Harry Potter: False Messiah- Update

I just read an article by George Orwell about the "boys' weeklies" in his time which strikes an excellent parallel imho to my post on Harry Potter a week or two back. Read "Boys' Weeklies" here. Some highlights include the use of old stone schools in the boys weeklies since 1900 as a way of introducing privilege fantasy into the story. And that many boys read several 12-15,000 word fantasy stories every week, and didn't read anything but the newspaper later in life. I'll quote one paragraph from the essay, where Orwell describes the background to every story in the two most famous boys weeklies:

The mental world of the Gem and Magnet, therefore, is something like this:

The year is 1910 — or 1940, but it is all the same. You are at Greyfriars, a rosy-cheeked boy of fourteen in posh tailor-made clothes, sitting down to tea in your study on the Remove passage after an exciting game of football which was won by an odd goal in the last half-minute. There is a cosy fire in the study, and outside the wind is whistling. The ivy clusters thickly round the old grey stones. The King is on his throne and the pound is worth a pound. Over in Europe the comic foreigners are jabbering and gesticulating, but the grim grey battleships of the British Fleet are steaming up the Channel and at the outposts of Empire the monocled Englishmen are holding the niggers at bay. Lord Mauleverer has just got another fiver and we are all settling down to a tremendous tea of sausages, sardines, crumpets, potted meat, jam and doughnuts. After tea we shall sit round the study fire having a good laugh at Billy Bunter and discussing the team for next week's match against Rook-wood. Everything is safe, solid and unquestionable. Everything will be the same for ever and ever. That approximately is the atmosphere.

Harry Potter: False Messiah

I watched Harry Potter number 7 with family today and noticed I didn't have the same fervor I had for it in High School. I had to force myself to get into that old mindset to sit through the 2 1/2 hour movie. In retrospect, that wasn't a good idea. Reality seemed so bleak afterwards. I'm still not fully back.

When the Harry Potter books first came onto the scene, parents and educational experts were stunned by their popularity. Reading had been on the decline for years, losing ground steadily to visual media. Suddenly though, kids were reading again. It was nothing short of a miracle. Theories were advanced to explain it, from the most silly to the most scientific sounding. "J.K. Rowling has created a witchcraft cult!" "Don't be ridiculous, children's brains have their visual centers much more developed than previously, Ms. Rowling's visually imaginative writing taps into that. Writers need to start to copy this style to engage kids." Well, if I had to choose one, I'd say it has more to do with the first reason than with the second.

Western society, with all it's psychological breakthroughs in parenting is just as competitive as ever. In fact, with religious observance down (and with it, it's so-called "slave values"), and increasing sources of media streaming visions of so many other people's fantastic monetary success and excess, I'd say competition is ratcheting itself up every year. However, unlike in previous generations, it is easy to gain temporary relief from this stress: Television. TV shows transport the viewer into a fantasy universe where they are free from their daily stresses. They have supporting friends and family, they have control over their lives, they can make a real difference in the world. [To a child, reliance on this escape can be very detrimental in learning to cope with the natural stresses of life. They haven't learned how to deal with more basic challenges, so they have immense difficulty coping with ones that compound those stressors with others. Add  to this that they first have to unlearn the old coping strategy and you can imagine the magnitude of the problem.]

What J.K. Rowling did was create a fantasy world fitted exactly to children. Like Dr. Seuss in his time, this world did not exist anywhere else before she thought it up. The escape was so much richer than anything in books or on TV. As Harry Potter, you are powerful, even though you're just a kid. You have supporting friends. You used to be abused and treated horribly, but now there is an entire hidden world that respects and adores you. And all because of an inborn specialness; you didn't have to earn it. All you have to do is have fun at cool classes, play a sport that you're the Best at, and have girls lining up for you. Mysterious fun things await you at every turn.

A common mistake is that books actually create a more real environment because they involve the mind more. That's incorrect. Books involve different parts of the brain than TV. They cost the mind's imaginative and rational faculties more energy to create the illusion they are going for in whatever story they are trying to portray. While that may be beneficial in that it develops those aspects of the brain, it detracts from the 'submersive' element of the story portrayed. Audio-visual media immediately transports it's viewers into it's world. To the person, it is more similar to reality than a novel because it doesn't rely on the brain to provide thoughts to stimulate the two main senses, sight and sound. Since the point is escape from the anxiety of reality and not learning, Television is usually preferred by people. However, if the book provides the fuller escape, as in the case of Harry Potter, it is preferred.

It's no matter if the books reach over 800 pages. The purpose is escape from anxiety; a more realized escape from pain is worth infinitely more than a lesser escape. And the longer the escape lasts, the better.

Make no mistake: this isn't a revolution in reading, it's a 'revolution' only in tapping into modern children's  psychology. Now that the zeitgeist has been explored, expect TV and movies to follow. What? Is my prophecy too late? Oh well. I guess you can just call me Professor Hindsight.