Heilman, Elizabeth E. (Ed.) (2003). Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives. N.Y., N.Y.: Routledge Falmer Press.
Pp. ix + 308
$24.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-415-93374-9
Reviewed by Kathleen Sullivan Brown
University of Missouri, St. Louis
July 22, 2003
Individual wizards use different types of wands to create magic in Harry Potter’s world. In this volume, the contributors use multidisciplinary wands of analysis from a variety of philosophical and critical perspectives to describe their view of reality represented in Harry Potter’s fantasy world. Editor Elizabeth E. Heilman has assembled an eclectic mix of serious scholars from literature, psychology and other disciplines to provide an extended consideration of the Harry Potter phenomenon. Contributors include professors who specialize in fields such as culture studies and critical literacy, as well as a sprinkling of classroom teachers, graduate students, parents and even a few preteens – the group for which the Potter series was originally intended.
Alex Wang, one of those preteens who is also a contributor here, notes some irritating inconsistencies in the Potter series from book to book and from Harry Potter books to Harry Potter movies. He says “It is harder to get lost in the world when that world doesn’t hold together.” (p. 282). These scholars have deconstructed Harry Potter’s world, and the series holds up well under such scrutiny despite as Alex notes a few inconsistencies. Beyond the scholars’ critical analyses, the book contains recommendations and practical advice for using the Potter books and the entire pop culture phenomenon as an inquiry tool in classrooms. In addition, this book includes enough Harry Potter information to bring any reader up to date who has missed the phenomenon until now and wants to learn what all the fuss is about it.
Turner-Vorbeck opens the Heilman collection with serious questions about the role of the corporate media in pawning off the Harry Potter phenomenon on children. She provides a chronology of how this “cultural phenomenon” was in fact created and manipulated, rather than just emerging from the delight of child-readers around the world. She asks the question, is this “good clean fun or cultural hegemony” at work? Her chapter frames the rest of the book, as each following chapter then tries to answer or at least address this question.
Objections and attempts at censorship have arisen over the Harry Potter books because they deal with what some perceive as controversial topics such as witchcraft. The chapter by Appelbaum may ease the minds of parents and teachers about these issues, arguing that children are not simply recipients of corporate culture. They act upon their world, a claim reinforced later in this book by Bond and Michelson who provide several examples of children doing exactly that. Appelbaum puts the Potter series into the context of broader children’s literature and superhero cults such as Superman, and Batman and Robin. Those earlier examples reflected post-war and cold war eras while Harry Potter and other contemporary child culture products like Pokemon reflect a postmodern era of emerging sociopolitical realities and the provisional nature of knowledge. Still, Applebaum like Turner-Vorbeck in the opening chapter also seems bothered about the pervasiveness of the marketing of Pottermania products and tie-ins.
In his chapter, Applebaum introduces the reader to several key concepts, particularly the notions of anime and gundam, respectively the techno-hero and the child-savior (pp. 28-30). His referent, however, is more the video game culture than the Potter books or children’s literature, and he goes so far as to suggest that the creator Rowling has written Harry Potter in the format of animated video games’ with serial events. His focus, though, is on how society distinguishes between science and non-science, or science and magic. Today’s technology, after all, was yesterday’s magic and science fiction. There is a small inconsistency here that worries him also. Like Alex, Appelbaum also questions some of the technology notions in Potter’s world: why do wizards have to ride a train? Or use a flying car? There seems to be a certain poetic license at work here as to the ways of wizards. This chapter of this densely packed book will be of special interest to teachers of science who want to take advantage of Harry’s interest in the technoculture and how things work to make classrooms more hands-on and active. To those teachers, Appelbaum offers a caution about their students, “When wonder is not in the curriculum, they will find it elsewhere, outside of school.” (p. 35).
