A rite of passage is a ceremonial event that marks the transition from one social or religious status to another, often connected with biological milestones of life such as birth, maturity, reproduction, and death. These events are a common element of culture worldwide and are often associated with birth, puberty, marriage, and death. Rites of passage are often associated with a chosen name, which may or may not have something to do with how it was earned.
A naming ceremony is a welcoming ritual for a newly born person, where the baby is welcomed into the community and assigned their name. This is a public ceremony during a worship service. Re-naming ceremonies are becoming more popular as children seek to rename themselves and parents seek to understand the child’s request.
Rites of passage are ceremonial events that exist in all historically known societies and mark the passage from one social or religious status to another. Some rites have been retired, while others, such as the Bar Mitzvah for boys and Bat Mitzvah for girls, still exist.
In many cultures, a special ceremony marks the transition from teen to adulthood, celebrating a major life milestone and an important transition.
📹 I NEED A NEW NAME! Rites of Passage
You are not alone, Tobie Creates deals with the life of being a transgender, gender identity, dysphoria, euphoria, social constructs …
What is the most common rite of passage?
The most prevalent rites of initiation in societies worldwide are those observed at puberty, which are often referred to as puberty rites. In simple societies, social groups are small and specialization in labor is limited to distinctions by sex and age. In more advanced societies, specialized groups based on common interests appear, and these customarily require rites of induction or initiation.
In culturally sophisticated societies, social statuses of leadership and specialized occupation are multiple. The most commonly recurrent rites of passage are those connected with the normal but critical events in the human life span—birth, attainment of physical maturity, mating and reproduction, and death.
Rites surrounding the birth of a child are often complex of distinct rituals that prescribe different behaviors on the part of the mother, father, other relatives, and nonfamilial members of society with respect to the newborn. Observances may begin when pregnancy is first noted and may continue until the time of delivery, when the full rite of passage is observed. In many simple societies, the expectant mother is isolated from other members of society at this time for the stated reason that the blood that flows during childbirth has inherently harmful qualities.
Ritual attention is often limited to the father, but later investigations made it appear doubtful that the mother in any society is free from ritual requirements. In many societies, rites called the couvade are observed by both parents. To prevent harm to their child and to other people during the ritual period, the parents observe food taboos, perform as little work as possible, eat in seclusion, avoid contact with other people, and refrain from various acts of ordinary behavior.
Practices of sympathetic and contagious magic relating to birth and the later well-being of both child and mother are abundant and diverse. In societies of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, religious specialists dressed as women simulated successful delivery. Rites directed toward the newborn similarly symbolize or ensure health and well-being, often including baptism or other ritual acts that introduce the child to supernatural beings.
What are the five rites of passage?
Initiation rites are crucial for human growth, development, and socialization in many African communities. These rites mark the transition to full group membership and connect individuals to the community and spiritual world. Dr. Manu Ampim identifies five stages of initiation rites: rite to birth, rite to adulthood, rite to marriage, rite to eldership, and rite to ancestorship. In Zulu culture, entering womanhood is celebrated by the Umhlanga.
Rites of passage are diverse and found in many cultures worldwide. Many western societal rituals may appear like rites of passage but miss important structural and functional components. In Native and African-American communities, traditional rites of passage programs are conducted by community-based organizations like Man Up Global. The missing piece is the societal recognition and reincorporation phase. Adventure education programs like Outward Bound have been described as potential rites of passage.
In tribal and developed societies, entry into an age grade, generally gender-separated, is marked by an initiation rite, which may be the crowning of a long and complex preparation, sometimes in retreat.
What would be considered a rite of passage?
This article discusses rites of passage, ceremonial events that mark the transition from one social or religious status to another in various societies worldwide. These rites are often connected to biological crises, such as birth, maturity, reproduction, and death, which bring changes in social status and social relations. Other rites celebrate cultural changes, such as initiation into societies with special interests, such as fraternities.
Rites of passage are universal and have been present in pre-existing societies since very early times. They have also been used as a means of providing entertainment, with religion being a primary vehicle for art, music, song, dance, and other forms of aesthetic experience. French anthropologist and folklorist Arnold van Gennep coined the term “rites of passage” in 1909, viewing them as means to ease individuals through the difficulties of transitioning from one social role to another without social disruption.
Van Gennep’s analysis of preliterate and literate societies revealed that rites of passage consist of three distinct elements: separation, transition, and reincorporation. The person symbolically severed from their old status, undergoes adjustment during the transition period, and is finally reincorporated into society in their new social status. Although the most commonly observed rites relate to crises in the life cycle, van Gennep saw the significance of these ceremonies as social or cultural, celebrating important events that are primarily sociocultural or human-made rather than biological.
What is the difference between a rite of passage and a ritual?
A rite of passage is defined as a ritual that signifies a transition from one state of being to another. This can be observed in various contexts, including marriages, which mark a significant transition in an individual’s life.
What is the difference between a rite and a ritual?
The terms “rites” and “rituals” are often used interchangeably. However, there are subtle but important distinctions between the two. Rites are established, structured, and ceremonial acts, whereas rituals are actions performed in a rite with symbolic meaning. Rites are defined as well-structured and ceremonial acts.
What are the 4 main rites of passage?
In simple societies, social groups are limited to child, adult, male, female, and disembodied spirit, with no social statuses except those of child, adult, male, female, and disembodied spirit. In more advanced societies, specialized groups based on common interests appear, and these customarily require rites of induction or initiation. In culturally sophisticated societies, social statuses of leadership and specialized occupation are multiple.
Rites surrounding the birth of a child are often complex and prescribe different behaviors on the part of the mother, father, other relatives, and nonfamilial members of society with respect to the newborn. Observances may begin when pregnancy is first noted and may continue until the time of delivery, when the full rite of passage is observed. In many simple societies, the expectant mother is isolated from other members of society at this time due to the belief that blood flowing during childbirth has inherently harmful qualities. This belief is strong in regions such as the Amazon basin, Corsica, the Basque areas of France and Spain, and various societies of Asia.
Ritual attention is often limited to the father, but later investigations have shown that the mother in any society is not free from ritual requirements. In many societies, rites called the couvade are observed by both parents. To prevent harm to their child and others during the ritual period, parents observe food taboos, perform as little work as possible, eat in seclusion, avoid contact with other people, and refrain from various acts of ordinary behavior. Women are often under injunctions to scratch themselves only with a stick or bone for fear of permanent scars on their bodies.
Practices of sympathetic and contagious magic relating to birth and the later well-being of both child and mother are abundant and diverse. In societies of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, religious specialists dressed as women simulate successful delivery. Rites directed toward the newborn symbolize or ensure health and well-being, often including baptism or other ritual acts that introduce the child to supernatural beings.
Is naming ceremony a ritual?
