In Defense of Harry Potter – The Tao of Self Analysis

Throughout the largest portion of my adult life, I have maintained what can best be described as an air of pseudo-intellectualism. My view of the world can sometimes be characterized by elitist attitudes towards films, books and entire groups of people. I have set myself on a pedestal which has in fact prevented any real growth from occurring within me. One way this attitude manifested itself was through my utter distaste and contempt for the Harry Potter series. I had come to associate Harry Potter with popular culture and had imposed upon that popular culture a value judgement of inferiority. Quite simply, I considered the books beneath me; inherently inferior because of their popularity. I had not read them, disregarding completely the old warning against judging a book by its cover.

This idea of popular culture being inferior is not new to cultural studies. There are many definitions of popular culture itself, but one way it can be defined would be to come to the conclusion that popular culture is all that is left after high culture is removed. The exclusivity and elite nature of this high culture means that the remnants are condemned to the ‘lesser’ category of popular culture. Practices, people, art, texts, and film (and any number of other things) which do not meet the strict standards required will fall into this category, rendering them by definition inferior. The trick about all of this is that all of the criteria involved are merely value judgements which support distinctions in social and economic class as well as an essentially myth-based concept of quality. The problem comes with the additional definitions of popular culture. Obviously one definition is that it is popular. Things which fall under the category of popular culture tend to be favored or regarded by many people. The simple fact is that the popular outnumbers the high by far, and the only barrier to the popular being legitimized is in fact the small minority which is attached to the interests of high culture.

Why I ended up associating myself with high culture, I do not know. An inflated ego, a need to feel that my opinions were more important than those of others – the truth is that it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that as a result of my interest in Taoism, my ideas began to shift. Through a process of self reflection, I realized how out of control my ego was. While I’m always going to have opinions and I’m always going to value some things over others, I realized how silly it sounds to judge something without really knowing anything about it. I can hear a song and dislike it, but I can’t honestly judge an entire work of fiction by a news clip or a movie trailer. I decided to give Harry Potter a chance.

First of all, the Harry Potter series is obviously intended for an audience of kids, so it is important to bear that in mind when reading it. I tried to think about it in the same way I would have been thinking about the Chronicles of Narnia series as I read it during my childhood. It is also important to think about the film franchise in this way as well. If there has been a huge Hollywood film for every Narnia book as a grew up, there is no doubt in my mind that my heart would have ached to see them. I don’t think that anything which gets kids reading can possibly be a bad thing. How could I think that, when the Narnia books gave me so much joy and eventually lead me down a path to become an aspiring writer?

Since my childhood, I have ready more fantasy novels than most people I know. While this could be considered good or bad by any number of people, it also leaves me in a position to understand the genre, at least to a certain extent. The Harry Potter series is neither the worst or the best I have read. The characters aren’t always extremely well fleshed out, but the use of setting is very good and the plot in the last couple of books is tied up in a very sophisticated way. I enjoyed the series, and isn’t that what matters? Rather than thinking so much about what other people will think of us, whether or not something is up to specific standards and all manners of in-depth analysis, shouldn’t we just live each moment for its individual and unique joy? When approached this way, as a child would approach them, these books have value. Whether that value is above or below you is up to you, but ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are ultimately a projection of the self. Taoism is concerned with the natural balance of things. In the creation of a concept of beauty, one creates the concept of ugliness by its lack, and vice versa. So does this apply to the idea of good and bad in the ordinary things of the world. It is an invention, a product of our own minds. There is no good. There is no bad. There only IS.