Sherry Chandler

Potter

Some views.

Eyewear:

Pottermania is empty, finally, because the Potter books offer a bloodless myth that cannot hold - though some characters may die. Astute readers will have noted the static structure of the series - each year, a new level at school, new teachers, and more conflict with the enemy. Potter is tested, but survives. Because Potter’s world is somewhat aChristian (or irreligious) it has mass appeal, in a way that Narnia doesn’t quite have - it doesn’t threaten our secular worldview, but affirms it - there is a world of Muggles, and a fun, other one, in the imagination. Unlike true religious belief, though, Pottermania makes no demands on us - no demands to change. As Rilke observed, in perhaps the most profound observation ever on the true impact of art, “you must change your life” after direct confrontation of art’s genuine reality. As Eliot said, we cannot take too much of that - and so, Unreal cities. Hell is, in fact, a world where we replace direct confrontation of the greatest moral and spiritual dilemmas for bloodless magic and ultimately safe “good reads”. Give me The Waste Land - or other great Poetry now - over Potter - any later day.

Silliman’s Blog:

Given the rather mixed & muted reviews it’s received, I was surprised to discover that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (HP5) is the best motion picture in this series to date. It achieves this, one of my sons avers, by cutting back everything that doesn’t contribute to its primary narrative drive – the battle between Harry & Voldemort to see into and control one another’s mind. It’s an epic battle from the very first scene to the last. It may well be that there’s much more going on in the books than in the films – I’ve found the novels mostly unreadable, but I’m hardly the target audience – but as films the series has been, at best, uneven,

Laura Miller in Salon:

July 20, 2007 | Ask someone what the Harry Potter series is about, and they’ll probably answer, “a boy wizard.” But in mulling over J.K. Rowling’s innovative melding of children’s fantasy fiction with old-fashioned boarding school stories, I’ve concluded that the boarding school element has the edge. Much as we may love Harry, Hermione, Ron, Hagrid and Dumbledore, don’t we all love Hogwarts just a little bit more? (Or, let me put it this way: Given the choice between meeting any one of Rowling’s characters and getting to attend the celebrated school of witchcraft and wizardry, which do you think most readers would pick?) So brace yourselves, fans: Hardly any of the latest and last book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” takes place at the school.

…

Of course, the idea that boarding school offers shelter from the rough injustices of the real world is a delusion enjoyed only by people who have never attended one.

Lance Mannion:

At the end of the show the other night, just as the credits were beginning to roll, a teenaged male voice cried out from one of the cars a few rows down from ours:

“I LOVE HARRY POTTER!”

And immediately cars all over the lot began to honk their horns in agreement. A beeping ovation. The teenager and the eleven year old took turns adding our horn to the cacaphony.

Kevin Drum:

Jeebus. Did Wieseltier really say that we should all be reading The Red Badge of Courage because we’re at war? Does he think that’s what everyone was reading during WWII?

The whole Harry Potter backlash continues to mystify me. I mean, I guess it’s inevitable when anything becomes as popular as the Potter books have become, but do the anti-Potter hordes really think the alternative is James Fenimore Cooper and Rudyard Kipling? When I was a kid I read The Happy Hollisters and Tom Swift, and I gotta tell you: J.K. Rowling is better. But I survived even those blights on my childhood.

Anyway, who cares? Let ‘em scratch their chins somberly and gripe about the downfall of western civilization all they want. I just want to know what happens to Snape.

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