Rediscovering Hogwarts:' Harry' Without the Commercial Posse

Lately I've come to realize that merchandising is the kiss of death for  literature. Once Hollywood, McDonald's and Toys 'R Us get hold of  books which  are popular in the literary market, they take on an identity that is often entirely at odds with the one they established in their initial written form. Fairytales, for instance, are never read in the same light after they become 'Disneyfied'. The Little Mermaid which began life as a somber Christian morality tale is now known primarily as a cute Disney movie with talking fish and a red-haired babe with a purple bikini top and a fish tail. It's also known for its numerous televised spin-offs, a Broadway musical and the numerous collectible toys which are still available in some form or another.  This merchandising effect has done wonders for some works of literature or "literature". Through the merchandising machine, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games and now E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey have gained  street-cred that they otherwise wouldn't have had if they remained in their original literary form.

However, for every success story, there is always a casualty. Such a casualty is a piece of literature which is actually really good but loses its credibility when it becomes a breeding ground for movie stars and Happy Meals. There are two such examples I can think of here. The first is any novel by Jane Austen. Austen is actually a brilliant satirist but much of this quality in her work is lost amidst the pink book covers and Colin Firth memorabilia which give off the impression that her works are simply conventional romances. The second is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. I'll examine Austen's pop culture status in a later post (or you could just read my thesis for a general perspective). Today's post is strictly dedicated to the Harry Potter books which I'm only now beginning to see value in.

  My initial resistance to the Harry Potter phenomenon can be traced back to when I first heard about it in its capacity as a commercialized modality. I think it was around the time when it was first announced that the director of Mrs Doubtfire would be directing the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It was also around the time when the fourth book, Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire came out. Intrigued, I decided  to give the books a bash. However, when I finally got around to doing it, the movie's release date was inching ever closer, chocolate frogs were beginning to be sold and some British kid named Daniel Radcliffe started turning up on every magazine cover. It was also the time where parents came out with their accusations that the books were Satanic.

Will all that in mind, I read the first two books not as works of literature but hyped up pieces of commercialism. I perceived it as a readable form of a 'Happy Meal', pretty but not much substance. Eventually Pottermania blew up to such an extent that I felt I would never be able to read it as literature, as opposed to a media marketing tool. I gave up and skipped out on the communal reading experience when the books came out and the communal viewing experience when the films came out. The series really just felt like traditional kiddie fantasy that had become yet another piece of cool literary sensation.

Now, a year after the final movie was released,  the books have now made way for other literary pop culture phenomenons. I decided to try the books again but now with a mindset that was uninfluenced by the series' media hype.Right now I've just finished (or rather devoured) Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book in the series, and I'm shocked by how different my reading experience is this time around.

The fact of the matter is that everything people have said about the books, independently from their media legacy, is true. From a strictly literary perspective, the series is outstanding.  Each book strategically drops red herrings as the plot develops, cleverly making readers think they know where the action is headed but subverting it as the book reaches its conclusion. Rowling also knows exactly where her narrative is headed. In the books I've read of late I've found too many instances where the author seems to be in search of a story, desperately trying to find any device to fill in  narrative gaps. This is far from the case with Harry Potter where each small narrative plot detail is crucial to the central plot at hand.


More importantly for me, however, is how the series engages with both its child and adult readers. Like Roald Dahl ,one of my favourite children's book authors, Rowling does not talk down to her young readers. There is no protective "sugar coating" in the world of Harry Potter.  As enchanting as Hogwarts is, it's not a safe or completely idealistic place. It's a space where children will experience the same realities and learn the same values they should learn as they themselves grow up. Death, for instance, is a constant reality at the school and, as with real life, the characters cannot use magic as a means of escaping it. In dealing with such issues, however, the books are also refreshingly free of cynicism. This is because the more somber parts of the narrative are balanced out by the conventional values which are preached in children's literature but in a way which is unforced, subtle and poignant. Finding self worth and maintaining friendships isn't always easy in Harry Potter but when each of the characters do recognize their abilities and find strength in one another, the books become pure inspiration for young readers, minus the shmaltz and didacticism which is ordinarily a standard convention for this genre.

What about adults then? What do we have to gain from the magical world of Harry Potter? I could tell you  that we could find pleasure in dissecting the books, identifying their relevance to socio-political themes in our society, just like with The Hunger Games. The books certainly have enough in them to lend themselves to such an analysis. However, I think to read the series from this perspective devalues its heartfelt nature. No matter what your age you're never too old to learn the lessons which are at the heart of Harry Potter and the beauty of the series lies in the fact that the adult characters (just like the adult readers) learn and grow along with the children as they too search for their place in the world.

 In many ways the Harry Potter series reminds me of one my favourite books, J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye. Like Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of Catcher, the characters of Harry Potter, both young and old, are constantly searching for meaning, both within themselves and the world around them. Behind the heroism and magic, the Harry Potter series has a literary soul of the highest order and no amount of merchandising can take that away from it.

Source for pic 1: http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Entertainment/pages-8/Warner-Brothers-considering-American-reboot-of-Harry-Potter-franchise-Scrape-TV-The-World-on-your-side

Source for pic 2: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/07.27.05/potter-0530.html