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Alex Merced
POPC 470
Issue Paper
Alex Merced on Andrew Blake on Harry Potter
During my time doing research to find a solid connection between Harry potter and the Chronicles of Narnia I stumbled across a very interesting book, The Irresistible Rise of Harry potter, by Andrew Baker. Many of the subject material in the book really hit home with material in class and decided a more appropriate essay would be an overview and analysis of this book. The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter by Andrew Blake is a very relevant book to class and I plan to analyze it's relevance by outlining some of th key chapters in the book and connecting them to class discussions.
Before I begin getting into different chapters of this book by Andrew Blake, I will summarize his overall intentions with the book. In this book Andre Blake intends to explain that Harry Potters success is beyond a great marketing effort and want to get at the cultural significance of it's success, which has been the overall theme of our class especially as pop culture scholars. In the introduction of th book, Blake brings up the argument that some has brought about better narratives of a similar structure not getting the same attention making reference to The Worst With Series which we discussed in class. In the end Blake presents his thesis, “ It is, in short, because Joanne Rowling's creation hits the spot by addressing many of the anxieties in our changing political and cultural world, and if we are going to understand why Harry Potter has become a global hero we have to see him in his times – namely, 1997 and after.” (Blake 4)
There are four chapters of this book I plan on spending a special focus on, Harry Potter and the Reinvention of the Past, Harry Potter and the Temples of Gloom, Harry Potter and the Cultural Turn, and Harry Potter and the Old Reader. Each of these chapters deal with important concepts in cultural studies, and specific examples relevant to our class.
“As Benedict Anderson has claimed, the “imagined community' is crucial to modern nationhood. An England imaging though it's past can hardly be said to exist in the present.” Andrew Blake
In the Chapter Harry Potter and the Reinvention of the Past, Andrew Black Brings up the concept of Imagined communities. The idea of the imagined community is very important in the world of cultural studies in the understand the creation of the nation-state, and the understand of nationalism when there is no sovereign nation. You have the idea of shared experiences, culture, and values that create a community of people who are not truly a community. For example, I'm Puerto Rican and in talking to other Puerto Ricans I find similar experiences and thoughts reverberate due to the function of our signifiers in society so we feel part of something bigger, yet there is no bigger entity. As a Puerto Rican there is no community meetings I must attend or dues I must pay it's all in my head and in head of those who feel a similar sense of nationalism, it's imagined, an imagined community. In this chapter, Blake uses the concept of Imagined communities to explain the current situation of England in relation of the United kingdom and it's losing it's hold as a nation. With the formation of the United Kingdom, England has no legal existence, Blake thinks this make England lose it's notion of England and Englishness. It's in this dilemma where Harry Potter functions to keep the Nation of England alive in the hearts of it's nationalist by creating a new “English” text. While this explains why the popularity of the book began to grow so large in England, the Harry Potter books have become a global phenomenon and this won't fulfill the same nationalist function in all it's consumers. This has tied into class discussions many times when people bring up that it's an “english” text, which will plays an even great roll in subsequent chapters of Andrew Blakes work. This chapter of the The Irresistible rise of Harry Potter is relevant in many discussions in the class identity and community ideology like when we talked about Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft and the individual priority in the community context.
“Reading, hearing or viewing Harry's Adventures, they will encounter a group of friends who read in order to act; but (a) this usually means they break the school rules when necessary for their purposes, and (b) the hero always knows what to do anyhow, so he's one of them.” Andrew Blake (Blake pg 46)
In the following chapter, Harry Potter and the Temples of Gloom goes back in time to the era of when the first Harry Potter book to set up a context for the English school scenario fostered as later books came. Blake documents that as Rowling was finishing up the first Harry Potter book, a dramatic change in literacy rates between the genders began. This became terror for the nation as they thought this was the sign of the feminisation of england. In culture studies gender ideology is always a very important part of studies, which we have discussed in class discussing issues such gender ideology when it comes to character like Hermione and such, I find it interesting that Andrew Blake suggests that Harry Potter is a representative of this change in English ideology. This makes me think about Harry and many of the other characters in the story and think twice about their gender ideology. First off, let's take a look at Harry, not hyper-masculine in any shape or form except for maybe his ability on the quidditch team yet this is put into questions when you bring up the fact that he's playing in the only non-combative (thus less masculine) position on the whole team. Even further, the rest of the teams job is to protect him at time, although the role of protecting Harry can be attributed more to his pseudo royal status more than maybe a feminisation of Harry Potter. Non of the other male characters in this story are at all body builders or in any way hyper-masculine and usually seem to have a sort of delicate air themselves. So when I think about all this, I can see how Andrew Blake can be suggesting that the Harry Potter narratives evolution reflects this change in English school systems and performance, which actually brings many issues of gender and gender ideology. It's even more amazing now how Harry Potter could attain it's global audience without any real semblance to hyper masculinity. Could this be signs that a larger global phenomenon of dehyper-masculinazation is occurring in global pop culture. Quite possibly, many pop culture forms are challenging the ideology of hyper-masculinity that could lead for such a gender neutral ideology to have the impact it has had. I've written before about emos music resistance against hyper masculinity (which is still oppressive), so one could possibly link the growth in emo music to the growth in Harry potter. It's these kinda questions that I get when i take my cultural analysis and mix it with the content in Andrew Blakes and relate it to what we've worked on in class. Andrew Blake book does have a lot of great material that can be cross analyzed to create new theories and ideas as to ideology and Harry Potter.
