Posted on 07/19/2004 4:05:50 AM PDT by jalisco555
The success of the Harry Potter series has provoked a lively discussion among French literary theorists about the novels' underlying message and the structure of Harry's school, Poudlard (Hogwarts). This article, which appeared last month in the French daily Le Monde, got particular attention, including an essay published in response arguing that Harry is an antiglobalist crusader.
NICE, France — With the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling has enchanted the world: the reader is drawn into a magical universe of flying cars, spells that make its victims spew slugs, trees that give blows, books that bite, elf servants, portraits that argue and dragons with pointed tails.
On the face of it, the world of Harry Potter has nothing in common with our own. Nothing at all, except one detail: like ours, the fantastic universe of Harry Potter is a capitalist universe.
Hogwarts is a private sorcery school, and its director constantly has to battle against the state as represented, essentially, by the inept minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge; the ridiculous bureaucrat Percy Weasley; and the odious inspector Dolores Umbridge.
The apprentice sorcerers are also consumers who dream of acquiring all sorts of high-tech magical objects, like high performance wands or the latest brand-name flying brooms, manufactured by multinational corporations. Hogwarts, then, is not only a school, but also a market: subject to an incessant advertising onslaught, the students are never as happy as when they can spend their money in the boutiques near the school. There is all sorts of bartering between students, and the author heavily emphasizes the possibility of social success for young people who enrich themselves thanks to trade in magical products.
The tableau is completed by the ritual complaints about the rigidity and incompetence of bureaucrats. Their mediocrity is starkly contrasted with the inventiveness and audacity of some entrepreneurs, whom Ms. Rowling never ceases to praise. For example, Bill Weasley, who works for the goblin bank Gringotts, is presented as the opposite of his brother, Percy the bureaucrat. The first is young, dynamic and creative, and wears clothes that "would not have looked out of place at a rock concert"; the second is unintelligent, obtuse, limited and devoted to state regulation, his career's masterpiece being a report on the standards for the thicknesses of cauldrons.
We have, then, an invasion of neoliberal stereotypes in a fairy tale. The fictional universe of Harry Potter offers a caricature of the excesses of the Anglo-Saxon social model: under a veneer of regimentation and traditional rituals, Hogwarts is a pitiless jungle where competition, violence and the cult of winning run riot.
The psychological conditioning of the apprentice sorcerers is clearly based on a culture of confrontation: competition among students to be prefect; competition among Hogwarts "houses" to win points; competition among sorcery schools to win the Goblet of Fire; and, ultimately, the bloody competition between the forces of Good and Evil.
This permanent state of war ends up redefining the role of institutions: faced with ever-more violent conflicts, they are no longer able to protect individuals against the menaces that they face everywhere. The minister of magic fails pitifully in his combat against Evil, and the regulatory constraints of school life hinder Harry and his friends in defending themselves against the attacks and provocations that they constantly encounter. The apprentice sorcerers are thus alone in their struggle to survive in a hostile milieu, and the weakest, like Harry's schoolmate Cedric Diggory, are inexorably eliminated.
These circumstances influence the education given the young students of Hogwarts. The only disciplines that matter are those that can give students an immediately exploitable practical knowledge that can help them in their battle to survive.
That's not astonishing, considering how this prestigious school aims to form, above all, graduates who can compete in the job market and fight against Evil. Artistic subjects are thus absent from Hogwarts's curriculum, and the teaching of social sciences is considered of little value: the students have only some tedious courses of history. It's very revealing that Harry finds them "as boring as Percy's reports cauldron-bottom report." In other words, in the cultural universe of Harry Potter, social sciences are as useless and obsolete as state regulation.
Harry Potter, probably unintentionally, thus appears as 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.
Ilias Yocaris is a professor of literary theory and French literature at the University Institute of Teacher Training in Nice. This article was translated by The Times from the French.
I think that they'll do a French re-make, with Jerry Lewis.
I agree with this.
I liked this critique. I also like Harry Potter.
The Harry Potter series is turning into a powerful libertarian critique of statism, much to my delight and amazement. I think this is the reason the author of this piece is so upset.
Damn. And here I am, thinking that it was just an entertaining novel/film. What a simpleton I am. JK Rowling is a genius on the level of Ayn Rand!
I am with you on this one.
I think this is the reason the author of this piece is so upset.
Agreed. :-) I think the author was far more eloquent than I would have been in stating it though.
Well, at least Rowling doesn't have any hundred page long speeches in her books!
The article read like a libertarian's caricature of how academics write, except that it was no caricature. They really write, and talk, that way, as I know from personal observation.
So, in fewer words, these competitions are much like schools, or at least the way they used to be, in getting their students to strive for excellence, and in real life, if you don't want to get a government job or live "off the dole."
This permanent state of war ends up redefining the role of institutions: faced with ever-more violent conflicts, they are no longer able to protect individuals against the menaces that they face everywhere. The minister of magic fails pitifully in his combat against Evil, and the regulatory constraints of school life hinder Harry and his friends in defending themselves against the attacks and provocations that they constantly encounter. The apprentice sorcerers are thus alone in their struggle to survive in a hostile milieu, and the weakest, like Harry's schoolmate Cedric Diggory, are inexorably eliminated.
This statement says far more about the French mindset than it does about Rowlings or the HP novels. The author is unhappy that the real world situation is presented. That while a government is able to defend against an outside aggressor, it's still up to the individual to protect him or herself. That often, government regulations make that defense more difficult, if not impossible. And the fact that the French don't believe in participating in "real" wars (although they're more than happy to profit from them), and that the concepts of good and evil are nothing more than outdated concepts.
I just saw the third HP movie over the weekend, and I was amazed at the change in tone from the first two movies, although I was told that the story was "darker" in advance. After having seen the first two movies, I bought the books, and have just bought the third book. I can't get over just how wrong I feel this author is, but then, as I said before, it seems to be perfectly in character for the French.
Mark
Yah, I like Harry Potter too. Helluva series so far.
Now I like it even more.
Just had a thought....Peeves floating thru the UN Assembly...flicking boogers at everyone...
I've always thought the series extolled a kind of iydillic socialism, despite the unseen forces that threaten. I'm surprised the author makes no mention of Dumbledore, supreme ruler of that universe.
French Intellectual: oxymoron.
Here's a different perspective:
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/3518-_Deconstructing_Rowling.html
Kids love going to candy stores.
Kids compete in a million different ways. Some are overt, some more covert.
There is evil, and there is good, and there are shades of each. I think this part is what upsets alot of people.
Everyone looks to deep IMO.
It's a fun series, well planned and written.
It also bugs people that there really aren't fireworks that last for hours and spell "POO" across the sky.
LOL. Rowling has two talents that are rarely seen together. She can make readers turn the page, and she has a grand theme big enough to require 2500 pages, when finished. It is useless to compare Potter to LOTR because the Potter story takes place in what is essentually a contemporary prep school.
They're just mad because the French giantess teacher ran away with the Anglo-Saxon Hagrid and spent a long time in a cave with him. Sacre bleu!
BTTT - and marking to read later.
How long before the french surrender to vodermont? {/s)
by the way I like the Potter books
All the time I spent reading the Harry Potter stories I thought I was reading stories with messages of morality. I guess I was too thick to realize Rowling was writing a treatise on economics using adolescents as symbolic consumers and their school as the marketplace. I guess the teachers must be some sort of economic advisors to the students. Could someone fill me in on the economic advice the kids are getting from Professor Snape? It would really help my new comprehension as to the true message of the stories.
Or Peeves chasing Kofi Anan out with a stick, ala Umbridge? ;-)
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