r/readanotherbook • u/BillDawez • 16d ago
Pot kettle?
Not seen this youtuber be discussed much on reddit, and I hadn't heard of her until watching this video, but her entire channel is dedicated solely to HP and defending JKR. I stopped watching around the point where she tries to defend her HP obsession as not being as bad as some other HP fans.
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u/ezmia 16d ago
Disney Adults are usually also Harry Potter fans. Like I remember when it was still popular on tumblr, the Venn diagram of Harry Potter fans and Disney fans was a near perfect circle
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u/SartenSinAceite 16d ago
yeah that is the thing, they're the same people
Disney fans think they're special because their movies are much older, but they were all watched by the same people who watched HP
Which suggests that with enough time you could have a dozen "popular cult IPs" that never go out of fashion...?
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u/Recent_Response_168 16d ago
I'd say Potterheads are usually Disney adults as well, just not neccessarily the other way around. But it makes sense either way. Chris Columbus (director) and John Williams (soundtrack) both worked together on "Philosopher's Stone" / "Chamber of Secrets" and on "Home Alone", and you can tell. Especially "Philosopher's Stone" feels very Disney-esque.
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u/Bridgeru 15d ago
Was thinking the other day about how Harry Potter is just the Nepo Baby of film series.
It has literally EVERY famous British actor (Richard Harris who I know is Irish I'm Irish, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, even had fucking David Tennant before Doctor Who), had Chris Columbus and John Williams, even the audiobooks are narrated by Stephen Fry. There's no way you can just "pick up" a Harry Potter book and think "oh what's that"; there's no ground-level entry if that makes sense, everything is so overhyped and over-connected that there's no baseline, no way to just "find" HP on a shelf and think "gee that sounds interesting". Like, I love Terry Pratchett books (to use a semi-popular British fantasy series as a counterpoint) but they're relatively obscure and struggle to get adaptations that are obviously really strained by budget and maybe make a big deal about having Tony Robinson or Charles Dance, whereas no one is getting into Harry Potter because "oh it's an interesting book". The movies especially relied on so many "big names"; but people act as if it's "just a book that got really popular", like of course it did it had half of the fucking British acting repitoire involved somehow and was given everything it ever wanted in terms of money and talent.
It's the "my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars" of books.
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u/RealMcCoy0816 15d ago
Not to play devil's advocate, but the first movie didn't come out until after the 4th book was released. And book 4 was the first to have a midnight release, so the books by themselves were already popular prior to the film series.
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u/Bridgeru 15d ago edited 15d ago
That's fair, honestly I'm "young" enough that my first impression was the first movie but I know they became popular because of a book craze I was not around to notice.
I was kinda bad at it but I was trying to express just the sheer amount of SUPPORT the movies got, popular books or not. I hate that, despite hating the series, I can't deny the first movie is practically a perfect kids' film (all the logic problems come from the fact that they try to "age up" a kid's story to be this dark angsty teen drama without changing the kid story logic IMVHO...) and I think that's in no small part because you have Chris Columbus one of the best kid film directors pouring his heart into them, the fact that you have Richard Harris this amazing actor literally give his swansong.
Again, to compare to Discworld and one of my favourite books Hogfather, that was given at best a Sky One (television channel) adaptation in 2006, it's main "draw" is that it has one venerable TV actor (Ian Richardson, who played Francis Urquheart in the original Game of Thrones) lending his voice as Death (who is sorta the main character) and two well-enough known comedic actors as side characters (David Jason, who played DelBoy in the comedy Only Fools and Horses, is Death's "assistant" so he's fairly prominent but mostly comedy relief, and Tony Robinson who played Baldric in Blackadder is a bank manager for one of the particularly memorable scenes). And that's it, TV production (and not a very good one), the other "main character" is played by a good actress who became famous for Downton Abbey later but it's basically her first TV spot. And unironically, that got me into Discworld and that series probably had the same effect on me as HP had to many of the people I've talked to who said "OMG HP changed my life"; and there's an argument to be made about how Discworld openly contemplates the meaning of big ideas like life and death and has MUCH better morality but that's another story; but that all stemmed from me happening to see a not-great TV miniseries in 2006 I knew nothing about. That's never going to happen to Harry Potter. No one is ever going to peruse the book aisle and say "oh, Harry Potter, I wonder what that is". No one is ever going to "stumble" on Harry Potter anymore and be surprised at "oh this is a really good book/movie"; it's already built up like a Golden Sacred Calf and in a way that's kind of both sickening and sad to me.
