The Sociology of Harry Potter: 22 Enchanting Essays on the Wizarding World

by Unknown

  The results of my survey suggest that Harry Potter has enjoyed a great reception in India because readers find familiarity in certain characters, creatures, and other elements of the British wizarding world. In this chapter I have presented three such elements that I believe underlay these feelings – Indian’s affinity for the supernatural, the Patil twins and many magical creatures, and the caste-like social structure of the society. Future research on Pottermania in India could address these and other social elements to discover which are most important and influential to children readers.

  Despite being set in the United Kingdom, Harry Potter has enjoyed great success in many countries, including those that, at first glance, appear very different culturally and socially. However, as I have tried to show, Harry Potter was immensely successful in India because, in short, when readers opened the book about a British school boy, they, nonetheless, entered into “a world entirely their own” (HP3).

  References

  Anand, Mulk Raj. 1944[2000]. “ The Barber’s Trade Union.” Pp. 29-42 in An Anthology of English Short Stories. Edited by R. P. Singh. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

  Encyclopedia Britannica. “Naga.” Retrieved 3 November 2011

  (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/401527/naga).

  Indicopleustes, Cosmos. 1897[2003]. The Christian Topography. Transcribed by R. Pearse. Retrieved 3 November 2011

  (http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/index.htm#Cosmas_Indicopleustes).

  Naas, Michael. 2007. “Comme si comme ca: Phantasm of Self, State, and a Sovereign God.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 40(2): 1-26.

  Office of National Statistics. 2005. “UK Snap Shot: Ethnicity and Identity Population Size.”

  “Either Must Die at the Hand of the Other”

  Religious Reactions to Harry Potter

  Leo Ruickbie

  A man stood by the window, arms folded, a dark silhouette against the light. In front of him, a girl with eyes reddened and puffy from crying. “Tell me, Samantha,” he began, “how did you and Holly get into the craft?” The girl looked up at him. “Through the Harry Potter books! We wanted his powers, so we called for spirit guides. Then they came into us.” She sank onto the sofa, the man standing over her. “They led us into stuff we found in the Harry Potter books – Tarot cards, Ouija boards, crystal balls...” The man interrupted her, “Samantha, the Potter books open a doorway that will put untold millions of kids into hell.”[1]

  This scene never took place. It is based on a comic strip by Jack T. Chick called “The Nervous Witch” (2002). It does, however, reflect the real concerns of many Christians, despite the fact that there were no Tarot cards or Ouija boards in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and crystal balls were presented in nothing but the poorest light. That in itself tells us much about the Christian Fundamentalist reaction to Harry Potter. Why was the religious reaction to Harry Potter so strong? Why did it seem like we were again about to relive the witch hunts of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

  Intended as an innocent and educative tale for children (and adults), Harry Potter clearly became a battleground for certain expressions of religiosity that reignited pre-established antagonisms towards paganism and magic. Rowling’s liberal messages of equality and the necessity of fighting tyranny were supplanted by a focus on magic, a magic that was purportedly rooted in evil. What is surprising is how much force this backlash could assume in our supposedly globalised, multicultural world.

  Nor is it simply a question of Christianity’s reaction to Harry Potter. Perceptions of the multimedia series have become a nexus of competing conflicts ranging from Islam to atheism to Wicca. Then we have a shift in some religious reactions that seemed to bear out the old adage that ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ Harry Potter was suddenly being co-opted and resold as a Christian message. How could that come about and is it sustainable? Is this assimilation, by its distortion of the original material, yet another form of persecution?

  Is it the case that in the conflict between certain elements of current religiosity and Harry Potter that “either must die at the hand of the other?” Are these same elements positioning themselves as Voldemort – the man who died – against Harry Potter – the boy who lived?

