s of January 2004, I have not read a word of any of the wildly-successful Harry Potter novels. (That's not entirely true, I read an exclusive preview excerpt from the 4th one in Newsweek, and found it to be pretty uninteresting juvenile-level fiction.)  However that doesn't mean that I'm unaware of the books and their popularity, and that I don't post news about them at times.

Such news items are collected on this page, with the most recent on top.

December 13, 2003

This article makes me hot.

NEW YORK - Four first edition copies of Harry Potter books inscribed by author J.K. Rowling to her father have been sold for nearly $90,000.

The highest bid of $48,000 at Wednesday's auction went for the fourth book in the fantasy series, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

The books were among seven first edition presentation copies that the author inscribed to her father, Peter J. Rowling, who consigned them to Sotheby's fine books and manuscripts sale. The other three copies did not sell, said Kristin Gelder, a spokeswoman for the auction house. None of the buyers was identified.

Sotheby declined to say why Rowling decided to sell the books. And there was no immediate comment from the author and no immediate response to a message left with her agent after business hours in London.

October 31, 2003

Speaking of pets, I would almost get a dog just to be able to dress him/her/it up in this costume on Halloween. Of course I'd have to be around other people and their ridiculously-costumed dogs in order to show mine off, and I'd be impressing dog owners... but aside from those drawbacks, it seems like a lot of fun.

The whole Harry Potter tie in is annoying; I mean it's Cerebus, guardian of the underworld in classical Greek myth, not some stupid ass three-headed dog from an overrated children's fantasy series. And what's with the cape, FFS?  But those elements can't entirely detract from the costume, even if the 2nd and 3rd heads are just sort of lying there, crookedly, rather than standing upright and snarling.

It does make me wonder though: where are the Siamese twin dogs?  Or cats, for that matter.  There must be more dogs/cats born on earth than people, and you see conjoined human twins all the time, or the one baby with part of their unborn twin absorbed into their body.  Why not five or six legged dogs, or two headed dogs?  That would be cool.

 

¤ Speaking of Harry Potter, here's perhaps the single stupidest news item I've ever seen.

A Washington doctor warned that he has seen three children complain of headaches caused by the physical stress of relentlessly plowing through the epic 870-page adventure.

Dr. Howard Bennett of George Washington University Medical Center wrote in a letter to this week's New England Journal of Medicine that the three children, ages 8 to 10, experienced a dull headache for two or three days.

Each had spent many hours reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."

After ruling out other potential causes, Bennett told his patients to give their eyes a rest. But the spell cast by the book was clearly too powerful.

"The obvious cure for this malady -- that is, taking a break from reading -- was rejected by two of the patients," Bennett said, adding that the children took acetaminophen instead.

December 29, 2002

JK Rowling may not be a cruel, greedy, avaricious, heartless bitch after all. 

She left footprints on my heart," Rowling said of the girl, one of the young wizard's most devoted fans. Catie died in May 2000 at the age of nine.

[The girl's mother] read the first three Harry Potter books to Catie and then e-mailed the publishers asking when the fourth was due -- as she feared time was running out for her daughter.

Rowling e-mailed Catie back with some tantalizing snippets from her fourth book -- "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" -- and then phoned her in Albany, New York to read extracts. "Catie's face just lit up," her mother recalled.

Then again, Hitler loved dogs.

December 14, 2002

Showing the amazing desperation of Harry Potter fans, there's been an auction for a gift card with 93 semi-random words from the next Harry Potter novel.  They are in order, but from lines and pages apart, so could mean anything, and you know Rowling isn't going to give away any of the plot in advance.  Sort of a weird item for an auction, but it's for charity, so nice that Rowling could take a break from counting her money to throw it in.  The amazing part is that someone paid over $45k for it.

Sotheby's would not reveal the full contents of the card, which was bought by an unidentified American collector, saying only that it included the words: "thirty-eight chapters ... might change ... longest volume ... Ron ... broom ... sacked ... house-elf ... new ... teacher ... dies ... sorry".

I'd think that for a lot less than $45,000 you could just bribe her maid or some intern at her agent's office to sneak you out a copy of the whole damn manuscript.  Or else use the money to feed all of Africa for six months.

December 5, 2002

I thought this post on Cal Pundit was interesting.  I immediately wished I'd made it, or at least thought of it myself.

Today, as we all know, there's a Christian fundamentalist constituency that rails endlessly against things like the Harry Potter books because they "condone" witchcraft and therefore....therefore, I'm not sure what, actually. But whatever it is, they don't like it, and they try to get the Harry Potter books banned from libraries.

Were there similar groups in 1940 protesting, say, the Wizard of Oz? Or complaining about a fairy breathing life into a wooden puppet?

