A Fan in Angst

July 28, 2009

I’ve read every book in the Harry Potter series since they came out more than a decade ago. These are not the most cerebral books known to man since their scope and prose aren’t even comparable to Tolkien or Lewis’s works, but they are definitely enjoyable. Harry Potter appeals to everyone’s fantasies and emotions, transcending the barriers of gender and age in doing so (like Twilight, lol). I am not a huge fan, but I appreciate Harry Potter for what is: an entertaining brainless read.

 

With that said, I want to direct your attention to an article that Jessica Zafra wrote two days ago at the Philippine Star called “Technology is Magic“. In it she compares Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy with the Harry Potter series. She says:

With scope comes the stakes. In Rings the whole world is in peril: if Sauron wins, all the races of Middle Earth and particularly men will be enslaved. In Harry Potter if Voldemort wins, there will be a change of management at Hogwart’s school. (At least that is what I have gleaned from the movies, which are said to be inferior to the books.)

It will probably be bad for regular people too, but in the movies a kind of apartheid exists between the wizards and ordinary humans (“muggles”). Occasionally we witness the casual destruction by dark forces of some famous London landmark, but few in the wizard dimension seem too perturbed. Since we are left in the dark about what’s at stake (Do we lose all our noses?) the war between good and evil has all the urgency of a battle for control of the high school drama guild.

 

Ms. Zafra admits (albeit implicitly) that she hasn’t read Harry Potter, which explains why she sounds quite clueless in the article. This is something that every Harry Potter reader knows: if Voldemort wins, both the supernatural and Muggle worlds—the whole planet— will be enslaved. Voldemort has particular hatred towards Muggle-born wizards and Muggles in general (hi Hitler!). He is not afraid to kill, he is ruthless, he is ambitious, he is evil. He is as much a villain as Sauron is. It’s sad that this wasn’t captured on film, but yeah, if you’ve read the book, you know it. It is a basic fact. It’s not just a change of Management at Hogwarts that’s at stake.

 

Ms. Zafra ads:

 

Then it hit me like a troll’s fist: Harry Potter is essentially elitist, while The Lord of the Rings is populist. I know how odd this sounds. Tolkien was a conservative, a member of the privileged class, and a defender of the old order. J.K. Rowling is a billionaire now, but at the time she wrote her novels she was a struggling single mother. But the hero of Tolkien’s epic is not Aragorn the reluctant king, Legolas the brave elf, or Gandalf, it’s little Frodo Baggins.

The smallest, most ordinary, least remarkable creature in the world changes the course of history. Power resides in the community of men, elves, dwarves and hobbits united by valor and sacrifice.

In contrast Rowling’s Harry Potter is a top student at a school so exclusive that ordinary people are unaware of its existence. There he competes with the other gifted kids, and by the sixth movie he is acknowledged as the chosen one who will save the world from the unspeakable evil. Power resides in one.

 

Harry Potter is not a top student. He’s actually pretty mediocre compared to other students at Hogwarts (except in Quidditch, sheesh). He’s just an average boy who just happens to always be at the right place at the right time and know all the right people. He was acknowledged as the chosen one, in a prophecy, but all he actually HAD to do was to literally give himself up to Voldemort and the rest was taken care of by his friends. Hogwarts isn’t an exclusive school, at least in the wizarding world. At a certain age, all wizards in the UK and Ireland are invited to attend. Therefore, it is erroneous to claim that Harry Potter is essentially elitist. It’s just a series about a, um, lucky lucky boy. I don’t quite know what to call it.

 

Ms. Zafra’s main points were 1.) Harry Potter is nooooo waaaay near the level of Lord of the Rings and 2.) technology is magic. My problem is that the arguments she made to support the former are moot. Why? Because she is comparing books she read to books she didn’t read (I’m not taking the level of comparison to films because she mentioned Tom Bombadil and barrow-wights, which aren’t in them). In doing so, she makes arguments that aren’t valid to support a—and I admit this—valid claim. An article like this from a journalist I respect is quite disillusioning. 

 

I know, I know, I shouldn’t have nitpicked. All this angst isn’t coming from a Harry Potter fan—I was a Jessica Zafra fan.