[Mb-hair] question?

[Jules Fisher]

Michael, these last three items I received on the "Hair" list seemed more like they belonged on the "civic"list. I do enjoy hearing of the Hair alums. Let me know if this is a crossover or what. 
 
When do I see you in NYC? Missing you, 
 
Love, J 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: michael at intrafi.com [mailto:michael at intrafi.com] 
	Sent: Sun 7/18/2004 2:40 PM 
	To: mb-hair at islandlists.com 
	Cc: 
	Subject: [Mb-hair] NYTimes.com Article: Harry Potter, Market Wiz 
	
	

	The article below from NYTimes.com
	has been sent to you by michael at intrafi.com.
	
	
	
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	Harry Potter, Market Wiz
	
	July 18, 2004
	 By ILIAS YOCARIS
	
	
	
	
	
	The success of the Harry Potter series has provoked a
	lively discussion among French literary theorists about the
	novels' underlying message and the structure of Harry's
	school, Poudlard (Hogwarts). This article, which appeared
	last month in the French daily Le Monde, got particular
	attention, including an essay published in response arguing
	that Harry is an antiglobalist crusader.
	
	NICE, France - With the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling
	has enchanted the world: the reader is drawn into a magical
	universe of flying cars, spells that make its victims spew
	slugs, trees that give blows, books that bite, elf
	servants, portraits that argue and dragons with pointed
	tails.
	
	On the face of it, the world of Harry Potter has nothing in
	common with our own. Nothing at all, except one detail:
	like ours, the fantastic universe of Harry Potter is a
	capitalist universe.
	
	Hogwarts is a private sorcery school, and its director
	constantly has to battle against the state as represented,
	essentially, by the inept minister of Magic, Cornelius
	Fudge; the ridiculous bureaucrat Percy Weasley; and the
	odious inspector Dolores Umbridge.
	
	The apprentice sorcerers are also consumers who dream of
	acquiring all sorts of high-tech magical objects, like high
	performance wands or the latest brand-name flying brooms,
	manufactured by multinational corporations. Hogwarts, then,
	is not only a school, but also a market: subject to an
	incessant advertising onslaught, the students are never as
	happy as when they can spend their money in the boutiques
	near the school. There is all sorts of bartering between
	students, and the author heavily emphasizes the possibility
	of social success for young people who enrich themselves
	thanks to trade in magical products.
	
	The tableau is completed by the ritual complaints about the
	rigidity and incompetence of bureaucrats. Their mediocrity
	is starkly contrasted with the inventiveness and audacity
	of some entrepreneurs, whom Ms. Rowling never ceases to
	praise. For example, Bill Weasley, who works for the goblin
	bank Gringotts, is presented as the opposite of his
	brother, Percy the bureaucrat. The first is young, dynamic
	and creative, and wears clothes that "would not have looked
	out of place at a rock concert"; the second is
	unintelligent, obtuse, limited and devoted to state
	regulation, his career's masterpiece being a report on the
	standards for the thicknesses of cauldrons.
	
	We have, then, an invasion of neoliberal stereotypes in a
	fairy tale. The fictional universe of Harry Potter offers a
	caricature of the excesses of the Anglo-Saxon social model:
	under a veneer of regimentation and traditional rituals,
	Hogwarts is a pitiless jungle where competition, violence
	and the cult of winning run riot.
	
	The psychological conditioning of the apprentice sorcerers
	is clearly based on a culture of confrontation: competition
	among students to be prefect; competition among Hogwarts
	"houses" to win points; competition among sorcery schools
	to win the Goblet of Fire; and, ultimately, the bloody
	competition between the forces of Good and Evil.
	
	This permanent state of war ends up redefining the role of
	institutions: faced with ever-more violent conflicts, they
	are no longer able to protect individuals against the
	menaces that they face everywhere. The minister of magic
	fails pitifully in his combat against Evil, and the
	regulatory constraints of school life hinder Harry and his
	friends in defending themselves against the attacks and
	provocations that they constantly encounter. The apprentice
	sorcerers are thus alone in their struggle to survive in a
	hostile milieu, and the weakest, like Harry's schoolmate
	Cedric Diggory, are inexorably eliminated.
	
	These circumstances influence the education given the young
	students of Hogwarts. The only disciplines that matter are
	those that can give students an immediately exploitable
	practical knowledge that can help them in their battle to
	survive.
	
	That's not astonishing, considering how this prestigious
	school aims to form, above all, graduates who can compete
	in the job market and fight against Evil. Artistic subjects
	are thus absent from Hogwarts's curriculum, and the
	teaching of social sciences is considered of little value:
	the students have only some tedious courses of history.
	It's very revealing that Harry finds them "as boring as
	Percy's reports cauldron-bottom report." In other words, in
	the cultural universe of Harry Potter, social sciences are
	as useless and obsolete as state regulation.
	
	Harry Potter, probably unintentionally, thus appears as a
	summary of the social and educational aims of neoliberal
	capitalism. Like Orwellian totalitarianism, this capitalism
	tries to fashion not only the real world, but also the
	imagination of consumer-citizens. The underlying message to
	young fans is this: You can imagine as many fictional
	worlds, parallel universes or educational systems as you
	want, they will still all be regulated by the laws of the
	market. Given the success of the Harry Potter series,
	several generations of young people will be indelibly
	marked by this lesson.
	
	Ilias Yocaris is a professor of literary theory and French
	literature at the University Institute of Teacher Training
	in Nice. This article was translated by The Times from the
	French.
	
	http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/opinion/18YOCA.html?ex=1091176042&ei=1&en=d13a96e0800eb3f4
	
	
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