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First as books, but now as movies, video games, and a multitude of toys and kitsch, Harry Potter has become an important feature of modern popular culture. As such it is becoming the subject of critical, cultural studies designed to help us better understand what the phenomenon says about modern culture as well as what sorts of influences it is having on that culture. What can Harry Potter tell us about our culture?

What sorts cultural assumptions does it challenge or reinforce?

Summary

Title: Harry Potter's World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives
Author: edited by Elizabeth E. Heilman
Publisher: Falmer Press
ISBN: 0415933749

Pro:
?  Offers interesting cultural critiques of Harry Potter which you won?t find elsewhere
?  Encourages readers to step back and look more critically at how the book engages modern culture

Con:
?  Some essays are very academic and probably not for the average reader

Description:
?  Critical analysis of the Harry Potter books & phenomenon
?  Essays analyze how the books portray culture and how they also can affect culture

 

Book Review

Elizabeth E. Heilman brought together specialists in literature, education, and other fields to examine the Harry Potter books and the general cultural phenomenon surrounding them. Harry Potter's World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives addresses the ways that Harry Potter can be read, children?s involvement in the stories, the ways in which Harry Potter is marketed, the portrayal of education in the books, the depictions of gender and family, and more.

Is such an evaluation important, though? After all, the Harry Potter books are just children?s stories ? why worry about them? Heilman explains:

• ?Ideological critique encourages critical reading, which enables the reader to understand the subtle and overt ideologies of the text. Ideology can be hard to see because the most compelling ideology comes in the form of the more subtly suggestive and pleasurable reading. Readers can be ideologically influenced without being aware of it. ...A postmodern critique of ideology aims to reveal systems of thinking that legitimate particular worldviews and enable oppression, but, at the same time, acknowledges that there is no ideologically free reality to compare it to.?

There?s something in this collection for everyone ? not just in the variety of topics, but also the opinions expressed. People are bound to find things that interest them, but also things that they disagree with.

Tammy Turner-Vorbeck criticizes how children seem to be exploited by corporations seeking to cash in on the popularity of the books:

• ?Corporate consumerism is increasingly targeting child culture... The infringement on child culture is particularly evident in the mass marketing of the Harry Potter products...?

• ?The proliferation of these items constitutes a blatant exploitation of the genuine excitement for children?s literature that stems from children?s true interests... Once a cultural phenomenon such as Pottermania takes hold, the majority of children are destined to find their first exposure not to the authentic items of child culture (in this case, the Harry Potter book itself). Rather, their first experience is often with the marketing spin-offs, which represent corporate America?s interpretation of the real thing.?

Heilman herself criticizes how gender and family are depicted:

• ?Males are represented more often, but they are also depicted as wiser, braver, more powerful, and more fun than females. It is not simply who is present, but, also, how characters are portrayed and what they do that matters.... The inferior position of females is further reinforced through characterizations that highlight their insecurities and self-hatred, especially as it relates to their looks and bodies.?

• ?In spite of their efforts to be beautiful and accepted, females in the Harry Potter series are often treated with secondary status in familial and romantic relationships.?

• ?Both nuclear families, the Weasleys and the Dursleys, have stay-at-home mothers and employed, head-of-the-household fathers.... There are quite narrow and specific identities suggested for both males and females in the Harry Potter series. In the Harry Potter books, boys are stereotypically portrayed, with the strong, adventurous, independent type of male serving as a heroic expression of masculinity, whereas the weak, nonsuccessful male is mocked and sometimes despised.?

Again, does it matter? Who cares if books read and enjoyed by millions of children all over the world reinforce common cultural stereotypes about the proper roles and behavior of men and women? The answer is contained partially within the question itself: a book can be pleasurable precisely because it is structured by comforting stereotypes and doesn?t upset preconceptions.

If it?s true that the Harry Potter books are ideologically conservative and, furthermore, exploited by conservative corporations for their own profit, then both the books themselves as well as the wider cultural phenomenon need to be read more critically. It would be inappropriate to take them at face value and Heilman?s book provides a good point to start.