Harry Potter vs. Iron Maiden
So since I've been traveling in England I've taken a liking to the English heavy-metal band Iron Maiden. Actually it's probably more accurate to say I've fallen head-over-heels in love with Iron Maiden and everything they stand for. If you've been paying attention, this is why I've begun to stick references to Iron Maiden in some of my Abridged entries. But the thing is, Iron Maiden's music, if you look closely, actually covers much of the same subject matter as the later Harry Potter books do. I think the difference is that Iron Maiden have always promoted themselves as a dark, dismal band, whereas Harry Potter started out as a fairly light-hearted children's series that could get dark and scary when it needed to, so while it makes sense for Iron Maiden to write a depressing song about life and death and choices, when Harry Potter brings up death it just feels...wrong.
Either way, though, the similarities are there. If you look at Iron Maiden's body of work, their favorite topic seems to be death, followed closely by war (with much overlap, of course). Dreams and madness are also common themes, and every so often they'll touch upon religion and spirituality (usually in the context of war and/or death). Gee, don't those themes sound familiar? They have songs that talk about other things too, of course, but the topics I mentioned above form the bulk of their collected works.
Even better, the sheer number of different angles with which Iron Maiden explore these topics means that at least some direct comparisons can be made. To use death as an example, Iron Maiden have pretty much covered all the bases as to how one might talk about death--they have works dealing with the death of young people ("Hallowed Be Thy Name," most of the songs about soldiers, the "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" rock opera) and works dealing with the death of older people ("No More Lies," "The Legacy," "Starblind"). Some of the characters die during war; others die in peacetime. Some songs explore the concept of an afterlife; some don't. Some songs touch upon suicide ("Still Life," and "Starblind" may be from the perspective of a suicide depending on how you interpret some of the lyrics), but this does not seem to be a preferred topic. It should be noted that Iron Maiden give just as much sympathy to the soldiers, who try to stay alive even if they don't succeed, as they do to, for instance, the narrator of "Hallowed Be Thy Name," who has no choice but to accept death.
"Hallowed Be Thy Name," by the way, is probably what Harry Potter's trip to go face Voldemort should have looked like. It's an absolutely gorgeous song that follows a young man (whom I imagine to be not much older than Harry is in the last book, though admittedly this is never spelled out) on death row, and what he goes through as he gets closer and closer to death. Eventually he's able to come to terms with his death by drawing from his spiritual beliefs, and concludes that he has nothing to fear from death. However, the song makes it very, very clear that going to his death is a terrifying, harrowing experience for him, and we certainly never see anyone but him try to present his death as anything other than bad (the ghosts of his parents don't appear to tell him that they're glad he's about to die young, and anything he says about death not being a big deal can be played off as his own attempts at reassuring himself). So the takeaway message is basically that people can find hope in even the direst of circumstances, without the unfortunate implications of Harry Potter that basically stipulate that everyone should be prepared to accept death at pretty much any time.
I also see an interesting parallel with Harry Potter and the "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" album. That album follows the adventures of, in essence, a magical seventh son (who is even referred to as the chosen one at one point) whose visions enable him to predict the future. Trouble is, nobody listens to him when he tries to warn his village of an impending disaster, and when the disaster happens he's the one who gets blamed. Doesn't that sound rather a lot like Harry Potter's trouble with his own strange visions and dreams from Book 5 in particular?
However, there is one key difference between these artists: Iron Maiden, over the course of their careers, stress the importance of free will. The narrator of "Hallowed Be Thy Name" may have had no choice but to die, but its successor, "Heaven Can Wait," is about yet another young man who gets himself called back from the brink of death because he isn't ready to die yet. Since then, the band has promoted more and more heavily the message that you shouldn't simply be a pawn of fate or devote yourself unquestioningly to a religion or cause or whatever, but should think and live for yourself--in complete opposition to what Harry Potter promotes, which seems to be, in essence, to have blind faith in someone with nothing to back it up, and sacrifice yourself as soon as that someone tells you you're meant to. According to Iron Maiden's music, this kind of attitude is immature, and part of being an adult is taking your own initiative.
Along those same lines, Iron Maiden also promote the idea that anyone can turn good or evil, as opposed to Rowling's view that someone might be good, evil, or some blend that will never change. This is basically the point of their song "The Thin Line Between Love and Hate," but other songs promote similar ideas. Given that Maiden have an entire song dedicated to presenting a sympathetic view of Lucifer ("Lord of Light," and it's weepy beyond belief) they'd most likely be horrified by the idea of portraying any person or group the way the Harry Potter books portray Slytherins.
Speaking of "Lord or Light," the song contains a verse that goes "We are not worthy in your black and blazing eyes/We gather demons in the mirror every day/The bridge of darkness casts a shadow on us all/And all our sins to you we give this day." In context, what this seems to be saying is, people do awful things, and rather than own up to them they blame them all on Lucifer. Even better, there's another lyric, implied to be from Lucifer's perspective, that goes "Free your soul and let it fly/Mine was caught, I couldn't try." GEE, DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?!
