Hype

[sartorias]

This will be somewhat incoherent--am still a tad tired. Last week was not good, but ended really well, with a school visit to Chadwick Academy in Rancho Palos Verdes.. The school is just as beautiful as it looks--it was first established as a posh boarding school many years ago. I went up there once as a fifth grader, when a friend and I (going

Comments

[asakiyume]

It's kind of neat to think of being at a wellspring of spontaneous hype.

Sometimes, it's fun to let yourself get swept away by hype--just for the fun of participating. But sometimes it can be a big turnoff, especially if you feel a total disconnect from whatever the hyped thing is.

By train of thought, this question: When the Norton awards are all done, and you're free to say, do you think you can post about your favorites among the books you've read, and what made them so?

[sartorias]

I am definitely planning to talk about the books I loved--and pimp the ones I was forced to eliminate from my list for what was mostly arbitrary reasons, as we could only choose so few.

[kalimac]

What interests me is not so much the question of hype. Some people who hated Harry Potter thought the whole phenomenon was hype, but it's historically clear that love for the first book came first, and that hype on that level couldn't have been maintained without continuing love.

What interests me is the question of surprise and anticipation in the reading/watching experience. If you were reading HP as it came out, you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen next - there were rumors that Harry would die at the end, you may recall - but it's very hard to read them now without having the surprises spoiled. I saw Star Wars on its first release, but how does it look different to people who know from the start that Vader didn't kill Luke's father, he is Luke's father? (Even though I don't believe - whatever he may say now - that Lucas had that in mind when the first film was made.) That some critical surprises are no longer surprises to anybody - like the cryptic "Rosebud" at the start of "Citizen Kane" - is a standing joke in

[sartorias]

Yes! With respect to Potter, it seemed clear to me that he'd win in the end--the structure adhered too closely to established patterns--but if I'd been a kid? I would have been tense as heck, and would have spent happy hours combing the text for clues and speculating for hours, just as so many kids I know did.

[asakiyume]

What's funny is how long some things can remain surprises. I saw The Sixth Sense on DVD, ages after it came out, and yet somehow, no one had spoiled the ending for me, so I was completely surprised.

And with "Rosebud," too, if you get a young person who doesn't come from a classic-film-watching family, I bet it could still be a surprise.

Harry Potter and Star Wars, though, probably not a surprise for anybody who's currently a kid...

[sartorias]

Yeah . . .

[queenoftheskies]

Do you think it was the movies, the ability to SEE instead of invest time reading, that kept more of the students from reading the remaining Harry Potter books? (I'm not suggesting addressing that in length. I'm just wondering your opinion.)

Do you think there's the possibility that readers were lost as the characters grew older and those around them started changing and dying? Characters that had been favorites? I know I heard many young people refuse to read further after Sirius died, for example. And, I know there was a time when readers were concerned that Harry, himself, would die.

It would be interesting, as these students grow older, to see if they were affected by the Harry Potter phenomenon in the same way those of us older now were affected by The Beatles and Star Wars.

[sartorias]

I do know that the books lost as lot of readers as they got darker, but then "a lot" when you're talking about millions and millions is still a drop in the bucket.

I suspect that as there is no longer any surprise in store re Harry--kids grow up familiar with the trappings of the stories--it's just easier to watch the movies, for many. But again, the books are still selling in the kazillions, so all this is relative.

And yes!

[sartorias]

Yeah...the whole release event thing is kind of interesting in itself. It doesn't seem to have become an expected thing, despite these other tries. (Though I understand the Twilight ones were super well attended. Maybe the problem there is that the story is done.)

[kateelliott]

[sartorias]

I know there was an initial publicity blitz by Scholastic, but in this case the blitz not only took hold, it succeeded beyond their dreams.

[tsheehan]

Interesting. I wonder if the number of kids who know the story vs number of kids who've read the story is changing because HP is becoming common culture. I only just read the brother's Gimm's tales for the first time this year, and I think the only fairy tale books I had were adaptations of the Disney versions of the stories (speaking of movies as a method of cultural transmission). Sure, the Grimm stories are a little more R rated than the Bowlderized versions we read our kids, but I didn't have to read Rapunzle to know the story. I wonder if it'll be the same for the Potter books?

[sartorias]

Oh, I think it's definitely the same. Little kids now know the main thrust of the story--there are no surprises left. They may choose to read the books, but not all of them are going to have the same sense of discovery as those who read them as they came out.