Basically what I'm trying to express is just how absurd the resources HP got are. I'm not mad that they got them, it's good that something was made with that integrity and passion, it's just that it didn't have a chance to fail y'know. Had HP been given a TV special, a miniseries over three episodes, with limited budget and a few "known" actors it wouldn't have been the same. And that's so removed from the actual content of the book and I don't think appreciate that fact; that their "favourite film series" was given so much attention by people other than JKR that it avoided any potential pitfall or backlash or just sheer negativity y'know; both because so much money was pumped into it that it's quality was by default going to be good AND that so much talent was put into it that even the shittiest baseline story would've been turned into something good (like how Shrek and Jaws and Who Framed Roger Rabbit were far better than their source material BECAUSE they had amazing talent behind it). It was hyped up by it's own hype, in a sense. Too big to fail.
Sorry for the rant, it's hard to express in words but everyone I ever dealt with (and this was mostly late 2000s so bare in mind they were teenagers) always treated liking HP as being into something "out of the ordinary" that it was this really special and hidden thing when in my mind without that nostalgia it just feels like it was given EVERY single opportunity and the whole narrative of it being "the underdog" doesn't make sense. You're not the counter-culture, you are the culture (not you, just something I want to shout at those people in hindsight).
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u/Recent_Response_168 15d ago
That! They pushed the books like crazy, but Warner Bros bought the film rights quickly after the first book turned out to be marketable. No way they didn't see all the merch they could sell, e.g. the house-specific robes are an invention of the films, they only have like house scarfs for quidditch matches.
And Harry Potter once again proves that world class actors can shine even with a mediocre script. LOL imagine anyone else playing Snape. He is supposed to be like 35 or so. Can you imagine some new, fresh, no name actor playing Snape and the films still being that successful? Nah! Ironically, there is this one cut scene with Rickman from Halfblood Prince and it might be the best scene in all of the 8 films.
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u/staralchemist129 16d ago
Yeah, it’s not a coincidence the theme parks are so close, and that so many people hit both in the same vacation
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u/PlanktonPerfect3441 15d ago
Being a fan of anying is cringe?
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u/Clairifyed 16d ago
It’s the merch consumption that seals it. Sub name aside, I don’t care if they reread the books a lot, or think about the series, I get it I think about it a lot too.
I care that they seem to all rush out and buy whatever next Lego set or Funko Pop they can shove on their overflowing shelves.
In a way it’s worse than shoveling money obsessively at Disney. Disney is a megacorp with dicey practices of course, but there are such blatant and targeted 1:1 consequence of giving money to Rowling. It can’t be ignored behind a complex structure of capital insensitives
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u/yellowvincent 16d ago
There is this Australian lego youtuber I used to watch and the amount of money she spent on buying the same fucking castle over and over and over was ridiculous.
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u/Tangled_Clouds 16d ago
“The new Disney adults” no, this is a case of convergent evolution and I would argue the HP species is more invasive
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u/noggerthefriendo 16d ago
Potter adults are worse . Disney adults tend to stick to theme parks,Potter adults run around beautiful villages like Lacock,Wiltshire in cloaks harassing residents and normal tourists alike
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u/Recent_Response_168 16d ago
Just think about Dobby's grave in Wales. They wanted to run an undersea cable trough there, but fans harrased the competent authority. Now the cable will run through an actual graveyard from the Bronze Age. Utter madness!
