Pshaw! IF you read the books you would know ( or if you trusted your eyes at the movies) that he is considered obnoxious for doing this and is scorned and stopped. Again, my spoiled friends, you have to WAIT and see (or read!). Ha-ha. This is more of a generation that SEES itself in every mirror!

Agreed. Sounds to me like someone who never read the books. Or the Wizard of Oz or Willy Wonka for that matter.

True enough Andrew, my generation is certainly not without fault. Those of us who did not support the Statis movement, still did not fight hard enough to quell it.

I just see a posh English public schoolboy who falls over a lot…kind of like Hugh Grant…I've met plenty of the little turds…in fact we have a government here full of them..

There have been several times i felt a strange lack of consequences in the Harry Potter movies. The latest movie has Harry nearly killing a fellow classmate in the boys bathroom. The plumbing has been destroyed, the kid is bleeding to death, and all that happens is a sinister look from one of his professors. Ho-hum. Back to class. No one in authority is even curious about what just happened as they send the injured bully to the hospital?

Well put, Ronnie.

I've slogged my way through enough explanations of why Harry Potter is bad because of his exceptionality. Wrong, I'm scolded, to say that anyone has anything special about his or her birth. Damaging, even.

It takes a pretty big stretch, though… Harry Potter is no more inherently talented than those around him and the fact that he's been singled out by various adults is not helpful. No one could argue that anything about his birth has made his life easier for him.

As Rowling has said, books are like mirrors, you can't expect a fool to look in and see a genius looking out.

"Harry spends “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” — the film version of which is raking it in this weekend — cheating out of a textbook that has all the answers written in the margins,"

Not true. The "answers" are not written in the margins. He did not cheat on tests. The book was full of recipes for potions, and the HBP had discovered better or easier ways to do things and wrote them down. The book says to "cut" something open, the writing says to smash it with the knife blade, which happens to work better. The students were NOT expected to figure out that they were supposed to smash it with a knife blade.

Furthermore, Harry went ahead and used a spell he found in the book without knowing what it was and almost killed Draco. Again, the theme of Misplaced Trust arises, which is common in the series.

Never seen any of this Potter stuff. I liked LOTR, but that is the only fantasy I've ever gotten into. This stuff looks childish – like Mary Poppins or something. Never watched that, either. But this theme you mention is pretty common in escapist narratives – especially popular among the lazy and intellectually challenged American audience.

EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY!! This is why Ive always felt JKR missed out on focusing the story on Draco, who offered more opportunity for the journey of redemption and identity and growth than Harry Potter. But JKR, after admonishing that her books were "about not believing what you see on the surface" would routinely dismiss Draco as a simple stereotype bully…it wasnt until Book 6 that she actually started adding some depth to Draco. Draco was a character that WANTED to be born – practically every great writer has a character that started out as inconsequential and then 'took over' and became a central part of the writers story (Peregrin Took, Eric Northman are a couple that *I* know of)…but I got the distinct feeling that JKR kept sitting on Draco.

Like Ive said before, there are some merits to her books, beyond the usual blather about 'it got kids to read' (Oh yeah? did they go on to read great literature like the Odyssey or the Iliad or Canterbury Tales or any of the other great works??? No…didnt think so) – but her refusal to develop characters that obviously had a life to offer to the story tells me everything. I get tired of reading stories where Im supposed to be sympathetic to a character just because all these bad things happen to him. Sheesh.

I've often thought that Rowlings wrote the series with a child development and psychology text book at her elbow.

Installment 5 is when young people loose their illusions, discover that their parents had feet of clay, and start to suspect there is more going on than they were previously aware.

In the first book, and the second, the kids (the "good" ones) were often thoughtlessly cruel. As children are.

Gotta agree with you on that one CBK. Having grown up reading Tolkien's work I decided I should read HP to see what all the buzz was about. I was told by so many "adults" that it was a modern age LOTR and that I had to read it. Really? Made it to the third chapter and donated it to the local library. I'm a big sci fi/ fantasy geek, but this did nothing for me.The movies are "cute" and watchable and that's about it.

Now they'll kill me….:-)

Come on now Harley, play nice. Like you, I have no interest in HP, but decided to check out the comments anyway. Everybody needs something to get into, so I have no trouble at all with the good folks who can't do without him. Think of it this way, since you and I both posted comments on this thread, and have over 50 thumbs up good guy warrior points apiece from this chat room, should either of us really be making comments about "getting a life?"

Just have some good old fashioned fun with you here "don't mean nuthin' at all."