  The classic interpretation, following Marwick (1964), is of witchcraft as a social strain gauge. Could even literary witchcraft be a social strain gauge? And in this case, of what social groupings? Of broader society, or of the denouncing parties? Could it be the case that the groups demanding the destruction and/or assimilation of Potter were in fact exhibiting symptoms of their own crises? As well as this, wider problems and cultural shifts are also brought into focus and/or being. What does a multivocal debate on magic say about the secularisation thesis, for example? What does the conceptual conflict arising out of modes of entertainment tell us about the condition of modern social interaction?

  “Potter Stinks”: Perverting Potter

  In 2006 a stout, bleach-bottle blonde stood in front of a group of children and shouted “Warlocks are enemies of God! And I don’t care what kind of hero they are, they’re an enemy of God and had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death!” A small voice in the audience called out “Amen!” Applause followed. Stabbing the air with an accusatory figure, she continued “You don’t make heroes out of warlocks.” Pastor Becky Fischer was addressing the Pentacostalist Kids on Fire prayer camp in North Dakota, USA. At the end of the session many were in tears (Ewing and Grady 2006).

  According to figures from the American Library Association (ALA 2006), the Harry Potter series constitute the most frequently challenged books of the 21st century. For the decade 1990-1999 the Harry Potter series was ranked 48th out of a 100 (ALA n.d.: a), when only the first three books had been published and none of the films, which undoubtedly raised awareness, were on release. For the decade 2000-2009 the series was ranked first (ALA n.d.: b). Reasons for challenging the series included violence, religious viewpoint and anti-family values, but the perceived promotion of occultism or Satanism was the most common accusation. These were mostly challenges made by parents against schools (ALA n.d.: c).

  Among the many attempts to ban the books from school libraries, especially in the USA, one particular case has attracted notable international attention. In the long-running ‘Mom vs Potter’ case, Laura Mallory has tried to have Harry Potter banned from school libraries in Georgia, USA, claiming that they promote “evil themes, witchcraft, demonic activity, murder, evil blood sacrifice, spells and teaching children all of this” (Madan 2006). Usually identified in press reports as a “mother of four,” she added that the books “have been shown to be harmful to some kids” (Daily Mail 2006). She first made her complaint in September 2005 against the use of the books at J.C. Magill Elementary School, taking her claim to successively higher authorities through 2006 and into 2007 before finally stopping short of the federal court.

  There have been several recorded public destructions of Harry Potter books, all of them conducted by Protestants. Rev George Bender, leader of the Harvest Assembly of God Church, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, organised a book burning in 2001 in which copies of the Harry Potter books were fed to the flames, saying “We believe that Harry Potter promotes sorcery, witchcraft-type things, the paranormal, things that are against God” (ABC 2001). The Jesus Party in Lewiston, Maine, attempted to burn Harry Potter books in a public park, again in 2001, but being denied a fire permit resorted to “book cutting” 12 copies in its place. Their leader, Rev Doug Taylor, said “We think these books are dangerous” (Sun Journal 2001). He repeated the book cutting in 2002 (Serchuk 2006). Also in 2001, Pastor Jack Brock told members of the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, New Mexico, that “Harry Potter is the Devil and he is destroying people” before leading his congregation to burn copies of Rowling’s novels (BBC 2001). In 2003, T.D. Turner, Sr, and his son T.D. Turner, Jr, both pastors, burnt a copy of one of the
novels outside their Jesus Non-Denominational Church, Greenville, Michigan (Serchuk 2006). In 2009 Taylor publicly ripped pages out of another Harry Potter book on the opening night of the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Hannon 2009) and wrote to the local paper, the Sun Journal, with the plea “Burn, Harry, burn” (Taylor 2009).

