Help me here.
It is an odd thing to have one of your favorite mythical worlds spun in an unpleasant way. I came across a mind-twisting article on Harry Potter, the capitalist pig. Nevermind that J.K. Rowling is richer than God now; the fantastical world she created was a lift to my spirit every time I entered it. Maybe it is because I have been raised in a competitive, capitalist environment all my life, and furthermore find competitiveness and also greed to be intrinsic to human nature in all but, as we would say, the most “saintly” among us (when thinking of the greed aspect), but I can’t fathom how the competitive drive could be conquered on a large scale within the real world, and how that would even be healthy. Competition causes us to rise to greater challenges, and without the constant battle, we would be complacent and jaded.
Not that I don’t tire of the battle to survive many days… especially when paying rent and other bills. In the U.S. the balance is probably shifted too much toward a “lord of the flies” mentality. And the consumerist aspect of our culture truly is poisonous. The latter and former things are somehow conflated, though, to make wholly “evil” the very process by which evil is battled in Harry Potter’s world.
I welcome comments that address the mindset of the essay’s author. (Does this explain the lukewarm reception of Lance Armstrong by the French and other Europeans? This year he has certainly approached Le Tour with the mindset of dominance.)
So where is the essay claiming Harry is an “antiglobalist crusader?”
Wow; couldn’t possibly be that the Harry Potter stories reflect the world-as-it-is with the “what if” of magic thrown in. Don’t see how that is “training” our youth any more than, say, Disney.
Hear, hear. The writer of this “literary criticism” seems to have trouble with the idea of reality. How does a private boarding school, magic or no, have “nothing in common with our own” world? In fact, aside from the fantastic elements that make this a *story*, isn’t the appeal of Harry Potter that his world is so identifiable?
That aside, the whole premise is ludicrous. If the books are capitalist indoctrination, why are the heroes either orphans, outcasts, or poor kids with hand-me-downs? How is it that the richest, most established families in the book are the villains, openly reviled by all our protagonists?
We won’t even get into the implication that competition is inherently bad (or somehow imposed on us by Our Corporate Overlords). Or how this “pitiless jungle where competition, violence and the cult of winning run riot” frequently rewards meek characters like Neville Longbottom or Ginny Weasley.
Sorry, Steve, it’s just inflammatory hogwash. Pun intended.