Appelbaum also broaches the subject of violence in Harry Potter and other child cultural artifacts. He claims that children in his research interviews can distinguish between real and phony violence. This is something that concerns adults, particularly educators. We worry that children may become desensitized to violence, not that they cannot distinguish the real from the cartoon-like violence, but that they cannot judge it as good or evil. The effects of violence are temporary in a cartoon but far more lasting in the real world of the playground or the social class networks of the classroom. It is not the cognitive distinction, but the ethical one that remains troubling for anyone who spends time around children and schools.
Appelbaum goes to the heart of the Harry Potter tale when he asks whether it is our abilities or our talents that determine our fate. Is it the choices that we make? Turner-Vorbeck, citing cultural hegemony of the media, would answer that our “choices” are not really choices at all if they are preprogrammed “events” in a video game with limited options as to what we can “choose.” Appelbaum appears more sanguine on the choices that children can make, but I am not sure his argument is as convincing.
The next chapter by Taub and Servaty also focuses on concerns expressed by many parents and educators about the dangers that may be found in the Harry Potter books because of their strong themes of magic and death. These authors provide some help to understand the variety of religious perspectives that shape these opinions. They explain, for example, that Fundamentalist Christians believe that Satan is real and that the devil uses books, movies and other means of communication to entice and recruit sinners. They quote Deuteronomy that such evils are “an abomination to the Lord” (p. 54).
Other parents with less extreme points of view express legitimate concerns that the Harry Potter books distort fantasy and reality and may prevent children from understanding the difference between the two. “Can children and adolescents exercise judgment about fantasy?” is a question they ask (p. 57). Even if we assume that children are capable of such judgment, do they, in fact, routinely exercise such judgment? Children who try to drive cars when they cannot reach the brake pedals or who jump off buildings like Superman may be “capable” of judgment in the abstract, but they do not necessarily exercise that capacity in certain situations of peer pressure. Uncle Dursley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets falls out of Harry’s second story bedroom window yet is shown unhurt and shouting, shaking a fist at Harry. In fact, a child who mimics this bravado may literally fracture something more important than Uncle Dursley’s dignity.
Taub and Servaty, however, cite research in developmental psychology that debunks these concerns as myths. They review the positions of developmental psychologists, starting with Piaget, who thought that children maintained their magical thinking throughout the concrete operational stage until age 11 or 12. Other researchers now make the case that a child as young as three may be able to distinguish between “magic” and “tricks.” Many factors, too, may influence a child’s ability to define reality. What is the emotional content of a story? What are the context and conditions under which the child experiences the story? For example, does the parent share that experience? What is the child’s grasp of the natural world such as the concept of gravity?
An important contribution that Taub and Servaty also make here is to cite the potential benefits of magical thinking as a positive and restorative therapy. This makes sense in light of the notion, expressed by many of these writers, of the child-reader as author. Children are rarely put in charge of anything in our society. They may find a sense of power and efficacy in being in charge of their own fantasy and, through their fantasies, be able to deal with painful subjects, events, and relationships.
Taub and Servaty also make a firm distinction between the scariness of printed books compared to movies and television, citing research by Cantor. In reading Harry Potter, the child is in charge of the pace and even the content by skipping pages or frightening scenes. The addition of soundtrack and music intended to dramatize and heighten suspense may make the movie and TV versions of child fantasy scarier. This is a good argument for encouraging younger children to read Harry Potter books and to read them with parents.
The subject of death is another recurrent theme in the Harry Potter series. Harry’s parents died when he was an infant, the work of the evil Lord Voldemort. Harry is an orphan, a fear that many children hold. These two commentators Taub and Servaty commend Rowling for dealing with the issue because so many others avoid talking about death. This commendation is not surprising since Servaty serves as editor of Omega: Journal of Death and Dying. Most children, they declare, have a mature understanding of death by age seven, and yet adults often try to protect children from experiencing this natural part of life and even mislead or keep children in the dark about details of the deaths of loved ones.
