Potter-Less
J.K. Rowling gets Pottermore backlash
AP PHOTO
I’ve no special affection for Harry Potter. It’s highly uncharacteristic of someone my age (which is 25), given that I did grow up during the boy wizard’s heyday, but I’ve only maintained a lukewarm fondness for the series.
I simply prefer the high fantasy of Westeros or Middle-earth or Thedas, as it were. I just have a harder time getting into low fantasy (the kind based in our world, like Harry Potter). Reality has an unpleasant way of getting in the way of things.
Anyway, I was pleased when J.K. Rowling declared that she was done with Harry and eager to move onto new things … and disappointed when Pottermore happened and all of sudden we’re getting new stage plays and three Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movies, and endless short stories and tidbits about the wizarding world.
Rather than making the original stories richer, Rowling is exposing the holes in Harry’s world.
Her recent foray into fleshing out the American wizarding world has thus far provoked the ire of some Native Americans, who condemned Rowling for carelessly rewriting and appropriating their traditional stories, as well as revealed Rowling’s general lack of knowledge of U.S. history (pro tip: There was no USA in 1693). I suppose it’s interesting to think that the Salem witch trials were somehow related to the wizards of Harry Potter, but that’s really all it is.
Part of the reason I dislike low fantasy is simply because too often the real world becomes a crutch for the fantastical. Rowling loosely based her wizarding world off our own, and just added quirky flourishes to make it unique without truly hashing out (at least publicly) the details.
There were already questions about how, exactly, wizard society worked: The economy makes no sense; the education system seems, at best, poorly regulated; and who elects the Minister of Magic, anyway? For all we know, Harry lives in a dystopia even after Voldemort dies.
She can spin one hell of a character yarn, no doubt, but Rowling isn’t quite as good at world building as her empire needs her to be. (She’s no Tolkien, who went so far as to create entire new languages for his saga.) But she’s now expanding her universe outward, conjuring up half-baked stories that sound cool but have little to add to what already exists.
If she doesn’t slow down — or at least think more about the less glamorous parts of what makes a fantasy conceit a fully realized world — the future of Harry Potter may be as ephemeral as a Lumos spell in the night.
Paige’s Pick of the Week:
Gudetama
Sanrio’s latest and greatest mascot is a morbidly depressed anthropomorphic egg. That sounds weird, I know, but Gudetama is just so cute as he slouches and groans his way through life. While you can, like me, acquire adorable stationary with his miserable face, you can also find his exploits on YouTube, where he begs people to just leave him alone. (youtube.com/sanrioinc)
