One of the things on my list of holiday activities is to reread the Harry Potter series. I’d noticed a couple of quite sophisticated ways in which they are all linked together, and wanted to read them all once more to fully appreciate it.
I’ve only just started, but it occurs to me that, from one point of view, the plot set-up for the series is not too dissimilar to an episode from X-Men: A radically different group of humans, with their own world, who are on the one hand reviled by some ‘normal’ humans (eg. The Dursleys), who cannot stand the weirdness of the others. On the other hand, there are in turn those among the differing group who not only wish to purify their own group, but have ambitions to rule all groups, (eg. Voldemort, Magneto). Obvious shades of holocaust and World War II.
Not surprising, really; it’s not an uncommon plot. Let’s call it the ‘difference’ plot. Two extreme reactions to different groupings of humans, with a sometimes difficult but nonetheless important compromise between them, somewhat akin to liberal democracy, right?
But all of Harry Potter doesn’t reduce to just this, of course.
A second thought is just how threatening the idea of another, secret, world really is. It is an amazingly powerful idea. The Narnia series, and The Matrix trilogy both used it well. Harry Potter has that same English schoolboy feel that Narnia does, but by posing that other world right in this one, (rather than accessed through some portal world or gateway), it is far more threatening in a way. Suddenly, all of the masterful uses to which the ‘muggles’ employ their economics, technology and science not only are shown to be limited and useless in the face of a different power, but are, in actual fact, incapable of seeing what is beneath their noses. If knowledge is power, then in the Harry Potter series, this puts the muggles at a serious disadvantage. The wizarding community, when considered in this light, is surprisingly peaceful, and, almost unreally so, not given to abusing such superiority.
But, if we are supposed to recall the infamously literal witch-hunts of the middle-ages, then this ignorance would almost seem self-imposed, and the advantage is not necessarily one way. The muggles simply refuse to believe that such things exist, and are given a little help when their incredulity is a little stretched. Theirs is a disenchanted world, as is said so often about our own. “There are more things in heaven and earth” said Hamlet, “than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
Filed under: Harry Potter, books, literature , books, Harry Potter, Narnia, other worlds, political allegory, The Matrix, X Men
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