A humanist naming ceremony can incorporate rituals or symbolic actions to mark life’s key milestones, such as birth, coming-of-age, marriage, and death. These rituals typically involve reciting specific phrases, making vows or promises, presenting objects, gestures, music, songs, dances, and special food and drink. They are part of humanist ceremonies of all kinds and are essential for celebrating life’s key milestones. Incorporating rituals into a humanist ceremony can help ensure a meaningful and meaningful experience for the child.
Is prom a rite of passage?
Prom, a rite of passage for teenagers, has been celebrated since the late 19th century. Proms, modeled after high society debutante balls, have evolved from semi-formal end-of-the-year dances in school gyms to a billion-dollar industry involving limousines, flowers, photography, special attire, and over-the-top invitations. The concept of prom dates back to ancient Greece, where formal banquets were held for elite men to honor their transition into adult society. In 18th and 19th-century Europe, women participated in aristocratic formal dances and balls, with debutante balls becoming common as coming-out ceremonies for the elite.
Is naming ceremony a rite of passage?
A naming ceremony is a public declaration of love and support for a child, serving as a rite of passage for the entire family. It includes a welcoming introduction, a well-chosen reading, the actual naming, parental promises, and closing words. A unique commemorative certificate is presented, and it is possible to incorporate giving gifts to commemorate the occasion. This ceremony can be held for multiple children.
What are all the rites of passage?
Graduation from school, divorce, and retirement at the end of a work life are also major transitions in modern large-scale societies. . In North America today, typical rites of passage are baptisms, bar mitzvahs and confirmations, school graduation ceremonies, weddings, retirement parties, and funerals.
People throughout the world have heightened emotions during times of major life changes. These stressful changes may be physiological or social in nature. They are usually connected with personal transitions between important stages that occur during our lives. These transitions are generally emotionally charged they are life crises. Most cultures consider the important transitions to be birth, the onset of puberty, marriage, life threatening illness or injury, and finally death. Graduation from school, divorce, and retirement at the end of a work life are also major transitions in modern large-scale societies.
During the early 20th century, the Belgian anthropologist, Arnold Van Gennep, observed that all cultures have prescribed ways for an individual and society to deal with these emotion charged situations. They have ritual ceremonies intended to mark the transition from one phase of life to another. Van Gennep called these ceremonies rites of passage. In North America today, typical rites of passage are baptisms, bar mitzvahs and confirmations, school graduation ceremonies, weddings, retirement parties, and funerals. These intentionally ritualized ceremonies help the individuals making the transition, as well their relatives and friends, pass through an emotionally charged, tense time. Most rites of passage are religious ceremonies. They not only mark the transition between an individual’s life stages but they reinforce the dominant religious views and values of a culture. In other words, they reinforce the world-view.
Note the military symbolism and ritual acts of this formal religious wedding in Canada.
Is a birthday a rite of passage?
A psychologist employed a Jungian perspective to analyze the significance of birthdays, conceptualizing them as rites of passage that facilitate the navigation of life’s uncertain transitions.
📹 The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter
Money can be found even in the darkest of times Video by Ada Černoša and Verity Ritchie Patreon: …
As a comics creator, I name a lot of characters and enjoy exploring different name combinations. I find that Marie goes well with just about any arrangement. It also seems to instantly add a lyrical quality. Tobie O’Malley White is nice. It’s also unique. I think Anne (or Ann) works better with Tobie than Annie. Grace works better here than Gracie. Ophelia flows nicely with Tobie and White. And, the Shakespearean connection is, of course, cool. These are all nice choices. I don’t know if any of this helps, but I just wanted to participate and share my thoughts. I enjoy names.
I chose my name just because I liked it and it has nick name potential, My dead name was impossible to shorten and Ive always wanted a nick name, Jennifer has Jenny and Jen. For my middle name I chose the feminine version of my late fathers name he died before I came out but I like to think he would have been happy about it. Now I have to wait for my driver licence to get back with my new name on it once I have that I can use it as photo I.D to get my name changed on everything else. I like Ophelia, its a beautiful name. But I think Marie sounds best with the rest of your name, Tobie Marie White just has a nice ring to it.
I remember going to the Wizarding World when I was like 12 or 13. They do an Olivander’s ‘experience’ where they fill up the room and select a random kid to try out wands while practical effects happen around you. I got selected from the back of the room, then went through a few wands before one ‘spoke to me.’ It did feel magical and special, until afterwards a plain-clothed universal employee pulled me aside to say, “You actually don’t get to keep this, but your parents can pay for it in the next room if you’d like!” like really? you cant shill out 20 some-odd wands a day
I would argue that Dudley was never intended as anti-consumerist, particularly – it was about him being ungrateful for it and treating his stuff badly, rather than getting it in the first place (then again, I haven’t reread it in years, for obvious reasons). Whereas Harry (because he grew up without anything) is suitably grateful for all his new stuff and treats it well and takes care of it. “Ungrateful” is a more common insult than “greedy” when villain characters use it, too
I thought using shopping to introduce the Wizarding World was clever in the books. It provides an easy setting to throw a ton of information at the reader without feeling boring. Ron bringing up his family’s poverty was an important contrast. I always wondered how the hell did poor kids afford to go to wizard schools? What if they’re a really poor muggle-born? But this was never explained. And you are absolutely correct. The films went HARD on the consumerism.
This may be just a personal gripe of mine, but the city where I study has one of the only intact medieval streets left in Britain, which is also spiritually significant to many Catholics as it was where a sixteenth century martyr lived and she has a shrine there. It’s almost impossible to find anything out about said history now as the street is entirely full of fucking Harry Potter merch, because if you squint it kind of looks like Diagon Alley despite there being no evidence JK Rowling ever visited there while writing the books. There are at least four different Harry Potter themed shops along one 300m long street front, including next to the house of a woman who was fucking tortured to death who gets one dusty plaque no one looks at. I’m not even Catholic but I am an archaeology student and it is infuriating.
On my 11th birthday, I decided I wanted a harry potter themed party. So my parents and I made almost everything by ourselves: wands, brooms, a giant aragoge, the plushies, the fucking death eaters, the letters coming out of the fireplace with thousands of fake candles floating. It was magical and it was far better than those plastic, soulless merchandise. Btw, I still have some stuff and I usually give out to other harry potter fans.
It reminds me of that certain era of y/n fanfics some years back. You’re adopted by (insert character/celebrity here), and by Chapter 3 (at the latest), you’re taken to buy a new wardrobe, new furniture, makeups, etc. Everyone got their chance to play Little Orphan Harry but instead of Hagrid in Diagonal Alley, you’re walking with Pentatonix through the Gucci store.
I think the impact of HP influencers is worth mentioning. They will endorse any trash product as long as it comes with Wizarding World trademark. The funniest article I’ve seen was a girl comparing “REAL wands vs. FAKE Wish wands”. Girl, they are all plastic and probably made in the same Chinese factory with terrible working conditions.
