20 years ago something happened that changed the world -
a book was published. A book (to begin with) no one expected to have such an impact. In fact, the very idea that such a book could have such a cultural impact in the time it was published seemed laughable.
But it did, which was a good thing for the author. She spent years writing it,
while raising a young child while on welfare. No one (not even her) could have predicted that within a few years of publishing that book, she'll become one of the richest authors in the world, becoming one of the great "rags to riches" stories of our time and (for the number of publishers who turned down the book) a cautionary tale in the history of business, along with similar ones involving
The Beatles,
Trivial Pursuit, and
Chester Carlson's idea for
a device that can copy documents in seconds.
Of course, I am talking about Harry Potter, the boy wizard that has given millions of children (and adults) fanatical joy.
Before I'll continue, I know some readers will be disappointed by my short tribute here. that is because...
- I am not THAT into Harry Potter. (I have seen the movies and read a bit of the books and that's it.)
- The experience of making my massive tribute to Pokémon last year has put me off the idea of doing such detailed well-researched tributes for a while.
So I got little to say about it, except that the books (from 2001) have spawned a franchise, featuring films, a theme park or two,
a stage play, and countless toys. So "
Is it worth the hype?"
"It's worth any amount of hype to get children to read again, and in these kind of numbers. And to have that kind of passion about sitting down in a corner turning pages of a book, instead of, you know, pressing on computer keys all the time and just playing PlayStations." - Alan Rickman, on HARDtalk just before the release of the first Harry Potter film (2001)
What made Harry Potter's massive (and fast) success a surprise to everyone back in 1997 was that back then everyone was thinking that kids were losing the ability to read books, because they were playing video games. In the year that
Grand Theft Auto was introduced (and Pikachu was sending kids to hospital by epileptic seizure) if you read a tabloid you would have found stories with headlines that say "Video Games Linked to Illiteracy in Children" or "How Can We Make Kids Read Again?" The usual "this new thing is against the old order of things" nonsense. If the journalists who wrote such nonsense and actually listened to the gamers they talked to (and thought about there own experiences with media) they would find that people usually don't care what medium a story is told in... as long as the story is engaging. If a story is engaging for someone that person will endure anything to experience it all. This is why some will endure hours in the rain to see an outdoor performance. This is why many millions will stop what what their doing to watch a TV show every day or week. And this is why many kids back in 1997 played video games ... because they hadn't found a book worth reading ... let.
They were few new works of fiction in print that were very engaging for English-speaking children in the 1990s. This could be because
Roald Dahl (my favourite author as a child)
died back in 1990, creating a massive void in the new culture generator. With years of no one successfully filling in this void (and shelves full of new books that were not that engaging), much of the book publishing industry was thinking that there was little money in children's books. And with video games becoming a multi-million dollar industry (and the coming of the Internet), it seemed that the days of the book were numbered....
....Then Harry Potter came along.
"...industry executives said the rise in children’s book sales was down to the wide range of choice, as well as fears among parents that their children are spending too much time using online social media and instead try to steer them towards traditional long-format reading.
“Parents have a general wish to see their children read print rather than spend too much time attached to their phone,” said Richard Charkin, executive director at Bloomsbury, publishers of the Harry Potter books. “There’s a slight fear of social media going on and people are saying ‘let’s get back to basics’.” " - Financial Times, 27th April 2017
And this was something people were noting even before the movies were made....
"In 1999, Harry Potter helped increase hardcover sales by more then 10%, and paperback sales by over 20%. The increase isn't made up only of Harry Potter books themselves, either--booksellers have noted an increased interest in other fantasy and in novels for children in general (For more on that phenomenon, see "The Harry Potter Halo" in the July 19, 1999 Publishers Weekly). And only eleven of the top 20 hardcover bestsellers in the PW list for 1999 were tied to a movie or TV show--thanks in part to Harry (April 10, 2000 issue). Things look good for the industry, but will this last?" - http://www.underdown.org/sales.htm
Yes, it did.
But the true legacy of Harry Potter isn't just in increased sales in books in the age of digital competition. Hogwarts' magic has also had a bewitching effect on the very brains of the people who read them ... literally.
But before I reveal why so, I got to address here the many people of fundamentally-christian faith who have branded J.K.'s work as "the work of the devil." Its easy to see why they would without actually reading them for themselves. Just the idea of a book about a kid learning to do witchcraft is enough to get them angry, especially if it becomes very popular. Even today they are some who still brand Harry as evil, but in 2017 these people are not only christian of the fundamental sense. They also share another trait ... they have voted for Donald Trump.
Many of you may think that this is because of their battle of words on Twitter. But that's the lazy answer. The true answer that only few actually are even aware of is what I said earlier.
"Hogwarts' magic has also had a bewitching effect on the very brains of the people who read them ... literally"
In 2016
a study published in
PS: Political Science & Politics showed that after reading one Harry Potter book readers approval rating for Donald Trump fell by 2-3 points. And "for someone who has read all seven books, the total impact could lower their estimation of Trump by 18 points out of 100."
This is the main reason why people who brand Harry "evil" should be afraid of the books. They teach children, not witchcraft, but ideas of tolerance and the evils of prejudice.
This study also revealed something else. The measurable fall of Donald's approval rating only happened to people who read a Harry Potter book. When it looked at people who watched the movies their approval of Trump pretty much remained the same. This reveals something interesting....
Reading changes your brain.
For most of human history, people learned about their world by looking at scenes. Because of this our rains have developed specialised parts to process sound and vision. This is why movies and music have such primitive cultural power.
Reading, on the other hand, is a skill humans only required relatively recently, so our brain aren't naturally wired to read text. Instead of a single part doing all the work,
your brain uses multiple parts to process the series of symbols you see into words and concepts you understand. This results in a form of
synesthesia.
For example, if I were to write the word DOG just now, did the image of a dog just enter your mind? What about YELLOW. Did that colour just flash in your visual eye? And what about BARK. Did you just imaginary hear a dog bark just now?
This is why literature is considered the most powerful of mediums. This is why poets are considered as great as politicians in history, by changing the minds of millions.
"Politics is shaped by people. And people, sometimes, are shaped by the fiction they read," - Mohsin Hamid The New York Times, 2015
This is how Harry Potter truly changed the world. It has fundamentally made a generation of kids more emphatic to others. No wonder Donald hates Harry.
