Transforming Harry

The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age

John Alberti, P. Andrew Miller

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780814342879
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Ageis an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation. The movie version of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, premiered in 2001, in between publication of the fourth and fifth books of this global literary phenomenon. As a result, the production and reception of both novel and movie series became intertwined with one another, creating a fanbase who accessed the series first through the books, first through the movies, and in various other combinations. John Alberti and P. Andrew Miller have gathered scholars to explore and examine the cultural, political, aesthetic, and pedagogical dimensions of this pop culture phenomenon and how it has changed the reception of both the films and books. Divided into two sections, the volume addresses both the fidelity of adaptation and the transmedia adaptations that have evolved around the creation of the books and movies. In her essay, Vera Cuntz-Leng draws on feminist film theory to explore the gaze politics and male objectification operating in the Harry Potter movies. Cassandra Bausman contends that screenwriter Steve Klove's revision of the end of the film version of Deathly Hallows, Part II offers a more politically and ethically satisfying conclusion to the Harry Potter saga than the ending of the Rowling novel. Michelle Markey Butler's "Harry Potter and the Surprising Venue of Literary Critiques" argues that the fan-generated memes work as a kind of popular literary analysis in three particular areas: the roles of female characters, the comparative analysis of books and films, and the comparative analysis of the Harry Potter series with other works of fantasy. While the primary focus of the collection is an academic audience, it will appeal to a broad range of readers. Within the academic community, Transforming Harry will be of interest to scholars and teachers in a number of disciplines, including film and media studies and English. Beyond the classroom, the Harry Potter series clearly enjoys a large and devoted global fan community, and this collection will be of interest to serious fans.

Part One

Adaptation, Fidelity, and Meaning

1

Harry Potter and the Popular Culture of Tomorrow

Andrew Howe

On July 21, 2007, J. K. Rowling released the final installment in her landmark Harry Potter heptalogy, cementing a position of importance in young adult literature and millennial culture. Indeed, the world she created in the early 1990s and exposed to the reading public in 1997 had, by 2007, transformed into an empire featuring movies, action figures, and the whole range of other artifacts that typically accompany tremendously popular texts that capture the imagination of a global audience. Rowling’s popularity had grown to extend into different parts of society, both popular and elite. When Richard Dawkins announces that he’s writing a book debunking your text and later recants, re-posting numerous positive articles on his website, you know you’ve arrived.¹

Harry Potter has also proven fertile for academics who are also fans, who can annually get their fix at conferences dedicated solely to Rowling’s fictional world. These conferences have been held in Chicago, southern California, Canterbury, Wales, and many other locations. The names given to them—Terminus, Potterwatch, Pottermania, DiaCon Alley, Ascendio, LeakyCon, and Infinitus—are indicative of the desire to bridge scholarship with popular culture and, in particular, fandom. An extreme manifestation of the hybridization between the academic and the fan (known as “aca-fan”) has been encouraged by several of these conferences, which have invited participants to attend dressed up as their favorite characters (cos-play joining fan fiction as two ways in which fans can interact with the text on a more personal level). The most common location for these conferences has been Orlando, Florida, largely due to the existence of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park, a part of Universal’s “Islands of Adventure,” which opened to the public in 2010, followed by analogues in Osaka, Japan (opened in 2014), and Universal City, California (opened in 2016). In addition to reading the books and watching the movies, fans can now experience Potter-themed roller coasters and other attractions and visit life-sized models of both Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. Naturally, they can also shop at a number of Potter-themed establishments within the park, choosing from hundreds of Potter-associated products.

The success of the Harry Potter franchise is undeniable, with well over 450 million book copies sold and with the original book in the series spending a full decade (1998–2008) on the New York Times Bestseller List.² Indeed, at one point (in 2000), Potter books occupied the top three places on that list, and the series’ dominance led to first a separate children’s book list and a further sub-division for children’s series in order to free up spots for newer texts.³

A look at the worldwide box office gross for the eight film adaptations indicates the immense popularity of the series above and beyond those who read the books. Released in November 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) grossed over $975 million USD at the worldwide box office; ten years later, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (2011) surpassed the billion-dollar mark, at the time ranking third in all-time box office receipts, behind Avatar (2009) and Titanic (1997). Certainly, the decision to split Deathly Hallows into two films was facilitated by the franchise’s continuing popularity even after seven books and six previous films. On average, the Potter films grossed well over $900 million worldwide. The fact that the first and last films were the two highest grossing in the franchise stands as a testament to the sustained popularity over the course of a decade.

However, inevitably over time there have been other popular books and film series that have arisen, and new developments that have impacted the continuing reception of Potter, leading one to speculate about the placement of this text in the canon of popular culture in twenty, fifty, or a hundred years. In the ten-year period since the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, one can already perceive shifts in the popular landscape of Potter as the original books and film adaptations recede further and further into the past. Although they are still beloved, these texts are increasingly outdated in an era rich in popular culture and media saturation, including other paracanonical Potter works that have been subsequently released.

The following events have all played a part in the incrementally changing face of the Potter universe: the disclosure that popular character Albus Dumbledore was gay; the ascendancy of other popular young adult literature series, such as Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight Saga and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, as well as the success of the films adapted from these books; accusations of commercialism in regard to the decision to break Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into two separate films, a move that was largely viewed as driven by studio greed rather than artistic sensibility; accusations of elitism over the initial decision not to publicly release Tales of Beedle the Bard, and to release short stories solely to members of Rowling’s website, Pottermore; the perceived shortcomings, in both popular and critical spheres, of Rowling publications outside of the Potter world; the graduation of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson from child stars to more adult figures, in particular with Radcliffe’s appearance in the play Equus and Watson’s high-profile status as an icon of global feminism; and finally, the reception of the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the first of five cinematic adaptations of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This chapter examines the inevitable transformation of Harry Potter the cultural juggernaut of the millennial period to Harry Potter the product of postmillennial nostalgia.