I once heard someone describe the character of Harry Potter as that kid who goes to college, and learns about all the injustices and flaws with the world and society around him, and then decides to become a Cop because his dad was the chief of police or something. And I think that’s just an incredibly apt metaphor for the series as a whole; just barely brushing its fingers against self awareness, ALMOST recognizing the grievous ills of the social structures around us, before taking a sharp U turn and going, “Well wait, what if slavery’s GOOD actually!”
Regarding the Diagon Alley scene, IMHO there is a decent way to portray that scene. For it to work for me, it’s building on Harry’s first birthday cake. It’s how amazed and grateful this abused child is to be receiving what most of us take for granted on a day to day basis. What is Harry buying? Magic themed school supplies and sweets … for the first time. If you reshot Diagon Alley to feel more like a town highstreet, rather than rustic Times Square, it’d do a lot to put the emphasis back in the right place. Have wizards and witches bickering about groceries, hardware, etc. with no glow-up, and contrast that with Harry being the only one who’s in awe of his surroundings. That’d be spot on for me.
this isn’t just about harry potter, but the connection between merch and doing one’s “duty” as a fan is INSIDIOUS. while i have never been into harry potter, i have been told that i’m not a “true fan” of things i like because i don’t own “enough” merch (or got most of what i do have for free one way or another instead of spending money on it) and therefore am not doing enough to support them. the ideology of fandom consumerism has absolutely trickled down to fans themselves, and it’s kind of sad.
Fun fact about gendered toys, when I was five years old, I asked for a toy garage to play with miniature cars. It had a system of pulleys that would bring the cars on the top floors and then drop it down à slide. My mother, worried, then asked my father if buying me the garage would make me a lesbian. I just thought the pulleys and slides were cool. Anyway long story short, my dad bought me the garage.
The wand buying always struck me as kind of weird. Like, wands are supposed to be unique and fit only one wizard — but somehow Ron has a wand from one of his brothers. In the second book, when his wand breaks, Ron actually suffers because his family cannot afford a new wand for him. There’s no way for him to go to Ollivander’s shop and get a new one during the school year, no one at school says anything except for “you need a new wand”, there’s no way to fix it and nobody even thinks of it. Just… Buy a new one, duh. His EDUCATION is actually at risk because his magic tool is broken and he can’t get a new one in ANY way. And also, am I supposed to believe that Molly Weasley wouldn’t sew her son something nice for the ball in the book 4? Or at least, wash the thing?
When I was a kid I remember the whole “writing on napkins” thing coming off a bit weird implausible. Like how do you write on free cafe napkins? For one, they rip apart if you apply any pressure or try to write small, so you’d have to have hundreds or even thousands of them. Each napkin is going to fit like half a sentence tops. Is the cafe just giving her hundreds of free napkins while she spends an afternoon writing multiple drafts of a chapter?
I love the parallel that can be made between Lyra’s shopping spree in Northern Lights and Harry’s in The Philosopher Stone. At first Lyra is so happy that Mrs Coulter takes her shopping and she tries new clothes, makeup, food in joyful abandon. But soon she realizes that Mrs Coulter is buying her. Harry’s consumerist spree really never ends.
when that factory incident happened in Bangladesh, my grade 9 teacher showed us an article about it. i remember realizing that there were probably girls my age there who died making cheap clothes. there is an ugly truth behind so many products in our daily lives and it’s definitely not talked about enough. thank u for ur commentary!!
Funny how most of the recognizable buyable objects from the HP universe are simple easily handmade objects from accessible fonts. Like, wooden wands and brooms. Simple woolen black robes. Hand knitted scarves. But ALL of those things are almost entirely made of plastic in the official HP stores. They’re lifeless and ugly and do not look fantastical at all. When i was in my HP phase, i carved myself a wand from a branch of a tree, bought a choir kid’s used black robes and adapted them to look like Slytherin robes, hand stitched owl plushies and got my grandma to knit me a Slytherin scarf. Everyone was always flabbergasted by the quality of my “collectibles” and asked me where i bought them and somehow they always looked disapointed when i said “i just made them myself”. Like they want the consumerism part of it. They want to spend ridiculous amounts of money on plastic merch.
god the thing about shopping is so true and tbh I think it’s a big part of why Harry Potter (for all its faults) really struck home as an escapist fantasy – it presented a fun fantasy world where you did fantasy analogues to the stuff you do in real (capitalist) life. Sure it’s fun to imagine yourself as Aragorn for a bit, but Aragorn’s either adventuring (hiking through mud in unwashed clothes) or ruling (probably involves a lot of Elf name memorization). At the end of the day, most of us don’t want to be kings. But you can superimpose Harry Potter onto your real world passtimes and ambitions and creature comforts, and escape into a world where you can study hard at a good school, get a good job from it and use that to buy things you like, while starting a family and keeping up your hobbies – but in a cool fun way where there’s magic and mystery and strange creatures. It’s not the fantasy of leaving the real world behind, it’s the fantasy of being actually fulfilled by the things capitalism conditions you to strive for.
The amount of different editions they put out for the novels alone is INSANE. There’s thousands of different boxed sets, special editions, anniversary editions, illustrated editions, deluxe editions, slipcase editions, the Minalima ones, trunks with books, etc. etc. The amount of paper they’re wasting on those is CRAZY.
JK didn’t seem to have been a single mother when she began writing the first book. By her personal (and most recent account) she wrote it on actual paper, while living in Portugal, and would apparently use the printer at the private school she worked at to make copies of the manuscript. She had a house and was still married. She said she wrote the book in one of Porto’s most beautiful cafés, The Magestic. Lately, a lot of conflicting accounts have started showing up about her life in Portugal. It’s also noteworthy that she said many a thing about her inspirations coming from Portuguese culture while there and in the following years (some are obvious renditions of culturally significant things, such as Portugal’s University culture influencing the uniforms to the architecture and shops of the city she lived in, Porto being sometimes nearly identical to places in the HP universe), but apparently, said no such thing outside the country for a long time. Years later, when asked, she implied that many of the places she had gone to for inspiration “before” didn’t exist, or even outright dismissed things she’d said in interviews years before (sometimes to a ridiculous degree). Sometimes Portugal was hell, she was poor and she suffered because of her Portuguese husband and had to run away to England where she started writing the book, sometimes Portugal was heaven, a centre of inspiration and a place where she could truly be herself and lead a good life while working on a small side project.
I wanted to add that the opera house from the 1920’s version of Phantom of the Opera, which was the oldest surviving movie set at the time, was demolished to make room for one of the Wizarding World theme park locations. Other movies like Universal’s Dracula and the 1940’s Phantom remake were filmed there too. As a massive horror fan, I’m really disappointed that I’ll never get to see it. A beloved piece of history replaced with a cash cow that keeps a disgusting bigot wealthy
for years now I’ve found the consumerist world of Harry Potter so disturbing. I feel like it’s managed to not only eclipse the books – as young children who have never read the books or seen the movies are begging their parents for merch – but also eclipse other major merchandisers like Disney. I don’t know if who Disney v WBs profits actually stack up, but Disney at least still seems to rely on producing new content. Children are still excited to watch the Disney movies, then want the merch of their fav characters. I don’t know anyone who’s actually seen any of the new HP movies. I know the box office for them has gone down. But everywhere I go there’s so so much Harry Potter merch. I moved to the UK last year, and was so disturbed to find HP merch everywhere, as if it was considered part of the history and culture as double decker buses, or the old architecture of the buildings themselves. I guess it’s just like Marvel (Disney) trademarking actual religious figures and having art of these figures removed or taken down due to copyright. We don’t own shit anymore, especially not culture.
