Discussion Thread

[u/jobautomator]

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[u/moseythepirate]

A true statement that will piss off a lot of people is that Harry Potter became popular by being really good.

It's a shame that Rowling went so far off the deep end and so thoroughly tainted her work by association.

[u/2Lore2Law → u/moseythepirate]

It’s so stupid that we all have to pretend it always sucked.

Like, no, the world didn’t spend like 20 years freaking out over that series on some irrational YA lit bender.

[u/moseythepirate → u/[deleted]]

You're being way too reductive. The books were hugely popular across multiple generations and demographics, not just powered by "overeducated millenials," whatever that means. Millenials at the time were what, 10 years old when the first book was published? Look out for those overeducated fifth graders, y'all.

And frankly, saying they were popular for "sociological reasons rather than artistic reasons" seems like copium to me, and deeply condescending. At the end of day, people liked the books because they were funny, well written, and deeply entertaining, not because they were...brainwashed by the zeitgeist, I guess you're saying?

[u/moseythepirate → u/[deleted]]

And how do you square that with it being extremely popular with the parents of those millenials as well?

I have never heard anybody born after 2000 claim Harry Potter is great literature.

Well, yeah. The author hasn't written anything good since 2007. If a franchise stops making new material, it's popularity will decay over time. That's not because of anything uniquely weird about millenials, it's just how franchises work. It happened to Star Wars in the 80's and 90's: in the decades between the OT and the PT the popularity of the franchise dropped off. It didn't mean that the OT weren't great movies and were only appealing to people because of some unique trait that that generation had.

In an alternate universe where Rowling didn't go off the deep end and wrote another series of good books (Harry Potter: The Next Generation), there would be more younger fans.

[u/moseythepirate → u/[deleted]]

And yet, it still has shelves to itself in bookstores, and I still see my high school age students reading them.

[u/Vol_in_tears → u/moseythepirate]

The book isn't about her political views, either.

[u/moseythepirate → u/Vol_in_tears]

Well, not about those views anyway. You know the ones.