Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter

Elizabeth E. Heilman, Elizabeth E. Heilman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781135891534
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This thoroughly revised edition includes updated essays on cultural themes and literary analysis, and its new essays analyze the full scope of the seven-book series as both pop cultural phenomenon and as a set of literary texts. Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, Second Edition draws on a wider range of intellectual traditions to explore the texts, including moral-theological analysis, psychoanalytic perspectives, and philosophy of technology. The Harry Potter novels engage the social, cultural, and psychological preoccupations of our times, and Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, Second Edition examines these worlds of consciousness and culture, ultimately revealing how modern anxieties and fixations are reflected in these powerful texts.

("DISCLAIMER: This book is not authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., or anyone associated with the Harry Potter books or movies.")

Part I
Perspectives on Identity and Morality

Chapter One
Controversial Content

Is Harry Potter Harmful to Children?

DEBORAH J. TAUB AND HEATHER L. SERVATY-SEIB

The publication of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, set publishing records, selling 8.3 million copies in its first day of release (Blais and DeBarros, 2007). Even as the Harry Potter books have been heralded as a publishing and cultural phenomenon, they also have been the subject of challenge and controversy from the publication of the first book through the last. The Harry Potter books were the seventh most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000 (up from forty-eighth on the 1990–1999 list) according to the American Library Association (ALA, 2007a). Objections to the books stem from their controversial content—from the centrality of magic to the topic of death to scenes that some believe are too violent, intense, or scary for children.

Controversy over children’s books is not new. According to Shannon (1989), “The history of the struggle over the content of children’s and adolescents’ reading material is nearly as long as the history of schooling in America” (p. 97). One of the bases for this struggle is the view of “children-as-innocent-and-in-need-of-protection” (Dresang, 2003, p. 21). In this view children need to be “protected from certain kinds of literature” (Stevenson, 1996, p. 305) that could be harmful to their innocence. Challenges to children’s books center on “what knowledge they [the challengers] think is valid, valuable, and virtuous for school curricula and library shelves” (Shannon, 1989, p. 97); those who challenge books “may believe that the materials will corrupt children and adolescents, offend the sensitive or unwary reader, or undermine basic values and beliefs” (American Library Association, 2006).

This chapter explores the controversial content of the Harry Potter series and whether the books might be harmful to children. Focusing particularly on the themes of magic, religion, violence and scariness, and death, the chapter concludes with guidelines for teachers and parents.

Challenges to Harry Potter: the Religious Argument

In his book about censorship in schools and public libraries, Foerstel (1994) states “there is no hotter topic among today’s bookbanners than the devil and witchcraft … materials about witchcraft and the occult account for the largest number of challenges to resources in libraries today” (p. 109). During the period 2001–2005, witchcraft was a major concern in challenges to books (American Library Association, 2007b). This is reflected in the many challenges to Harry Potter based on religious objections.

Most religious objections to the magic in Harry Potter are based on various passages of scripture, most commonly Deuteronomy 18:9–12:

When you come into the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord; and because of these abominable practices the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

(Revised Standard Version)

The dangers of Harry Potter from a Christian perspective can be found on the Internet under such titles as “The Harry Potter Series: A Vision of the Antichrist” (Chambers, 2007); “Bewitched by Harry Potter” (Kjos, 1999); “Harry Potter Lures Kids to Witchcraft—with Praise from Christian Leaders” (Kjos, n.d.); “Harry Potter: A New Twist to Witchcraft” (“Harry Potter: A New Twist,” n.d.); and “Harry Potter and DandD—Like Two Peas in a Pod?” (Kjos, 2000). The religious concerns include assertions that the books portray magic as harmless, fun, or good and that they may encourage children to dabble in the occult. Similar arguments have been made about the role-playing game “Dungeons and Dragons” (“D and D”) and certain rock music (Blimling, 1990; Hicks, 1991; Hunter, 1998; Kjos, 2000, 2003).

The rhetoric of many of these websites is extreme, and both the reasoning and the interpretation of scripture frequently is convoluted. For instance, Joseph Chambers (2007) wrote, “Without question I believe the Harry Potter series is a creation of hell helping prepare the younger generation to welcome the Biblical prophecies of demons and devils led by Lucifer himself.” He continued by suggesting that the source of the inspiration for the Harry Potter books, which are widely reported to have just popped into author J. K. Rowling’s head fully formed, is Satan. He concluded with his certainty that “the Harry Potter books are just another means [of Satan] of blinding millions to the truth.”

