Harry Potter and the Hysterical Reactions
With the seventh Harry Potter book and fifth movie about to premier, there’s no shortage of Harry Potter Hysteria (HPH) to be had. This is baffling to us librarians, Harry Potter fans, or anyone with two brain cells to rub together as HPH clearly just so much Satanic Panic with a new coat of paint. So, the claims of witchcraft and Satanic initiation are clearly a cock and bull story, but what is the real motivation behind banning Harry Potter books? It could be part of the Evangelical movement’s more general disregard for worldly knowledge, book learning and anything fun. But I think it’s more specific than that. I think there is a real threat to the religious worldview in the Harry Potter books, it just isn’t Satanic in nature but secular.*
While His Dark Materials and even the Lord of The Rings are also on the Evangelical shit list, Harry Potter has become the whipping boy for their fears of a secular culture. The Harry Potter Books and films show how one can fight evil without resorting to superstitious rituals or relying on religious authority. It’s just a boy and his friends, learning to develop their inborn talents (sometimes doing so against the wishes of authority figures) to save the world. And that scares the shit out of the Religious Right. No wonder they don’t want their kids to read these books, as they will grow up to think that they can fight evil and change the world for the better without appeals to higher powers or relying on a daddy figure (because he’s dead, after all), but just by invoking the magic of hard work, friendship and cooperation and sometimes breaking the rules. Harry Potter encourages children to be rebellious, self reliant and to distrust elders, because they may not have their best interests in mind. Which is why they will go down in history as the best books, ever.
I think that the Harry Potter is the Devil thing is so over the top. If the values of the books even in the least would lead children to the dark side it would be one thing. But I think the values in the books about are very moral. Dark action has negative outcomes. I think it boils down to the fact that questioning and looking at the world one a personal, rather than a group level, is just scary to some people.
Right on, Isaac. The morals of HP are universal: trust your friends, help those in need, use the skills you have, don’t trust authority blindly and fight evil with all your heart but don’t get suckered in to becoming evil in the process. This last one is the tricky one and what I think the seventh book will really be about.