So yeah. But above all I think it's interesting that so many artistic similarities between these two seemingly unrelated artists exist (even if they're not always used for the same purposes). I wonder if it's a cultural thing? I don't know how old JKR is but I do know that the band members of Iron Maiden were born in the mid-late 1950's, shortly after World War II. So...is it a British thing? Or a Brits-born-in-the-wake-of-world-wars thing? Or is it just coincidence?
Either way, though, the similarities are there. If you look at Iron Maiden's body of work, their favorite topic seems to be death, followed closely by war (with much overlap, of course). Dreams and madness are also common themes, and every so often they'll touch upon religion and spirituality (usually in the context of war and/or death). Gee, don't those themes sound familiar? They have songs that talk about other things too, of course, but the topics I mentioned above form the bulk of their collected works.
Even better, the sheer number of different angles with which Iron Maiden explore these topics means that at least some direct comparisons can be made. To use death as an example, Iron Maiden have pretty much covered all the bases as to how one might talk about death--they have works dealing with the death of young people ("Hallowed Be Thy Name," most of the songs about soldiers, the "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" rock opera) and works dealing with the death of older people ("No More Lies," "The Legacy," "Starblind"). Some of the characters die during war; others die in peacetime. Some songs explore the concept of an afterlife; some don't. Some songs touch upon suicide ("Still Life," and "Starblind" may be from the perspective of a suicide depending on how you interpret some of the lyrics), but this does not seem to be a preferred topic. It should be noted that Iron Maiden give just as much sympathy to the soldiers, who try to stay alive even if they don't succeed, as they do to, for instance, the narrator of "Hallowed Be Thy Name," who has no choice but to accept death.
"Hallowed Be Thy Name," by the way, is probably what Harry Potter's trip to go face Voldemort should have looked like. It's an absolutely gorgeous song that follows a young man (whom I imagine to be not much older than Harry is in the last book, though admittedly this is never spelled out) on death row, and what he goes through as he gets closer and closer to death. Eventually he's able to come to terms with his death by drawing from his spiritual beliefs, and concludes that he has nothing to fear from death. However, the song makes it very, very clear that going to his death is a terrifying, harrowing experience for him, and we certainly never see anyone but him try to present his death as anything other than bad (the ghosts of his parents don't appear to tell him that they're glad he's about to die young, and anything he says about death not being a big deal can be played off as his own attempts at reassuring himself). So the takeaway message is basically that people can find hope in even the direst of circumstances, without the unfortunate implications of Harry Potter that basically stipulate that everyone should be prepared to accept death at pretty much any time.
I also see an interesting parallel with Harry Potter and the "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" album. That album follows the adventures of, in essence, a magical seventh son (who is even referred to as the chosen one at one point) whose visions enable him to predict the future. Trouble is, nobody listens to him when he tries to warn his village of an impending disaster, and when the disaster happens he's the one who gets blamed. Doesn't that sound rather a lot like Harry Potter's trouble with his own strange visions and dreams from Book 5 in particular?
However, there is one key difference between these artists: Iron Maiden, over the course of their careers, stress the importance of free will. The narrator of "Hallowed Be Thy Name" may have had no choice but to die, but its successor, "Heaven Can Wait," is about yet another young man who gets himself called back from the brink of death because he isn't ready to die yet. Since then, the band has promoted more and more heavily the message that you shouldn't simply be a pawn of fate or devote yourself unquestioningly to a religion or cause or whatever, but should think and live for yourself--in complete opposition to what Harry Potter promotes, which seems to be, in essence, to have blind faith in someone with nothing to back it up, and sacrifice yourself as soon as that someone tells you you're meant to. According to Iron Maiden's music, this kind of attitude is immature, and part of being an adult is taking your own initiative.
Along those same lines, Iron Maiden also promote the idea that anyone can turn good or evil, as opposed to Rowling's view that someone might be good, evil, or some blend that will never change. This is basically the point of their song "The Thin Line Between Love and Hate," but other songs promote similar ideas. Given that Maiden have an entire song dedicated to presenting a sympathetic view of Lucifer ("Lord of Light," and it's weepy beyond belief) they'd most likely be horrified by the idea of portraying any person or group the way the Harry Potter books portray Slytherins.
Speaking of "Lord or Light," the song contains a verse that goes "We are not worthy in your black and blazing eyes/We gather demons in the mirror every day/The bridge of darkness casts a shadow on us all/And all our sins to you we give this day." In context, what this seems to be saying is, people do awful things, and rather than own up to them they blame them all on Lucifer. Even better, there's another lyric, implied to be from Lucifer's perspective, that goes "Free your soul and let it fly/Mine was caught, I couldn't try." GEE, DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?!
So yeah. But above all I think it's interesting that so many artistic similarities between these two seemingly unrelated artists exist (even if they're not always used for the same purposes). I wonder if it's a cultural thing? I don't know how old JKR is but I do know that the band members of Iron Maiden were born in the mid-late 1950's, shortly after World War II. So...is it a British thing? Or a Brits-born-in-the-wake-of-world-wars thing? Or is it just coincidence?