Imagine being on the train to Hogwarts and wanting to buy a wispa and a coke only to find out that nouveau riche Potter kid everyone’s been talking about for years bought the whole cart Edit: I thought it was obvious this was a joke. I have no interest in debating the logistics of the Hogwarts Express food cart supply chain Edit 2: A second edit to make the first edit more prominent because Potter fans in 2024 still can’t detect humour nor display basic reading comprehension 🤦
When I wanted a Hufflepuff scarf, I decided to learn to knit, did it and made myself one. Is it a good scarf? No! It’s too short and the stripes aren’t even, and it doesn’t even have any Hufflepuff related looks besides the colors. Do I love it? Of course, and I would not trade it for any brand made scarf. I wonder what would the story be like if the kids had to carve their wands or earn them somehow.
In this consumerist hellscape, don’t forget about how JK Rowling has always been super ableist. To the point where she refused to make a lot of aspects of HP theme parks accessible in the bare minimum way (installing elevators, not having 2 or 3 little steps up into buildings, diagon alley stores with doors that can’t fit wheelchairs). When she was informed of some of these issues, she refused to change her “vision” – which is trash.
The hypocrisy in JKR’s “Harry Potter is anti slavery” narrative is mental tbh. Harry frees Dobby because slavery is bad, he agrees with this. Then doesn’t care about slavery at all for the rest of the books (Ron makes fun of Hermione for caring about SPEW, Harry does nothing; Slughorn tests his food on a house elf after the poisoning of Ron, Harry thinks “good job Hermione isn’t here”). Then Hagrid says that Dobby was a weirdo and house elves like being slaves. And in the epilogue of the last book (19 years later) Harry actually gets his own slave and thinks, hey, this is quite nice. He even thinks he’s going get Kreacher to make him a sandwhich when he comes home!
That’s funny because I actually never liked HP-merch though I was a huuuuge fan of the books as a child. I actually got repulsed by the extensive consumerism of the Dudleys or even Harry buying all the stuff from the trolley lady in the train because I was like “what about the other kids on the train?!”. And I’m fat.
When I was a teenager, my aunt took me to see the temporary HP Warner Bors exhibition in Paris. At that time the universe was still very dear to my heart, but I remember feeling disgusted and extremly disappointed when the tour ended in a huge giftshop. I didn’t know what consumerism meant at the time and I couldn’t accurately explain the feeling, but I know now it was a kind of overload. I felt like I was being forcefed merch and it ruined the whole experience for me. You explained it perfectly in that article and I have to say this might be the best commentary article of 2023 so far ! Glad I stumbled onto your website, can’t wait to see what you do next !
the “commodified fantasy takes no risk” thing is also exactly why Netflix is digging its own grave. They were left to stand only on their own IP, but they don’t want to take a risk on their IP and potentially make a single iota less money than “the next Stranger Things” *could* make them, so they back out of any good series that seems a lil risky, a lil weird. Good fantasy requires good risk. Le Guin knew that damn well, being a woman writing high fantasy about black and brown characters back in the 70s? That takes cajones the likes of which I will never know.
What a fantastic analysis! Gotta say, this made me think about Bill Watterson, the cartoonist who created Calvin and Hobbes. He refused to ever license any of his characters (despite the popularity they reached), and never wavered from that. I’ve always respected him so much for that. It is a choice that can be made… though it requires being able to put ethics before money.
I’ve been avoiding JK’s IP like the plague recently, but your articles are good enough to merit an exception. Something that I loved about the books as a kid was that the material stuff in them felt so high-quality and real. Olivander was an old fashioned craftsman of the kind that modern capitalism has made increasingly obsolete. The clothes were tailored to measure. Books were bound in leather. Food was made from scratch. Buildings were built of wood and stone. Plastic, drywall, printer paper, etc. were largely left behind in the muggle world, leaving the reader in a blissfully tactile environment of beautiful things. Having reminders of that material beauty packaged and sold as more of the same cheap crap that it contrasted to so powerfully in the books was such a cutting disappointment. The first—and least—of many from that quarter, alas.
God I remember when I would hang out at Barnes and Noble reading books everyday after school and there was this really cool wizard chess set that I wanted so badly. I would stare at it for minutes every day thinking how cool it would be to own. I never did end up buying it and I’m really glad I didn’t. If I had any money at all at that age I would’ve spent it all on HP merch. Thank god a friend helped me carve my own wooden wand instead of spending however much money one was at the time.
When you compared buying the wand to Gandalf having to buy his staff, something clicked. I think this consumerist issue is a big subconscious reason why I’ve never been a Potterhead and always been a Lord of Rings fanatic. People have often asked me, “But Harry Potter is peak fantasy!! Why aren’t you into it that much??”…the heart of the story matters much more than any fun spells or trinkets you slap onto it for sales
The issue with recycling is that…..People forget the rule, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Recycling is the LAST thing we should be doing. Reducing and reusing is far better than any recycling. This leads into consumerism though. I try to be mindful with my purchases for things that last and don’t need to replace/upgrade for a long time. Like for my birthday, Christmas, and any other gift giving times, I’d rather get a gift card or asked exactly what I’d need, because anything extra is unnecessary waste that is outside my interest area most of the time and a less than half the time when it is in my interest areas. I am finding it harder to give gift ideas to people because I am getting to the point that useful stuff is either stuff I buy regularly that is consumable or larger items I am saving for I need.
What’s funny about the symbol of the Deathly Hallows is that in book 7, Krum sees Lovegood wearing the symbol and says it was used by Grindelwald, the dark lord active during the WWII era… So when you think about it, the Deathly Hallows symbol is basically the swastika of the wizarding world, and the Lovegoods are like those people you sometimes hear babbling on about “reclaiming” it. Something to chuckle about next time you see it stuck to a car or tattooed on someone.
It’s weird to think I’m an anomaly who heard about the books from a friend despite being Scottish born and bred. My first wand and broom were sticks I found in the woods near my house. But I remember my mum buying me a Hermione doll for my Christmas. I, however, was not allowed to open it out of the box. It was a collectible and I had to think of the fact that it would increase in value. I was 9. My brother got all the original HP Lego, it was built and put on display but could not be torn down and put in the Lego bin, instead each piece when dismantled had to be done so carefully and put in it’s box. We were often discouraged from playing with it. Consumerism isn’t just the buying but the fact that in some cases we weren’t even allowed to play with the things we got because the scarcity of the product meant parents saw them as investments that would increase in value. This may just be a totally incomprehensible rant, but honestly I commend you for bringing this information to a wider audience.