What a bunch of malarkey. No moral story? All the books continually stress that Evil is Evil and needs to be fought. Dumbledore and Harry name Voldemort and not hide behind what eveyone else calls him, "Man Made Disaster", I mean, "You Know Who". No Compromise. No Negotiations. Even when for a moment Harry appeared to feel pity for young Tom Riddle for being abandoned in an orphanage, Dumbledore rebuked him. Gently, but a rebuke nonetheless, and Harry snapped back to realizing that's no excuse for his later acts of evil. As for not being punished for using the Half-Blood Prince's book, he was. He got detention for using Sectumsepra against Draco Malfoy, a spell learned from the book. Snape, being the Half-Blood Prince, knew he cheated in Slughorn's Potions class. Harry gets punished in the first book for being up late at night. He gets punished in the second book for being in a flying car in front of Muggles. Harry certainly does not get off scott-free for his misbehaviors.

Gee, all time time I thought the Harry Potter series was about creepy Professors teaching magic tricks as the way to get through life.

Wave your academic wand of wizardry and the world will fall into place; shiny happy, it's made by the wave of a wand.

This guy's a f***ing moron. Did he miss the it's our choices that make us who we are part (I think both Dumbledore and Sirius said that at some point)? Did he not realize that Harry only uses the luck potion to do complete the important task Dumbledore has charged him with (as opposed to using it to get with Ginny)? Did he breeze over the part where Harry realized blindly following the easy path wasn't so great when he ended up a hack 'n' slasher after using the spell Sectum Sempra (from the Half-Blood Prince's book)? Or how about the rewards the kids earn for being brave and doing the right thing – including Neville. Remember the part in one of the earliest books where Neville stood up to his friends (and he didn't have many!) when they were breaking the rules? And how Dumbledore praised this action in front of the entire school? And how Neville and Luna, who are looked down on by many of their peers, are appreciated and accepted and truly liked by Harry? Harry's a nice guy, and he doesn't always take the easy path. As for Harry being so exceptional, this writer needs to go watch the scene in "Order of the Phoenix" in which Hermione tries to recruit students for a real defense against the dark arts class, which she persuades a reluctant Harry to teach; in this scene, Harry explains that he's survived his encounters with Voldemort largely thanks to help from others and luck. He's not stuck up, and in the end… well, I won't give away what Harry's willing to give up to save everyone else.

This writer reminds me that, like Cornelius Fudge, people see what they want to see.

Well noted. Unfortunately I felt there was a lot of junk to wade through to get to that rather significant point. Rowling didn't seem to realize that all because the story was about Harry Potter doesn't mean everything that happens to him is significant to the themes of the story. Perhaps she actually realized this but once the books caught on, she wanted to please the fans (not a bad thing) but the only way she could do that was with details, not significance. I think the underlying story is simple (but solid) and quite overburdened with junk.

I love hearing these claims – that the writing gets better, not because she was learning, oh no – Rowling was always perfect, and EVERYTHING was all plotted out, and she was just 'getting into character'.

Okay, sorry, that was mean. I can understand this theory. Oh, except for that bit where every single person in House Slytherin fought for The Lord of All Evil.

I'm sorry, what chapter of the psych book was THAT in?

Having watched all the Potter movies to include the latest one; I don't see were Harry is treated as entitled. Actually, the movies have been good because they are full of comradeship and the willingness of a few to sacrifice against evil even though they could just walk away from it. When watching the movies, Harry and his friends represent to me the few young men and women serving this country in uniform against an evil most have forgotten about or do not want believe still exists.

Yes, we all have to endure a generation where everyone is special and unique and knows everything. Just ask any of them.
Unfortunately,, we all have to endure their Potternomics too.

So, having only read the first installment and not enjoying it (fantasy/scifi et al isn't my thing, nothing against the books and haven't seen the films), I'll ask HP fans: is Harry a type of messianic Christ-figure, a superman etc? Is there an archetype that can be applied to the story? For those who have read the thousands of pages, what is the overriding lesson – if there is on – to be taken from the HP canon?

[...] Here is the original post [...]

Not reading = Having a life?

Where in the hell have you been?

I believe you might be making a snarky comment on my post from the other day. My 17 yr old learned to read with HP. The summer before his junior year, he read Ulysses. The year after the 1st HP came out (he was in 3rd grade) he had already read all the children's book in our library about the Titanic. He then went on to all the adult books about the sinking, and in 4th grade, he read It Happened One Night. He also reads Shakespeare, along with Sports Illustrated.

Don't make rude assumptions.

This is nonsense on a couple of levels. First, some folks *did* complain about the HP books right from the start because of the magic angle. I thought the complaints were silly, but whatever. Second, I don't recall anyone on BH criticizing HP now *because* of Rowling's statement. If anything, some may not like her much for it, possibly because it was a publicity stunt or some such, but that didn't seem to affect their opinion of the books and movies one way or the other. Also, "wingers"? What, is that trollish for "right wingers" or were you just too lazy to type the entire intended slur?