“We want the stuff to be mysterious, not to know how it works – even when we know it has been 'created' using computer software designed for the manipulation of words, sounds or images.” - Andrew Blake (Blake pg 47)
In our class we spent probably more time than on anything else on discussing magic and it's role in relation the ideology of the fans and author of the narrative. Andrew Blake in the chapter Harry Potter and Cultural Turn in The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter has very interesting take on the role of magic in Harry Potter. First off, Blake begins by addressing how the world of Harry Potter not only addresses our beliefs in magic, but our anxieties about creativity. Essentially what I got form it is that Blake is trying to say what makes something magic is not knowing how it is done. The disconnect between the consumer and possibility creates an element of mystery which is all too appealing and is the true art. This appeal of mystery and creativity is supposed to explain why magic is magical in the world of Harry Potter, where people can just chant incantations and things happen without any real explanation of why or how other than an incantation as for how it occurred. This remind me a lot of in class and how people will so feverishly try to protect the magical boundaries of Harry Potter and come up for some very idealistic rationals about magic in Harry Potter, such as the idea that the magic is knock against science. Andrew Blake makes a very interesting point that magic is magic cause it's mysterious, and it's this mystery that makes art appealing and to this end Rowling does a very good job of showing how much of an art magic is.
“And Despite the Hype, Harry continues to be a cultural icon precisely because of his place in this interconnected and relatively autonomous world of popular knowledge, which works outside the official and commercial realms, and often defies them” - Andrew Blake (Blake 66)
In the final chapter I am to take a look at, Harry Potter and the Old Reader, Andrew Blake makes the above statement which brings up the most underlying values I believe of a pop culture scholar. In the years I've been studying pop culture you see the fundamental question of how much influence does the media and marketing have on the local and global community that exclusive of shared ideology. Being a marketing minor I can say that that we scholars were right all along that ideology doesn't work along the lines of popular culture but that popular culture works in contraints of ideology. Appropriation, globalization, adaptation, these are all phenomenon that instead of showing the opposite actually show how changing ideologies shape popular culture, not how changing popular culture shapes ideology.
“And so on – for at least another decade, presumably, as the proposed seven books and their presumed matching movies spiral upwards past each other into ever-higher sales statistics. Why? And More specifically – why books, tapes, films, and merchandise against a set of reference points – including the ways in which we think about the past, eduction, childhood and adulthood, work and creativity in the cultural industries, the consumer, and the reader. And, yes, magic.” - Andre Blake (Blake pg 2-3)
In the writing of Andrew Blake we saw many relevant theories and concepts that tie into class and the many discussions we've had. In the pantheon of Harry Potter literature I felt I got a lot out of reading this book and that it has a lot to offer in the understand of Harry Potter and in the world of applying Popular Culture Studies concepts and theories. In the first chapter I looked at, Harry Potter and the reinvention of the Past we saw the concept of Imagined Communities take place in a world with a dying English nation and Harry Potter working as a new text to help reclaim English nationalism and revitalize even though it's legally dissapeared with the formation of the UK. In the Next chapter, Harry Potter and the Temples of Gloom, we discussed gender ideology and how it applies to the feminisation of england which was heralded by shifting school performance to a female dominant culture and how Harry potter can be seen as a gender neutral text. In my take on Harry Potter and the Cultural Turn I was able to connect Andrew Blakes ideas on magic and creativity and connect them to class discussion and the role of magic in Harry Potter, discussing that art is valued for it's mysteriousness, and it's this mysteriousness that makes magic work which is what makes things function so well in the world of Harry Potter. In the last chapter I focused on, Harry potter and the Old Reader, I began to discuss the notion of the context of popular culture relative to the media and hype. All this point out many things relevant to our class such as the relevance of Harry potter as an ideological text that makes reference to the context in which it was created as well as a living breathing application of al the concepts we have studied as popular culture scholars.
Works Cited
Blake, Andrew. “The Irresistible Rise of harry Potter”. Verso. 2002.
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