The thing that you have to understand about basically any commentary JK makes in her stories is that JK does not believe in systematic issues. Her political beliefs are very much to stick to the status quo and any issues that arise are not faults of the system, but rather the fault of bad actors within that system. A system ripe for abuse is not the problem, it’s the people who actually abuse it. I mean look at the way she discusses slavery in her books, or the articles written about it on what was then pottermore. According to her, house elves being slaves isn’t the problem in and of itself. No, actually the problem is that some people are mean to their slaves, and that’s the real issue. If Serius has just been nicer to his slave maybe he wouldn’t have been betrayed. There’s also the important way she depicts the morality of actions in her books. There are no good or bad actions. There are only good or bad people on good or bad teams. And depending on which of those you are, your actions are also those things. The fatphobia in the books is a great example. Harry and his friends can make fun of Dudley for being fat all they want, and it’s fine. Because Dudley is bad and Harry is good. So Dudley deserves it, and Harry’s actions are inherently morally acceptable. But when Malfoy makes fun of Molly Weasley for being fat (except she’s never actually described as fat because that’s reserved for bad mean people), then Harry gets mad and it’s portrayed as a bad thing that Malfoy would say something so mean about Molly.
I always found it strange that poor people like the Weasleys and Lupin existed in a world full of magic, I must admit. It always bothered me that they had to suffer, while Harry had a vault full of gold underground too, that he never once used to help pay the Weasleys back for their hospitality. I think that’s why Rowling introduced the 5 principals of magic to the series later on, that said food and other materials (maybe elements necessary for manufacturing money) could not be duplicated. She must’ve had millions of fans bugging her about why wizards and witches couldn’t just make food, clothing, and money appear out of thin air.
Living in the old part of Cambridge, there are literally more harry potter merchandise shops than supermarkets. The town isn’t particularly tied to the series much, it feels like an invasive element in the city centre. They’re always close to Gonville and Cauis College, which funnily enough has notoriety as the transphobic college.
The main writer for He-Man actually hated writing the series because it was an exaggerated toy commercial, and soon left. He went on to be one of the lead writers for Batman The Animated Series and many other DCAU shows, which were probably some of the best stuff done with DC’s characters. He also wrote Batman Arkham City and Arkham Asylum. Edit: Btw this and the Barbie article convinced me to not buy toys, (Which I haven’t done for a couple of months). I feel bad that I’m gonna have to dispose of the toys that are wasting away in my room. For context I am 14. So a lot of the stuff is from when I was a lot younger.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, if Harry Potter was actually written in a boardroom by a marketing team I would not be surprised, imagine millions of people buying the same shit in four different colours, now that’s divide and conquer. It’s like the worldbuilding was MADE to sell merch, the brands, the hogwards shit. STICKS, THEY MADE US BUY PLASTIC STICKS.
The DIY merch aspect is one of my favorite things about Our Flag Means Death fandom. HBO/WB doesn’t give a shit about promoting the show, so tons of independent artists/fans can make a decent chunk of change from it. Even the number of India-based Etsy stores selling pink bird robes, while probably not completely free of sin, are making those robes because they noticed a direct demand because of the amount of people buying the (100% cotton) fabric from them in the first place, not because they’ve been hired to fill a corporately determined quota, and they don’t have to give a cut to WB. Also, yeah, those Hogwarts robes being polyester is 100% of the reason I didn’t buy them when I went to Universal. Like, it’s already hot and humid enough in Florida, why would I willingly swathe myself in several layers of black plastic on top of it?
Can we also talk about the books getting new editions every year? They change the cover illustrations, or make 4 versions of each book according to your Hogwarts’ house, or make the Minalima editions, or the Jim Kay illustrated editions, or books only with quotes, or themed about beasts, quidditch, and so on. It’s getting frustrating and also it’s a BIG problem if we think about the paper…
One thing I find really interesting is that with the very queer, very trans, offshoot of the Harry Potter fandom that is the marauders fandom and within really only the last two or three years you’ve seen this explosion of fan made merch that can sometimes have very obvious HP imagery, but often are things people outside of the fandom (and even those in most of the HP fandom) wouldn’t recognize as something associated with Harry Potter. There’s an interesting kind of subversion going on there because if there’s one thing JKR hates it’s there being HP merch she can’t make money off of😂
I lived in Edinburgh for seven and a half years. The amount of Harry Potter stuff marketed to tourists in that city was (and is) just… off the charts. Whole shops dedicated to Harry Potter merch, Harry Potter tours of the city, you just can’t get away from it. Edinburgh is such an amazing city with so much rich history, but all these companies care about is making it relate to Harry Potter in every way possible to sell more wands and more tours where you can see the graves she took the names from and the cafe where she wrote it. It just feels frustrating loving this city so much as my home and knowing how much it had to offer beyond just Harry Potter, but feeling like that’s all the companies wanted to squeeze out of it to get that tourist money. Could go on a whole rant about how focusing on just raking in unlimited tourism instead of the happiness of people who actually live there is a wider problem in Edinburgh in general tbh. But just in relation to the Harry Potter thing, shit sucks.
As a sewist here’s a quick guide to sustainable fabric 1. Fabric that already exists (especially natural fibers) 2. Linen 3. Wool 4. Organic cotton 5. Silk 6. Conventionally grown cotton 7. Heavily processed natural fibers such as bamboo rayon 8. Any synthetic fabric such as rayon, nylon, polyester, spandex, etc.
Fun fact so some of the ‘Harry Potter House Feather pens’ being sold at Primark are the exact same mold of pens being sold as novelty feather pens at asda, which is also the same mold as some random pens on amazon. So while Primark could just have bought the same mold and is making them independently and ethically, this is, at least for me, very much an occam’s razor situation of a clear example of Primark using mass made factory products as ‘exclusive merch’.
I think I have exactly one piece of HP merch (a monochrome metal pin with the crest of Ravenclaw House) simply because I find almost everything so tacky, ugly and cheaply made. I went through all the stores at the WB Studio in London and the shop at Platform 9 3/4 without finding a single souvenir I thought was good enough quality and aesthetically pleasing. Also a less than favorite moment from my studio visit was when I stopped by a desk where an employee was explaining how the Death Eater masks were made, and held a demonstration of the manufacturing. I went closer to see the process and he was talking to a few people. He gave me the once over, turned to two girls next to me in Hogwarts robes, and said “I will explain to you because at least you made the effort to dress up” and I was ignored for the rest of the presentation. Apart from being a real shitty move (imagine the wound if he said this to someone who couldn’t afford merch and had saved up for years just to afford the entrance fee) this was a really good illustration of the consumerist obsession of the franchise.
