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The Potterization Of Modern Life

Started by Serge, August 03, 2017, 09:57:40 PM

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Dr Syntax Head

I love Harry Potter because it's a touchstone of people I need to avoid. Mention Harry Potter? I never speak to you again. Even if I married you.

Quote from: Urinal Cake on August 04, 2017, 04:44:20 AM
Have you seen people play Quidditch? It's fucking stupid.

Yeah, I mean any idiot can chase an airborne ball on a flying broomstick, can't they?  What does it prove.

Paul Calf

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on August 03, 2017, 10:45:13 PM
No it isn't. Please do drop by and fail at comprehension and guesswork another time though.

Quote from: Twed on August 03, 2017, 11:10:33 PM
I can't, there's a balsa wood slab in front of your door with "DRAWBRIDGE" scrawled on it in Tippex.

You two should definitely fuck.

thenoise

Oh God, Marvel comics and whatever the fucking rival comic company is, I was into marvel before it was cool, etc. All comic book films are shit, comics are for kids and superheroes are fucking bullshit. Let women have their childish wizard crap, men are all stupid superhero worshipping comic book reading man children anyway. (Except me I'm great)

Dr Rock

Marvel have made some of the most entertaining movies of the last decade. Didn't you even like the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies, or the X-Men movie where Wolverine goes back to the 70s? They were great. Pisses all over the little boy wizard shit anyway.

Twit 2

I don't mind adults liking Potter in addition to other stuff, but it's rather bleak when that's all they read. I know a teacher who went to Harry Potter Land World or whatever the fuck; she's in her mid-30s I guess, no kids, and I am 99% sure she doesn't read any proper books. I'd even go as far as to say being a teacher is perfect for twats like this because it gives them an excuse to wallow around permanently in children's tat and make it look like professional development.

Icehaven

I totally agree with Serge's point, however I think he and I probably get an exagerrated sense of it from working in book places (I'm a librarian.) It still surprises me how often I get asked for HP books in here (clink library), still one of the most regular requests (often literally alongside books about the Krays and bodybuilding etc.) And it's not only from younger blokes who grew up with them either.
I've never read one and only seen a few bits of the films (because my Mum likes them) which I've actually been castigated for on several occasions, it's seen as a serious failing for a librarian. The excuse that I'm 38 years old doesn't seem to wash.

olliebean

Quote from: BlodwynPig on August 04, 2017, 02:02:02 AM
Without having to read the entire volumes can someone here argue the case FOR the potter books...without using the words "appealing to adults and children", "a new mythos for the 21st Century", "just good wholesome fun", "Ulysses for the pre-, post and everyone in-between-millennials."

It's the "appealing to adults and children" thing that I don't get. I slogged through the first book once because a friend kept going on about how much I'd like it, and it was OK I suppose as a kids' book (not being a kid I'm not best placed to judge) but it is very much a kids' book in the way it's written and I couldn't for the life of me work out why an adult would want to bother with it. I gather the later ones improve in this respect as they're written for an audience that's growing up with Harry, but adults were already into it before those came out.

mothman

Is this a thread to complain about the ubiquity (in some quite idiotic ways) of one particular franchise in people's cultural lives, or is it a thread for people here to act all snobbish about popular culture in order to make out themselves to be inherently superior to the "great unwashed?"

Because yes, HP is probably shit for cunts... but if it wasn't, something else would be. The best you can say about it is, it might have increased literacy a bit, and if a few people went on to read more widely as a result, then that's a good thing. The rest... nothing you can do for them. Ignore them.

Dr Rock

Quote from: mothman on August 04, 2017, 08:17:54 AM
Because yes, HP is probably shit for cunts... but if it wasn't, something else would be.

Maybe. Then we could slag that off instead.

thenoise

Quote from: Dr Rock on August 04, 2017, 07:59:53 AM
Marvel have made some of the most entertaining movies of the last decade. Didn't you even like the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies, or the X-Men movie where Wolverine goes back to the 70s? They were great. Pisses all over the little boy wizard shit anyway.

Haven't seen them.  I liked superhero stuff well enough as a child - the Christopher Reeve superman films were firm favourites - but they are far too stupid to enjoy as an adult.  Even as a teenager I had the decency to be embarrassed about them.

Wet Blanket

It's interesting to me in that it didn't seem to get madly commercialised until after the books were no longer being written. I remember the half-a-luggage trolley bolted to the wall in the old King's Cross being semi-ignored, now there's a special shop and a specific queue to have your photo taken with it in that scarf to add to your Bumble profile.

