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NM (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} narcissam) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif){kind=small} fandom_wank,@ 2006-01-17 19:51:00 |
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| Entry tags: | godwin alert, person: jkr, wtf mate |
J.K. Rowling is a Pop-Culture Hitler
You heard right. Here you are. I'm c&ping this under a cut in case the author g-men.us decides to take it down.
This is what I think about the Harry Potter phenomenon on an individual level: totally normal and harmless. But this is what I think it represents on a larger scale: a prime example of the end of high standards of quality in art. I admit I have only read one of the books, the first one. However I have a bachelor's degree in literature so I do know at least to some degree whereof I speak, and let me tell you, that was the worst book I have ever read, not just because my expectations were high; they weren't. But it was really, really bad. To me what it represents is the triumph of a kind of "concept culture", where the superficial premise of the narrative is taken at face value and the reality of the execution is not really considered. Add to this Rowling's deplorable tendency to try to sell her books by intimating that she will kill off one of the characters! However I will try to make my next point with an analogy: the people who generate mass culture are like governments of a country, and the people to whom they sell their work are like citizens of that country. Now, when people point to the US society which claims to be free, the thing they tend to dismiss as worthless or repressive are our systems of government. The things they tend to praise are usually mass cultural phenomena. You all know the arguments against our government because I see them here all the time: US politicians lie, they start wars, they buy influence, etc. And the arguments for our mass culture are similarly simple: it's democratic, free enterprise, entertaining, etc. How does this relate to my analogy? Well consider that in the mass culture "government", once a person reaches a certain level of status and power, there is no accountability. With only small exaggeration, someone like Rowling could publish her grocery list and people would buy it and praise it. This status is however impossible to attain in the real government of a country like the US (the way it should be!) But other countries are not like this, and we should not expect or coerce them to follow our lead. Still I would raise Rowling's Britain as a prime example of a nation with tons of people in positions of mass culture power who are never going to go away until they die. LOL, not that I'm suggesting anything, fellow Potterhaters! But still, take Princess Diana: she would have been Princess Diana until she died if she had lived to be 100. Or Elton John: he hasn't written a memorable song since the eighties, yet he still rules from his copyright throne. Now mind you we in America have plenty of these people of our own. But I think the difference is we don't obsess over them as much, neither loving or hating them as much as they do in other countries. Notice that although the new Star Wars films are quite popular here, people are able to separate the diligent efforts of the many (the actors, production designers, etc.) from the ego-trip of the one, namely Star Wars' emperor George Lucas. As disgusting as the throwaway, almost pornographic, culture of celebrity in America is, cult figures like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, George Lucas, etc are normal objects of fantasy for people and will go away in their own sweet time. But I don't think it's possible for someone like Rowling to go away unless she goes all Howard Hughes on us, puts all her books in the public domain, and becomes a recluse. Also, notice how people in Hollywood (the ultimate destination of all modern pop culture) and the entertainment industry in general behave. They behave like aristocrats and at worst, dictators! We were not supposed to have aristocrats in this country; that was part of "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." Now of course the people that wrote that were all rich white males, many of them slaveowners, but does that make it any less true? Not at all, because they - the founders - did not have the kind of mass appeal and popularity that someone like Rowling has. They could not write six books and become richer than the Monarch of England. They could not sue for $100 million dollars, as Rowling did, a newspaper which printed excerpts from her book too early for her liking. (I am not even going to go deeply into the fact that she rarely includes American characters in her books yet constantly markets her crap here and rails against "bigotry"!) What I detest about people like Rowling is the personal power they generate through mass culture, making themselves into dictators, all the while decrying the burdens of fame like Hitler in the Fuehrerbunker in Munich complaining how the Germans had let him down.
Bonuses: A new spelling of prejudice in the first reply! And ten bucks the second poster, Miss K., is a Harmonian.
NM
ETA: OP identifying himself as Keith Ellington posts in comments: "Paragraphs added and Quintus Snape's troll deleted. Laws are made to be broken, including Godwin's. Sorry about Fueherbunker, don't know much about European history because it's all about famous sociopaths like J.K. Rowling."
