Over the next couple of days I'm going to be posting things I've noticed about Harry Potter and that I wonder about. Some are funny, some are poignant, some are wildly inappropriate for someone of my age and education to think about in his spare time.
To begin let me start by making an admission that will piss of every single person reading this: I have never read any of the Harry Potter books. I know, but bear with me here. Even though I haven't read the books, I love the world of Harry Potter. I think, like Star Wars, the Matrix, and, judging by fan-reaction, Avatar, the Harry Potter books create a world that people wish was real and love playing in. And that's awesome.
In fact, I'd really like to have read the books so I could play in that world more. The problem is, even as a kid, I never really liked "Young Adult" literature. I found it patronizing and usually boring. So, although I was roughly in the right age demographic, I only heard about Harry Potter because I read a satirical piece about it in the New Yorker. No offense to J.K. Rowling, but a kid who reads the New Yorker and criticizes the review David Denby gave American Beauty probably isn't going to be able to be lost in the magical journey of a prepubescent wizard.
While I haven't read the books I have had many friends and family who have, and I have seen all of the films at least once, except The Half-blood Prince, which I just haven't gotten around to. I know there's been a lot of fan criticism of the way the movies represent and explain certain things, so I'm also using internet research to fill out my literary ignorance on the list below.
I know there have been examinations of Harry Potter like this before, so there is one thing I am not going to do here and that is criticize Rowling as a writer. Many people have suggested that Rowling's plots are very formulaic, that the books are filled with plot holes, etc. I'm not going to go into that.
Furthermore, nothing I'm mentioning here should be taken as criticism. These are all simply things I've noticed that I wonder about the world Rowling has created. Some of these things I've noticed were never explained for good reason (as we will see when I mention the giant fucking).
To begin let me start by making an admission that will piss of every single person reading this: I have never read any of the Harry Potter books. I know, but bear with me here. Even though I haven't read the books, I love the world of Harry Potter. I think, like Star Wars, the Matrix, and, judging by fan-reaction, Avatar, the Harry Potter books create a world that people wish was real and love playing in. And that's awesome.
In fact, I'd really like to have read the books so I could play in that world more. The problem is, even as a kid, I never really liked "Young Adult" literature. I found it patronizing and usually boring. So, although I was roughly in the right age demographic, I only heard about Harry Potter because I read a satirical piece about it in the New Yorker. No offense to J.K. Rowling, but a kid who reads the New Yorker and criticizes the review David Denby gave American Beauty probably isn't going to be able to be lost in the magical journey of a prepubescent wizard.
While I haven't read the books I have had many friends and family who have, and I have seen all of the films at least once, except The Half-blood Prince, which I just haven't gotten around to. I know there's been a lot of fan criticism of the way the movies represent and explain certain things, so I'm also using internet research to fill out my literary ignorance on the list below.
I know there have been examinations of Harry Potter like this before, so there is one thing I am not going to do here and that is criticize Rowling as a writer. Many people have suggested that Rowling's plots are very formulaic, that the books are filled with plot holes, etc. I'm not going to go into that.
Furthermore, nothing I'm mentioning here should be taken as criticism. These are all simply things I've noticed that I wonder about the world Rowling has created. Some of these things I've noticed were never explained for good reason (as we will see when I mention the giant fucking).
That said, some things here could have been explained better as part of the narrative; but mainly this is a list, in no particular order, of things I've noticed about the world of Harry Potter that my overactive brain thinks about when I'm watching The Goblet of Fire on cable for the 20th time.
To start things off, here's something I've noticed about Hogwarts admissions.
Admissions Standards: Easier To Get Into Than Arizona State
Admissions Standards: Easier To Get Into Than Arizona State
Everyone in Harry Potter pretty much treats Hogwarts like it's a really nice private boarding school. This makes sense since it was clearly modeled on that system. The problem with this, is that apparently the only standard for admission to Hogwarts is if you're born with the ability to do magic, you're in.
On some level this makes sense, a lot of what the characters study is basic use of magic stuff, so if they didn't let all magically-oriented kids in you'd have a bunch of stupid kids with magic powers they didn't know how to use, because they couldn't get into a good wizard school. And nothing is more dangerous than combining stupidity and magic.
