Harry Potter - a capitalist pagan!

Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? Yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere with Potter.

First things first Harry Potter isn’t my thing, it was Bagpuss that did it for me as a kid. Almost unbearably poignant. Someone told me a few years ago that the function of Bagpuss was to gently expose children to the concepts of loss whether through death or through e.g. the loss of childhood. Might be a load of rubbish of course but I still can’t bear to watch Bagpuss to check it out due to the aforementioned unbearable poignancy.

The Potter books themselves are fairly mechanical, to the point where The End Of Harry Potter by David Langford, can predict upcoming plots based on an analysis of the devices Rowling uses.

The books are also highly derivative:

The ultimate model for Harry Potter is “Tom Brown’s School Days” by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857.

The irritating thing is that, like the Star Wars series, the constant barrage of Potter books, films and associated merchandise reeks of crass commercialism.

Harry Potter has now become a brand that has been used to sell the products of multinational corporations like Coca-Cola.

The series of novels in which Harry and Hogwarts are deeply implicated in a capitalist organization of the world.

This view is backed-up by the New York Times :

… the fantastic universe of Harry Potter is a capitalist universe.

… 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.

However, capitalism is a double-edged sword. Now that the JKR money making hype machine is in overdrive, revving-up one last time as sensing the death of a golden goose it tries to squeeze every last golden egg out of her fetid carcass:

Millions of people will descend on stores for a copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” this July, but deep discounts mean many will struggle to turn a profit from the jamboree.

Everywhere you go there is huge, ridiculous discounting by the chains,” said Graham Marks, children’s editor at the British-based trade magazine Publishing News.

“They are literally not going to make one penny out of the book. It is stupid — just throwing money away … The world has gone mad.”

Worst still, it appears that the Potter books themselves are promoting a kind of pagan religion as:

In Florida, parents have objected to a library program that presented youngsters with certificates for reading the wildly popular Harry Potter series by author J.K. Rowling. A Christian legal interest group, Liberty Counsel, became involved in the controversy and charged that the promotion actually violated the separation of church and state.

Thank God I’m a Potter hating atheist!

What you can do

Join the campaign at: http://www.ihateharrypotter.com/