{"id":9439,"date":"2017-06-27T04:57:10","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T04:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9439"},"modified":"2017-07-04T09:54:40","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T09:54:40","slug":"what-do-protests-about-harry-potter-books-teach-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-do-protests-about-harry-potter-books-teach-us\/","title":{"rendered":"What do protests about Harry Potter books teach us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trisha Tucker<\/a>, University of Southern California \u2013 Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

On Monday, June 26, 2017, Harry James Potter \u2013 the world\u2019s most famous wizard \u2013 will celebrate his 20th birthday. His many fans will likely mark the occasion by rereading a favorite Harry Potter novel or rewatching one of the blockbuster films. Some may even raise a butterbeer toast in Harry\u2019s honor at one of three Harry Potter-themed amusement parks.<\/p>\n

But not everyone will be celebrating Harry\u2019s big day. In fact, a vocal group of Christians \u2013 usually identified as \u201cBible-believing\u201d or fundamentalist Christians<\/a> \u2013 has been resistant to Harry\u2019s charms from the start. Members of this community, who believe the Bible to be literal truth, campaigned vigorously<\/a> to keep J.K. Rowling\u2019s best-selling novels<\/a> out of classrooms and libraries. They even staged public book burnings<\/a> across the country, at which children and parents were invited to cast Rowling\u2019s books<\/a> into the flames. These fiery spectacles garnered widespread media coverage, sparking reactions ranging from bemusement<\/a> to outrage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Harry Potter turns 20 on June 26.<\/span>
\nLesley Choa<\/a>, CC BY-NC-ND<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What could justify the use of such drastic measures to keep these books out of the hands of young readers?<\/p>\n

The different views on Harry Potter<\/h2>\n

Book burnings may be relatively rare in modern America, but efforts to protect young readers from \u201cdangerous\u201d texts are not. Such texts, and the efforts to limit their readership, are the subject of a class I teach<\/a> at the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n

In this class, students survey a collection of books that have been challenged on moral, political and religious grounds. These include classics such as \u201c1984\u201d<\/a> and \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird,\u201d<\/a> as well as newer texts like \u201cPersepolis\u201d<\/a> and \u201cThe Perks of Being a Wallflower.\u201d<\/a> The point is not to determine which challenges are \u201cgood\u201d and which are \u201cbad.\u201d Instead, we seek to understand how differing beliefs about reading and subjectivity make certain texts seem dangerous and others seem safe to particular populations of readers.<\/p>\n

Harry Potter is one of the first books we discuss.<\/p>\n

Most readers of Rowling\u2019s novel \u2013 including many Christian readers<\/a> \u2013 interpret the characters\u2019 tutelage in spells and potions as harmless fantasy, or as metaphors for the development of wisdom and knowledge. Similarly, they read incidents in which Harry and his friends disobey adults or make questionable choices as opportunities for characters and readers alike to learn important lessons and begin to develop their own moral and ethical codes.<\/p>\n

\"\"
What makes some literary texts appear \u2018dangerous?\u2019<\/span>
\nkayepants<\/a>, CC BY-NC-SA<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For some fundamentalist Christians, however, Harry\u2019s magical exploits pose an active danger. According to them<\/a>, Hogwarts teaches the kinds of witchcraft explicitly condemned as punishable by death and damnation in the biblical books of Deuteronomy<\/a> and Exodus<\/a>. They believe the books must be banned \u2013 even burned \u2013 because their positive portrayal of magic is likely to attract unsuspecting children to real-world witchcraft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Similarly, they think that when Harry disobeys his cruel Muggle guardians or flouts Dumbledore\u2019s rules to save his friends, he actively encourages child readers to engage in lying and disobedience, which are explicitly forbidden by the Bible. As Evangelical writer Richard Abanes puts it<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe morals and ethics in Rowling\u2019s fantasy tales are at best unclear, and at worst, patently unbiblical.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Making assumptions<\/h2>\n

Why don\u2019t Bible-believing Christians trust young readers to discern the difference between fantasy and reality? And why don\u2019t they think children can learn positive lessons from Harry\u2019s adventures \u2013 like the importance of standing up to injustice?<\/p>\n

According to scholar Christine Jenkins<\/a>, people who try to censor texts often hold a set of false assumptions<\/a> about how reading works.<\/p>\n

One of those assumptions is that particular literary content (like positive portrayals of witchcraft) will invariably produce particular effects (more witches in real life). Another is that reactions to a particular text are likely to be consistent across readers. In other words, if one reader finds a passage scary, funny or offensive, the assumption is that other readers invariably will do so as well.<\/p>\n

As Jenkins points out, however, research has shown that readers\u2019 responses are highly variable and contextual. In fact, psychologists Amie Senland<\/a> and Elizabeth Vozzola<\/a> have demonstrated<\/a> this about readers of Harry Potter.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Readers\u2019 responses can vary widely.<\/span>
\nSeamus McCauley<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In their study comparing the perceptions of fundamentalist and liberal Christian readers of Harry Potter, Senland and Vozzola reveal that different reading responses are possible in even relatively homogeneous groups. On the one hand, despite adults\u2019 fears to the contrary, few children in either group believed that the magic practiced in Harry Potter could be replicated in real life. On the other, the children disagreed about a number of things, including whether or not Dumbledore\u2019s bending of the rules for Harry made Dumbledore harder to respect.<\/p>\n

Senland and Vozzola\u2019s study joins a body<\/a> of scholarship<\/a> that indicates that children perform complex negotiations as they read. Children\u2019s reading experiences are informed by both their unique personal histories and their cultural contexts.<\/p>\n

In other words, there\u2019s no \u201cnormal\u201d way to read Harry Potter \u2013 or any other book, for that matter.<\/p>\n

Distrusting child readers<\/h2>\n

Fundamentalist Christians aren\u2019t the only group who have trouble trusting the capabilities of child readers.<\/p>\n

Take the case of \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird.\u201d<\/p>\n

For decades, parents have argued<\/a> that Harper Lee\u2019s novel poses a danger to young readers, and have sought to remove it from classrooms for this reason. Some parents worry that the novel\u2019s vulgar language and sexual content will corrupt children\u2019s morals, while others fear that the novel\u2019s marginalization of black characters will damage the self-image of black readers.<\/p>\n

Despite their different ideological orientations, I believe that both of these groups of protesters \u2013 like the fundamentalists who attempt to censor Harry Potter \u2013 are driven by surprisingly similar misapprehensions about reading.<\/p>\n

In all of these cases, the protesters presume that being exposed to a phenomenon in literature (whether witchcraft, foul language or racism) naturally leads to a reproduction of that phenomenon in life. They also believe that their individual experience of a text is correct and applicable to disparate readers.<\/p>\n

\"TheThese cases of attempted censorship show a profound distrust of child readers and their imaginations. And they ignore evidence that child readers are far more sophisticated than adults tend to credit them for.<\/p>\n

Trisha Tucker<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Writing, University of Southern California \u2013 Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trisha Tucker, University of Southern California \u2013 Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences On Monday, June 26, 2017, Harry James Potter \u2013 the world\u2019s most famous wizard \u2013 will celebrate his 20th birthday. His many fans will likely mark the occasion by rereading a favorite Harry Potter novel or rewatching one of the blockbuster […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2450],"tags":[2639,2066,2637,2638],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9439"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9496,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439\/revisions\/9496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}