Not all the Slytherins are evil; they are ambitious to a fault. However, you only ever see a very few Slytherin characters in the book, and they do happen to be engaged in bad things. But, the house's population is comprised of more than just these characters. Not even all the Durmstrangs are evil although they're set up to seem suspicious.

This is satire of some kind, right?

Does anyone else think the photo looks like the cover of a 1960's gay pulp novel, what with Draco's black turtleneck and the…er…point of his wand?

[...] the original here: Harry Potter: A Hero For the ‘Entitled Generation’ This entry is filed under America – Blogs, Big Hollywood. You can follow any responses to this [...]

So is this article an attempt to get a bunch of people to discuss and argue? Taking an obviously controversial approach, that the author had to know was going to result in lots of people disagreeing with him, seems to point to a fraud being played on us. Since his points are so obviously off base to anyone who's read the series, the only answer I can come up with is the he did write it for just that reason. There wasn't anything easy or entitled about Harry's upbringing and education years. He suffered greatly from abuse until he was 12 and then over and over again on his summers. At school he became the target of many students, and even had his friends turn on him when he needed them the most. He came to learn that his ability with magic wasn't anything special when compared with all his peers, but he learned that despite that he had to work hard to do what fate had handed him.

I saw Harry grow as well. So did Hermione and Ron and a whole host of others. Maybe you are just Draco obsessed (a little snark back).

And kudos for the responders – I've hung out on a Harry Potter message board since early 2005. Many of the posters are young teens. And they are well-read, write very well, and are very intelligent. And the topics discussed range from Harry Potter, to all kinds of literature, TV, movies, art, politics, etc.

I hate it when people feel the need to feel superior b/c they didn't like the books. If you don't like them, fine. But that doesn't make the rest of us stupid because we did, whether we are children or adults.

Also, as Gen X'r (b. 1971) I resent being called names. In fact, IMHO, my generation (at least at the older end) were still for the most part being raised the "old fashioned" way. My parents were NOT hippies. They are not Baby Boombers (B.1941 and 1943). Many of my friends were also raised the same way I was. I don't recall getting the "Special" talk at all. Frankly I think that was mostly the younger Gen X'rs and generations after. I'm proud of my Generation because I think we are the last ones who will probably turn back to conservatism because of our general skepticism and distrust of authority and our refusal to fit into any mold – hence the name "Gen X".

I'm geting more than a little tired of people who claim it as a badge of honor that they have never watched and/or read Harry Potter/LOTR/Mary Poppins/whatever. They seem to feel like it makes them superior without realizing how arrogant it makes them sound. If they don't want to read or watch any of Harry Potter, fine. Different strokes for different folks. Just quit bragging about it. On a site dedicated to understanding and interpreting pop culture and art, far too many folks seem proud of their philistine behavior.

"Luke in the original movie particularly, and even the second two Stars Wars pics before Lucas went off the rails, was a nobody who became a somebody by both faith/trust, and self-sacrifice and control (particularly the latter two movies)."

Except that he's not. Luke starts off as a mopey adolescent who's sure (or at least REALLY hopeful) that he's meant for something better than his ordinary life. He is subsequently told that not only is he correct, but that his greatness is innate: He has special abilities that he was born with, a member of a warrior-elite based mainly on who his father was. Same as King Arthur, Hercules, Christ, Harry Potter, the whole lot of them. It's the way these stories go – rail against them if you want, but you're railing against the entire mythic tradition of the human race

(continued)

Well said! There is good to be found in the Potter world, but I think the author fell victim to haste and pressure (as a result of the popularity), sloppiness (as you said recently, her editors let her get away with far too much), and lack of planning (despite her protestations to the contrary.)

She labors over trivial (but novel) details and then lets something like you describe lay fallow. She asks us to indulge her silly things and great length and then doesn't follow through by making those aspects significant. I feel a little cheated, and I think the material is a little as well.

Perhaps the "wingers" aren't as concerned or outraged by gay characters as you think they are.

My objection was that she threw it out after the last book was published. Looked like pandering. If you're going to have a gay character, and it's not needed as some sort of "surprise" later in the story, just describe the character as such and get on with the story.

Well, I like McDonalds (as well as steak). It may not be the best, but sometimes it hits the spot.