Many may find it difficult to take such extreme ideas seriously or to believe that others might. To many it will appear ridiculous that so many are taking a fantasy seriously. To understand this perspective, it is essential to understand religious views on fantasy, magic, and the occult.

Religion is a critical factor influencing parental attitudes about children’s fantasy behavior in that there are stark differences between what is considered real and what is considered fantasy from one religion to the next (Taylor and Carlson, 2000). They continue by describing how specific religious orientations (e.g. Hinduism, fundamental Christianity, and Mennonite) affect parents’ views of childhood fantasy-related behavior. Taylor and Carlson address two primary objections to fantasy offered by parents with fundamental Christian beliefs. First, those with fundamental beliefs appear to equate fantasy with deceit and express concerns that fantastical activity and storytelling will lead to lying and other deceitful behavior. In addition, members of fundamentalist groups who are focused on issues of “spiritual warfare” believe that it is necessary to protect their children from evil forces in the spiritual world. Some in this latter group have even expressed concern about public elementary schools, stating that they expose children to dangerous ideas about witchcraft, occult practices, and Halloween.

In their research on the imaginary companions of children, Taylor and Carlson found a qualitative difference between the responses of parents with fundamental Christian beliefs and the other parent participants. In general, most parents who expressed concern regarding the behavior usually did so in relation to the inconvenience of including the imaginary companion in family activities and worries that the behavior was developmentally inappropriate and/or that it might indicate that the child was struggling with distinguishing fantasy from reality. In contrast, parents with fundamental Christian beliefs associated imaginary companions with the devil. Taylor and Carlson argue that these disparate views of the same behavior “reflect a divergent perception on the part of the adults of what is real and what is fantasy” (p. 248).

This divergence of viewpoints can be seen in the reactions to Harry Potter by members of various Christian groups and denominations. While some Christian leaders support and admire the Harry Potter books (Granger, 2006; Olsen, 1999), others condemn them as dangerous.

For fundamentalist Christians “witchcraft is as real to us as any other religion” (Gish, 2000, p. 263). This belief—that witchcraft is real and is necessarily evil—lies at the heart of the religious objections. To those who believe in the reality of witchcraft, the threat of the Harry Potter books is that they might desensitize children to the sinfulness of magic and that “children may learn to see them [occult or Satanic practices] as acceptable” (p. 264). (Those interested in a detailed and excellent description of the religious objections to the Harry Potter books and other popular children’s fantasy books are directed to Gish’s article.) “Once again: when you believe that witches and occult practices are real, and contrary to God’s laws, those books are quite different from what the authors probably intended” (p. 264). Gish provides a useful gloss of Deuteronomy 18:9–12 as those verses are applied to Harry Potter. She points, for example, to the Divination course offered by Hogwarts and, obviously, the fact that Harry and his friends are learning to be wizards.

Several Christian leaders who support and admire the Harry Potter books find the books promoting values such as courage, love, friendship, and loyalty, with a moral approach of good vs. evil. Granger, in his book Looking for God in Harry Potter (2006), asserted that “the Harry Potter stories ‘sing along’ with the Great Story of Christ [which] is a significant key to understanding their compelling richness” (p. 2). Although many writers have commented on the near total lack of the mention of any religion in the first six Harry Potter books, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the reader encounters “whispers” of Christianity (Smietana, 2007). In the cemetery in Godric’s Hollow on Christmas Eve, Harry and Hermione read the inscriptions on the graves of Kendra and Ariana Dumbledore and of James and Lily Potter—both passages from the New Testament. Shortly after the publication of Deathly Hallows, Rowling, in a press conference, explained that she has always seen her series as based extensively on Christian themes, including questions about the afterlife and the power of love over death (Adler, 2007). According to Rowling, she hesitated to make the religious parallels too explicit as the series developed to keep readers from anticipating too early where the story was going.

Just before the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the Church of England published a guide to teach youth leaders in the church how to use the Harry Potter books to teach Christian messages to young people (Use Harry Potter, 2007). The author of the guide, Owen Smith, stated,

To say, as some have, that these books draw younger readers towards the occult seems to me both to malign JK Rowling and to vastly underestimate the ability of children and young people to separate the real from the imaginary.