Three months after the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling appeared at Carnegie Hall to read excerpts from the book to a group of several thousand lucky winners of a contest sponsored by Scholastic, the American publisher of the series. Partway through the event, Rowling outed Albus Dumbeldore as gay. This revelation was greeted by a prolonged standing ovation, and news quickly spread around the world.⁴ The reaction in the media and the court of public opinion was swift and divided, and the blogosphere went into overdrive. In some ways, the revelation made as big a splash as the coming out of many famous real life individuals, which by that point had become almost routine a decade after television personality and comedian Ellen Degeneres had come out on her own terms.

Naturally, there was a return to the text, as readers sought to find clues they had previously missed: much of this renewed focus was turned upon Dumbeldore’s relationship with Gellert Grindelwald. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic posted on his blog: “Let’s run the gay-check, shall we? No known female companion ever. Brilliant in school. Befriends a despised classmate. Childhood crush on another boy.”⁵ Others were even more tongue-in-cheek in reading tea leaves from the past, such as those who focused upon descriptions of Fawkes, Dumbledore’s Phoenix, as “flaming,”⁶ and those who employed the phrase “don’t ask, don’t spell.”⁷ Taking a cue from wordplay in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Andrew Slack, as reported in an article in the Los Angeles Times, noted that “Albus Dumbledore” is an anagram for “Male bods rule, bud.”⁸ The cynical and, in some cases, homophobic humor didn’t stop there, impacting even those who indicated that they simply did not care. As Edward Rothstein quoted in his New York Times article, one commentator noted, “Oh, who cares? The whole bloody lot of them were gay as far as I’m concerned. All those hours of movies and not a single car chase, shootout or kung fu fight.”⁹ However, not too surprisingly, public opinion largely polarized into two camps: those who supported and those who did not support Dumbledore’s outing.

Many applauded Rowling’s decision to both create a gay character in a book for youth and then publicly out him.¹⁰ Those in this group generally focused upon how this revelation fit into the larger framework of tolerance found throughout the Potter canon, most notably in the textual rejection of bias against those of mixed blood heritage (Mudbloods). However, despite widespread acceptance of Dumbledore’s homosexuality, there were detractors who found themselves, at least on this one particular topic, in a strange alliance of conservative Christians, politically active gays, and literary critics. For conservative Christian groups, this episode only served to further fuel a fire that had been burning since the success of the initial book. To the laundry list of other criticisms, including the fact that these novels hinged upon magic, drew attention away from God, and encouraged rebelliousness against authority, one could now add an embrace of homosexuality. Soon after Rowling’s announcement, Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, stated: “It’s very disappointing that the author would have to make one of the characters gay. It’s not a good example for our children, who really like the books and the movies. I think it encourages homosexuality.”¹¹ Some went even further, such as pastor and radio host Kevin Swanson, who in late 2015, between advocating for the execution of homosexuals and organizing a GOP conference ahead of the 2016 Iowa presidential caucus, invited America to “repent of Harry Potter . . . Repent that Dumbledore emerged as a homosexual mentor for Harry Potter.”¹²

Joining in the criticism of Rowling were many gay commentators, who viewed Dumbledore’s outing as “too little, too late.” Certainly, Rowling didn’t do herself any favors with her quote following the standing ovation: “If I had known this would have made you this happy, I would have announced it years ago.”¹³ This quote seemed to indicate that her decision was more about popularity than conscience. Furthermore, others questioned the timing of the announcement, at a point when no more books were forthcoming and most of the sales had been made, although it is important to note that, at the time of the revelation, there were still three more films to come.¹⁴

Finally, some felt as if this announcement was a public relations concession made to gay readers following the marriage of Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin. These two characters had both gained queer followings in previous books, Lupin most likely for his medically-marginalized turn in Prisoner of Azkaban, reminiscent of how those with AIDS were treated in the 1980s and thereafter. Rowling herself made this connection, stating that, “His being a werewolf is really a metaphor for people’s reactions to illness and disability.”¹⁵ As Adam Shecter noted: “I wish Dumbledore could have been a model of possibility for queer and questioning youth.”¹⁶

Rounding out the coalition of those skeptical of Rowling’s revelation were critics, literary and otherwise, who cried foul regarding her introducing non-canonical information and expecting people to take it at face value. An example of such a critic was Edward Rothstein, who in a New York Times opinion piece noted that although he continued to admire the series for its clear lines between good and evil, tolerance and intolerance, he viewed the revelation to be manipulative in that it further crowded Rowling’s world with another marginalized protagonist: “Her heroes are the hybrids, the misfits, those of mixed blood, all bearing scars of loss and love: the half-giant Hagrid, the mudblood Hermione (whose parents were not wizards), the poverty-stricken Ron, the orphaned Harry. Perhaps speaking of Dumbeldore as gay was just a matter of creating another diverse rebel against orthodoxy.”¹⁷

Although in no discernible way did this episode detract from Rowling’s popularity, it illustrates the manner in which topical controversies often follow in the wake of an extremely successful text and in particular how, when that text becomes part of a culturally mediated past, the process of revision and reinterpretation begins. In essence, when a textual journey is complete, the text itself is no longer as important as the political discussions that it engenders and that migrate and evolve over time.

It is predictable that, upon completion, a popular work will at some point be replaced by another tale with contemporary cultural resonance that exists at the forefront of collective consciousness. That has certainly transpired since the 2007 publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the final film adaptation four years later, most notably with the ascendancy of the The Twilight Saga and The Hunger Games franchises, as well as...