea about manga! I didn't pay any attention to manga back then so, to me, it felt like anime went from being lame and weird to being insanely popular.
But there's probably more than a little something to your idea!
May 3, 2023·edited May 3, 2023Liked by radicaledward
Yeah it's just a very particular kind of storytelling, isn't it.
I may have shared this before, but I've just recently experienced the first two HP books for the first time in my life, reading them to my daughter. She's indifferent about going on to book three. Make of that what you will.
My introduction to the series was when I reluctantly went to see the third movie with my friend in high school. I really enjoyed it, and so, read books four through six. Really enjoyed them as well! Especially The Order of the Phoenix! But then, before I got to book seven, someone on the subway spoiled one of the Big Events, so I waited a while before reading it. Once I got to it, the magic had somehow gone out of it for me, and I found it a bit of a slog.
I say all that to say: I'm enjoying these recaps of yours.
I could definitely see that! It may actually be one of the general problems I have with a lot of manga/anime.
One thing I find interesting about Harry Potter and part of why I wanted to review them this year is that everyone has some connection to them. They were so inescapable that even people who have never read the books or watched the movies probably has a pretty good idea of how it all shook out.
Such a great point that Rowling has created a neoliberal, Tony Blair-esque meritocracy. Later books, particularly because of Cornelius Fudge (who I think she intends as a stand-in for Neville Chamberlain) do suggest that the wizard regime is not perfect, but you are right to point out that the Wizard-Muggle hierarchy is otherwise unquestioned.
I think it does matter that Hermione is horrified by the enslavement of the elves and campaigns to stop it (although Harry and other “good guy” characters think she’s being foolish).
Absolutely! Though Hermoine's efforts aren't until later and they're largely treated as a joke by the narrative (at least for longer than you'd expect) and an inconvenience by the characters.
I suppose LOTR and Narnia are the closest in scope to the HP books and maybe Baum's Oz books...big worlds across time where we don't know the backstory as much. What are the similar books in other cultures, I wonder? I know there are epics from India like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the byliny in Russia, and of course the Iliad and Odyssey but I don't know them enough to make any comparison with HP. I think in 100 years pondering HP in this lineage would make sense and your observations fit.
I would not compare Harry Potter to epics. Mostly because that does a disservice to Harry Potter, which is really not trying to be Lord of the Rings or The Odyssey or anything like that.
Narnia is probably a good comparison, in that it's kind of flimsily held together and is about children of destiny entering a magical world and deeply rooted in Christianity. I haven't read the Oz books, but I imagine there's similarities there too.
Despite what Rowling has said, it seems like she drew a great deal of inspiration from Ursula K Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. Rowling has denied this many times, so I suppose it could be just coincidence. I think the other parallels are to detective fiction, since each novel is really structured as a mystery.
Yeah, Harry Potter is in many ways at its best when it avoids thinking too hard about the worldbuilding and just lets itself enjoy the world being a wild and magical place. It works really well when you're 12 and you've always been suspicious that the adult world has a lot more going on than you've been told about. It doesn't work when you're 25 and trying to figure out what's going on with the wizard economy anyway. (Why are the Weasleys poor? Don't they live in some sort of post-scarcity economy anyway?)
And the racism is a problem in all sorts of fantasy and sci-fi, because the whole fallacy of "real" racism is that the differences between races are so minor as to be largely insignificant. If you use elves or Klingons or telepathic clouds of sentient gas as your "Other", and they have well-established biological differences from humans, then it's not racism if you note those differences. If you're hiring a night watchman by all means hire the species that can see in the dark and doesn't actually need to go to sleep to function.
Propulsive, nice stock characters, not very thoughtful...
If we think of the Harry Potter series in relation to other published novels and the whole publishing industry at the time of its release, its eventual popularity is sort of mystifying.
But you're planting the seeds here, in my mind, of an analysis of the Harry Potter series as the forebear to the manga explosion we're currently seeing in North America (and everywhere, really).
I think a lot of parallels can be drawn, but I'll have to mull this over a bit more, first.
Yeah, I find the way it swept through the world very surprising after looking at these first two. Though the answer, I think, lies in the next book. That's my theory, anyway!
Interesting idea about manga! I didn't pay any attention to manga back then so, to me, it felt like anime went from being lame and weird to being insanely popular.
But there's probably more than a little something to your idea!
Yeah it's just a very particular kind of storytelling, isn't it.
I may have shared this before, but I've just recently experienced the first two HP books for the first time in my life, reading them to my daughter. She's indifferent about going on to book three. Make of that what you will.
My introduction to the series was when I reluctantly went to see the third movie with my friend in high school. I really enjoyed it, and so, read books four through six. Really enjoyed them as well! Especially The Order of the Phoenix! But then, before I got to book seven, someone on the subway spoiled one of the Big Events, so I waited a while before reading it. Once I got to it, the magic had somehow gone out of it for me, and I found it a bit of a slog.
I say all that to say: I'm enjoying these recaps of yours.
I could definitely see that! It may actually be one of the general problems I have with a lot of manga/anime.
One thing I find interesting about Harry Potter and part of why I wanted to review them this year is that everyone has some connection to them. They were so inescapable that even people who have never read the books or watched the movies probably has a pretty good idea of how it all shook out.
Such a great point that Rowling has created a neoliberal, Tony Blair-esque meritocracy. Later books, particularly because of Cornelius Fudge (who I think she intends as a stand-in for Neville Chamberlain) do suggest that the wizard regime is not perfect, but you are right to point out that the Wizard-Muggle hierarchy is otherwise unquestioned.
I think it does matter that Hermione is horrified by the enslavement of the elves and campaigns to stop it (although Harry and other “good guy” characters think she’s being foolish).
Absolutely! Though Hermoine's efforts aren't until later and they're largely treated as a joke by the narrative (at least for longer than you'd expect) and an inconvenience by the characters.
I suppose LOTR and Narnia are the closest in scope to the HP books and maybe Baum's Oz books...big worlds across time where we don't know the backstory as much. What are the similar books in other cultures, I wonder? I know there are epics from India like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the byliny in Russia, and of course the Iliad and Odyssey but I don't know them enough to make any comparison with HP. I think in 100 years pondering HP in this lineage would make sense and your observations fit.
I would not compare Harry Potter to epics. Mostly because that does a disservice to Harry Potter, which is really not trying to be Lord of the Rings or The Odyssey or anything like that.
Narnia is probably a good comparison, in that it's kind of flimsily held together and is about children of destiny entering a magical world and deeply rooted in Christianity. I haven't read the Oz books, but I imagine there's similarities there too.
Despite what Rowling has said, it seems like she drew a great deal of inspiration from Ursula K Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. Rowling has denied this many times, so I suppose it could be just coincidence. I think the other parallels are to detective fiction, since each novel is really structured as a mystery.
Yeah, Harry Potter is in many ways at its best when it avoids thinking too hard about the worldbuilding and just lets itself enjoy the world being a wild and magical place. It works really well when you're 12 and you've always been suspicious that the adult world has a lot more going on than you've been told about. It doesn't work when you're 25 and trying to figure out what's going on with the wizard economy anyway. (Why are the Weasleys poor? Don't they live in some sort of post-scarcity economy anyway?)
And the racism is a problem in all sorts of fantasy and sci-fi, because the whole fallacy of "real" racism is that the differences between races are so minor as to be largely insignificant. If you use elves or Klingons or telepathic clouds of sentient gas as your "Other", and they have well-established biological differences from humans, then it's not racism if you note those differences. If you're hiring a night watchman by all means hire the species that can see in the dark and doesn't actually need to go to sleep to function.