Finally, Taub and Servaty offer practical and helpful advice for parents and educators in dealing with these controversial issues of religiosity, fantastical thinking, and death (p. 67). They even urge respect for diverse points of view about Harry Potter, including religious fundamentalism.
Chapters four, five and six provide rich examples of reader interpretations of Harry Potter. Malu explores the tension she found between her own reaction to the Harry Potter stories and her son’s decided lack of interest in them. By interviewing other children she also heard a range of other children’s reactions to “having” to read Harry Potter as a classroom project, which leads us to an interesting point: should older children be encouraged to read Harry Potter on their own, or should they be forced by their teachers to read Harry Potter as a new canonical work?
For those who choose to read Potter books together in class, Malu encourages the use of drama, performance and other literacy activities such as the puppet show that finally stimulated her son’s interest in the books. She feels these types of activities are especially important for boys whose reading skills may lag behind their peers.
Malu’s view presents a structuralist interpretation of themes from the interviews she conducted with school children. She found five themes: metaphors linked to personal experience, feelings, memory, imagination, and knowing/understanding the Harry Potter character. For adults, she adds another theme of “addiction” (p. 90). This word crops up often to describe adult fascination with Potter books and may relate back to Turner-Vorbeck’s theories of marketing manipulation. Nonetheless, if reading Harry Potter is an addiction, is it beneficial or destructive, in the way we think of most other addictions?
Next, Anderson tells a personal story and helps readers relate to the experience of a Native American who is learning to navigate two cultures. Anderson sees the Navajo and Euro-American cultures as an either/or proposition of cultural assimilation, but she also is optimistic about the possibilities for biculturalism of Harry Potter’s Muggle and magic worlds. Anderson ends her story with more advice to teachers on how to use Harry Potter with Native American students and other learners to explore cultural similarities and differences and reflect on issues such as isolation and bias.
While most of the contributors to this volume focus on the reading of Harry Potter, Bond and Michelson concentrate on children’s use of Harry Potter for creative writing. They see reading and writing as intertwined constructivist acts of literacy. They introduce Langer’s concept of “envisionment” (p. 109), which means that the reader does not just interpret what is read or what the author meant, but the reader becomes author, envisioning the reader’s own world. They point out that a global audience now exists on the Internet for writing and sharing Harry Potter stories and provide many examples of such “interactive, dialogic and collaborative models of learning” (p. 113) in the form of websites, hosted by young people. The Daily Prophet is one they name -- an online newspaper with a fictional interview of Professor Snape and even a letter to the editor from Snape complaining about the interviewer. Instead of a threat to print books, the Internet may support readers and writing while removing cultural barriers.
“Versioning” is another type of writing activity in which young authors take their own spin on a Potter storyline. Creating multiple ending is nothing new, of course, and has been found in print books for quite a while. According to Bond and Michelson, however, many girls are now creating their own versions on these websites and confronting gender issues by creating action figures of Hermione, the primary girl character in the Potter series.
In the next section, the collection turns from culture studies and reader responses to literary analysis. Nikolajeva sees in the Harry Potter books a return to the novel’s romantic hero. She asks: what is it about Harry that so many readers of different ages and backgrounds seem to like so much? She informs the reader about Northrop’s five-stage theory of myths and locates Harry Potter in the fourth stage. In this analysis, a romantic hero is one who is better than most ordinary mortals but is by no means god-like. Nikolajeva contrasts Harry Potter with Cinderella and other romantic heroes in children’s fiction, and she identifies other writers such as Edith Nesbitt who influenced J. K. Rowling’s work. Nikolajeva also compares Harry Potter to other genres of fiction, especially those found in children’s literature. She detects parallels between Harry Potter and Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys who also solve mysteries with their unique talents. In a comment that might help adults better understand the Potter phenomenon, Nikolajeva compares Harry Potter to the James Bond series. Readers (or movie watchers) know what is coming with 007 and with Harry Potter, but we do not know how the hero will save the day and that is what makes it entertaining. Nikolajeva especially likes Harry Potter for his Everyman quality. He is an ordinary boy, with an ordinary name, and eyeglasses.
