/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17866434]

>unironically a good book series for kids
Why all the pseuds in this board hate it?

[Anonymous No.17866439]

>>17866434
Because adults still read it and claim that it is literature.

[Anonymous No.17866441]

https://voca.ro/17UOcgB6lWtc

[Anonymous No.17866446]

>>17866439
Are your opinions dictated by idiots?

[Anonymous No.17866450]

>>17866446
No, they aren't. OP asked why pseuds on this board hate Harry Potter. Presumably if OP is specifying pseuds on this board, there are also some on this board who are not.

[Anonymous No.17866451]

>>17866441
lmao based

[Anonymous No.17866474]

The first few books are indeed pretty good children's literature, but then someone told her she was writing something important and it gradually inflates into one of the more embarrassing records of English megalomania and short-sighted public school liberalism.

[Anonymous No.17866478]

>>17866446
No but society is

[Anonymous No.17866922]

>>17866474
Could you elaborate on this?

[Anonymous No.17867245]

>>17866922
The seeds are in the first book: Philosopher's Stone is a parable of incrementalist English liberalism in which a genetically chosen child is plucked from between the hedgerows of vulgar bourgeois relatives so he can attend an Eton-equivalent public school, where he ultimately learns 'It is our choices, Harry, that show what we are, far more than our abilities' (the tension at the heart of the Anglo-Saxon ideology). This isn't really so bad since it's a cute enough story in the English fairy tale tradition, but over time Rowling stops writing fairy tales and starts doing genre fantasy worldbuilding—except the world she's building is not directed at achieving e.g. Tolkien's cultural-linguistic integrity but rather a consistency of *values*, which is a problem when the values are the unexamined assumptions of an elite class which has rarely faced a meaningful reckoning in the past two centuries.

For example, the most notable oddity about Harry Potter is that from a historical perspective, the existence of Slytherin house makes no sense—this is widely acknowledged even by fans—and it makes increasingly less sense with the laboriously detailed lore of the later books. Salazar Slytherin's prejudices were allegedly regarded as bizarre and bigoted during his life in the Middle Ages, and even the justification of early modern witch hunting cannot really explain the persistent tolerance of House Evil, an entire cohort of schoolchildren selectively groomed into a pointless prejudice which there is no meaningful incentive to adopt, not even as a means of scapegoating. Moreover, this prejudice is necessarily taken to debilitating extremes, as we see in Voldemort's inbred maternal line, who are magically inert and mentally deficient. The sheer institutional inertia required to preserve Slytherin's explicit value system of 'Muggle-borns bad' even after Voldemort's rise to power strains the credulity even of Potter enthusiasts.

All of this does make sense from the perspective of *values*, however: the English dream is the enlightened rule of an international elite, forged in the crucible of their old school network (with porous borders for those 'Muggle-born' talents, so as to satisfy the libido dominandi of the middle classes), an elite who are the natural leaders of a global coalition against universal fascism. This imagined enemy arises not from historical conditions but as a recurrent challenge by the same cynical conniving opponents, as of an upstart Germany disturbing the European balance of power to try and take over the world again, requiring the efforts of that eternal underdog, that plucky old British Empire. Harry Potter in its last few volumes is nothing more than the English elite mouthing to themselves the fantasy of their status as protagonists of world history in such a distorted, Chinese whispers way as to become comically incomprehensible.

[Anonymous No.17867261]

>>17866434
>unironically a good book series for kids

No!

[Anonymous No.17867300]

I just like it for what it is, and what I find funny is that my mom preferred LOTR and I preferred HP. As I grew up it became the other way around. Sure HP is cool, but I kinda hate the character itself and there's a lot of unexplained things.

[Anonymous No.17867325]

>>17867245
Incredible and accurate post, especially the part about how the eternal fascist foe is some kind of Saturday morning cartoon villain always off in the distance, waiting to be trounced so the good guys can celebrate over kippers.

Can you comment on the legal and normalized slavery of house elves in the books? What does that say of Rowling?

[Anonymous No.17867327]

>>17866434
Percy Jackson is better

[Anonymous No.17867600]

>>17867325
>the eternal fascist foe is some kind of Saturday morning cartoon villain always off in the distance, waiting to be trounced so the good guys can celebrate over kippers.
Yes, that's exactly it, the 'whip the Hun and get back in time for tea' mentality. It's another rerun of the We Won the War tape, except the film is damaged, there are vital parts of the story missing, and it's unclear why any of this is happening at all.

I'm not sure I could provide any novel insight on the house elves, which have obviously been noted before in discussions of Harry Potter's politics. To me it's just another way Rowling models her depictions of injustice and social change on British incrementalism; slavery was abolished in the British Empire by the will and commitment of a few quixotic individuals among the elite, contrary to e.g. French Haiti or the American Civil War. In that sense, it's more obviously anachronistic but less plainly silly than the Slytherin issue, and reveals how Rowling defaults to a mode of gradual reforms by a small elite rather than discontinuous change. It also ties in to her depiction of this porous aristocracy: Hermione, the Muggle-born, is the main agent pushing for house elf liberation, bringing change and revivification to a stagnant and unjust social order.

[Anonymous No.17867714]

>>17867245
i liked the books, but damn if this post isn't the coolest thing in a long time on /lit/

[Anonymous No.17867954]

>>17867245
i've never seen it that way, thank you for your response anon

[Anonymous No.17868022]

>>17867245
What a read, thank you anon.