  A number of books, information packs, audio CDs and videos have been produced carrying the same arguments against Harry Potter. Books include Steve Wohlberg’s Exposing Harry Potter and Witchcraft (2005) and Richard Abanes’s Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick (2008). Most recently, Candy Gwen Lopitz (2011: 215) made the extraordinary claim that “Harry Potter films are prevalently used in satanic ritual abuse cults” in her self-published Spiritual Battery. Family Life Center International had its ‘Harry Potter Kit,’ consisting of a twelve page newsletter, audio tape and a PowerPoint presentation sheet. Probably the most influential was Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged (Matrisciana 2001) with promotion via the Christian Broadcasting Network’s The 700 Club, presented by the controversial Pat Robertson. Chick’s (2002) ‘The Nervous Witch’ footnotes the video during Samantha’s ‘confession’ scene. On the product page at chick.com we are told that through Harry Potter “millions of children are being desensitized to the dangers of the occult spirit world.” The battle against Potter is compared to that being fought against the teaching of evolutionary theory in schools.

  The reaction against Harry Potter was neither restricted to Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity, nor to the USA. According to letters published by the Canadian religious news service LifeSiteNews.com, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, endorsed Gabriele Kuby’s critical book Harry Potter: Gut oder Böse? (‘Harry Potter: Good or Evil?’), saying “It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which are unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly” (LifeSiteNews 2005). Although this was widely reported as papal opposition to the series, there has been no official statement from the Vatican. Kuby condemns the series for, among other things, having “no positive transcendent dimension” and using “emotional manipulation and intellectual confusion” to make “an assault upon the young generation, seducing it playfully into a world of witchcraft and sorcery” (Kuby 2011). Father Gabriele Amorth, honorary life-president of the International Association of Exorcists and exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, was characteristically forthright in his view: “Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the King of Darkness, the Devil,” adding that there could be no distinction between black and white magic “because magic is always a turn to the Devil” (Lawler 2002).

  In the UK, reactions were less extreme. The Church of England response was mixed. Canterbury Cathedral refused permission to film on location for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, citing inappropriate pagan imagery, and Carol Rookwood, headmistress of St Mary’s primary school, Chatham, Kent, banned the books from the school library (Petre 2001). The Very Reverend Nicholas Bury, Dean of Gloucester Cathedral, came in for criticism from Anglicans, including a public demonstration, for allowing filming to take place in the cathedral (Rosenthal 2005).

  Members of the Eastern Orthodox church in Greece and Bulgaria have spoken out against Harry Potter (Ekathimerini 2003; Leviev-Sawyer 2004). Notably, the See of Didymoteicho, Thrace, whilst making the familiar accusations, also denounced Potter’s “Christ-like attributes” (Ekathimerini 2003). Following Stanislav Ianevski’s casting as Quidditch ace Viktor Krum (HP4), posters appeared across Sofia proclaiming “God hates magic” and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church ran a front-page story in its official newspaper warning that “magic is not a children’s game” (Leviev-Sawyer 2004).

  Harry Potter has also incensed Muslims, largely for the same reasons. The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education and Youth banned Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone from use in private schools (BBC 2002); a move later echoed by Muslim schools in the UK (Hall 2009). When Iran’s Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry approved Harry Potter, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke out against the decision and the daily newspaper Kayhan castigated the series as a Zionist project intended to pervert the minds of the young (Memri 2007). Hours before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows went on sale in Karachi, Pakistan, police found 10kg of RDX explosives following an anonymous tip-off (The Nation 2007). It was also reported that a fatwa had been issued against JK Rowling (Abbot 2007).

  The intense controversy pushed Rowling onto the defensive as interviewers repeatedly questioned her on the accusations. “I don’t believe in witchcraft” (Woods 2000), she has said, adding on another occasion, “Practicing Wiccans think I’m also a witch. I’m not” (Jensen 2000). Speaking to Katie Couric (2003) she was more forthright: “I absolutely do not believe in the occult, [or] practice the occult”. Rowling has repeatedly stated that none of her readers has ever told her that her books have led them to take an interest in the occult (Weeks 1999; BBC 2001; Couric 2003). Newspapers also report similar statements from readers themselves (e.g., Madan 2006), whilst Christian sources offer supposed exposés, such as David Meyer’s ‘Former Witch Exposes Harry Potter’ in which he claims that “the Harry Potter books are training manuals for the occult” based on his own alleged experience as a ‘witch’ (Meyer n.d.).

