Impossible Owls: Essays

by Brian Phillips

think about the Harry Potter series. One of the reasons J. K. Rowling’s books exerted magnetic power over every sentient creature on earth is that they resolved, indeed fused, a cultural contradiction. She took the aesthetic of old-fashioned English boarding-school life and placed it at the center of a narrative about political inclusiveness. You get to keep the scarves, the medieval dining hall, the verdant lawns, the sense of privilege (you’re a wizard, Harry), while not only losing the snobbery and racism but actually casting them as the villains of the series. It’s the Slytherins and Death Eaters who have it in for Mudbloods, not Harry and his friends, Hogwarts’ true heirs. What results is an absolutely bonkers subliminal reconfiguration of basically the entire cultural heritage of England—and thus the backstory of much of the modern world. It’s as if Rowling remakes a thousand-year-old national tradition into something that’s (a) totally unearned but (b) also way better than the original. Of course it electrified people.