***SPOILER ALERT! If you ever plan on reading the books and want a surprise stop reading! You have been warned!***
Not sure if this was covered in the movies, but in one of the books it is brought out that Harry being the “Chosen One” was the result of a Schrodingers Cat sort of prophesy. It could have been Neville Longbottom. Voldemort killed Harry’s parents not Neville’s so Harry became the hero. Harry is not exceptional. He is lucky or unlucky depending on your point of view. Read the books.

Note: Much of the above information comes from the fact my wife reads/writes Harry Potter Fanfic. It’s trivia through ozmosis. I probably got some of it wrong.

Yup. Harry is explicitly pointed to as a mediocre wizard who struggles in school, but he makes the right choices when it counts. Actually, the characters in the book pointed out as being particularly talented are Dumbledore, Snape, and Voldemort, and the former two start out using their abilities selfishly, while Voldemort makes all the wrong choices. Dumbledore and Snape are admired AFTER they start to show moral character and bravery.

Really, I think Harry is a great protagonist for a book that children can read. He doesn't really have a huge moral journey, because he's basically a good kid, with minor, forgiveable flaws, to begin with. When he cheats or cuts curfew, as high school kids often do, he gets punished, as he very well should. If he didn't have flaws, he'd be a crappy, unrealistic character. On the other hand, while there are other characters that I, as an adult, find more interesting, I'd be troubled if my elementary school students were reading a book centered on someone who once joined a terrorist organization to gain power, before thinking better of it and undergoing massive sacrifice and bouts of guilt to redeem himself. Redemption and character development are great, but so is age appropriateness.

Not only does he hate it, but it drives a wedge between him and Ron in GoF. Ron is jealous because of everything that happens to Harry, and Harry is annoyed because he doesn't want this stuff to happen to him. He wants to just be a normal kid. But, as Optimus Prime said, fate rarely calls upon us at a time of our choosing.

I think the book version of Half Blood did a better job of displaying Harry's revulsion for the spell he used on Malfoy. Understandable though, considering that this far into the series they seem to expect that the audience is either composed of readers of the series or of people who at least follow the movies enough to know the essence of the characters. From his analysis, it doesn't appear that Mr. Smith falls into either of those categories.

It's fun, escapist fiction and great summer movie material, as is evidenced by the box office numbers in the midst of tough economic times. Is it Tolkien or Lewis? Of course not, but you'd be hard pressed to find many current authors that hold up to certified classics…that's what makes them classics.

To me, a life without reading isn't much a life at all. Tell me, does posting responses to internet blogs signify having a life? What does one need do in your mind in order to have a life? Does it have to be Hemingway (who by the way I find dreadfully dull) to have significance?

If you want a REAL "hero for the Entitled Generation", someone who has NOT had to conquer his own vanity, laziness and anger to get where he is, and someone who has been "cosseted" and told he is special from day one, someone who ignores ethics and someone who, when "(d)eploying his powers" finds that it " involves no more character or soul-searching than following a recipe", look no further than our President, Barack Hussein Obama.
Nancy Pelosi looks like she has not only EATEN Death, but asked for seconds.

You should give the rest of the series a try. The themes get more complex as the series progresses and I think you'll find it worthwhile. Most of the books can be found in thrift stores these days so no risk to your wallet!

Wow, no surprise that you're commenting on the themes of something you haven't even read.

Reminds me of people who can always find a reason to mention that "they don't even own a television."

"deserves to have her butt kicked by a serious editor."

It isn't just her that you can say this about. Look at every current popular writer and series of the last ten years. For young adults its Harry Potter and Twilight, and adults its Dan Brown who couldn't write a good piece of prose if his life depended on it. There used to be an assumption by the literati that if it was popular than it was junk writing. Now it seems to have been proven by the most recent entries in pop-fiction to become a truism.

I'm female and a HUGE Star Wars fan. Not so much a Harry Potter fan, though I do watch the movies on DVD. I see some of your points but your conclusions are a bit too generalized.

But he's discussing men and women. You can't discuss them without generalizing. It's like when one says "men like sports, women like to shop". One would be an idiot to believe it a maxim for the entire gender, but if we can't generalize things like this, or if we have to stop and preface every thing with an "in general" or "there are exceptions", then we've lost the ability to argue like adults.

As a fellow Gen X-er (b. 1969), I thank you. All of that self-esteem crap came later.

I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Smith.

There is a theme throughout the books, which is that sometimes you have to chose between what is right and what is easy. The character's choices have consequences. This is not unlike Big Hollywood. For most of y'all in show business, it is easier to keep your mouth shut and let the Janeane Garofalos speak for everyone. However it is not right. So you come here.

These books are written for children. It is also important to understand that they take place in Great Britain. They don't contain a lot of the touchy-feely-I'm-okay-you're-okay, drivel that you see in a lot of children's books. There is no lesson about moral relativism. And, they are fun to read.

