In my last entry, I said I hoped that it would be the first and last time I wrote about reality programming because I dislike it so much. Conversely, I love today's topic so much that I'm going to have to refrain from writing about it more often. One does not have a brief conversation about Harry Potter with the Media Reader. Sure, I can restrain myself, but should whoever I'm talking to demonstrate even the most cursory knowledge of the books, I'm off to the races. Get ready for some intensely nerdy discussions of wandlore, friend!
The strange thing? I've never understood the overwhelming appeal of the books. They're well within the realm of what I would ordinarily be interested in reading. What is it about them that draws in millions and millions of people, who would not, unlike certain bloggers, have read an embarrassing number of books with swords on the front cover?
Yes, it's well-written, the characters are fun to know, and J.K. Rowling does a great job of developing her whole epic tale of good versus evil across all seven books. But how many other books, movies, TV shows, etc are of equally good, if not better, quality?
My theory? I think I (and many of these other readers) like the books so much in part because they're so popular. I don't mean in the sense that we all want to look cool and like the trendy thing (sadly, I don't think books are going to become the tiny dogs of the future and we'll all want to be spotted with them). I mean because we all, secretly, want to geek out to a massive degree together. How often have you started talking about something you really liked, only to realize midway through the conversation that the person you are talking to is politely amused by how much you know about the topic? And more rarely, how happy are you when the person you're talking to knows exactly what you're talking about?
Usually, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other if hordes of other people have read a book I like. It's always nice to have someone else to talk to about a book, but it's not like the book is running for governor of Massachusetts and I'm concerned that if not enough people like the book, we'll get stuck with some lame Republican book. Thank goodness.
With Harry Potter, this is different. Finding another Harry fan is always fun. And for the movies? It's like going to a stadium concert. The spectacle and the crowd are just as important as the actual music. Normally I could get all caught up about the terrible acting and bad writing, but for Harry Potter movies, I just turn the critic off. There's something approaching magical about sitting in a sold out movie theater, having waited and waited for the movie, and then hearing that telltale music start.
It's why it's more fun to watch your favorite baseball team with other fans. You may not have been one of the millions of people (entire Media Reader family included) who went to see the seventh Harry Potter movie recently, but I bet you can think of some other experience in your life when you were just happy to be around other fans. There will always be something special about being nerds together, whether it's Harry Potter nerds, Red Sox nerds, or vegan baking nerds.
Well, I was supposed to be writing this completely insane business proposal, so, rather than go completely nuts I turned to the Media reader for a dose of sanity and was saved. I do think that you are, as JK herself would say, spot on in your identification of part of the reason for the HP phenomenon. Fans of any sort do seem to feed on talking about/going to/doing things that connect them. As you pointed out what makes the fan reinforcement of HP so amazing is that it's primarily around READING. Books that were ostensibly (at least originally) for CHILDREN. Who in the world has ever heard of that on this kind of scale before??? Certainly not me.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, being a Red Sox nerd defies all common sense.
Yes, it's difficult not to like a trend that has gotten so many people reading. And I think Rowling to an unusual degree can make her readers go learn more once they're done. Once you know she's hidden some meaning in a name, you're going to look up all the names.
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