08.08.2007
Inspired flashes, mainstream values
Jeremy Butler reviews Harry Potter and the deathly hallows
"Those who refuse to listen to dragons are probably doomed to spend their lives acting out the nightmares of politicians" - Ursula K Le Guin"
The beautiful irony at the heart of fantasy is that in imaginary worlds we can often more freely explore aspects of our own world than we can in more realistic genres. As the fantasy writer Le Guin writes in her essay Why are Americans afraid of dragons? (1974), fantasy "isn't factual, but it is true". Then Le Guin was lambasting the parochial mindset that dismisses fantasy as escapist drivel.
Thirty years on, fantasy still has its critics, naturally, but it is also enjoying something of a golden age. At the time of writing seven of the top 25 best-selling titles on Amazon.com are fantasies "¦ and all of them are Harry Potter books! Of course, the top of the list is the final book in the series that has done so much to revitalise interest in reading in general and fantasy in particular, Harry Potter and the deathly hallows.
No-one can disagree that the Harry Potter series has enjoyed an unprecedented and somewhat inexplicable level of success. Even before The deathly hallows the books had sold an estimated 325 million copies, turning author JK Rowling into a dollar billionaire. The latest book alone sold a staggering 2,652,656 copies in the first 24 hours it was on sale in the UK.
Since the publication of the first in the series, Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone, in 1997 fantasy has enjoyed considerable commercial success in printed form and on the screen. Some of this has been rather poor stuff, cashing in on the halo effect of the Potter books in much the same way as so many derivative fantasy books were published in the wake of the popularity of Tolkien's The lord of the rings in the 1960s, but there have also been some real gems that may not have gained so much attention without the interest garnered by Harry Potter.
Although pagans will no doubt protest, the books have also arguably contributed to the increased involvement in pagan religions. Perhaps most importantly, while reliable figures are hard to find, there is considerable anecdotal evidence to suggest that the Potter works have inspired many previously reluctant readers, both children and adults, to become keen book-lovers.
This popularity is heady stuff for fantasy fans. Yet mostly readers and critics restrict themselves to asking whether the books are any good. As Marxists we need to ask ourselves the same question as publishers and writers are no doubt asking: what is it about the Potter books that has made them so successful? And furthermore, what does this success tell us about our society?
Notwithstanding the clever marketing of the series (the suspense between each publication, the secrecy over each ending and the rags-to-riches story of JK Rowling herself), the magical formula of success is contained within the pages of the books themselves.
For those (very) few not familiar with Harry Potter, the series is set in our own world with the addition that magic is real and there is an unseen magical community of wizards and magical creatures. The eponymous hero is a schoolboy at an exclusive school for wizarding folk who must not only face the travails of being a teenager, but also thwart the evil schemes of the dark wizard Voldemort, who tried, and failed, to kill Harry as an infant, but succeeded in killing his parents.
In The deathly hallows, Voldemort has fully regained his power and Harry and his friends must track down and destroy the mystical artefacts that make him invulnerable, while hiding from the wizarding authorities that have been subverted by Voldemort's followers. The book ends with the long awaited final showdown between Harry and his nemesis.
Part of the charm of the series is undoubtedly its accessibility, in more ways than one. Not only are the books easy to read (it took me a day and a half to read the 607 pages of The deathly hallows), but in the clear-cut clash between good and evil the plot is a comfortably predictable one. Also, unlike secondary world fantasies like The lord of the rings or The chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter's world is, as I have said, our world, albeit with the inclusion of magic.
It is not quite our world though: it is all rather twee. Potter's England is the idealised England beloved by American tourists and middle class mums and dads who have forgotten their own childhoods. It is full of villages, public schools with house systems and prefects and people with silly alliterative names. It is a very unthreatening version of reality. Despite Potter fans proclaiming that the books are dark and deal with death and other weighty matters unflinchingly, nothing really unpleasant or disturbing happens, and the vision of childhood depicted is a rose-tinted one. Bullies are ludicrous rather than sinister, death is noble, never squalid, squabbles between friends are overcome in the next chapter and the children enjoy going to school and never argue with their teachers!
The politics displayed in the Potter books are rather bland as well. For example, a recurrent theme throughout the series is racism. Voldemort is a racist bigot who is trying to exterminate those wizards who are not from hereditary wizarding families, and ultimately exert wizardly rule over non-magical people. Thoroughly in keeping with the multiculturalism of the political mainstream, Harry and his friends are nice and tolerant and inclusive of those who are different.
Yet, as with the multicultural agenda, the good wizard's commitment to equality is superficial: goblins and elves form an underclass within magical society and there is a further stark divide between those who are born wizards and 'muggles' who have no magical power. Harry and his friends largely accept this status quo, or at the very least fail to sufficiently challenge it.
Far worse, however, is the determinism and mysticism present in the stories. Those unfamiliar with fantasy sometimes think that the genre is irrational: on the contrary, good fantasy must be internally consistent. Fantasy can break the rules of our reality, but in order to be believable it must replace them with other rules, and follow them.
Rowling does not appear to understand this. Despite magic playing such an integral part in the stories, it is never explained how it works: instead it is frequently used as a deus ex machina, its workings being changed merely to advance the story. All too often challenges are not overcome logically, but instead by mystical plot devices that come out of nowhere, through dreams and happenstance and magical trinkets. Just as unpleasant is the idea that fate or luck decides whether you are good or bad, magical or mundane.
Contrast the middle-of-the-road politics of Harry Potter with two other children's fantasy books: CS Lewis's The chronicles of Narnia and Philip Pullman's His dark materials. These very different authors are unapologetically bold in their politics - not in the patronisingly didactic way of Orwell's Animal farm, but so that their radicalism infuses and enriches their respective stories. The christian convert, Lewis, has his characters strive to do the right thing and willingly endure suffering to do so, while those of the humanist and atheist, Pullman, rail against those structures that diminish humanity, while searching for meaning and identity.
Both of these series have enjoyed considerable commercial and critical success, but not to the extent that the Harry Potter books have: the very qualities that make them so interesting inevitably offend and alienate some potential readers. Rowling, on the other hand, has maximised her audience by producing a story so anodyne that Gordon Brown is a fan.
Like New Labour, however, although the Harry Potter books lack substance, they are not short on style. Although the plots themselves are rather forgettable, and the characters are often two-dimensional, Rowling has had some inspired flashes of creative genius: particular highlights are the quirky wizard game of quidditch, the ghosts who act as patrons to the school houses, various eclectic magical disciplines like shape-changing and duels with magic wands, delightfully odd secondary characters and pictures whose subjects can talk and move from frame to frame. It is also worth saying that despite the sentimentality of the books there is a genuine attempt at engaging with altogether darker and more mature themes of loss and growth in a way that tries not to patronise its readership.
The very best fantasy challenges both its characters and its readers. The Harry Potter books do not. Although Ursula Le Guin herself has praised the series, I would argue that its very success is because the books are a rather tame fantasy: people are still afraid of dragons. The Potter books do not demand overmuch of their readers. They do not challenge the values of readers because their own values are so prevalent in mainstream society. They do not stretch readers' credibility because they never take themselves seriously enough to create a believable alternative world.
The books are nice, and I am not altogether sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.