There is not enough room here to go through all that! LOL!

In short:

Harry's story is the Hero's Journey that has existed for tens of thousands of years and that spans all cultures.

But, and not to ruin it for those that haven't read it, it's ultimately about Death, and our acceptance of it. It is that acceptance that helps Harry to win in the end. There are some Christian themes that are touched upon in dealing with that.

It is also about making the right choices, sticking by your friends, tolerance (but not in too "lefty" a way).

Ultimately, the books were a way for JKR to deal with the death of her mother from MS at 45 years of age. I think she took it harder than she thought, and these books I think were a carthasis for her and helped her deal with her grief.

Spare me the fanboy angst.

Having read the whole series for the sake of completion, all I can say is that this is the first set of books I've read where I've gradually begun loathing the protagonist. By the end, he's simply an overwrought selfish tactless emo little tick. This certainly annoys the other characters at some times, but they usually end up accepting his nonsense instead of telling him to grow up.

It takes an amazing amount of credulity to read that (admittedly entertaining) series, and come out with the cult-like fervor I see in the comments here. Turn the nerdrage off and think critically mm'kay? "You obviously didn't read the books" is a somewhat shaky assumption upon which to begin your arguments.

Yeah, I thought we conservatives didn't like "elitism" and that's exactly what it sounds like to me.

I would never want to have a conversation with someone who never watched any kind of TV or read popular literature. What the heck would be talk about? I mean, really. There is more to life than all the high-brow stuff. Which is fine and I can talk high brow when needed, but I also just like to chew the rag.

And funnily enough both LOTR and HP both hit on actions with tragic consequences (Voldemort's mother and the love potion, letting herself die, Voldemort in an orphange, Snape making the wrong decisions that ultimately cause the death of someone he loves) and life-driven purposes – Snape to redeem himself for Lily's death, Harry to come to terms with Death, Dumbldore to also redeem himself for some of his past mistakes with his sister and Grindelwald.

You see, you need to take the blinders off and stop thinking of it as "children's stories". The writing style is different and quite frankly, I think Tolkien goes on longer than he needs to. I've read plenty in my life and I find his style hard to get through. HP, though simple to read, is also very powerful if you open your mind to it and stop denigrating it and its author.

Chris E.– unless you're just Whiskey under another name, as I suspect—Whiskey's essay is based upon a ridiculous claim for which there is no support:

"This is why if you look at the Star Wars fanbase and the Potter fanbase, the former is almost exclusively male (they respond well to the basic themes of the first movie series — how to be a hero) and the latter almost exclusively female (which responds well to Rowlings themes of how to have relationships). "

I've asked him (you) before to provide evidence that Harry Potter fans are "almost exclusively female," and he (you) refuse to do so.

These, and many more, mischaracterizations and overgeneralizations of women, without a shred of evidence (and much evidence refuting same, such as the fact that women are more likely to be religious than men are) leads me to the conclusion that Whiskey is a misogynist.

They're both generalizations. A lie would be if he knew it to be false. Use a dictionary.

Then you did YOUR job as a great parent making sure that your daughter took the next step. I know of too many mothers who were happy to just let the reading settle at "easy" material.

Im no more snarky than what I have seen HP fans be about people who criticize the books. Snarking back at me is no skin off my nose! You and others have only had a few talking points about the books that Ive seen whereas me and a few others have made valid points that are critical of the books…if JKR had put more thought into her writing and really believed in the smarts of the children reading it, she wouldnt have been so lazy. CS Lewis didnt make half the assumptions about his audience that JKR and Narnia is one of the best loved worlds in the imaginations of children. HE knew how to write. Im cynical and a bit scornful of someone who doesnt take pride in their writing style – it snarks of condescension.

I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. A product of ignorance and misogyny, then.

Whether or not whiskey's claims regarding fan-bases are accurate, from what little I've read of the Potter series (couldn't stomach it) versus Star Wars (all we have to do is watch Triumph to know that whiskey's claims regarding the Star Wars fan-base are probably pretty accurate) I think whiskey is rather on-the-mark regarding the content of those two series. (Horrible run-on sentence, I apologize). It's like watching "Thelma & Louise" – that ending was, I thought, *obviously* written by a man. Reading the script for "Brokeback Mountain," it was obvious that the themes came from a woman. Looking it up, I found out that the short story was, in fact, written by a woman.

Men and women are different, as whiskey claims, and certainly NOT superior or inferior, one to the other. Just different (I, for one, think that's a GOOD thing). Yes, these are generalizations. Yes, one can always pick outliers or extreme cases to attempt to argue against generalizations. Does that invalidate the generalizations? No, because they are, in fact, generalizations and in no way attempt to claim universal authority in all situations and all under all conditions.

