Re: The true message of Harry Potter
Mana said:
It is my opinion that the Harry Potter books have been written in such as way as to bring about a republic in Britain. Consider these facts:
1. The hero is Harry Potter. He was born a wizard. All wizards are born into wizard families.
2. Muggles i.e. non-wizards, are portrayed early on as being oafish, ignorant, selfish individuals.
3. HP is a lazy b*stard. His power is derived more from his heritage rather than actual ability.
4. Wizards are stuck in a bygone age.
Harry Potter portrays an elitist utopian society. Kids and adults love it, even though it involves a highly stratified society to which they have no access. They can pretend all they like but all is fruitless. It is the nature of human beings to want to belong to a successful, powerful group. Children crave this in particular. It is, afterall, essential for their survival.
I'll absolutely agree with that last point. It's the ulitmate disaffected kid's fantasy - to be taken out of your mundane life and told you're someone special.
But you kind of misunderstand the point of reading a book like that as escapism, if you think the readers will come to resent Harry Potter and his pals. Kids identify with the characters as they're reading, they don't see themselves as muggles. Any kid with half an imagination imagines themselves a wizard. And when they grow up a bit, they become this thing called "well-adjusted" which means they don't resent the successes of fictional characters; they look back on the sweet escapism of HP books with nostalgia.
Besides, portraying your run-of-the-mill human being as oafish, ignorant and selfish is hardly a new idea in fiction. It resonates so, because in general people are ignorant and selfish. It never usually causes resentment because any reader with eyes can see it's a reasonable point; People like the Dursleys (the only muggle characters in the HP books) do exist in a less caricatured way in the real world, and they are contemptable. But it's necessary for Harry's own family to be singularly unpleasant in order for the whole disaffected-kid-fantasy to work. If they were nice, he wouldn't need to be taken away. The idea that muggles in general are naturally inferior, though, is one that's opposed by the main "good" characters in the book, who promote an ideal of tolerance and co-existance between all peoples.
Harry Potter does indeed portray an elitist society, but it's hardly a utopia. It portrays it as *bad*. The wisest and most talented young character in the books is probably Hermione - she has muggles for parents, and she acquires a large part of her skill through hard work - book work - not through inheritance. One of the central themes of the books is that it's your conduct, not your breeding, that makes you a good person.
I absolutely agree that HP has a very liberal message, but it's hardly a sinister one. In fact, it's pretty damn obvious. And though you can be a liberal without being a republican, it could also be intepreted as a republican message (The wizarding world, incidently, though extremely prone to corruption, does appear to be democratic - there's a minister, not a monarch at the head of the community)
But it's hardly going to achieve that ends by turning kids against itself and driving them into the arms of the politicians. More likely, they'll be "taught" by the leading wizard characters in the book and carry that message away with them. Which would be nice. But most kids I know are so thoroughly familiar with the idea of fiction vs real life that they don't take the books that seriously at all. They leave that to the adult fans.
(incidently Mr RING, you have your characters a bit mixed up - Harry's best friend Ron is from a poor family, albiet a pureblood wizarding one. Hermione is from a middle-class muggle family.)