The Occult

What about the concerns that exposure to magical ideas such as spells, wizards, and potions tempts young people to dabble in the occult or become members of a cult? On her website in her discussion of the dangers of Harry Potter, Kjos (2000) asserts,

For most children tutored in paganism by popular authors and computer programmers, there will be no turning back…. A little dabbling in the occult usually fuels urges to explore other practices…. Packaged for our youth as D and D [Dungeons and Dragons] or as Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they desensitize their captive fans to the dangers of occult forces. They can become irresistible.

Hunter (1998) also cites the progression from fantasy role-playing games to dabbling in satanic rituals to cult membership. Some people even assert that satanists use Dungeons and Dragons to recruit members (Foerstel, 1994).

Hicks (1991), a law enforcement expert whose book, In Pursuit of Satan, addresses alleged satanic crime, debunks this notion of a causal link between fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons and occult dabbling. In a study of a stratified random matched sample of fantasy role-playing gamers, satanic “dabblers,” and students who were neither game-players nor dabblers, Leeds (1995) found the gamers and the uninvolved comparison group to be similar to one another in terms of their beliefs in the paranormal and personal stability and the satanic dabblers to be different from the other two groups in both of those areas. Based on his study, Leeds concluded, “the occult and satanism are two distinctly different realms, and … one does not necessarily lead to the next” (p. 158). He continued: “These results do not support popular media suggestions that involvement in fantasy role-playing games are the direct antecedents to satanic practices, beliefs in magical spells, and demon-summoning in impressionable youth” (p. 158). Hicks (1991) deplores the notion, suggested by the popular media, “that teens have so little judgment where fantasy is concerned that parents must absolutely control all that they read and hear” (p. 271). Can children and adolescents exercise judgment about fantasy?

Fantasy and Reality

Beyond the religiously based concerns expressed well by Gish (2000) are those of parents who do not believe that magic, of the type presented in the Harry Potter series, is real. These parents may express concerns that their child(ren), however, could begin to view such practices as real. Their concerns are grounded in the idea that reading books like the Harry Potter series, which include fantastical and magical content, could foster confusion regarding the distinction between fantasy and reality.

Although the subject of fantasy is still an emerging area within developmental psychology, there is valuable information to be gleaned from the research that has been done. The scholarly work reviewed here addresses developmental and methodological issues related to the fantasy—reality distinction, factors that appear to affect children’s ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, and potential benefits of fantastical thinking and play.

In her thorough review of the fantasy/reality literature, Woolley (1997) indicates clearly that the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, at a very basic level, is in place by three years of age. She and her colleagues have found that around the age of three years children express differences between reality and pictures, reality and pretense, and reality and toys in their everyday conversations (Woolley and Wellman, 1990). Skolnick and Bloom (2006) found that not only can children (aged three to six) distinguish between real and fantasy figures, they separate fantasy worlds as adults do (e.g., Batman does not believe that SpongeBob is real). Sharon and Woolley (2004) found that the three to five year olds in their study had some difficulty correctly categorizing real vs. fantastical entities, but that five year olds (closely followed by four year olds) were strikingly similar to adults in their attributions of the properties (i.e., physical, biological, social, and mental) of real and fantastical entities. Five year olds were much more likely to attribute human-like properties to real entities (e.g., a child of the same sex) than they were to fantastical entities (e.g., monster, fairy, Santa Claus).

The approach used to challenge and assess children’s ability to distinguish fantasy from reality is a significant issue (Bourchier and Davis, 2000; Sharon and Woolley, 2004). It is evident from reviewing the literature that researchers are continually fine-tuning their approach to assessment in an attempt to understand best what is occurring cognitively for children as they engage in the experimental procedures. Questions arise about numerous potential confounding factors (e.g., inclusion or exclusion of response choices, language used). For example, Sharon and Woolley (2004) provided children with the option to place entities in an “unsure” pile if they were not confident that an entity was either real or fantastical—an option that children used quite frequently. They reasonably argued that the failure to offer this option in previous research likely affected findings as children who were unsure were required to choose. Deák (2006) contends that current methods of investigation offer more information about children’s “failure to understand the unfamiliar discourse format of the standard test” (p. 546) than they provide insight regarding children’s confusion between fantasy and reality.

Keeping in mind the developmental and methodological issues noted above, there are factors that seem to affect children’s ability to distinguish fantasy from reality and their beliefs about magic. More specifica...