If not, why not? Surely the brand of Christianity that we call fundamentalist was more widespread in the 30s and 40s than it is today? So what happened to it? Fighting for prayer in school is understandable, but complaining about Harry Potter really isn't. What happened?

My opinion would be that the Evangelists 50 years ago weren't as frivolous and had more common sense than they do today, plus there wasn't such a need to get headlines.  There's no way Jerry Falwell thinks that the purple Teletubby is a real threat to anything.  He just noticed (or someone pointed out to him) that there was a purple one with a hand bag and a triangle symbol on his/her/its head, and that it sort of matched up with gay pride symbolism (purple color and triangle symbol).  And since Teletubbies was a phenomena at the time, he knew he could get some media coverage by yelling about it.

The kookiest Christians now who are going on about Harry Potter don't really give a shit about a fantasy book series with magic. There have been books like that forever.  What they see is that Harry Potter is the biggest book series on earth in memory, and that saying anything about it will get them headlines.  It's a huge windmill to joust with, and though they know the effort is destined for failure, it gets them attention and notice and perhaps people will think, "The Harry Potter thing is too much, but they do have some good points on other issues."

At least that's my appraisal of the current events. I don't have enough/any knowledge of what such people were obsessing over back when the Wizard of Oz and Pinocchio were new releases.

While I don't believe any of them are using it as anything but a crass political/publicity tool, the key point that modern day evangelists try to make about Harry Potter is that it's magic set in a modern, real world setting, and that it will therefore make kids believe in real magic and seek out Satanism.  As compared to magic in a fantasy world, Lord of the Rings for example, which is magic set in a totally fantastic and magical world and divorced from real world witchcraft or occult.  Of course there are hard core Christians who object to all fantasy and magic, but they're so far out on the nutty edge that there's no point in really paying them any mind. So we'll just limit our thoughts to the more realistic nuts, who say Harry Potter is bad since kids will believe it's real.

I think it's a pretty ridiculous concept; these are the same sorts of people who got the rocket packs and anvil dropping taken out of Bugs Bunny since they said it would make kids emulate it. The other thing about them that amuses me is that they really do believe in all the stuff they warn about.  My thought on the possibility of kids liking Harry Potter so much that they get into witchcraft or Satanism is a big fat, "So what?"  It's just another sort of fantasy, like real life role playing, and 99% of the time it's a phase that passes harmlessly. But that's since I deal in reality, and don't believe for an instant that there are witches or fairies or magic or demons roaming the earth.  Which is why I like fantasy; it gives me a way to believe (sort of) in things that are cool, but don't exist.  I guess the Bible is the same sort of thing for them; a cool fantasy that gives their lives some purpose. It's just that they take it way too far. 

The rush of crappy books that try to suck at the milk-swollen teats of Harry Potter continues.  Some non-fiction textbook that purports to analyze the Harry Potter popularity phenomena had a cover that was virtually identical to the Harry Potter ones, with font and color and images of stars and such.  They were ordered to come up with a new cover, and include a non-official disclaimer.

Verso is delighted to make it clear that this book is not part of the Harry Potter series. Neither the font nor the colour is intended to confuse readers - after all Warner Bros, JK Rowling and Bloomsbury Publishing plc have spent very substantial sums of money marketing and protecting the Harry Potter brand.

"We printed the disclaimer but they weren't happy with that either," the spokesperson said. "They wrote us a rather sniffy letter about it."

Given that the four Harry Potter books have sold over 175,000,000 copies worldwide it's no real surprise that practically every other book published is trying to leech a bit off of that phenomena.  Not that that makes it any less cheesy.

November 17, 2002

Harry Potter 2 opened Friday, and maybe it's me, but there seems to be virtually no hype about this one, at least compared to the first one last year.  It's still going to make $70-80m this weekend, by expert estimation, which will be possibly the third biggest movie opening ever (behind Potter 1 and Episode 1).  It in fact made almost $29m Friday, which is on pace for $80m.

It is opening in the most screens of any film ever, so it certainly has a good chance to make a fortune.  My impression is that most fans who were so desperate to see it on the screen saw it a year ago, and will see it again, but aren't quite so fanatically eager to do so.  How much that has to do with the first film being sort of boring is open to debate.

Potter 2 reviews are mixed; overall positive, but few raves and few pans.  I've read about a dozen and while most say this one is better since it leaps right into action and doesn't have to introduce all of the characters, others say they miss the slow build up and char development. Others say this one is better for action and character interaction while some critics say it's all action and gets tedious.  Very mixed and frequently-opposite reactions, overall.

