Jun 15, 2004 - my child, I was there because of the pleasure and connection the JK Rowling's stories had stirred within me, the adult. JK Rowling's books and ...
6/23/2017
Wendy Keys - Perspective - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Wendy Keys Tuesday 15 June 2004 5:55PM
It's a Wizard World!
Supporting Information When Harry Potter and The Sorcerers Stone was released three years ago I was one of those adults queuing up with child in tow to watch the film. And I wasn't there just to chaperone my child, I was there because of the pleasure and connection the JK Rowling's stories had stirred within me, the adult. JK Rowling's books and subsequent films have struck a chord with an audience too old to attend Hogwarts but old enough to yearn for those traditional fantasy tales, where evil, though terrifyingly evident, was always conquerable; where it was possible to clearly distinguish good from bad, and where the world had mystery and magic to explain away the unexplainable. One need only recall Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass; C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, J. R. Tolkien's Lord of The Rings and more recently Susan Cooper's The Dark Rising. Many adults are drawn to films aimed at young people because these stories often contain themes that appeal no matter where you stand on the biological timeline. Themes of love, death, trust, loyalty, fear and difference are the narrative threads we circulate amongst ourselves via our media. Print, film and electronic stories aimed at the child audience are overlayed with adult commentary that address the supposed wisdom associated with adult life experience and provide a safe context in which to deal with 21st Century shifting moral and ethical boundaries. Where are ethical and moral lines drawn now? Is violence only bad when conducted by an enemy and OK if the "right" people for the "right" reasons are the torturers? Does our culture truly believe that a child can only be happy and healthy if he or she is living in a Christian, middle class, heterosexual nuclear family no matter how they are loved and cared for? How does one deal with life when you are deemed different? Harry Potter is different, and his coming to terms with his difference and understanding why certain adult groups fear or treasure him is what makes the story so compelling to adults and children. Such trans-generational address in films like Harry Potter, Finding Nemo, Cat in The Hat, and Shrek have a place. However, as the producers and distributors gleefully watch the box office takings rise, I ask the industry to please include in their media menu films that are made specifically for the distinctive tastes and interests of children, as well as films which offer challenges particular to the condition of reaching adulthood. We tread horrible homogenous ground if we continue to produce texts which adultify children and ask adults to become childish just so we can all happily consume the same product. I want content that challenges me as an adult and I also want my children to have separate stories inclusive of
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6/23/2017
Wendy Keys - Perspective - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
their needs as young people today. Trans-generational address can flatten and limit content and as a consequence fail to challenge anyone by aiming to please everyone. What is it about JK Rowling's books and consequent films that have resulted in what is now commonly referred to as the Harry Potter Phenomenon? Is it because your ten-year-old son can now be seen sitting quietly devouring a printed text and you cannot contain your excitement at his practicing what not long ago would have been assumed dangerous, antisocial, sedentary behaviour - but which today in the 21st century is considered a way of rescuing our illiterate male children? Or, are you a parent who takes up with the fundamentalist Christian call to ban the stories that allegedly promote the occult and pagan practice, frightened that your child will be seduced into ways other than those of yours and your community? The media act as an important communication tool within our culture. They circulate certain beliefs and value systems and ask us to either aspire to them or to feel good about already subscribing to those particular beliefs and values. In 2004 we continue to struggle with difference and fear, and our media experiences offer us - adults and children - a means to address repressed cultural, social and political taboos or, if preferred, to escape them utterly in a world of fantasy. Millions of Australians in the next few weeks, myself and son included, will flock to the cinema to see the third instalment of Harry Potter, and the media will again exclaim over such a phenomenon. I'll conclude by noting that despite the hype, not everyone loves Harry, and the term phenomenon is, I find, an overused and most annoying media tool. However, after watching my son's maternal grandmother don a witch's hat and straddle Hagrid's motorbike at our local bookshop's launching of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last year, I must admit, it has indeed certainly had its moments.
Guests Wendy Keys School of Arts, Media and Culture Griffith University QLD
Further Information Credits ProducerSue Clark
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