Going to Potter

This morning, I listened to the news on my drive in to school, as is my wont.When the broadcast got to state and local news, there was a small bit on a mother in Georgia trying to get the Harry Potter books banned from school libraries. I had my usual reaction -- "Fie upon you, woman!" -- and carried on with my day.

Later I got an email from my buddy Todd, forwarding a text version of the same story: Problem with Potter reaches state. My reaction remains "Fie upon you, woman!" but I thought this issue merited further discussion/pontification. I just want to hit a couple of points now; maybe I'll come back another time and pontificate more, if the Spirit so moves.

The first point is brought up in the article itself, and further expanded in a later email from Todd. I'll quote him first:

[I]f you take [Harry Potter] out of circulation, the logical step is to start removing things like William Shakespeare’s plays, "The Wizard of Oz," "Alice in Wonderland" and the popular "Lord of the Rings" and "Chronicles of Narnia" series. To me this has always been a glaring hole in the anti-fantasy position. They will say that Greco-roman mythology, Shakespeare and the like are "classical" literature and yet anything modern that follows in a similar vein is evil/demonic.

I agree that this is a strong and critical point: if we are to act according to a specific principle, we ought to do so consistently. If Harry Potter is out, so is The Hobbit, The Iliad, and The Tempest.

Indeed, this point can be made even stronger: the Iliad records actual myths of actual pagans, who actually believed the Iliad was inspired scripture. If anything, the Iliad is closer to the Koran than it is to Harry Potter, in that it records the belief and practices of a real religion. One might protest, "But nobody believes in the old Greek gods anymore!" Oh, really? Tell that to these folks, who call themselves "Hellenic Reconstructionist Pagans." Furthermore, The Tempest depicts elements of Renaissance Hermeticism that were actually believed and practiced by Shakespeare's contemporaries, notably John Dee: the summoning and binding of elemental spirits, the drawing of magic circles, and so forth.* This tradition, too, is still with us today.

On the other hand, no-one at any time in history has ever believed what J.K. Rowling presents in her Harry Potter books. Her magic is an imagined genetic trait, connected in some way with quasi-Latinate gibberish; it is not a religion or worldview, but a plot device, and not a particularly well thought-out plot device, at that. Her concept of magic does (or doesn't) do whatever she wants, depending on her needs in the plot. (Yes, she has maintained consistency over the series, but that doesn't mean she has a consistent metaphysic scheme in mind, just that she tries not to contradict herself outright. I can appreciate that, but I still prefer the more systematic approach.) Yes, the woman on the radio called Harry Potter "Witchcraft 101," but she has been misinformed about Harry Potter, Wicca, or both. (Probably by this crappy video or something like it.) I've read Harry Potter. I've read Wicca, Hermeticism, Goeticism, Kabbalism, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Druidism, Theosophy, You-Name-It books. 'Tain't the same thing, not at all. So, if anything, we should ditch the Iliad and keep Harry Potter. Any takers? Anyone? Didn't think so.

On to my second point, again ripped off from Todd:

[Harry Potter critics] also discount the intelligence of children. Children know that they can't fly. That they can't make things move telekinetically. However, children have a huge imagination. Children can create a story from any random thing that they hear and expand it to vast levels of incredulous imagination.

I agree, generally. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, often. Of course, kids don't have much experience, so they don't always sort out facts and lies accurately. But they do try. Anyone who has worked with kids knows that they are inquisitive and that they are particularly concerned about what is real and what is not. In fact, most kids I've met are pretty skeptical regarding claims about things outside their own experience: "Fish that fly? Uh-uh! Fish don't fly!"

But I think this topic is a bit more complex: it concerns the genres of discourse kids encounter and kids' ability to distinguish between them. Critics assume that kids believe whatever they read or see on TV, but I don't think that's the case. Kids are pretty quick to discover that facts and fantasies usually come packaged differently: Cartoon Network = fantasy, Animal Planet = fact. In talking to my nephews and little brother, I've found that they will often reject the reality of something because they saw it in a cartoon. Case in point: I had to convince my brother that there were, in fact, Shaolin monks after he had seen a cartoon called Xiaolin Showdown. This ability -- distinguishing between genres of discourse -- is a vital part of the rational process, and it develops over time, so children can't be faulted if they don't always sort things out properly. But they do know such distinctions exist, and they do the best they can with the knowledge they have. Kids' biggest problem in this area is information from one genre that is packaged to look like another, when fantasy is presented in the manner of fact. Frankly, I think Santa Claus falls in this category. This disruption of normal genre distinctions only confuses children in their efforts to understand the world and the ways we talk about it, and it isn't helpful. (Of course, there are other terms for this, notably "lying" and "fraud.") Does Harry Potter fit this description? I don't think so. The stories themselves, the cover art, the toys and other accoutrements, all match up with other members of the category "children's fantasy," and so signal their audience, even before the stories are read and understood, that the content is imaginary, not real. If anything, kids may be led to doubt that there is such a thing as a witch or a wizard. And there aren't -- not as Rowling defines them.

Of course, all of this begs a more important question: why would you want to give a kid Harry Potter when you have The Hobbit, which is vastly superior in every way?

* Stroub's Bartimaeus Trilogy is a Harry Potter-like "rise of a young wizard protegy" tale, using a conception of magic drawn almost completely from this Hermetic tradition of goetia. Ripe stuff indeed, and dark, dark, dark. I recommend it only for big-people consumption.