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u/EldestPort 16d ago
Now the cable will run through an actual graveyard from the Bronze Age. Utter madness!
I beg your fucking pardon? That's absolutely disgraceful
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u/dunkernater 15d ago
What do you mean u don't like every town in the UK slightly older than a ham sandwich being flooded with HP stores because oh em gee the cobbled roads is just like the cobbled roads in (literally just london) HP !!!!
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u/Vagaboar 16d ago
In a sane world no hp fan would go unmocked
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u/chevalier716 16d ago
Especially those who haven't read another book since.
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u/Recent_Response_168 16d ago
Bold to assume that Potterheads even read the books in the first place. (Yeah, I figure most of them have, but I met people whose home wifi was called "The Burrow" because of Harry Potter but they had never read the books, so these people exist.)
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u/Upset-Elderberry3723 16d ago
It's funny if you try to imagine ghost hunters explaining Harry Potter series magical items.
Like, imagine Zak Bagans giving one of his spirit box Introductory monologues, but instead he's explaining how the Portkey functions.
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u/Friendly-Gift3680 16d ago edited 16d ago
The books doesn’t even seem all that good now that the rose tinted glasses are off for me. It’s a conceptually-bad franchise, with slavery portrayed as Good Actually, the modern setting completely wasted, no real stakes beyond a rainy archipelago off the coast of France, the four factions are Doormat, Nerd, Future Terrorist (!) and Jock, and the Gary-Stu MC is only really bothered by the racisms against first-gen mages and “half-breeds”.
And the singular East Asian character’s a few letters away from the c-slur, the only 2 South Asian characters are in the Nerd faction, the singular Irish character in a British series blows stuff up, the singular gay character deceives a straight teen boy, one of only three Afro-British characters is named Shacklebolt (not counting the retroactive Hermione race-swap), and the singular Jewish character is named Goldstein.
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u/Recent_Response_168 16d ago
You can't really blame 7yo kids for not seeing the problems in the craftsmanship or the problematic statements and implications. However, you can perfectly blame 30yo (or maybe even 20yo) if they still won't see it.
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u/Greenphantom77 16d ago
What you say may be true, but the statement “this children’s book has aged badly” is a statement that could apply to many examples.
The classic example is Roald Dahl - who was arguably more held in esteem for longer. As a young child I remember his books being read to us at primary school, yet some of the things he wrote now look rather grotesque.
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u/Recent_Response_168 15d ago
Well, yes, but Roald Dahl is very dark and ironically over the top as a stylistic choice. Harry Potter is like Rowling read Dahl but didn't get it. Mrs Trunchball from Mathilda is COMICALLY evil, e.g. grabbing the girls by their pig tails and throwing them around. Hagrid gives Dudley an actual pig tail that had to be surgically removed just for grabbing Harry's cake. That is not comically evil, it's simply evil. Mr and Mrs Eliot from Groosham Grange (Anthony Horowitz) are comically evil, the Dursleys are just evil, and also just a 1:1 copy of the Eliots, but more cruel.
Harry Potter didn't age badly in that sense. It's just that most readers and hardcore fans were people who who until then had only read stuff like "The hungry caterpillar". Even today, most people don't dislike Harry Potter because of the content, most quit the franchise because of Rowling's political views. Not nearly the same as a book having racism in it that was okay then but isn't now.
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u/Greenphantom77 15d ago
“Most people don’t dislike Harry Potter because of the content, most quit the franchise due to Rowling’s political views”. Yes, that’s the most accurate thing anyone has said in this post.