One of the most interesting analyses in the entire Heilman book comes in Nikolajeva’s application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of “carnival” to the Harry Potter series (p. 129). Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher and social theorist, used the notion of “carnival” to explain the anti-hegemonic behavior of members of a community. Mardi Gras is a perfect example of a carnivalesque ritual that Catholics, especially in medieval times, engaged in prior to the long, solemn fasting of Lent. Carnival is the time when “the people” briefly challenge the formal strictures of society. While there is not time in this review to go into detail about this complex idea (see Morson & Emerson, 1990), Bakhtin’s notion of carnival is a potent tool for explaining the often-comic and sometimes subversive tension between children and adults, students and teachers.
An interesting disagreement between two of the commentators represents the divergent views of different generational perspectives. Nikolajeva, a professor of comparative literature, asserts that the character of Harry Potter does not have a complex inner life and that Rowling, as a novelist, does not dwell on Harry’s motivations. Yet in the Appendix mentioned earlier, the young reader Alex Wang specifically observes that what he misses in the movie versions is Harry’s thinking and feelings about events (p. 279).
Alton, in the next literary perspective, points out how Rowling has fused many different genres in the Harry Potter stories. One of these genres, the bildungsroman, is a novel of formation in which a young person develops character. There are often three motifs or themes in these novels: loss of the father and search for a father-figure, conflict between traditions of past and needs of present, and the beginnings of a loving relationship outside of the family circle. Alton shows how Rowling employs these motifs in Harry Potter. The school story is another genre to which Alton alludes. Hogwarts, she claims, is really quite comparable to any British public school, despite its wizardly inhabitants. She cites evidence of dormitories, commons rooms, shared meals and competitions, demerits for misconduct, and many other components that constitute the experience of generations of British school children.
Having incorporated so many of these genres thus far in the progression of the series, it seems logical to wonder, as Alton does, where Rowling will take Harry as he continues his development as both boy and wizard. Will the Harry Potter series eventually reach epic proportions, “epic” being the super-genre of all time, in which the hero does become god-like.
De Rosa’s contribution focuses on the initiation rites in Harry Potter. He points out that Rowling achieves success by often inverting rather than following literary conventions. Instead of fasting in his new surroundings, as might be expected of an initiate during a rite of passage, Harry Potter gorges on food at the Weasley’s home and at Hogwarts. This deviation makes sense when coupled with the rule-breaking theme in Harry Potter. Because Harry is an orphan, his quest for identity also carries a slight twist from novels about more typical adolescents. Harry is allowed to grieve the loss of his parents through the Cloak of Invisibility, the Photo Album, and the Mirror. Instead of rebelling against his upbringing, Harry seeks to learn more about it. His mentor, Dumbledore, helps Harry Potter realize that, ironically, he cannot live in the fantasy world of the Mirror: “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” (quoted, p. 176).
Family life, belonging and alienation are themes taken up then by Kornfeld and Prothro. They do not find much to like, however, as they conclude that Rowling reduces “family life to slapstick comedy” (p. 189). They believe the author stereotypes family and gender roles, with the breadwinning fathers and stay-at-home moms. Boys have the major active roles in the story, parents are generally clueless, kids are “smart-ass” and everyone is one-dimensional, in their view. They write: “These two families [Dursleys and Weasleys] are…comical, conventional, superficial, predictable – and totally misrepresentative of the diversity of family structures in contemporary society.” (p. 191).