Case in point
The flaw in this is that much of Harry Potter is about class warfare. Sure Voldemort and the Deatheaters are concerned with blood-purity, but if the Malfoys are any example, they're clearly not fans of the underclasses either. I think it's cool Rowling puts these kinds of harsh lessons in her books sometimes. Way too many youth literature tells young people that money doesn't matter and it's what's inside that counts. Rowling does this, but she also says that sometimes people won't like you just because you wear hand-me-downs and there really isn't anything you can do about it.
This is why the admissions thing doesn't make sense to me. With all their disdain for the lower-classes why wouldn't families like the Blacks and the Malfoys use their money and power to found their own academic institutions and not let in the poor and the muggle-born? Instead they seem to choose to constantly bitch to everyone who'll listen about how they don't like ANYTHING the school does, even though their combined fortunes probably dwarf Hogwarts' operating budget several times over.
For some reason all of these rich, powerful, evil familes want their kids to go to Hogwarts, even though the only thing they like about Hogwarts is Slytherin House, whose headmaster acted as a double agent against them years earlier. That would be like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin sending their kids to Oxford after the Revolutionary War because they really liked the dorm that was run by Benedict Arnold.
And Yes, I did just imply that Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin were evil. Read you history books people.
The admissions thing always bothered me too. They act like Hogwarts is an elite school, and yet they let retards in that blow everything up. On top of that, Hogwarts has a reputation of creating amazing wizards. Then you hear about schools like Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and
ReplyDeletethe Durmstrang Institute which obviously screen their students. I've read the books and it seems as if there are only three schools on the Eastern Hemisphere. Beauxbatons is located in France and only admits women it seems. Durmstrang is located probably in Germany or Russia and seems to admit only men. So what do you do if you are the opposite gender in those regions? Why wouldn't all the rich people attend one of those select schools? Hogwarts seems to fill the void left by those other 2 very select schools, so it would seem that it was an absolute necessity despite the rich wizards bitching. The only other 2 schools referenced in the books are located in Brazil and Salem, MA.
FYI, Hogwarts is located in Scotland of all places. London, is closer to Paris than it is to Edinburgh so if there are any boundary lines for school attendance, you'd think blood born female Londoners would go to Beauxbaton. This would include Bellatrix (black) Lestrange, and Narcissa (black) Malfoy,
You bring up some good points.
ReplyDeleteI would dissagree that Beauxbatons and Durmstrang screen students. I think what's more likely is that just as Hogwarts is in the style of an English boarding school, Beauxbatons seems to be in the style of a French etiquette academy and Durmstrang in the manner of a Soviet-era military school. As such both of the latter schools have a much stronger emphasis on regimen and protocol than Hogwarts.
It's also worth noting that all the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students seen in the books and films are there for potential participation in the Triwizard Tournament, and as such are all of the more senior classes than the majority of Hogwarts' students, so a marked difference in magical competency is to be expected.
If schools are explicitly stated to be in Scotland, France, Eastern Europe, Brazil, and the United States, I'd expect there would also be schools in at least Africa an Asia as well, to round out the different possible approaches to magic and education that each known school seems to represent.
According to the Harry Potter wiki, Beauxbaton is actually co-ed, despite what's shown in the films. I can't find info on Durmstrang, but they could go either way. They could value producing powerful strong wizards of all sexes, or they could be very strict in adhering to old military codes.
I'll talk more about school boundary lines when I post my thoughts on the racial mix of Hogwarts students, but what I've gathered is that school attendance seems to be based on historical/political boundaries more than anything else. For this reason I assume Hogwarts serves the magical youth of England, Ireland, and Scotland, which have been both historically and politically fairly united; while France and England have never really gotten along and Eastern Europe has always creeped the other regions out.
Finally, in looking into all of this I discovered it's impossible for Durmstrang to be in Germany, since Dumbledore clearly states that the school is to the north of Hogwarts when welcoming them and no part of Germany is to the north of any part of Scotland. This means it's probably in Russia, since that place has tons of northern territory. That and who's more likely to hire turncoat terrorists as powerful leaders than Russia?
Harry Potter is not what I read/watch when I want to think about things. That's why plot holes don't matter. I have to admit that when I first saw Hagrid's half brother, the full blood giant, I wondered how a giant woman would even notice if a human man blew a load in her giant vagina. Although J.K. Rowling did the right thing in making Hagrid's giant parent the mother, as if a human woman took a giant cock...pretty sure she'd die.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Your assessment of Chris Angel made me giggle.