The most interesting thing is another fanatical Christian church going on and on about the Satanic influences and witchcraft is evil etc etc blah blah. I wish I could take that sort of thing more seriously, and do some sort of point by point rebuttal, but I just don't have it in me. It's too silly; and how do you debate with people who believe in magic and sorcery as literal things?  There's just no common frame of reference.  It is amazing that such primitive philosophies still exist in the modern world; we hear about natives in parts of Africa burning witches for shrinking their testicles, or attacking witch doctors for cursing their village and laugh, but really, how different is this?  There's just more organized society and rule of law here to keep the kooks from taking action on their delusions.

The really hardcore Christians love this.  It makes them feel vital and needed, like anyone really cares about them, or is out to get them.  I await the CAP Alerts guy's review eagerly, after he went on and on about Satan's evil plots in his review of Harry Potter 1.

Oh goodie, he's got the second one up already.  I just went to get the link to the first one and saw it.

Several Christian leaders, including myself are waking up and seeing that the entertainment industry is, whether intentional, the single greatest tool of Satan to remove Jesus from our lives. Comfortably. Efficiently. Desirably. Acceptably. Popcorn flavored. An example of this is Professor Lockhart who teaches protection against the dark arts *using* witchcraft, sorcery and wizardry. That, in and of itself is misleading and false, saying that witchcraft, sorcery and wizardry are not dark arts while God says they are. Now this movie has planted in your young child's mind that which God specifically calls evil is not evil. Just another desensitizing and reconditioning brainwashing episode your child will do battle with as s/he grows. Just another tiny fragment of removal of Jesus from morality, changing His morals to moral relativism, little by little. [Jude 4]

Sadly, that's about as fanatical as he gets.  His point by point listing of the bad stuff is always good for a laugh too.  A few of the "Offense to God" items:

• still photo/painting subjects moving
• living screaming baby-looking plant roots
• screaming letter
• moving stairs
• evil voices from nowhere telling to kill, repeatedly
• talking hat
• book with blank pages that answers written questions

So what, Baby Jesus cries at escalators?

I find it astonishing that this guy, and others like him, sit around thinking that there is literally some goat-horned guy sitting in a fiery pit in the center of the earth, plotting to corrupt all humanity, and using Harry Fricking Potter to do it.  The reviewer isn't just saying this to make a point, he literally believes every word of it.  That sorcery exists and is real, and that showing it in a movie encourages people to seek it out in real life, and that Satan wants this to happen. The Inquisition never ended, for some.

That level of superstition must make life a lot more interesting, and it's fun to feel like eye candy movies are so important on a larger level, and that your actions and words really matter in some epic good vs. evil battle.  I can see why people buy into this, it's like the paranoid schizophrenics who think the CIA is plotting against them, sending radio waves into their heads, or who fantasize that celebrities are space aliens and they're the only person who knows it.  It makes you feel important, and makes your life seem more than just a daily existence.  This CAP Alerts guy is clearly delusional and probably clinically insane, he's just channeled his paranoia into an all-encompassing worship of Christianity, rather than making tin foil hats and writing 10 letters a week to Bush to warn him about the Martians that have already switched bodies with Cheney.

I'm not sure if this is better or worse, but he appears to be functional in society, and isn't dangerous, and his fantasies have led him to create an entertaining website, which is more than most sane people can say.

In any event, I'm going to see Harry Potter 2 on Tuesday, so I'll let you know if I can feel Satan's dark tentacles worming into my soul during the Quidditch match.

November 12, 2002

Following in the footsteps of the absurd Gospel of Harry Potter, comes an even bigger rip off from Russia. Some guy has written basically a Russian version of the story, changing all of the names slightly, and setting the events in Russian culture. He's defending it as a parody, but the reports seem to indicate that it's not some clever, comical retelling, but is just a rip off. Same events, slightly different names, same plot, etc. It's a cover novel, like a cover song, if such a thing exists.  The key difference is that cover songs pay royalties to the original, and playing a different version of someone's four-minute ditty is a lot different than plundering years of someone's work.

Yemets said he trusted his readers to be able to tell the difference between Potter and Grotter, and would happily have it translated so Western critics could check. "I believe in the text, and if people read it they would see the difference. We are not hiding anything," he said.

His Moscow readers did not seem so sure. As children crowded forwards to have Tanya Grotter books signed, Yemets said he would give a prize to the first to tell the main distinction between Tanya Grotter and Harry Potter. Nine-year-old Alexander's hand shot up.

"There is no difference, they're basically exactly the same," he said. He did not win a prize.

Truths from the mouths of babes...

October 9, 2002

An annoying article to pick at today. You can read it right here, on Yahoo.

The article is about a new book some woman has written.  In the book she relates how the Harry Potter novels are chock full of Biblical imagery and morals.  The article includes several suspect examples.

"I could run a weekly bible study using Harry Potter as a starting point. It is a gold mine of biblical truth if you look at it that way," Connie Neal, author of The Gospel According to Harry Potter, told Reuters in an interview.

