French scholars are debating over the nature of wizarding
society, as this article culled from the Independent and reproduced in the
New Zealand Herald
says:
French get philosophical about Harry Potter
06.07.2004 By JOHN LICHFIELD
PARIS - In the sober columns of Le Monde, a debate is raging which
slices to the heart of the political and philosophical concerns of
the early 21st century.
Is Harry Potter a capitalist neo-liberal? Or is he an
anti-globalist lefty, concerned by the fate of the humble and the
oppressed?
The opinion pages of the centre-left, French daily - more often
occupied with human cloning or Third World debt - have, over the
last three weeks, been examining, in high Marxist-structuralist
manner, the political subtext of the works of J. K. Rowling.
The Great Debate was launched on June 4 by Ilias Yocaris, of the
Institut Universitaire de Formation de Maitres (secondary teacher
training school) in Nice.
Yocaris, one of the people responsible for training the next
generation of French teachers, complained in Le Monde that the
"fantasy universe of Harry Potter is ... a capitalist
universe".
The five Harry Potter books - enormously successful in French
translation - are stiffed with "neo-liberal stereotypes" which
caricature approvingly the "excesses of the Anglo-Saxon social
model", Yocaris said.
Thus all representatives of the state (the Ministry of Magic) are
lampooned as ridiculous, or incompetent or sinister. Harry goes to
a "private" school, whose "micro-society" is a "pitiless jungle"
which glorifies "individualism, competition and a cult of
violence".
Public institutions are unable to protect individuals: Harry Potter
and his friends find that they have to break the magical
state-imposed rules constantly to protect themselves from evil
forces.
Yocaris says that the Harry Potter books are an example of the
totalitarian universe imagined by George Orwell, come to life.
"Capitalism is now trying to shape, after its own taste, not only
the real world, but the imaginary world of its
consumer-citizens."
Now Le Monde has published an equally erudite reply to Yocaris'
thesis.
Far from being a capitalist lackey, Harry Potter is, in fact, the
first fictional hero of the anti-globalist, anti-free market,
pro-Third World, "Seattle"generation, according to Isabelle
Smadja.
Smadja, who teaches philosophy at the Lycee Loritz in Nancy,
suggests that Yocaris has been confused by the fact that the Potter
books are, themselves, such a global, commercial and marketing
success. Examination of the text suggests that they are, in fact, a
"ferocious critique of consumer society and the world of free
enterprise".
The magical world created by Rowling is, Smadja declares, suffused
with the ideas of "other-worldism", the name given to the
anti-global movement in France.
Harry and his friends show creditable concern for the "house
elves", the unpaid servants of the magical world. That the elves
are mostly content with their lot is, says Smadja, a "pertinent"
critique of globalisation. "Poor countries are so blinded and
attracted by the system which exploits them that they have no
desire to revolt against it".
French intellectuals have struggled from the beginning to come to
terms with the great success of the Potter books and movies. There
have been previous interpretations, suggesting that the books are
"anti-progressive" and "sexist". There have also been complaints in
France that many of the wicked characters in the books have French
names.
In a response to the first ("Harry is a neo-liberal capitalist")
article, a Le Monde reader mocked the tendency of some French
intellectuals to wallow in ideological abstraction.
"A question presents itself," Vincent de Longueville from Paris
asked in the newspaper's letters column. "Was Ilias Yocaris ever
young?"
- INDEPENDENT