In defence of Harry Potter

[lyore]

I pity the young generation growing up on her books with a sad and skewed notion of morals and grammar through the broken glasses of The Boy Who Lived.

This essay/post is partly inspired by the above quote (unattributed on purpose, since I don't want her getting attacked by passing HP fen *g*), but mostly it’s in reaction to anti-HP comments I’m seeing a lot, in RL and in Fandom. Despite the title of this post, this isn't really a defence of HP, but more an examination of why I think the books are as problematic as they are.

When you're reading this, please insert IMO as needed. Other people's thoughts may vary - that's fine. In fact, I encourage you to tell me, since I spent far too long thinking/typing this up, and am interested in what people think.

With all that out of the way, let's get into it:

Let's start this debate from a moral perspective, since that's a frequent argument against the books. And let's leave aside religious issues, and whether or not children should be getting all their moral guidance from works of fiction.

Are the Harry Potter books really such bad moral examples? Straight away, I can think of a lot of events/plot points in the books that can be seen as morally dubious (the treatment, portrayal and sheer existence of Slytherin house for starters). On the other hand, I can think of a lot of times when the books are obviously championing 'do the right thing (Dumbledore's speech at the end of GoF, for instance).

To me, the problematic issues are those that are buried in the structure of the work (Slytherin=Evil, for example) and, and I think that, on a child-friendly level, they are countermanded by the raising of 'surface' issues such as the anti-werewolf prejudice, Hermione’s crusade for elf right, the whole 'doing what is right vs doing what is evil' theme. Does that make the subsurface issues any less problematic? Of course not. In fact, they are all the more problematic for the contrast, but what it does do is give anyone who cares to debate this with their children a good jumping off point. ('Children, discuss: What is the difference between portrayal of prejudice with respect to Werewolves and Slytherins?') If people are really interested in resolving the morality of Harry Potter, there's a lot there to discuss.

But looking at the moral issue raises another issue: the conflict between what the Harry Potter books say and what they show.

This conflict 'saying' and 'showing' is fascinating, and worth examining further. This issue is exemplified in the portrayal of Dumbledore. We are told that he is the best of the wizards, a kindly mentor, a caring teacher, and a powerful foe. But looking at these books from an adult level, what we see is a character who has consistently failed to protect those in his care, failed to defeat a villain he helped create, and who has consistently encouraged a minor to get involved in life-threatening situations, often in order to resolve situations the he (Dumbledore) is, at least in part, responsible for. We are left with two choices - he's either a manipulative bastard, or a well-meaning but incompetent failure. Not a very appetising choice.

This disconnect between what is said and what shown arises from the combination of a few factors:

a) the injection of a classic 'boarding school' tropes (where the adults serve as a framework for the child protagonists to pursue the story) into an 'adult' world (in that a war to protect society as we know it is normally considered the domain of adults).

b) the co-existance of the Real and Magical worlds. While it works well on a classic wish-forfillment level, the apparent values of the magical world sit uneasily with the situation described in a). As adults, we know that in the 'Real' world, leaving children to fight the battle against an evil overlord is morally wrong, and because the Real world still exists in the framework of the books, it's hard to leave that moral judgement behind. In a pure fantasy world, these objections can be more easily overcome.

c) adults reading what are, despite the increasingly adult storylines, still children's books. Yes, the plots have grown in darkness, but the world is still a children's one. The plots have matured, but the world cannot, because it works on that childhood, fairytale level. On an adult level, this world makes no sense, because it is based on classic childhood tropes of incompetent (or at least not very useful) adults and the 'world through the wardrobe'.

When the 'feel' and themes of the books were still content to work at a childhood level, the disconnect between the 'real' world and the Magical world could be ignored, the impotence of the adult characters glossed over, and the sub-surface moral issues ignored, because we could read these books on the childhood level we remembered . But as the later books brought in more 'adult' concepts and characterisations, readers were trying to look at the story through two sets of glasses, as it were. The increasing inclusion of more complex issues prompted reading through 'adult' glasses, and that's when the flaws in the world structure are apparent.

As a related note, the other common criticism of the Harry Potter books is that they aren't, on a technical, 'grammar and style' level, very good. But even on this level, Rowling's books work better on the childhood fairytale scale. Her strength, and one that served her very well in her earlier novels, is a gift for creating whimsical situations, realistic child protagonists and amusing/intrigueing adult caricatures character sketches, rather than being an excellent writer. This limitation, and the issues raised above, means that translating those sketches into workable characters, and those situations into a complete world, is occasionally less than successful.

The Harry Potter books are a classic combination wish-forfillment and old-style boarding school fiction with an epic twist. And for a kid, that isn't a bad combination, but from an adult's perspective, it's problematic.



Thoughts?

Comments

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Thanks. And say hi to geo_chick for me :)

Link away - I don't have that many HP fen on my flist, so I'd be interested in what your flist has to say.

*hugs back*