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khaosworksSpellbound
There were witches and wizards, academics demanding human rights for elves, and a Viking in a cape who wanted to talk sex. Tanya Gold mingles with the Potterheads at Britain's first Harry Potter convention
Tuesday August 2, 2005
The Guardian
Of course, we're all familiar with fandom and the extremes that fans can get up to. And we're equally familiar with the habit the media have of selecting the most extreme of us to hook in on. I may not know much about Pottermania aside from the movies, I may not think much of Pottermania, but fan obsession is something I am intimately familiar with and I understand the impulses. However, what is interesting is the final paragraph in Gold's article.
There were witches and wizards, academics demanding human rights for elves, and a Viking in a cape who wanted to talk sex. Tanya Gold mingles with the Potterheads at Britain's first Harry Potter convention
Tuesday August 2, 2005
The Guardian
In a cafe at Reading University a witch is eating a sandwich. Nearby a wizard sips a frappé and reads the Daily Mail. The witch finishes her sandwich, brushes crumbs from her cloak and sticks her wand into her belt. "Come on," she tells the wizard. "It's time for 'Should house elves be granted human rights?'"More at the link.
The Potterheads are alive. Two weeks after the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth and penultimate book in JK Rowling's series, as the world bites its toenails and prays for the young wizard hero and his lightning-shaped scar, the real devotees have invaded Reading. More than 200 hardcore fans have come from 25 countries for Accio! Britain's first Harry Potter convention. (Accio!, in wizard-speak, means "Come!") They flew to Florida in 2003 for the Nimbus Convention, they broomsticked to Canada last year for Convention Alley, but this year it is the Reading University campus that hosts a three-day orgy of Potter symposia, Potter disputation and pointy hat wearing.
Accio! planned nearly 100 events: quidditch, a type of netball where you hit the ball with a broomstick (in the books the wizards fly on the broomsticks); a mock trial of Severus Snape, the wicked potions master who (not to give too much away) does something bad at the end of Half-Blood Prince; and pseudo-intellectual forums including The Rule of Law or the Crumpled Horned Snorkack? and Beings and the Beast: Free Will, Destiny, Contagion for Animagi and Werewolves".
My first lecture is an Amnesty International take on house elves, the oppressed underclass of the wizarding world. In Potterland, these small, gnarled creatures, resembling miniature Vladimir Putins, are forced by the selfish wizard community to do all the dusting. Today, their advocate is Joanna Lipinska from the institute of ethnology and cultural anthropology at the University of Warsaw. Tall, slender and shining, she puts one in mind of a slightly cross kitchen knife.
"The enslavement of house elves goes back centuries," she says. "They are forced to wear tea towels instead of garments and they do not have the right of freedom of expression." Lipinska shakes her head in anguish. "I believe," she says, "that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be applied to the wizarding community."
She does not look up. She does not even blink. Instead, she mutters a precise, passionate 12-page case for the liberation of the house elves. The Human Rights Watch report on the treatment of the Kurds under Saddam was less detailed. It seems impolite to mention that house elves do not exist.
The debate is opened to the floor. A Dutch delegate says, "I have difficulty granting human rights to things that aren't human. The magic-al creatures aren't minorities. They are a different species." Lipinska's eyes widen; she looks hurt. Another delegate nods. "He's right. Dobby the Elf is a mutant freak. He should be enslaved!" Another delegate declares they would be "bored if they were freed".
But, just as the reactionaries are flushing the elves' hopes of liberation down the toilet, a Potteresque William Wilberforce appears. She is an elegant black woman with a slow, southern drawl. "The slaves in America were also told they loved being slaves and that they would run from freedom," she says. "This wasn't true. We are relearning the lessons of history through JK Rowling. We must oppose slavery again!" A vote is mooted. Lipinska nods cautiously. As the memory of the Alabama lynchings lies drifting in the air, we vote for freedom.
I mingle with the audience, who are now jabbering questions at each other. Is a seventh part of the soul of Lord Voldemort (the ultimate dark wizard) nestling in Harry Potter's scar? Will Harry die, Christ-like, at the end of the series, redeeming wizardry on a technicality? Is Dumbledore (the saintly headmaster of Hogwarts) God? Is Professor Sprout a lesbian? Do werewolves smell? And does anyone, actually, like Harry?
Accio! is sprinkled with obsessive compulsive disorder, like fairy eggs on a lawn. I meet a woman who announces that she listens to the Harry Potter audiotapes continuously. "When I finish one, I begin another. When I am walking, when I am eating, when I am cleaning the house, when I am sleeping, I listen to Harry." A sinister oneupmanship infests the rooms; who has the most exhaustive knowledge of the canon? "How many times did Harry get a zero in potions?" snaps one witch. "I ... I don't know," her friend stammers.
Of course, we're all familiar with fandom and the extremes that fans can get up to. And we're equally familiar with the habit the media have of selecting the most extreme of us to hook in on. I may not know much about Pottermania aside from the movies, I may not think much of Pottermania, but fan obsession is something I am intimately familiar with and I understand the impulses. However, what is interesting is the final paragraph in Gold's article.
...(As) I return to the Muggle [non-magic] world, passing some wizards photographing a pair of Snape's underpants and a gently hiccuping witch, it occurs to me that I sensed a faint resentment of Rowling in Reading. She is the scribbling reminder that the Potterheads' preferred world is an invention. The delegates do not want to read about wizards; they want to be them. "Is it necessary", Vander Ark asks in his symposium, "for JK to die for us to live?" He pretends he is joking, but I'm not sure. Rowling has made a world for the Potties, but gratitude is a double-edged wand. Ms Rowling beware; a forest of them is pointed your way.I leave that to you to make of it as you will.