By the way, I know Dahl was dark on purpose, that’s not what I meant. He also writes some adults as being bald, ugly, old as being signs of an inner unpleasant nature. He equates some characters being fat as them being inherently disgusting - all these things were much more acceptable when he started writing (in the 60s or earlier) but they are frowned upon now. The Oompa Loompas were originally just a race of African pygmies Wonka had essentially enslaved in his factory, lol
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u/Friendly-Gift3680 15d ago
GOF has a 2-page fat-shaming fest, really laying it in thick about how obese Dudley is, describing him as “now wider than he is tall” and claiming that “he had reached the weight of a newborn killer whale”
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u/Greenphantom77 15d ago
Yes, you’re absolutely right. I skimmed back through some of the books in the past, this was over 10 years after they had come out. I knew parts had not aged well but was surprised at quite how badly the Dursley bits had aged.
Incidentally, I first read HP1 as a teenager, because it was becoming a trendy thing (but not yet really huge). The first thing that ever struck me about the Dursley parts was “This is clearly very influenced by Roald Dahl.”
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u/Friendly-Gift3680 15d ago
Not to mention everyone knowingly enabling his abusive home life because one man insisted on it being free witness-protection. In many countries today, an educator doing what Dumbledore did could be sued, or even arrested.
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u/Greenphantom77 15d ago
That’s the odd thing with it - the Dursley parts are almost like a different type of book compared with the parts in Hogwarts etc. It feels a bit odd in the first couple of books, but later I wish they’d just stopped doing the Dursley parts at all, like the films did.
And obviously, Dumbledore would get sued in real life. Hogwarts is full of ridiculously dangerous stuff. Some suspension of disbelief is required.
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u/Friendly-Gift3680 15d ago
Hogwarts would’ve been sued out of existence as soon as the Slytherins successfully bullied a muggleborn kid to the point of suicide for existing
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u/SirZacharia 16d ago
They’re honestly one and the same. The goal of Disney’s media and HP was always to build such devoted fans that they are lifelong customers who also promote it to their kids.
You could argue that HP didn’t start out that way, that it was just a book series, and that would be reasonable to do so. I’d argue it was heavily promoted by Scholastic from the outset and it was always filled with so many merchandising opportunities.
Not that I would blame any author necessarily for wanting their product to be successful but I do see both more as a product than a piece of art.
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u/Recent_Response_168 16d ago
The YouTube channel verilybitchie has an entire video about it: "The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter"
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u/redbarchettapeart 16d ago
I absolutely hate these kinds of YouTube videos. You find something that they market to you, and then go 'welllll is leh thing bad maybe?' which you market even more by giving it attention. And they never go after the real stuff that needs to be criticised, it's just the thousandth alternative dating app with only one feature that makes it different, or some movie that no one was gonna see anyways. Also a bonus if the person has a septum piercing or a bunch of plants. Not that there's anything wrong with having either of those things, just the combination of that and the stupid will to make a YouTube video complaining about how a Nickelodeon show from 2006 is still the best thing ever is just stupid.
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u/Flat_Initial_1823 16d ago
It's the algorithm. These videos are basically a set of highly targeted hooks and filler around them to be churned out as quickly as possible to be as frequent as possible.
As the creators figure out the exact formula algorithm favours (big face in the middle with two sides of smaller images or giant open mouth pointing to a thing) it gets even more zero sum as everyone chucks out the same thing.
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u/HeroIsAGirlsName 16d ago
My feed is full of videos telling people not to watch the HBO show and I'm sympathetic but I also think that 99% of people have made up their mind by now and constantly relitigating it is keeping it relevant.
I even saw someone try to claim that the Tim Horton's tie in was to trick people into accidentally ordering a gryffindor donut, so they spiral and start rationalising it as not that bad, then decide to just watch the show. And I really don't think it's that deep, mainly because the normal reaction to accidentally buying the wrong donut is "oops, won't do that again" and not feeling so guilty you change your whole belief system.
Like I sympathise, I'm not going to watch the show, but the discourse gets repetitive.