I think this is why Animorphs is never gonna get the movie or tv show adaptation the fans want. It’s not as toyetic. The darker themes are more prevalent. It’s just harder to market once you get past the first six or so books. On the other hand some beautiful art has come from the fandom regardless. People hand make Andalite plushies and print t shirts with their own designs that actually fit the themes of the series instead of distilling it to a soulless logo.
So, your a young wizard or witch and it’s your first year of school at Hogwarts, you go into the wand shop and this beautiful wand chooses you and without barely thinking you successfully cast a repairio spell on your broken watch inherited by an ancestor, it’s like a match made in heaven. Then the shop owner turns to you after you just met your litteral soul mate and says: “that will be 125 shmeckles” And your a Weasley…..
This article really underlines to me how special the Calvin and Hobbes series is. Bill Waterson only ever officially licensed a couple calendars. Everything else (especially the Calvin peeing stickers you always see on big trucks) are all bootlegs. As I get older I find some of my favorite media from childhood feeling cheaper and cheaper (especially Harry Potter,) but Calvin and Hobbes remains totally unsullied. I’m so glad those messages were never undermined in the way many of the attempted messages in HP have been.
oh man! the wand buying is a good point. technically each wand is suppose to be unique and special with some core that resonates with the chosen user similar to the components of a jedi lightsaber, but the lightsaber is forged by the jedi in training through ceremony while the wands seem already exist before encountering the users they were meant for and its always bothered me every time i reflected on it.
I’m currently study the Philosopher’s Stone for an English class for university (fantasy children’s literature). While the paper that I’m writing doesn’t relate to the blatant consumerism in the Harry Potter, this is something that I noticed while reading. One thing that bothered me (that you mentioned) that the movie simply glosses over Ron’s embarrassment over his poverty compared to Harry’s new found fortune. I throughly enjoyed this article essay, and the thoughtful academic approach and analysis done.
Towards the end, I was like “Oh, this sounds like that Ursula K Le Guin quote,” and then immediately after you included one by her, but a different one than I was thinking! The one I was thinking of comes from later in that passage: “What the commodifiers of fantasy count on and exploit is the insuperable imagination of the reader, child or adult, which gives even these dead things life–of a sort, for a while.” It feels like a lot of properties are built with this in mind and try to capture audience imagination so that the audience will do the work of building the story (and consuming), rather than tell a story that can stand on its own.
When my nieces really got into Harry Potter, (and before they – thank the gods! – found Rick Riordan, whose books are pretty awesome) and wanted all sorts of merch, as their nonbinary Ankle, I did what anyone who’s a stitcher would do: I bought decent quality black cotton, a lighter rayon* in the colour of their favourite houses for linings, a pattern for kids’ size choir gowns with some nifty detailing, some heavy duty snaps for the fronts, and sewed those suckers up into better robes than anything any factory ever mass produced. Custom sized, custom lined, hand embroidered school logos, and MASSIVE POCKETS! The kids loved them and wore them to shreds, I’m permanently their favourite Ankle (or Aunt, or Uncle), and I didn’t have to give a cent to the TERF. *Rayon, for anyone who doesn’t know, is somewhere between a natural and man made fibre, as it’s traditionally made from recycled paper. If I recall my fibres class from textile arts, it was first made in Japan in the 1700’s, as a cheap alternative to silk. It’s not quite environmentally perfect, since the reclaimation process uses some toxic stuff and some producers add fresh wood pulp, but it’s SO much better than any synthetic!
One thing I remember from being a Harry Potter-enjoying kid in Sweden is a fan-made sort of… it was like a hybrid between a discussion forum and an online game, where you made an account and pretended you were a student at Hogwarts. It existed for a few years until Warner Bros shut it down for copyright infringement, without offering any alternative to this online spot for Harry Potter fans to hang out. So they basically killed an online community, that to my knowledge never attempted to actually make money off of the HP brand/IP itself. What I also remember from being a fan of the books is how excellent the Swedish covers by Alvaro Tapio (I think that’s his name) are. The covers were far more interesting than the books.
This made me think back a bit on when I was younger, and around the time of the 2nd movie my mother went through the effort to hand-make Harry and Ron dolls for me and my brother for Christmas, complete with a little Hedwig with actual feathers and a tiny broom with twigs. I really wish we had been more caring for those two, because that’s the kind of gift not even the highest-quality mass-produced toys can replace. My mother has always been quite wary of how consumerist kids media was in the 90s (I was one of the few kids who had pretty much 0 Pokémon merch outside of scrounged-together trading cards and a plush), but no amount of careful parenting is able to really resist the onslaught for long, even back then. Years later we got a little sister and I distinctly remember mom working super hard to ensure she wouldn’t come into contact with the IPs of a local kids media mogul. That lasted until the first day of school… As much as you try to avoid it, your kid will be fascinated by whatever they don’t have that others do, regardless of quality or value. I kinda worry how we’ll fare if and when my wife and I decide to have a child. In the incredibly unlikely case mom reads this: I love you!
My mum would always go on rants of how she hates Harry Potter for this very reason… Like she used to read us all the great fantasy sagas when we were kids and she couldn’t stomach HP, because she couldn’t get over the fact that you had to buy magical stuff in the magical world and basically wealth dictated everything. Anyway, great and insightful article!
My son just startet reading the first novel of the series (and has watched abit of the movie). He always loved to draw and of course the house is filling with paper after paper full of the house-sigils, quidditch-stuff, wand-diagrams … and I – as a graphic designer – began to realize, that this could not be a coincidence, that there are way to many prime-merchandise-worthy aspects in these books, for it not to be intentional. I hadn’t occured to me when I did read the books myself as a kid, but now, as a parent who is always a bit worried about merchandising and toys, it really stood out.
When I went to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Experience, I couldn’t believe the prices of things in the gift shop. One chocolate frog – £7! A cardigan was around £50 IIRC and robes were £75 upwards (for larger sizes)! The food was expensive as well. However, my father enjoyed it there, and that was the last trip out we had together before he became too ill with myeloma. So, I treasure the memory for that reason.
Oof that polyester thing makes me mad!!! The EU are basically trying to ban the production of our national costumes in Norway, because they are mostly made of wool, and propose that we should use polyester instead. And not only the plastic, but the fucking disrespect of trying to BAN our national costume, but also.. do you wanna know something? Those costumes are NEVER thrown away, but rater is inherited for generations, and still they want us to use garbage to make them
honestly as a kid i was so broke. so i resorted to making my own ‘merch’ that was sometimes even better than the version that warner bros would sell. and im so thankful for that. I have a hand made quality marauders map, potion bottles and i even found the original copies of the books from thrift stores that costed me what? like $20 in total. even as kid, I have pictures of little me dressed up in a cape with a hand drawn griffindor emblem taped on. and honestly, kids really dont need all that special and exclusive stuff at the end of the day. and its so much more rewarded, well it was for me atleast to see the stuff i created in its place. plus the added factor that i wasnt feeding into this world of consumerism.