I don't think there is anything wrong in arguing using generalizations as along as we acknowledge they are generalizations and always allow for individual differences/outliers. We do it all the time, anyway. And the use of generalizations can be very constructive in discussing broad concepts. Here, I think the use of generalizations is warranted and, I think, accurate.

the sinner,

Patrick

Harry Potter is a new breed of superhero – the metro-sexual hero. It came from the mind of a woman author.

As far as I can tell, the scene in which Harry uses the book to make the potion involves a "test," or perhaps a "contest". Without the book, we can assume Harry wouldn't have been able to leap ahead of the other students, and therefore wouldn't have won the lucky juice. You can twist it any way you want, but that won't change the fact that he used someone else's crib sheet, pure and simple.

What I got from the part about the old textbook was not that it's cheating.
Harry was told to refer to the textbook for recipes. What he had obtained was a copy of the book that was loaded with marginalia written by someone who really understood the subject, probably a good deal better than the book's authors. He tried sharing the tips, which were not well received by his classmates because they were being asked to diverge from the approved textbook. Having the book, in terms of its effects on Harry's grade in Potions, was materially not much different than if he had been able to spend 5 hours a week getting one-on-one tutoring after class, from Snape.

The point of this thread of the story is not to justify cheating but to point out that, for just about any skill you want to discuss, getting into the mind of a real master can result in sudden improvements, but at the same time these people are not saints to be imitated in every aspect of life. That's what I got from it anyway.

What I find interesting about the series is that in certain ways Rowling subverts her own overtly professed ideology — the way the government Ministry of Magic is mostly obstacle, then eventually antagonist, and must be circumvented by the Order of the Phoenix. This is not a leftist narrative – if it were, it would be the government that ultimately saves the day. On the other hand, the author's ideology does make it through in other ways.

whiskey, you nailed it. thanks for putting it into words.

Mr. Rogers, Fraggle Rock, Sweet Pickles — contrary to what a fellow gen-x'er says below, we were the first generation in post-war America to be swirled around in the progressive petri dish. I'd say our up-bringing was marked by a concerted effort in our cultural and educational experiences to "actualize" us. Blargh, I say. The only thing it did was inject a huge anti-authoritarian streak. A "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," MTV loving, devil-may-care attitude towards the very people trying to inculcate progressive values into our "heads full of mush," to borrow a phrase from the Limbaugh lexicon. A side-effect of all that "carpe diem" brow-beating was the idea that we're "special." We know it's true: Fred Rogers told us so.

One HUGE difference between Boomers and post-Boomers: A lack of domestic tumult. We have no civil rights movement, no Vietnam, no Watergate, etc. So we invent things: Anti-Bush protests, the fervor we have for the environment, etc. The truth is, we haven't truly been challenged as a generation.

Except for my cohorts who have plunged headlong into the war on terror. The kids in the military. If there is any hope for my generation, it lies almost exclusively with the men and women who answered the call on 9/11 — and before! These guys are our future statesmen and captains of industry. They're our best and brightest. They have come to the conclusion all us post-Boomers must come to eventually, or else perish: No one's going to solve our problems for us.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm in a bidding war on eBay for a Castle Greyskull, and I have to watch old episodes of Nickelodeon shows on YouTube. At work.

…without doing a thing to earn them!

That part was cut to ensure a G rating.

LotR towers about everything in the genre. Having said that, there is something to what Kyle Smith says but I don´t think it is that clear-cut. By and large, the HP books are good reads and they certainly won´t do any harm.

I've never read or seen "Brokeback Mountain" or "Thelma & Louise," but I have read the Harry Potter books.

"Control of fear, acceptance of death and loss, sticking to the right thing, of honor, of duty, and so on, even when they are very difficult and emotionally draining." Whiskey characterizes these themes as "male" and thus foreign to the Harry Potter universe. That's simply incorrect, and laughably so, to anyone who has read the books. I'm surprised that you think Whiskey's "on-the-mark" about this, given that you admit you haven't read them, but I don't have a problem with the rest of what you've said.. But it's clear that Whiskey himself is unfamiliar with the books, their themes, and their readership, and he's making himself look foolish by making these unfounded claims.

DD being gay (or what JKR really said was that she always "thought of him" as gay) does not change one iota of the story. Not one. It has no real relevance. DD and Grindelwald as good friends works just as well and any love DD may have had for him was irrelevant beyond the fact that the corresponded, spent time together and had stupid notions about Muggles.