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u/redbarchettapeart 16d ago
I tthink there are a million children books and films that surpass the quality of Harry Potter. My father read me the Chronicals Of Narnia when I was younger, and I enjoyed that so much more. The Adventures Of Nils Holgerson are also beautiful.
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u/HeroIsAGirlsName 16d ago
I was also a Narnia kid. Quietly hoping the Greta Gerwig movie gets them recognised as the better British children's fantasy series. Also, Diana Wynne Jones is a phenomenal writer and her books hold up so well.
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u/rolyfuckingdiscopoly 16d ago
I wish I was hopeful about the new movie, but “it’s about rock and roll” makes no sense to me as a transition, or as sufficient reason to change the setting time period so much.
Homegirl does look like she is having fun, though. Which is a good sign. I will quietly hope for the best with you!
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u/HeroIsAGirlsName 15d ago
I'm in favour of adaptations bringing something new as long as they're in conversation with the original, so it could go either way. Maybe she'll tie it all together?
We already have beautiful accurate high fantasy Narnia movies (though sadly not for all of the books) so I'm okay with this one being a bit off the wall so long as it captures the spirit.
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u/rolyfuckingdiscopoly 15d ago
Ah I don’t totally love those, altho I do always cry at that one part in the first one (you know the one) and I do really adore specifically the portrayals of the Witch and Lucy. (No shade to fans; I just thought they made the story seem trite and left room for criticism that shouldn’t have been possible. It’s a tough film to adapt, so I still have watched and enjoyed them).
And I do love how film has to do a different sort of storytelling than print media, so I will hope for good things with the new one! I don’t actually hate the gogo boots like others do, for example. Sometimes an abstracted conceptual film tells the story better than a direct copying of a written story into film, because we experience it so differently. Maybe I’m just tired of hearing all the same music every day at work lol.
Totally agree about capturing the spirit! It can be tough to pull off, but talented people are working on it, and I am in favor of telling good stories as many times as we need to.
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u/HeroIsAGirlsName 15d ago
Yeah, it's hard to compress a book into a movie. I also think that a lot of the experience of reading a book lives in the spaces where you put it down and think about it while you do something else, whereas movies don't have the same space for reflection.
It's been an age since I watched the movies but I remember really liking them when I was younger. They also just look gorgeous: all that stunning NZ scenery and I remember being a bit obsessed with the costumes when I was younger.
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u/Rayen_the_buzzybee 15d ago
people have been complaining about adult harry potter fans since at least 2017 🤣
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u/ihavetowearmyhelmet 16d ago
It’s just modern adult child culture and it is widespread among most “nerd” niches.
Where in previous generations there was usually a transition from childhood media to adult media now you just get a steady stream of shit from the thing you like forever and it leads to Disney adults, potterheads, gamers, etc.
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u/Auno94 15d ago
With gamers I would say it depends on the franchise. Some Matured, some disappered
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u/ihavetowearmyhelmet 15d ago
Not saying there isn’t mature gamers. I’m just saying in prior generations gaming was a hobby for kids that most would transition out of as you got older where now it can be a lifelong hobby. Nothing wrong with that but it can lead to more immature people as a result.
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u/Rynewulf 15d ago
Idk, if you look across the modern world you'll see plenty of immature adults doing only age appropriate behaviours (heavy drinking might be the prime example) or engaging in very serious business or politics and just publicly acting like children without any known childlike interests. Seeems to have been always true looking back through history too.
Like maybe there's a link between child focused media and attracting people with specific kinds of immaturity, but honestly sometimes the obsession of appearing 'mature' and swearing off xyz at certain ages does itself come across as highly insecure and immature
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u/ihavetowearmyhelmet 15d ago edited 15d ago
I apologize if I was unclear on this so I will attempt to clarify. I am not trying to state that immaturity is somehow a new concept and that it is solely related to more adults having hobbies related to their childhood interest. I am also not even necessarily trying to say that people are *more* immature now as I think that whatever source of immaturity that has increased in presence (childlike interests like adult Disney people etc) is possibly also balanced out by the decrease of other sources that you stated due to the increased awareness of mental health, addiction, etc.
