I
“Don’t ask questions” – that was the rule at the Dursley household, but its power extends far beyond.
[T]he trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things which are worst for them. (TPS 215)
Astonishingly, the Potter series has not inspired a wave of conversions to paganism, and the inquisitors and torches have retreated. But before we give the proverbial sigh of relief, let us ask some serious questions: What if even graver problems than witchcraft exist? What if we discovered that Rowling’s beloved books represented a powerful potion produced by mixing 1) the reality-sweetening techniques of propaganda and advertising with 2) the perceptions and feelings of someone suffering from a number of mental disorders?
And what if these questions hint at the secret of Harry Potter’s powerful spell on the modern child’s imagination?
What does the Potter series have in common with advertising? Just consider this powerful paradox: Harry’s fantasy comprises an unparalleled amount of the real world, and all of it seems wonderful. Gadgets, banks, trains, sports, gambling, automobiles, headmasters and so on—all apparently lifted out of the 20th century and sweetened with a pinch of fantasy or humour or both. Harry Potter doesn’t just reproduce the material stuff of modern reality, it reproduces all our weaknesses and ills: violence, child abuse, verbal threats and insults, deception, greed, vanity, and so. And, what’s worse, most of it is also sweetened by the fantasy setting or humour.
I can hear my critics laughing, “Oh please, it’s just a children’s fantasy series! Don’t spoil the fun!” I’m sorry, but when a children’s series makes beer drinking, bad tempers, violence, the exploitation of animals and workers, seem ‘interesting,’ cute and even funny, then we must give pause. If we can criticize corporations for pursuing young consumers with gigantic marketing machines, why shouldn’t we be critical when a talented author pursues or attracts young readers by making violent conflicts, a dangerous sport (Quidditch), underage driving, the banking industry and many more highly questionable behaviours and institutions seem cute, awesome, fantastical or slightly humorous? How else does one explain a series that, for example, sweetens the reality of animal abuse by making the exploitation of Harry’s mail-owl seem oh-so cute and neat? How else does one explain a series that constantly pushes readers through a revolving Reality-Fantasy door, for example, by directing our attention to real, headline problems like terrorism (see the opening pages of The Half-Blood Prince) while drawing the reader into a fantasy world whose solutions to terrorism are useless and serve only to help readers escape?
Even the issue of orphan abuse, or—to be accurate—‘Harry’ abuse, serves only to elicit pity from the reader for the hero, and that sweetens the hero, makes him seem more righteous. The spell of pity, however, leads readers to entirely overlook the psychological reading that a disturbed childhood often leads to a number of mental disorders whose symptoms closely resemble the imagined world and the real feelings and behaviour of our dear Harry Potter.
As a reading experience, Harry Potter is a sort of harried Peter Pan, a boy hero who leads his readers into a Neverland contaminated with reality. And yet, despite its contamination, his Neverland is our escape, even when that fantasy becomes a world more horrific than the world he refuses to face. Thus, in the opening pages of The Order of the Phoenix, poor Harry lies in a bed of flowers, beside the Dursley’s open window, blissfully ignoring a blaring news report about the drought and heat wave devastating the real world!! Where was his mind? Probably dreaming about Lord Voldemort.
Given Harry’s education, is it right to expect more maturity from him? I doubt it. Still, I remain ever hopeful and vigilant for the day when he returns, not necessarily to solve the world’s problems, not even to offer readers the medicine of laughter, but—simply to face and wrestle with the real…
II
People used to think that learning to read evidenced human progress … the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect on and judge what one reads. (Ellul. Propaganda 108)
According to Northrop Frye, “Any work of fiction written during the last two centuries will reflect the secondary and ideological concerns of its time” (Words with Power 43). Harry Potter also reflects the secondary or ideological concerns of its time. Propaganda, Jacques Ellul calls some of these concerns our Western myths. Of course, since HP is children’s literature, we can hardly expect it to overtly address ideological concerns or even express such concerns through some rebellious characters, right? Perhaps we cannot expect that, but surely a book of children’s fantasy literature does not need to recreate a world that is, culturally speaking, completely identical to ours, conserving all our bad habits with so much artistry that they seem good and normal.
Among the habits or beliefs conserved in HP are the following: that the forces of good have the right to commit violence, that animal abuse is harmless, that education must serve the economic ends and that shopping is necessary. Some of these beliefs are so deeply ingrained that people have difficulty imagining life in any other way.
Perhaps the core myth conserved by HP is the “myth of Youth [and] the myth of the Hero” (Ellul 40), and the belief that we must not “reflect on [our] actions [because] [a]ction must come from the depths of the unconscious” (181). Western media-driven propaganda reinforces these beliefs by appealing to our desire to identify with groups, heroes and political leaders (173) who do nothing to encourage independent thinking and would be embarrassed to pause and think in public for more than a second.
According to Ellul, modern propaganda creates modern democratic citizens who “repeat indefinitely ‘the sacred formulas of democracy’ while acting like a [Nazi] storm trooper” (256). This is an important point not because HP is propaganda, but because many similarities exist between Ellul’s vision of propaganda and this analysis of HP. Harry’s participation in Dumbledore’s Army is a case in point; of course they are the righteous ones striving for justice, but does anyone try to understand why Lord Voldemort exists in order to prevent an unjust culture from creating another Lord Voldemort? No.
In order to deflate the Harry Potter media hype, this paper will look at how, on the surface, HP conserves and glorifies harmful ideologies and cultural norms; while, just beneath the surface, the series mocks and parodies the same traditions it appears to conserve.