  In many cases the negative outburst to the Harry Potter series was a reflex reaction exhibiting little familiarity with the novels, films, or opinions of JK Rowling. Both Brock (BBC 2001) and Mallory (Madan 2006), for example, revealed that they not read any of the Harry Potter novels. Outrage coalesced around the presentation of magic as a real and potentially positive force, re-drawing the old battle-lines of Christian outrage against the occult in general. In particular, many Christians expressed the fear that they were losing control over their children through exposure to what was perceived as occult propaganda. This was a multi-faith, multi-denominational assault, although expressed more forcefully and vocally by Fundamentalist groups. The extreme presentations of this fear in book burning and bombing attest to a social strain gauge effect comparable to classic witchcraft accusations.

  “A Fresh Attempt to Seize Power”: Subverting Potter

  In 2002 Dutch priest Pastor Joris Ridderbos pulled on a conical hat and in front of a group of children dressed as Harry Potter characters celebrated what the media dubbed as “a Harry Potter mass”. Speaking to the Haagse Courant newspaper he said “The story of Harry Potter starts with an alternative reading of the story of the three kings, there is a speaking snake and, like Jesus, Harry Potter was a very obedient boy” (BreakingNews 2002). He was not alone. Connie Neal’s three books (2001, 2002, 2007) on the subject trawled J.K. Rowling’s series looking for allusions, however contrived, to Christian teachings – she received death threats from Christians for her efforts (Bailey 2011). Similarly, Presbyterian minister Dr John Killinger turns Potter into an “often unwitting Christ figure” (2002). Another recent attempt is Derek Murphy’s Jesus Potter Harry Christ (2011).

  The Rev Dr Francis Bridger, principal of Trinity College, member of the Church of England’s General Synod, argued that the Harry Potter books were “opening the door to the Gospels” (Petre 2001). Himself an author of Potter apologia, Bridger used A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Harry Potter (2008) to downplay the role of magic in the series and highlight “intrinsic human goodness, love and friendship” as part of his argument that the books are “firmly based in [sic] Christian values.” Bury defended his decision to allow Warner Brothers to use Gloucester Cathedral as a location for Hogwarts (HP1) by stating that “I’ve no evidence that these books have done any harm or led any children astray.” Instead he found that “the lessons are positive. Good defeats evil” (Rosenthal 2005). The then Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England, Dr George Carey, called Harry Potter “great fun” in his New Year message broadcast on BBC Radio 2. Again, he found the differentiation between good and evil to be the ce
ntral message (ACNS 2002). To coincide with the publication of the final book (DH), the Church of England published a guide for youth groups (Smith 2007) using Harry Potter to illustrate Christian principles in an intentional effort to harness the popularity of Harry Potter for its own ends (Sugden 2007).

  Reversing its position of the previous year on Harry Potter, the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, was notably positive about the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: “There is a clear line of demarcation between good and evil and [the film] makes clear that good is right. One understands as well that sometimes this requires hard work and sacrifice” (Squires 2009). The paper (2011) essentially restated this comment for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, leading Deacon Greg Kandra (2011) to announce that it had given the film the “thumbs up.” Rev Peter Fleetwood, a member of the Vatican’s council for culture, said that the books “help children to see the difference between good and evil” and that Rowling was Christian “in her way of writing” (Guardian 2003). The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website (USCCB 2004; 2009) placed two of the Harry Potter films in its top ten family films category (HP3 and HP6), noting in particular how “good and evil are clearly delineated” in the latter.

  The Orthodox Church also has its Potter apologists. American Orthodox writer John Granger claimed that there was “a profoundly Christian meaning at the core of the series” (2004: xviii). Similarly, Russian Orthodox writer Deacon Andrei Kuraev (2003) noted the presence and importance of Christian values in the books.