There's a tat shop in York that sells twigs and mugs and has staff in Harry Potter style outfits, but as far as I can tell isn't an officially recognised tie-in store, and I don't think York features at all in the books, but it has people queueing out the door. I don't think if somebody opened a shop with stripy floors called the Red Room in some random town, selling those fucking vinyl dolls with big heads of Agent Cooper, it would be half as successful.

Dr Rock


Pijlstaart

I love harry potter dynamics, I love waking up to hear he's been magic-wanding, love the big hat. Love how crap, short and violent the wizarding experience is, there's got to be 20 different monsters that try to kill him, monsters that they keep around for the hell of it. A wretched, degenerate, parasitic society, that's how it's portrayed, and all the fan-people wish they were wizards, they want to be a part of it. Bizarre. Had to go to a conference with a PhD student who was obsessed with it, jabbering on and on about how boring conferences were and how great harry potter was, made me look bad by association.

Not really fussed about the obituaries, put what you like. Pioneering research into bum disease, functional dissection of the Pijlstaart scuttling reflex, I discovered what makes stickers sticky, it's the bit on the back, but no obituary for me, no BBC front page, can't take space away from the B-list actors. I hope that many decades from now, white dee carks it the same day as whichever obscure 80s soap actor you've decided is high-brow and latched onto, hope she bumps him off the obits and into obscurity, with the rest of us.

Repeater

Girlfriend is heavy into this stuff and I'm heavy... no. She's been asking me which house I belong to and stuff and I've said I'll watch the films but I have fuckall enthusiasm for it. LOL at that boy dragging Shoulders though, that was good patter.

gloria

Imagine not liking someone because they're into a different aspect of pop culture than you. How old are you lot? About 13? It's the Harry Potter fans who are lucky that you're not interested in them.

Dr Rock

I wouldn't go out with an adult who really liked Harry Potter. A child maybe.

Wet Blanket

Quote from: gloria on August 04, 2017, 08:53:28 AM
Imagine not liking someone because they're into a different aspect of pop culture than you. How old are you lot? About 13? It's the Harry Potter fans who are lucky that you're not interested in them.

Well Harry Potter falls into that category of 'pop culture it's okay to like' doesn't it? Like the afore-mentioned Star Wars and Doctor Who. I bet you wouldn't jump in if the thread was about the detrimental effect of Love Island or the red-top tabloids, which probably have even more fans than HP.

mobias

Quote from: BlodwynPig on August 04, 2017, 02:02:02 AM
Its a bog standard cafe in Edinburgh...and probably the only place I've been associated with Potter that was not teeming with tourists or tat.


I think the cafe that heavily promotes itself as the cafe where she wrote Harry Potter, The Elephant Cafe, isn't the real one. The real one, Nicholson's, next to the old James Thin bookshop isn't there anymore.

Vodka Margarine

I share Serge's frustration about it still being everywhere after twenty years but essentially it's only a bit of mindless escapism and fantasy, like all the other deathless but lucrative franchises. Nerdish concerns are indelibly part of mainstream culture now, just look at the rise of 'comic cons' and all that baloney. Personally, I'd rather people were obsessed with Forest of Embarrassment Part 34 than all that mini-me Andy McNab military shite that was flying off the shelves last time I worked in a book shop (mid 00s).

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Delete Delete Delete on August 04, 2017, 02:23:33 AM
Isn't it just a generational thing, give them 10, 15 years and they'll be moaning about the Superhero fans, like ways that generation will be moaning about the next generation. At least they got something to be passionate about, but soon they will feel as out dated and old as my generation is s starting to feel now.

Well in fairness to Potter (not that I like it), the biggest criticism of superhero films is that a lot of them are quite boring. Just 2 hours of hamfisted dialogue being gruffly exchanged with a couple of chase scenes. At least in Potter stuff happens and that.

I think I was just slightly too old for it when it came out. Was already on Pratchett by then.

mrpupkin

Quote from: Wet Blanket on August 04, 2017, 08:32:20 AM
It's interesting to me in that it didn't seem to get madly commercialised until after the books were no longer being written. I remember the half-a-luggage trolley bolted to the wall in the old King's Cross being semi-ignored, now there's a special shop and a specific queue to have your photo taken with it in that scarf to add to your Bumble profile.

There's now a second queue outside the station to gain entry to the original queue, every day of the week. I think they're better off ditching the trains altogether and renaming it Kings Cross Official Harry Potter Trolley Photo Queuing Hangar.

Quote from: mrpupkin on August 04, 2017, 09:41:13 AM
There's now a second queue outside the station to gain entry to the original queue, every day of the week.