[Anonymous No.17868032]

>>17866434
>>unironically a good book series for kids
no it's not.

[Anonymous No.17868060]

>>17867245
>>17867600
Reminds me of this classic.

[Anonymous No.17868157]

It's been a decade since I read the books but I always found it odd steadfastly refused to kill (or even use torture spells) when everyone around him, including his closest friends, readily do so, at least after the bad guys openly kill a bunch of people. Rowling must've meant it as some stubborn kind of conscientious objection on Harry's part but it felt more like cowardice. Never mind that Harry later works as the equivalent of a FBI/CIA agent for a government that even before Voldemort would lock people up in a black site and turn them into vegetables by sucking out their souls.

Also Dolores Umbridge was a thinly veiled Margaret Thatcher and it's worth noting that the portrayal of the muggles resembles a liberal picture of the "Thatcherite-Blairite middle-class".

[Anonymous No.17869309]

>>17867245
speak english nerd

[Anonymous No.17869395]

>>17867245
This guy's right but to add to his point, the only way to understand HP is to first understand the elite English boarding school. I attended one of them and the only reason they still exist is to perpetuate the same plucky British Empire power fantasy this anon described. There's an evil house, an evil school takeover and an epic school battle because bongs of that class are literally unable to comprehend geopoilitical events through any lens other than that of boarding school events. That's when they all peak and what they cling to for the rest of their lives because it was the only period in which their existence held any kind of power or meaning. Sure, once they graduate they'll probably be comfortable and well-off forever, but the fact remains, they will never again experience anything close to that Britannia Rules the Waves sense of brazen patriotism and community they lived by during their school years. So it's only natural that they spend the rest of their lives trying to reclaim it, whether through their own offspring, or, like Rowling, by retreating into a power fantasy within a power fantasy.

[Anonymous No.17869740]

>>17866441
BASED
Are you the /mu/ guy

[Anonymous No.17869922]

[Anonymous No.17869976]

so what movie/book series is the anti- harry potter?

[Anonymous No.17870022]

>>17869976
So You Want to be a Wizard

[Anonymous No.17870089]

>>17866441
>https://voca.ro/17UOcgB6lWtc
Hilarious. Why do anons do this though?

[Anonymous No.17871278]

>>17868157
Yeah, Harry only used Cursio once, Sectumsempra once while knowing what it did and Kedavra I twince twice.
They also never explain why there's no guns. A sniper would take care of anyone easily.

[Anonymous No.17871609]

>>17867245
the kind of posts that keep me checking this board

[Anonymous No.17871624]

>>17866446
>Are your opinions dictated by idiots?
Yes, as a social animal i cant but help being overruled by society. Which is why i want to destroy aspects of it.

[Anonymous No.17871637]

>>17866474
She also got the Stephen King-style treatment, where as the writer gets more famous the publisher stops editing them, and they end just publishing whatever bloated manuscripts are submitted to them.

[Anonymous No.17872804]

>>17871637
Even as a kid OotP was such a lengthy bore.

[Anonymous No.17873399]

>>17872804
It's still my least favourite to this day, including the film. The time travel sequence feels like a drag.

[Anonymous No.17874520]

>>17868157
>it's worth noting that the portrayal of the muggles resembles a liberal picture of the "Thatcherite-Blairite middle-class".
How anyone tolerates snobbish caricatures as preposterously shallow as the Dursleys is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.17875483]

HP at its core is a Christian allegory. The skeletal framework of Christian imagery and belief is what stops the nonsensical world from falling apart. This, matched with the Britishness of the work, is what makes it adored by fans.

Harry Potter is a chosen one child (Jesus), he is persecuted at birth because of a prophecy (Jesus), he is taken away to a different land to return later (Jesus). He dies purposefully as a means of saving those who believe in him and who he loves (Jesus). Harry goes to the afterlife (King's Cross which is a halfway point) which can be viewed as Heaven.

The series has a unique weight of seriousness to it because Harry is a Christ allegory. The world Rowling creates is very interesting, but borrows heavily from mythology in very direct ways.

The main point to understand is that Rowling hit the jackpot with Harry Potter as a character. But she can't replicate the story in prequels or sequels or spin-offs, because without Harry Potter the whole wizarding world falls apart.

You might ask why Harry doesn't try to reform the wizarding world. One answer is that Christ doesn't come to reform the world either, but to give a promise of salvation in the next life.

Rowling essentially writes mystery novels with political themes washed in Britishness. None of her books have the 'magic' of Harry Potter, because she was tapping into the Christian themes of that story, but isn't in the other materials.

That's about it really.

[Anonymous No.17875584]

>>17866434
Lack of exposure to the british boarding school novel tradition.

[Anonymous No.17875605]

>>17867245
>>17875483
What you get when you cross these two interpretations, 'Harry Potter is an allegory for how the British elite believe they are messianic' is awfully telling.

[Anonymous No.17875616]

>>17875483
>HP at its core is a Christian allegory.
More specifically its based in a very Presbyterian view of Christianity.

[Anonymous No.17875799]

>>17872804
Agreed. Was my least favourite in the series as a kid.

[Anonymous No.17876854]

>>17875616
Elaborate.