They find a bit more to like in Rowling’s treatment of Harry as a caring person, especially as he takes on the hero role at Hogwarts. Harry moves from isolation with the Dursley family where he has no one to care about and no one cares about him, to the wizard world where he cares about many people, creatures, and even wizard traditions that he is just learning. In this vein, Kornfeld and Prothro recall a fundamental idea in sociology of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft from Frederick Toennies (p. 194). Often applied to urban and rural societies, these two terms represent the opposite poles of modern life from the primary, caring relationships of family and the local community to the alienation and isolation of impersonal industrialized cities. Once again, Rowling has inverted these concepts, in this case with the new larger society of Hogwarts School caring more for Harry Potter than his real aunt and uncle ever did. Rowling, they posit, seems to accept conflict and competition as an integral part of Harry’s life and family although she does show the uses of family and friends to support adolescent development of independence and healthy identify formation.
Chapter eleven is an important one for educators who might want to use the Harry Potter books as a lens to examine real-world schooling practices. This contributor Elster finds that the Harry Potter series presents “a complex world of knowledge and knowers” where “knowledge is multilayered and multifunctional” (p. 204). Learning for Harry is an active process of inquiry-based learning in which he uses his talents and his book learning to solve real wizardly problems. Still, there is a separation of “school learning” and “life learning.”
Although Elster does not draw on the concept here, I found that Nikolajeva’s earlier application of carnival useful when looking at Rowling’s depiction of school and the whole process of learning. Rowling’s tongue seems firmly planted in cheek when students at Hogwarts ask their teacher to tell them about the “convention of 1289.” I am not sure the adults “get it” that they are being gently mocked about the stuffiness of the real school curriculum.
Elster, though, poses an intriguing question with regard to Harry Potter and more importantly to real parents and educators. “When should adults hide or withhold knowledge from children?” (p. 214). In some ways, the knowledge of wizardry in Potter’s world corresponds to “the hidden curriculum.” The real knowledge that counts is sometimes kept secret, and children often wear a cloak of invisibility in our schools and in families in terms of their democratic participation in decisions affecting their own lives.
Although Heilman as an editor and parent enjoys the Harry Potter stories, she has concerns about Rowling’s use of gender and power themes, which she articulates in the chapter she authored. Heilman starts off Chapter 12 with this comment about the Potter books: “Themes related to power and gender seemed to conform to a rigid set of patterns, which reflect capitalist and patriarchal gender regimes” (p. 222). She argues that educators should use artifacts of popular culture such as the Harry Potter series to unmask these dominant and hegemonic conventions. Heilman admits that her initial reading of Harry Potter did not reveal sexist and capitalist patterns, but that later her formal analysis of the books did. Many would suggest that this is taking Harry Potter much too seriously as literature, although the introductory chapter by Turner-Vorbeck buttresses her argument. If popular culture is indeed such a potent force in shaping the minds and imaginations of young people, then perhaps it does require a close reading and the deconstruction of such texts. Readers can get lost in Potter's world without a critical literacy.
Heilman points out gender stereotypes in the books’ characters, including Harry as the “brave but stupid” hero (p. 225), Hermione as the smart but timid girl, the old and wise headmaster Dumbledore, and the old and nurturing McGonagall. Girl characters are allowed to play Quidditch, but of course, their play is inept and they do not win games as the boys do. Girls giggle; they cry and shrink in terror while boys compete and attack in their defense. She also points to a lot of stereotyping of body images though, when Heilman complains that one of these body-image examples is Hermione using a wizard spell to change the appearance of her teeth, I personally felt that the argument had gone too far. The series, after all, targets middle school youth for whom bad teeth and/or orthodontia are nearly universal themes.
Heilman also observes many examples in the books of male and female archetypes such as the powerful, hegemonic masculinity. She reminds us of Barthes’ distinction between predictable pleasure (plaisir) and the more unpredictable, unsetting, and unnerving type of pleasure (jouissance) when a text challenges our assumptions (p. 235). She would prefer to see more of the latter in Rowling’s work. The chapter ends with a discussion of Bronwyn Davies’s observation that readers can learn about “discursive practices” (p. 236), which they can use to examine and challenge the dominant view. Heilman finds the themes in the Harry Potter series to be valuable for this purpose because they are both “engaging and constricting” (p. 236).