Yeah I noticed that the other weekend and was a bit stunned. It's a nice feature but the only way that length of queue would be justifiable was if it really did lead to a magic school.

Quote from: Dr Rock on August 04, 2017, 12:10:27 AM
JK Rowling was very well promoted to begin with though - remember all the stuff about writing the book in her local internet cafe or whatever. The original press focused on that, and that's how she reached a wider audience. Publishing likes the public to have an image of the author that they find interesting and like, and initial marketing often focuses on this.

I'm not sure that's entirely accurate actually - while there was a lot of hype, it didn't come straightaway - the first Potter book was published in 1997, but it wasn't until 1999 that they started becoming particularly well known - all that marketing and stuff about the cafe etc only really became a thing after her books had already started becoming popular with kids - it capitalised on it and no doubt helped to increase it but didn't quite originate the initial appeal.  It was more a result of it than the first cause.

Wet Blanket

That sounds about right to me. I remember it becoming suddenly very fashionable to read the Harry Potter books when I was in the second year of Sixth Form, around 2001 (is that about when the first film came out?) and having an opinion on whether adults should read them becoming a staple of stand-up routines and talk show chit chat around this time.


Dr Rock

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 04, 2017, 09:28:49 AM
Well in fairness to Potter (not that I like it), the biggest criticism of superhero films is that a lot of them are quite boring. Just 2 hours of hamfisted dialogue being gruffly exchanged with a couple of chase scenes. At least in Potter stuff happens and that.

I think most Marvel films aren't boring. I think all Harry Potter films are boring. I think Potter films are much more samey than Marvel films too, even though Marvel films are sometimes a bit formulaic - and I much prefer that formula. Also I am 100% right about this. The end.

H Scorn

#56
Quote from: Dr Rock on August 04, 2017, 08:58:13 AM
I wouldn't go out with an adult who really liked Harry Potter. A child maybe.

I go out with an adult who really likes Harry Potter.
She knows I'm not keen so doesn't mention it much but we visited Glenfinnan because Harry Potter, it was heaving with tourists so we visited Ardnamurchan instead, Highlander 3, a popcorn classic, was filmed in the area. Better.

She also thought Wonder Woman was good. Fucking hell what have I done?

J.K. Rowling is awful isn't she? She 'Potterises' political situations and gets involved in politics too much (politics I don't like that is - anti- Scottish independence, anti-Corbyn)

touchingcloth

Quote from: Kelvin on August 04, 2017, 02:28:38 AM
I don't think there's anything baffling about the popularity of the books/films, at all. Just from the four film I've seen, they very obviously have all the components of your Dickens, your Star Wars, and your Lord of The Rings; big, colourful worlds that feel fleshed out; broad, archtypical characters, but with enough personality to make them stand out from more generic storytelling; a sense of wonder and memorable set pieces; and a simplistic, but distinctive morality. All the hallmarks of other popular culture tentpoles.       

The obvious flaws in the writing, story-telling, and in the films, acting, are compensated for by the above average world building; and those worlds are compelling, not because they're the most nuanced, but because they mix simplicity with wonder, from the small scale, to the large. Just as the original Star Wars films are elevated beyond their scripts, Dickens beyond his plotting, and Lord of the Ring beyond their density, the appeal of Harry Potter is surely memorable characters doing interesting things, entertainingly.

This covers just about every reason why the books are enjoyed by a range of different ages. It's a bit of a simplistic view to see them as being written for and therefore only enjoyable by children - like the best kids' books they're not written in a way that deliberately excludes an older audience, but rather in a way that includes a younger one. Something like the Just William stories were written with a younger target audience in mind than the Potter books, but I can still laugh like a cunt at them because the characters and themes are more universal than they'd seem on face value alone.

It's a fallacy to compare Rowling to Joyce, of course, because they're writing with entirely different aims in mind. Not everything has to be Ulysses to be worth your time, but I do agree with the sentiment that there's a problem if people are never reading anything but Harry Potter (though I'm not sure how widespread this actually is amongst adults).

yesitsme

I've never read HP but I have read The Worst Witch to my daughter.

It's about a young girl who goes to Witch School to be taught spells 'n' stuff.  She has a cat, flies on a broom gets in to all sorts of scrapes.

Never understood how no body went 'Oi, Rowling - have you read this?' 

I have seen a, what i assume to be parody book called Barry Trotter - never picked it up though, what sort of person buys this?

Friends of OFAH?  Friends of BoE?  Enemies of Harry Potter?

Gertcha!

Bazooka

Every actor that dies these days has been in Harry Potter, easy for the news to copy and paste the title for a new death article.