The Class of Harry Potter
I suspect everyone who has ever written a story about wizards is told “yes, but isn’t it just like Harry Potter”. Including those whose stories were written decades before. Just for the record, there have been stories about people with magical powers, schools or universities of magic, and many of the plot elements of the HP series since stories began. That doesn’t mean J K Rowling ripped them off either – they are part of the vocabulary of fantasy.
The issue I have with Harry Potter and most tales of people with magical powers – and much other science fiction and fantasy – is nothing to do with their originality. It’s the politics.
A common trope is that magic exists, but ordinary people have to be protected from the knowledge of its existence. There is a cabal of magic users who hide their powers away either to protect themselves, or the population at large.
I don’t subscribe fully to the Marxist or Structuralist analysis of texts, but can’t help see the echo of the way our mundane elites protect themselves in this. Just like magicians, they club together consciously or unconsciously to disguise the effect they have on our world and ascribe any bad effect to the esoteric secrets of market forces. An even more insidious meme is that any problems one group of ordinary people have is caused by another similarly disadvantaged group not those at the top of the pyramid.
Class is clearly a part of the Potterverse and the long standing magical families look down on those of “muggle” heritage. They are the bright working class kids who have won an academic scholarship to a public school and are easily spotted by the children of the elite because they can’t afford the right uniform or the skiing trips.
The path in “classic” or Tolkeinesque fantasy is that a peasant discovers a talent for magic or fighting and rises to the top. They rarely bring everyone else with them – just join the elite even if they depose the current top dog. The social heirarchy is preserved and the poor peasant often turns out to be the illegitimate offspring of someone important rather than a lowly serf. At the start of Gormenghast we are cheering for Steerpike the social climber, but like many who have ascended the ranks he pulls up the ladder behind him and enforces the social rules even more strictly than those born to it.
Even Harry Potter, who starts off as an outsider suffering at the hands of the elite ends up accepting the system, just wanting to get rid of the worst elements of it.
We need a revolution, but I suspect the new boss will be same as the old boss. We will get fooled again.
