Harry Potter: Cultural phenomenon or get a life you tosser?
Back from my weekend wedding a little sunburned and a tad hungover.
I was perusing The Observer and I thought this article might interest some of the Harry Potter fans on my f/list. It's basically an account of a journalist's visit to Lumos, the Harry Potter symposium in Las Vegas. I have to say, personally I agree with her on an awful lot of things, especially the faux academia that's sprung up around the books and the completely wanky, superfluous lit crit. Frankly if you pull anything out of any book and create a literary theory around it if you try hard enough, it doesn't suddenly make that book any more worthy.
Anyway, I'm interested to hear peoples thoughts on the article, especially as the journalist focuses on women in the fandom and the phenomenon that is Harry slash.
Here's a quote to tempt you in:
"it's when I go to 'Out of Bounds: Transgressive Fiction' that I get really annoyed. It's a seminar analysing Hermione Granger-Professor Snape fan fiction. That is to say, a relationship between a teenage girl and a fortysomething man, which often, it transpires, takes the form of a rape narrative. There are 200 women in the room. And a whole lot of talk about female empowerment and gender reversals, but, frankly, if it was 200 men talking about rape narratives involving underage schoolchildren, it would be a matter for the police, and I don't think this is empowering anybody."
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1837941,00.html
I was perusing The Observer and I thought this article might interest some of the Harry Potter fans on my f/list. It's basically an account of a journalist's visit to Lumos, the Harry Potter symposium in Las Vegas. I have to say, personally I agree with her on an awful lot of things, especially the faux academia that's sprung up around the books and the completely wanky, superfluous lit crit. Frankly if you pull anything out of any book and create a literary theory around it if you try hard enough, it doesn't suddenly make that book any more worthy.
Anyway, I'm interested to hear peoples thoughts on the article, especially as the journalist focuses on women in the fandom and the phenomenon that is Harry slash.
Here's a quote to tempt you in:
"it's when I go to 'Out of Bounds: Transgressive Fiction' that I get really annoyed. It's a seminar analysing Hermione Granger-Professor Snape fan fiction. That is to say, a relationship between a teenage girl and a fortysomething man, which often, it transpires, takes the form of a rape narrative. There are 200 women in the room. And a whole lot of talk about female empowerment and gender reversals, but, frankly, if it was 200 men talking about rape narratives involving underage schoolchildren, it would be a matter for the police, and I don't think this is empowering anybody."
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1837941,00.html