Harry Potter was the thing that got me started on read like proper thick books as a child, but other than that I have grown to really dislike the franchise over the years. It is an accessible children’s book series, but I cannot take any adult who is running around pretending it is the best fantasy novel of all time seriously. Like tell me you have not read a lot of fantasy, without telling me you haven’t read a lot of fantasy.
Idk even when I still liked Harry Potter, it never read as anti-consumerist. There’s a reason why the shopping scenes are so detailed and drawn out. Probably the most lively written part of the first book. Dudley didn’t read to me as ‘don’t be consumerist’ but as ‘say please and thank you when you get shit full of presents, you little brat’ it wasn’t about capitalism being bad it was about children should be thankful and deferential. Harry always was, that’s why he was the good guy.
As far as schools go, the Accelerated Reader program gave the Harry Potter books HUGE numbers. AR was a program that rewarded you points if you could pass a test about a book you read and the number of points was usually tied to the difficulty of the book that I remember being important in grades 5-8. It also puts it off on the school and teachers to provide prizes for the points. Harry Potter had points that were at the top of the scales. CoS was lower but Goblet of Fire was one of the top scoring books. I remember most of the kids in our class read it for the points. When the first movie came out a bunch of kids in my class, myself included, tried to take it and failed because some of the questions were specifically the parts of the book that differed from the movie. This got a lot of us to read the book and the library had multiple copies that were never in stock. It was how I first learned that the books even existed after seeing the movie.
I’m a 80s baby….so since I became aware of my existence in this world….I’ve been urged to CONSUME. Now, I was a late teen when HP became a thing…and I honestly became a fan out of spite! My hometown did a good ole fashioned book burning/banning and as a little helion I wanted to know what exactly was so ” soul destroying” about a British boy with a stick. I babysat younger kids…so I brought the “forbidden book” to read to the kids. As I read, I started to fall for Diagon Ally. I snuck on the school computers to look for various scraps of Hogwarts. This includes hand drawing the house crests for my little “Magi-brats” ( lol, I swear I did really take good care of the kids!)…now as I said small town…we barely had a grocery store. let alone a place that would sell any actual merch. So, we carved our own wands, drew crests and quotes on everything….made homemade chocolate frogs, Butterbeer, Bertie Botts. Planned whole car loads of kids to come with me and some select friends (later known thanks to the kids as the Hogwarts Rescue Squad….as we “rescued” them and took them the movies ..the midnight release parties…it became a whole thing…) Then, I saw it …45 minutes into town for everything….now we are seeing the “real” shirts, the “real” wands, and I watched as a switch went off in these kids. Everytime, it was gotta have a “real” wand…..”real” merch…. The wands carved over weeks, blisters hadent even healed over on some…..now looked at as if they were a disgrace!
Your point about the Harry Potter movies reminds me of Yu-Gi-Oh! Kazuki Takahashi’s manga was originally about all kinds of games. Seto Kaiba and the card game Duel Monsters (originally called Magic & Wizards) only appeared in one chapter. But after they became popular with fans, Konami took the opportunity to make it a real card game and sponsored a new anime focusing on Dual Monsters. The main difference is that (as far as we know) nobody forced Rowling to change her own work to focus on the marketable elements.
Oh my gosh the recycleable plastic thing was something my sister and I discovered recently when our supermarket chains stopped offering to take plastic to be recycled. The company that was recycling plastic here stopped accepting any so they had to close their programs, and its because of the reasons you said, they ended up with too much plastic that was degrading or not viable for recycling anyway, and presumably other companies didn’t want to buy it off them. But also, I wouldn’t be surprised if this recycling company was set up by “big oil” to encourage people that using plastic was “fine, actually!”
Throwing out clothes is insane to me. If they don’t fit, they get donated, if they break they get fixed. Basically the only reason I buy clothes is when I need something specific for a specific reason like nude tights for a show or a water resistant sweater for a camping trip. Though I do get a couple pair of leggings and a couple shirts a year as gifts
I’m glad my main obsession was Percy jackson and yes I think you can buy camp half blood tshirts but i don’t know that there were any official licensed ones until much after the original popularity, and other than that there wasn’t much merchandisable shit from the stories?? annabeth’s invisibility cap literally just being an old yankees hat … the camp necklaces having handmade clay beads..just a lotta fun imo
Wow. “Magic is so tied to consumerism, presumably in an attempt to modernize it.” It starts with a flimsy critique on greed, but really it’s just a critique on excluding someone from capitalism. The problem with the Dursleys is not that they overindulge, it’s that they leave Harry out of that consumerism. This viewpoint also makes the Harry Potter books read as a how-to manual for creating a marketable franchise: give your characters fun escapist shopping sprees! Divide your characters into personality-based factions with clear visual identities! Include easy visual symbols! Make their magical abilities dependent on the purchase of an item and make fitting into this fantasy world dependent on the purchase of many items!
I both love and hate how commercial HP is. Being able to buy such specific magical stuff from the the world that was my main place for escapism growing up means a lot (I’ve no interest in the chibi stuff or faces printed on tshirts/notebooks etc.) but I won’t be giving any more money to Rowling. There’s also so much official merch that’s just horrendously made.
The Shambles in York has not one, not two, but FOUR Harry Potter shops, despite there being absolutely no connection to Harry Potter whatsoever. (It’s a long story – one person set up a Harry Potter themed shop there and these businessmen saw the opportunity to copy his idea and flood the street with Harry Potter shops). Tourists ask where the “Harry Potter street” is and ngl it gets on my nerves a little. The Shambles is a historic street with authentic Tudor buildings in it. It is the home of Saint Margaret Clitherow, who was tortured to death for hiding Catholic priests in her house. I enjoy Harry Potter (outside of JK Rowling’s bigoted nonsense) but the constant association of The Shambles with Harry Potter irritates me because it’s a beautiful site with real history and culture in its own right, and it’s turning into Disneyland. Phew. Rant over.
Great article! I never thought of it this way. I was a huge Harry Potter fan, but have to decided to no longer monetarily support anything attached to JK Rowling because I support the trans community. I have actually always hated the merch too, which to me has basically just boiled down to basic items produced in 4 different colors and it has always seemed distinctly mundane for products supposedly based on a magical universe. I just didn’t (and still don’t) really see the appeal of a chocolate frog that doesn’t hop or a magic broom that can’t fly. So with all that being said a boycott of Harry Potter merch is actually something I’m finding very easy, most of the designs are lackluster and rely overly on just the basic symbols repeated over and over again on an overpriced low quality base product.