DD had to deal with things more directly personal – his sister, his mother, his brother, Grindelwald and what he did. And then Voldemort. He did witness a lot of horrors including the death of his sister that he may have caused directly, and all the while he tried to keep a quiet profile so that he could find a way to fix it all.

Why does it have to be anything like LOTR to be good? All of these stories have similar themes of good v. evil, friendship, loyalty, etc. etc. They are the Hero's Journey told differently but really the same.

Why does one have to be better than the other? Why can't they just be "different"?

Fine, you read it.

Fine, you didn't like it.

It doesn't make the rest of us "fans" any dumber than you, "mm'kay"?

Condescending much?

Elitist much?

Actually what was nice about the HP series was that in the end, love, not violence won the final battle. And mind you, I am no bleeding heart liberal or feminazi, and I certainly wasn't when I read the books. It was just nice to see something from a different point of view, from a female point of view. Unless you are so chauvinistic that you can't comprehend that a woman can have a POV and that POV can be helpful?

Harry a metro-sexual? Again, the question must be asked – did you read the books? Certainly he's not as macho as other heroes. He is kind and considerate, but certainly willing to fight evil when it arises.

In the end, when the weight of the world is on his shoulders, he doesn't whine or cry. When he realizes that he must sacrifice himself (not knowing that in the end he would be okay), he walks bravely into the woods, only calling upon his parents, godfather and good friend, for strength. And he gives up his life in order to save everyone.

I hardly see that as metrosexual, unless you think Jesus was metrosexual in some way.

The HP series started out as a fantasy literature for pre-teen children. Then children BEGGED their parents to read the stories to them and for them. My brother's children MADE him read one HP book (he was not just into it and he wasn't into LOTR as well). Not all adults are just into HP series but most were pleased with the fact that the HP series encouraged a great number of children to read literature, fantasy or otherwise.

It is a subjective opinion of mine and you have to learn accept that. I'm not dissing HP series or JKR, just pointing out the obvious differences between between JRRT and JKR for their works based on their life experiences.

I don't see him as a Christ-figure or superhero at all. He's more like Frodo in that he's entrusted with power (or something powerful for him to guard and dispose of) and his "destiny"–in connection with that power–sets him apart from the others of his kind. He has certain qualities that make his character endearing and his experiences along the way test and mold his character, further developing him as he gets closer to his destination (or final encounter with the "dark lord" Voldemort, in HP's case).
That'smy take on Harry Potter's character and the gist of the HP canon. It's an engaging story, and I enjoyed reading it. It does resonate with its readers–in large part because of the kind of person and the kind of challenge represented by Harry Potter, whose friends (like Samwise Gamgee, Merry & Pippin and the rest) are indispensable to the story. Harry would not have been set apart in the first place had not his own mother sacrificed her own life to save him. That sacrifice defeated Voldemort and left an indelible mark on Harry. The scar is more a sign of how sacrificial love can conquer evil than how special Harry Potter is.

Readership in general is overwhelmingly female when you're talking about adult readers of fiction. Harry Potter is no different. I guess my evidence (working in a bookstore for the last ten years) is anecdotal, but the boys were just as into the books as the girls, and very few adults were buying them for themselves. Those that did were generally women. I'm not sure why it is so outrageous that I ask Whiskey to back up a factual claim he has made. (I, on the other hand, am making no claim about the readership at all. I'm questioning what seems dubious to me.)

El Gordo, you don't understand the way Whiskey works. He doesn't look at data and come up with a theory, he has a preconception and makes up data to support it. (Chris E. has told me I mustn't call that lying. It's—I don't know—promoting faleshoods.)

What "insights" can be based on not having read (or comprehended) the books? Or from "generalizations" such as 'women are left-wingers' or 'most women are anti-Christian?' I can't imagine that they'd be of any value.

I dunno, I think Snape would have said it in fewer words.

Chris sorry to say it but in this issue, Mike is correct.

True. And Hermione tells him that over and over again, and Harry feels rather bad about his unearned reputation in potions. When he gives up the book, his potions skills obviously decline, and it becomes rather obvious that he wasn't really extra talented in this area. This is made much clearer in the book.

However, I would personally justify his use of the directions in that first potion he made. It was the first day of classes, he had ended up with a book that was written all over it, and everyone was screwing it up. He took a chance with following directions that could have been entirely wrong, and it paid off. When he continued to follow the directions and get a lot of credit he didn't deserve, that was clearly wrong, and the book suggests as much.

I've already responded to several other posters on here, but I' going to go out on a limb here and also present a brief argument for the conservatism of Harry Potter.