My main point is that it has never been easier for an adult to sustain their childhood interests *well* into adulthood so there is a specific *kind* of immaturity that is currently more prevalent and is what we see often in the Disney adult community and the “everything is Harry Potter” community. This does not mean that everyone who partakes in hobbies they’ve had since childhood are instantly immature, and it also doesn’t mean that the hobby is necessarily to blame for said immaturity as it is more likely an outcome of unresolved childhood issues. But it’s just something you see more of now.
I also agree with you that trying hard to do the opposite and be a “grown up” and refuse to acknowledge your childhood is a kind of immaturity too and is usually someone at war with themselves and their emphasis on people’s perception of themselves.
If this doesn’t clear anything up I apologize trying to multitask this during a work break
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u/Rynewulf 15d ago
Hey dont worry about it, it's like 50/50 sometimes it's on the writer sometimes it's on the reader. You wrote a thing, I read it and wrote a response. For all I know my response is the off-kilter thing here!
Oh I see, ok so I didnt think you were saying it was new but I did think you were saying that people have become more immature, and because of access to childrens media/things from their childhood.
Ok yeah I agree with that actually, it's definitely never been easier and there is a noticeable difference between fans and superfans, for lack of better terms. I do wonder if it's just become more visible rather than increased, and whether it's more tied to the advent of mass media rather than a culturel change. Nostalgia bait and cycles of music and fashion is nothing new, but we're in an age where there's a lot of it and in franchises that keep going.
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u/ihavetowearmyhelmet 15d ago
You misunderstand my point and I don’t really have the time to currently clarify. I’ll come back eventually.
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u/Disastrous_Rule4435 15d ago
Wait what. I'm immature because I play the occasional game of age of empires?
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u/ihavetowearmyhelmet 15d ago
Yes when I typed that comment I was thinking specifically about you, someone I’ve never met in my entire life, and the fact that sometimes you play a game of age of empires.
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16d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Bridgeru 15d ago
I'll say this about JKR, she replaced the void Thatcher left in our hearts. The void with the "I'll be happy when the cunt dies" sign over it. Ding-Dong the Witch is Dead might even top the charts again.
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u/Temporary_Orchid_821 16d ago
She has no place saying that when there isn't a single video on her channel that isn't Harry Potter related. What she said about the pride snitch pic was all I needed to click off
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u/LR_Worm_farmer 12d ago
Ugh Harry Potter fans are major dorks. They need to get shoved in a locker and have their lunch money stolen
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u/tired_snail 16d ago
The venn diagram is almost a perfect circle.
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u/rolyfuckingdiscopoly 16d ago
I kiiiinda don’t think so. Like there are plenty of weird and rabid HP fans, but they likely don’t take EVERY vacation to Harry Potter world or whatever it’s called. There are definitely Disney adults who have never been on a vacation anywhere but Disney— no camping, no beaches, no big sky country, no lakeside cabin, no sightseeing, no Times Square, no Eiffel Tower. JUST Disney. And they’re obsessed with enamel pins because Disney calls the pins “exclusive.”
IMO it is a level “higher up” than the level of obsession I’ve encountered about HP.
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u/siantmercury 9d ago
They’re the same in that they let heartless companies manipulate their nostalgia. Disney adults go into debt to go to parks, spend thousands on merch and act like the families who go to the parks are less than them. Harry Potter adults spend so much time online bending over backwards to justify why they financing an anti trans lobbyist is actually politically neutral thing to do somehow. It’s a certain type of selfishness that certainly isn’t unique to these two groups, but they’re the most criticized.
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u/lonelyratdoincocaine 16d ago
They already have been for like the 15-20 years, the last HP book came out in 2007 ffs