This may sound strange but I 100% mean it as a compliment when I say this analysis reminds me of article essays from a few years back before it became as entrenched a niche on youtube. Nowadays article essays topics often feel so overused that every article starts to feel repetitive in an artificial way. But this article felt like a breath of fresh air and honestly reminded me of why I came to enjoy this genre. I don’t just want my own opinions regurgitated to me in a more polished and organized way, I want to be exposed to new concepts I haven’t thought about before and this essay certainly filled that desire ❤️
The thing that always struck me as the weirdest when it came to the wands is that obviously the wand chooses the wizard… but then… you’re basicaly forced to buy that particular wand? So… are all wands the same price? Regardless of what materials they are made from? What if you have a fixed budget and you can’t buy the wand that chooses you so you have to settle for one that doesn’t work well for you?
As if it wasn’t bad enough, the prices for the merch at the theme parks are disgusting. Like, $40 for a small ornament, $50 for a stuffed toy, $20 for candy. The most trivial things start at $30-$40 and it easily goes up to $80-$100+ for many things. When you consider how unethically and cheaply they make them it’s even worse to charge that much. (Btw I’ve never been, but seen extensive article tours of the products and prices). I don’t know how any family can afford to buy even one thing per person after the prices of the tickets, food, whatever other travel expenses etc.
It is quite interesting how the marauders fandom, made up more of younger fans of the HP world embrace characters in a much more organic way, for example fan works of lupin often involve thrifted sweaters and very “normal clothes” compared to the flashy uniforms marketed to fans. The fact that an entire new story was fan created shows just how great fantasy worlds could be without company consumerism
I also find it weird that every child has to buy their own school books if stacks of them are available in the class rooms. And they seems to use the same books for decades! Especially the books seemed to be a huge financial burden for e. g. the Weasleys. I do wonder tho what they do with all of them afterwards
I tried to research the concepts and history of Alchemy and European Mysticism online but I see mentions of Harry Potter characters on search engines which annoys me because I only wanted to study history of alchemy and not the search results about what is trending in popular culture. Last year, I tried to find an actual replica of a historical feather pen online and I get search results of Harry Potter inspired feather pens and this infuriated me because many people nowadays follow popular culture. The consumerism isn’t restricted to just Harry Potter though, any popular culture media such as big blockbuster movies and triple-A article games will instantly be tied to merchandise and products for example, Disney films and Ubisoft article games, because they thrive off consumerism.
There was a time when I was really into Harry Potter universe and it was roughly around the times the books were being released. Even at that time, when I was glossing over a lot of diturbing aspects of the world, I was really uncomfortable about the whole wand thing. It was such a mess. At one hand the books told you that wands were 100% individual and that it was about finding the one that was perfect for you. On the other, they showed you some kids unable to afford certain kinds of wands or new wands in general and using hand me downs. Or controlling parents chosing wands for their kids. Like, god, the lore was so inconsistent…
Scholastic winning the rights auction explains why HP was SO utterly ubiquitous through elementary schools. Every kid in my school knew them, and the library– tiny public suburban elementary school library– had several copies of most of the released HP books, the same way they did with Goosebumps and Hardy Boys. Really fascinating to learn the politics and economic factors playing into that.
33:32 SO MUCH THIS!!!! Most of what is great about the Potterverse is the fandom, those who create fanart, those who write fanfiction, those who simply post their headcanons and amicably (for the most part) debate each other’s fan theories. They’re the ones who thought about the ethical and logistical elements of the series far more that J.K. Rowling ever did. I read the books as an adult, who was a long-time fantasy and science fiction fan. I remember thinking at the time the Sorting Hat started singing that this would make a great kids movie. I also noticed how it seemed crafted to hook into the child-readers psyche. All kids with siblings have felt at times that their parents favor the other(s) and treat them unfairly, so that gets buy-in. A lot also at some times think they’re adopted, and their “real” parents are way cooler than the ones they have now, and will someday come to claim them and whisk them off to a fabulous life. Discovering you have awesome magical powers makes it that much better. In total, it’s a perfect wish-fulfillment power fantasy. But hey, if you’re a fantasy fan to begin with, you’re probably totally okay with wish-fulfillment power fantasies. And I totally am; they’re fun and satisfying. 😉 My criticism is that JKR went overboard with demonizing the Dursleys, giving them every negative trait she could think of, even if those traits were mutually exclusive. For example, would people as obsessed with being seen as “normal and proper” let Harry go out in public in ill-fitting worn out clothing?
Oh my god thank you for also mentioning the absolute WILD fatphobia in this universe. I’m sure the comment section can refresh my memory but I can’t remember a single « good » character being fat? Hagrid is big, but I don’t remember his thick ass ever being mentioned the same as Dudley, in fact what I can remember is how often it’s said that Harry is sooooo skiiiinnyyyy
Thinking about all of this consumerist culture around the franchise, I’m so happy and proud to have been raised differently by my parents. Me and my sister had our Harry Potter phase, but it has never never come to our mind to buy HP merchandise. It simply wasn’t a thing at home. We subconsciusly knew that we didn’t need all that stuff, due to the education our parents gave us. I rememeber that during my HP phase I spent entire days playing in my garden only with with a magic wand made by me with a branch from one of the trees. I have been really lucky.
Oh my god, you just hit on something that was circling around my brain literally like yesterday when I watched a livestream of Grace Rudolph (spoiler YouTuber). She was asked her views on JKR, said she couldn’t support JKR as someone who used her platform to spread hate in the world… and then later in the article, she started plugging HP merch ☠️. On one hand, gotta give her credit for actually making a definitive statement about JKR and not being wishy-washy. On the other, her over the top excitement about the NY HP store felt like it undercut her point. And also, a discomfort I couldn’t really put my finger on until I watched your article. That what we’re perusal is a brand doing everything it can to cling to relevance and find ways to milk money out of consumers. They’ll spread the narrative that supporting the HP franchise isn’t really supporting JKR (it is), so that even fans who take issue with JKR and other aspects of HP can continue to empty their wallets guilt-free. Anyway… this was very interesting and got me thinking about a lot. Not just with HP, but with the commercialization of fan culture in general. With HP specifically too, they really hit on something with the whole House system. It’s combining horoscopes with sports teams with a magical world. It pretty much guaranteed that even low-level fans will end up buying SOME form of house-related merch at some point in their lives. And Pottermore was such a clever way of selling more merch too, with the wands and the house sorting.
genuinely startled to realize that i think this article is the first time i’ve ever heard someone point out that the Universal HP park sections are mostly shops cause you’re right and more people should be saying this i got to go for my high school senior trip years ago (and was really started and upset to realize that i was essentially stuck window shopping because i didn’t have like $50 to throw away on a wand because i still needed to worry about food. i think i bought two keychains that i can’t even use on my keys because they’re too heavy so they’re on a purse i don’t use anymore in some closet somewhere. though i will add that after that trip and after talking to my family about it my grandad went out and got some wood from a tree and carved it into an objectively much better wand that I still have.
You have a magnificent cathedral like Durham, with its history and architecture. I went there, and the annoying tourists and people who were OBSESSED with Harry Potter were only interested in the fact the cloister area was used as the flying school in Harry Potter, to me It kind of negated the building. Even the gift shop was full of Harry Potter merchandise