First of all, could this be a more pathetic cash grab?  Pick a famous book series, write a book about those books, focusing on some controversial aspect of them. Sucking on the swollen teats of JK Rowling, so to speak.

The book is getting press because there are usually hardcore Christians going on and on about how evil Harry Potter is, since it's got magic and sorcery and that's said to be evil by the Bible.  At least it's evil when someone other than Jesus or Yahweh does it. Required reading on this point is the CAP Alert review of the first Harry Potter movie, which is far and away the most unintentionally-funny movie review I can ever imagine reading.  I have to quote from it.  I just can't resist:

I have not read any of the "Harry Potter" books. Thus I am not influenced or biased by them. But I can say the movie is just as the books are described by the ones with the open mindedness to see precisely what they are. And what better time to embrace evil in entertainment than now when we have kicked God out of schools, government and many, many homes and what used to be the family. I guess Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a logical extension of I Dream of Genie, Bewitched and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, all benevolent on the surface and all since we kicked God out of our schools.

Yes, he's tracing the decline of Western Civilization beginning with I Dream of Genie. If you need any more proof that there is no God than the fact that fruitcakes like this guy can claim to be speaking for Him, I don't know what to tell you.

Anyway, the "Harry Potter is about Jesus" article presents a few examples.

Neal's favorites include the death of Harry's mother. The Dark Lord Voldemort threw the curse of death at Harry but his mother loved him so much that she threw himself in front of the curse and saved him at the cost of her own life. Her sacrifice mysteriously broke the power of Voldemort.

She noted that during a recent conversation, a teen-ager with a pierced nose had commented to her; "Hey, isn't that a bit like what Jesus did on the cross."

I love that "teenager with a nose ring" bit.  They just have to mention the nose ring.  Christians are so easily impressed.

As for what the nose-ring'ed "teen-ager" says, no it's nothing like that at all.  The history of literature features mothers dying for their children, and you can see that behavior all the time from animals.  It's biological imperative; most species exist solely to propagate and pass on their genes.  Dead children = no gene survival.  Humans of course intellectualize it and ennoble it, and it is an option, but comparing a mother trying to save the life of her child to the story of Jesus being crucified (as if he really had a choice, being as that's what the Romans did to heretics) is a pretty big stretch.

She also points out that Harry celebrates Easter and Christmas in the books.  Ooh, there's a shocker; a member of modern Western culture celebrating two of the major holidays.

As the second half of the article details, most of the "Harry Potter is evil" types think this new book is a crock as well, for predictable reasons.

"Kids are curious and when they are either watching the (Harry Potter) movie or reading the books they become curious about witches and spells, not Christianity. There is no Gospel according to Harry Potter," Abanes said.

Abanes said that while witches and magic are used in fantasy literature such as C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia" or J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," those works take place in a different world with different rules.

"Harry Potter takes place in the here and now in England, using references to existing occult practices," he said.

I'd never thought of that, actually.  That anyone would consider Harry Potter to be bad since the magic and such takes place in the modern world.  So do they object to say Superman for the same reason? Would Harry Potter be okay if it were set in like 1940?  It's got witches, warlocks, magic, ogres, demons, unicorns, invisible train stations, etc.  It's obviously a fantasy world, not our real world.  Though I'll concede that an 8 y/o might confuse the two.  This is not a distinction made by all fearful Christians, to again link to the CAP Alert guy for his equally-brilliant LotR review, which views any sort of sorcery as a gateway to inevitable Satanism.

My ultimate take on the Harry Potter vs. Biblical truths theory is that there are a lot of stories in the Bible, most of them based on existing cultural myths and legends.  These sorts of elements are found in all literature every written.  You could easily write a book discussing the "glimmers of the Gospel" found in some stories from ancient China, thousands of years before the Bible was written, if you are as vague and nebulous in your definitions as this new book seems to be.  One of her best examples is that Voldemort is evil, just like Satan.  So every story every written with a really evil bad guy is using the Bible as source material?

Is this woman even aware that the earliest versions of the Bible, back when it was just a bunch of scrolls, and not the compiled and heavily-edited Old/New Testament that survives today, had nothing at all about an adversary of god? The concept of dualism didn't exist in the ancient Hebrew myths that evolved into the Bible.  The ancient Hebrews learned of this theory when they came into contact (mostly during the Babylonian Captivity) with other cultures that had dualism in their religion, such as Zoroastrianism.  They liked the whole personification of evil, and the good vs. evil aspect of dualism, so incorporated that into their evolving myth structure, and added in the story of Lucifer.

Not that historical fact ever really has any place in religious debate, but I just felt like interjecting one of the few bits of remaining knowledge from my nine units of World Mythologies.

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