The most conservative book in the series IMO is the Order of the Phoenix. In the story, Voldemort has returned, Harry and Dumbledore know he has returned, and they argue for preparation and perhaps even a pre-emptive strike. The government, however, refuses to acknowledge this and, together with the press (which is consistently shown to be practically evil throughout the series) vilify and demonize Harry and Dumbledore, and attempt to appease whatever hints of dark arts are out there. Meanwhile, Voldemort is lying low and building up his strength. The government, in an effort to control what kids are learning, begins a centralizing takeover of Hogwarts, banning the teaching of actual defensive spells and initiating all sorts of stupid little rules. This government takeover of education has devastating effects and is regarded as an unnatural and unlawful extension of governemnet power. Professor Umbridge is a horrible government bureaucrat who is obsessed with making everything look cute and fluffy and little-girly, but at the same time has a limitless desire for tyranny. The government is also obsessed with political correctness, putting up statues showing all the "magical brethren" living in perfect harmony, even though this is obviously a fantasy. Harry starts a private militia, training in defense against government orders to be ready when the real danger comes (2nd Amendment anyone?). Harry, while a hero, is also a teenager, and becomes a bit of a jerk for a while, dealing as he is with all sorts of hormones and the weight of the world on his soldiers. This is shown to be a natural, but nevertheless irritating phase, where he expects things from others that just aren't going to happen. Hermione, continuing a project began in GoF, campaigns for the liberation of house-elfs. While this has some merit, as house-elfs are often treated horribly, they don't actually WANT to be freed, and in the end it is a silly political campaign symbolic of many that young people get into when they are overly idealistic and ends up causing as much harm as it does good.

So right there, in the 5th book alone, you have arguments against appeasement, pro-defense, anti-overreaching government, anti-bureaucracy, pro-private schools, ani-PC, and against the selfishness and stupidity of teenage desires. Then, in later books, she maps out the varying philosophies of the greatest Dark Wizards of all time. Voldemort sets up a regime clearly reminiscent of the Nazis, with requirements for pure blood, prison camps, and the slaughter of those not in the dominant race. Grindelwald, a wizard defeated many years before, had a different philosophy, justifying everything "For the Greater Good." He proposed a revolution, putting wizards in power over the whole world because they would be able to govern most justly and correctly, and he didn't mind breaking heads to get there. Dumbledore himself was seduced by this philosophy in early life, believing himself capable of changing the world for the better by force. To my mind, these two governing strategies are quite obviously symbolic of Nazism and Communism. While Nazism is obviously bad, it is interesting that she also includes an indictment of Communism and the arrogance of many intellectuals who flirted with it and even outright supported it. Even tyranny for the greater good results in worse tyranny.

While I do not think J.K. Rowling herself is necessarily conservative, her themes and messages can clearly be seen in a conservative light, and I think many children will benefit from learning them.

I absolutely accept that. I'm just glad that someone admits it rather than bleeting on about how it's the be all and end all of all opinions. I do appreciate that fact, because I agree that many opinions are grounded in both subjective and objective aspects and it's good when people can just agree to disagree.

Of course the two writers had different experiences, but that in and of itself does not make a better writer, IMHO. Tolkein, it is my understanding, was writing about industrialization and war and his dislike of both, as well as other themes. JKR was writing about Death and how to cope with it, as well as other themes.

Again, doesn't make one better than the other just based on that. I think that was all I was trying to get at.

Cheers.

My only point being that I don't understand the need to build one writer up by tearing another down. I understand if you weren't doing that, but others do and my defense of the "underdog" is more about a general defense of "underdogs" and a loathing for that kind of "competitiveness". If Tolkein is a good writer and storyteller (and it's obvious that he is), then he will stand on his own without the need to tear JKR down. And vice versa.

In other words, can't we all just get along. LOL!

Cheers.

Excellent post, Stephen. Excellent analysis. And I think you are 100% correct. I always saw OoTP, and especially DD's Army as just that – very conserative in nature.

Although I think JKR has been supportive of Gordon Brown (hardly a conservative), I wonder if somewhere subconsciously there is a conservative just waiting to come out. LOL!

It always struck me as strange that JKR is a liberal but her books are so conservative in nature. I wonder if she ever feels conflicted about that? Perhaps she is in the conservative closet?

Whiskey,

Do ya have to turn EVERYTHING into a battle of the sexes?

I couldn't agree more. "The Old Man and the Sea" was ice cream on a lazy summer afternoon compared to "The Sound and the Fury", both of which were assigned to me in my AP English class in high school. I didn't care for either, really, but I'd choose Hemingway over Faulkner any day of the week. The fact that Faulkner is considered one of the Great American Authors boggles my mind, but all I can do is shrug and resign myself to the fact that I just don't get him.

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