Philosopher: Potter is a lefty (Magic a resistance vs. triumphant middle class)

News 24 (South Africa) ^ | October 26, 2007

[Stoat]

Philosopher: Potter is a lefty
26/10/2007 16:21  - (SA)  

 

Paris - Harry Potter is a left-winger and the seven books by JK Rowling are a diatribe against Thatcherite Britain, a French philosopher said on Friday on the day of the last novel's publication in French.

"It must be said from the start that Harry Potter is deeply political and that the books speak of today's England," Jean-Claude Milner told the left-wing newspaper Liberation.

"Reading it, one can see that JK Rowling - like many cultured English people - believes there was a real Thatcherite revolution, that it was a disaster, and that culture's only chance is to survive as an occult science."

According to Milner, Harry's world of magic - and especially the elite public school setting of the Hogwarts school of wizardry - offer a means of resistance against a triumphant middle-class represented by the non-magic Muggles.

"Harry's uncle and aunt - Muggles par excellence - live like heroes of Margaret Thatcher's world, in a neat little estate where all the houses are identical," he said.

"One can equally say that modern England is a world where the Muggles have indeed taken power, first with Margaret Thatcher and then with Tony Blair - a world where the omnipotence of the middle class is given free rein," he said.

According to Milner - a professor of linguistics at Paris university - the scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in which Harry's aunt is blown up like a balloon is a satire on Thatcher.

'Clear allusion to Thatcher'

"Here we can see a reference to (the film) The Great Dictator by Chaplin, featuring an all-powerful middle class figure gone mad. And one cannot help but note that the aunt is called Marge - a clear allusion to Thatcher."

For Milner, Hogwarts provides a refuge for the minority who wish to preserve civilisation from the dangers of globalisation.

And he says Rowling's use of Latin and Greek words in her magic vocabulary is a kind of antidote against the value-for-money society of modern Britain.

"In the world of Hogwarts there are certainly inequalities. But at the same time, since culture is open to all, Hermione - the child of Muggles - can outperform Malfoy, the child of wizards," he said.

"So what appears as elitist is in fact real equality, as opposed to the false equality of the Muggles. In this, Harry Potter is a war-machine against Thatchero-Blairism and the 'American way of life'.

"JK Rowling is a real libertarian motivated by a desire to conserve. It is as if she is saying ... the real magicians are not Tony Blair's spin-doctors but people who know Latin and Greek."

'Lacks nobility of soul'

As for the evil Voldemort, he is the "super-spin doctor". A wizard himself, he is proof that culture alone is not enough to save the world. Power-mad, he differs from good wizards because he lacks "nobility of soul".

"So we have on one side the Muggles, where oppression means power over things; and on the other hand Hogwarts, where knowledge enables one to resist the materialism of the Muggles - but also opens the way to power over people.

"This terrible power, which Voldemort seeks and which we call tyranny, is one of the themes of Harry Potter - and indeed one of the themes of English literature since Dickens and Orwell," he said.

Some British critics have in the past accused JK Rowling of conservatism for setting her books in a nostalgic era of boarding-schools and steam trains.

The finale of the series - Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - went on sale in France and Germany on Friday, three months after it came out in the English-speaking world.

[dragonblustar]

Wipe the foam from your before you speak, it’s getting sick.

[Corin Stormhands]

Whatever. I’m so over this conversation with you. I tried to offer you facts and you ignored them.

I’m done. If it fulfills some deep emotional need, you may have the last word.

[SuziQ]

I read two of them for the first time this summer, too. I thought they were horribly written,

OK, so she's not J.R.R.Tolkien or C. S. Lewis, but they're children's stories, and rollicking good reads!

[longtermmemmory]

Harry Potter:

Official Children’s Book of Miller Beer.

[Wuli]

The PIC looks like a drag queen. I don’t think that’s particular a “French” attribute.

[SuziQ]

Rowling stated that she made it clear in her last book that Dumbledore was gay.

That's not what she said at all. She 'outed' Dumbledore in an offhand way by saying that he 'loved' Grindenwald when he was a young man. I make a clear distinction between homosexual orientation and activity, and don't use the word 'gay' to describe homosexuals because it is more a POLITICAL term than one identifying a sexual inclination.

Since there is no homosexual activity in the Harry Potter books, I prefer to consider Dumbledore as asexual, as are all the teachers at the school.

[twigs]

Plotwise, yes. Quality of writing? Horrors.

[dragonblustar]

"My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay," said Rowling, whose comments were posted on the Potter fan website

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=578de009-03fd-46df-8722-cef9de657d32&&Headline=Harry+Potter+author+'outs'+Dumbledore

Her words, not mine.

[SuziQ]

Oh please. Wikipedia? Since any fool can write anything they want there, on any subject, I’ll go with what I already KNOW, not what some fevered imagination can concoct.

[Corin Stormhands]

FWIW, the quality of writing got much better as the books progressed.

True, she’s no Tolkien or Lewis. And she’d tell you that.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Were I ever to put this much thought into something as trite as Harry Potter, I'd know it was time to give up.

[Psycho_Bunny]

She’s no nothing in my book. Who cares?

[Corin Stormhands]

Well, since you keep commenting on this thread, apparently you do.

[Psycho_Bunny]

omg...lol

[Stoat]

The PIC looks like a drag queen.

Brigitte Bardot looks like a drag queen?  WOW...first time I've heard that.

I don’t think that’s particular a “French” attribute.

Not being one to associate with drag queens, I wouldn't know one way or another.

I'm sorry that my poor attempt at levity failed in this case.

[MEGoody]

. . .but if the Leftish tendencies of the Potter empire are less than overt

Don't know about the books themselves, but since Rowlings announced that one of the characters was homosexual, that kinda tells us that she is a leftist.

[Stoat]

sorry did you say something?

what was this thread about again?

:-)

LMAO

To put it succinctly, I would give it a title something like 'Trends in French Philosophy'

Here's another one of the better examples of French Philosophy, in my view  :-)

 

sorry did you say something?

what was this thread about again?

:-)

[SuziQ]

Her words, not mine.

I never said they were YOUR words. What I DID say was that she never wrote that as part of her story, so I choose to look at it as a strong friendship between Dumbledore and Grindenwald, as I understood it when I read the book the first time. I never attributed their relationship to anything but a desire together to change the world for the good. Socialist, maybe, but not homosexual. Dumbledore also states in the story that he was wrong to think that way, so at least we knew he became a little more wise as he aged.

[RockinRight]

Yes - the Potter stories are set in the 1990’s.

[dragonblustar]

"It's very clear" in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows how intense Dumbledore's feelings for the dark wizard are, she said, feelings that astute adult readers will recognize while children will simply construe as manifestations of friendship.

The power of love is one of the major themes in the Potter oeuvre, she noted, and "certainly it's never been news to me that a brave and brilliant man [like Dumbledore] would never love other men.

"He's my character," she asserted. "I have the right to know what I know about him and say what I say about him."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071024.ROWLING24/TPStory/Entertainment

Rowling refered to Dumbledore as gay, not once gay but as being gay his whole life. Rowling implies that Dumbledore's relationship with Grindenwald was wrong because it made him blind, not because it was a homosexual encounter.