Heilman and Gregory continue this theme into their co-authored chapter. They examine hegemony in terms of insiders and outsiders in these real and wizardly communities. They quote Althusser, Gramsci and Foucault to explain what hegemony is and how it functions, not so much as formal rules but as a way of thinking and making assumptions. Literature, though one of the more powerful tools for challenging such hegemony, may also reproduce and represent hegemony at the same time that it transforms and challenges it
As critical theorists, Heilman and Gregory find a lot to discuss about insider and outsiders. There are many of these in the Potter books. Harry himself is often both at the same time, while Draco is very concerned with his own insider standing and the lack of standing that others have such as Hermione. Heilman and Gregory also look at some of the minor characters such as Dobby the house elf and find that Rowling “reinscribes and normalizes the marginalized status of immigrants and dialect speakers.” (p. 245). They object to the characterization of some of these minor characters: the French as fashionable, the Hungarians as stout, and the Bulgarians as surly. In this respect, the author Rowling may be guilty of failing to fully develop the characters, or even of a lack of consciousness. Despite their misgivings and disappointments, Heilman and Gregory conclude that the Harry Potter series “provides rich opportunities for important discussions” (p. 257) about such issues as peer relations, racial and national stereotypes, and gender expectations.
In the book’s final chapter, Skulnick and Goodman contend, with Rorty, that popular culture is an important source of learning for young people and that educators need to attend to the many rich examples that have curriculum potential, such as the Harry Potter series. Teachers miss many chances to use popular culture artifacts to discuss, inquire and reflect on citizenship and civic leadership. Harry Potter, they discover, is both a typical and an atypical hero. He often breaks rules but does so with some larger common good in mind, and this is the essence of civic leadership. On the other hand, while Harry Potter helps the downtrodden, he does not really question the fundamental hegemony of the status quo. He survives, he helps his friends and furry creatures; but as Harry moves toward his majority, will he really fight for social justice?
Skulnick and Goodman highlight Rowling’s use of rituals as examples of events that teach about citizenship, democratic decision-making, and agency. They recommend that teachers look to three scenes in the books where these rituals are well expressed: the Sorting Hat, the Quidditch field games, and Harry’s pronouncement of evil when he says Voldemort’s name. They pose a question for all non-Hogwarts educators: “How do we use our schools …as settings to more adequately prepare people to assume responsibility of citizenship?” (p. 264).
It would be helpful to have more clarity about the distinction between citizenship and civic leadership (which is specifically in the title of this closing chapter). Skulnick and Gordon explore Harry Potter’s choices in these ritualistic school encounters and come up with several lessons to be interpreted from them. Neither destiny nor institutions can create a hero. Rules are socially constructed and negotiable, especially for people in society who wield power. Harry wins at the Quidditch game not just because of his personal powers but also because of the support that he receives from his peers, from his community. Only in the third ritual, the naming of evil, does Harry move beyond the norms of his community toward civic leadership.
Finally, in what may be a fitting epilogue for the Heilman book, Skulnick and Goodman state:
A hero is not just someone who upholds the value system of the institution in which he or she belongs but rather is someone whose consciousness of the changing needs of individuals who survived in a given institution allows them to change it. (p. 273)
Harry Potter upholds the values of his school and community, but in the unfolding saga he has shown a willingness to move beyond the group and the status quo, exercising independent thought and leadership in the face of threats to self and others. Heilman’s volume clearly shows that the Harry Potters books, despite inconsistencies and constraints, contain valuable lessons. Educators and parents, with this multidisciplinary collection as a guide, can mine the series for its curriculum potential to teach critical literacy, citizenship and agency in a world that often values conformity over community.
Reference
Morson, G. S. and Emerson, C. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University PressAbout the Reviewer
Kathleen Sullivan Brown is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the College of Education of the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Her research focuses on the social and economic contexts of education.
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