Cultural Criticism: Harry Potter

Over the weekend Adam and I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and reflected on this huge media franchise and its core in the story by J.K. Rowling. Both of us, in our own way, sort of wanted to see the end of the series on the big screen, and felt there was some kind of good to the whole thing.

We discussed this topic throughout the weekend, as we often do, and it occurred to us to return to Harold Bloom's famous denunciation of the first novel in the series, back in 2001. A liberal punditry site called Opednews.com supplies the text for free. Bloom is at his most insightful near the beginning, though he at once begs a few questions:

The ultimate model for Harry Potter is "Tom Brown's School Days" by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857. The book depicts the Rugby School presided over by the formidable Thomas Arnold, remembered now primarily as the father of Matthew Arnold, the Victorian critic-poet. But Hughes's book, still quite readable, was realism, not fantasy. Rowling has taken "Tom Brown's School Days" and re-seen it in the magical mirror of Tolkien. The resultant blend of a schoolboy ethos with a liberation from the constraints of reality-testing may read oddly to me, but is exactly what millions of children and their parents desire and welcome at this time.

Why bring up Tom Brown's School Days? What is the central weakness of this text? More importantly, what are some good reasons why art need not (should not?) give "millions of children and their parents" what they desire. Adam and I considered these things at some length, and our thoughts include:

• The story the mother tells the child in this case is one that encourages exceptionalism, and passes down clichéd models of social relations (your friends are the most important (but don't have sex with them, naturally); your dead will always be with you -- in here (gestures at heart))
• Adam says Bloom probably meant that he didn't want to hear a story that did things he'd heard before, and done better the earlier times. The fault here is that the ideas are brittle and tired -- clichés.

It occurred to me, however, that Bloom seems blind to the tradition of women's intimate publics (though he sees this public clear enough when he realizes that readers "sense her wistful sincerity"), and so does not see that the sentimental language of intimacy add as much to the text as any boyish predecessors as Tom Hughes or J.R.R. Tolkien. The character of Hermione, for example, is a major exponent of the female complaint; her actions, such as the escape-by-release of the Gringots dragon in one of the final scenes, show how her sense of the feelings of others give her what she needs to be a more humane person. Harry, too, is little more than a sort of sensing-machine: he hears Horcruxes, and reveals clues by licking, kissing, touching or otherwise making contact with things. 

This sort of thing, which deserves a much fuller analysis, adds up to an injection of a distinctly feminine voice into the world of the fantasy-thriller. Rowling is the storytelling mom we all wish we had, and can have now, for the low price of $10 for a movie ticket (or $25 for a book, or some similar amount for a lego game cartoon thing). A necessary cultural studies intervention would inquire whether the Harry franchise makes it more or less likely for parents to tell their children stories after Harry Potter. 

Bloom approaches the question, asking "Will they advance from Rowling to more difficult pleasures?" But Bloom does not even attempt to answer this question; he really does not see much of interest in it, because he clearly does not care one whit for "non-readers" or what he probably calls, off the page, "unintelligent children." 

I fault him for that. I remember hearing a literature teacher on NPR once speak on one of her girl students who read Twilight, and accepted the teacher's recommendation of Jane Austen or some such thing, and eventually went on to read a good number of stories with female protagonists. The girl returned to Twilight and had to admit to the teacher that she now realized she could see that Twilight was a stilted story with rather horrid characters. 

How often does such a marked improvement to a child's reading habits occur? Bloom can't help us answer the question, but we should try. And if we are to be good literature teachers, we should imitate the teacher I heard on the radio in giving over space for children to read popular and "middlebrow" texts,  but to make the most use of these. Deathly Hallows, for example, references so many bits of tradition, from Arthurian legend (the Sword of Gryffindor offers itself to Harry or whoever needs it) and English War poets (Neville Longbottom's dialogue in the third act of the final movie). At each of these moments, the teacher has an opportunity to show off how the traditions of folklore, humanism, and so on all have real value in the construction of real art -- and blockbuster stuff, too!