A glimpse into galen's past...
- A very niche genre of music, wizard rock describes tunes written about Harry Potter from the perspective of various characters in the stories, most of which are written by bands who do so exclusively. To date, there are over 750 wizard rock bands, active or archived, and like the Harry Potter books and movies, in 2016 the music is thriving.
Sorry G you done stepped in it because I just recently made it through the whole of the Harry Potter universe and I found it unsettling. So rather than do a big long pompous bl00's review of why Harry Potter disturbs me, I'ma just kick it off here. This - this quote is exactly what I'm talking about. Harry Potter is the most authoritarian series I've ever read. The Ministry of Magic is utterly unquestioned even when they've been clearly and obviously co-opted by someone so evil that you literally can't say his fucking name out loud. One must always obey Hogwart's even when one of your students is literally a genocidal assassin, and the fact that the headmaster is quite clearly operating at the behest of the Antichrist in no way diminishes her authority. And in case you thought this was a parental thing, no, Fantastic Creatures continues the bent whereby American wizards can't fraternize with normies under penalty of fucking death and if one of those normies should find out about wizards you wipe his memory no questions asked. And while the limey fuck wizards can think this is maybe a little backwards, they're totally cool with it. Twilight? It's dreck, sure, but it's dreck in which two unlikely lovers triumph over adversity in order to find happiness. Hunger Games? Hunger Games is about a plucky girl who literally overthrows the world order. Harry Potter passive-protagonizes his way through five fucking books in which his every civilization-dooming discomfort is caused by the inflexibilities of a corrupt system to become... a mid-level clerk in that corrupt system. The message it sends is FUCKING GHASTLY. There's some weird pre-Brexit politics in the Harry Potter universe. because I'd only done the movies up until now, I'd never really noticed how Hermione is an SJW who wants to free the Elves who are clearly the British service class who clearly don't want to be freed because really, the English caste system is better for everyone. The whole "wizarding family" through-line is about the aristocracy and the house of lords and how even when they fuck up they're allowed to continue in their orbits because they're fucking aristocrats. Dumbledore is the biggest fucking rebel in the entire series and his rebellion is self-serving: he doesn't lift a goddamn finger against Grindelwald because he swore a magical oath but he doesn't ever say "hey guys I swore a magical oath so sorry here let me help you any other way I can" he fucking undercuts the Ministry of Magic because they're incompetent because I guess everyone always does whatever they say without actually helping them along. And when Hagrid gets hung out to dry over something Voldemort did? Yeah, Dumbledore shines it the fuck on for 30 years until Harry Potter finds out the truth and then it's "yay harry!" instead of "Dumbledore you fucking monster." Why the fuck does the Ministry of Magic keep an army of Dementors at the ready? Probably for the same reason MACUSA has an execution chamber big enough to drown a Teamsters' local: they're an unquestionable authoritarian death squad whose inviolability is central to the universe. And should trouble break out that threatens the health and safety of magic and non-magic denizens alike, one's duty is to work within the arbitrary rules of those death squads to restore them to power, not to make the world a better place. Take a look at that logo. To the people who rawk it, it says "I am a fan of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Zelda and Dr. Who." What it's really saying, though, is "I proudly announce my fealty to the marketing of Time-Warner, Disney, and Universal." Really, "fandom" means "I subvert my creative energies to the products of giant corporations." There's a Star Trek band. They're named S.P.O.C.K. They've been around for maybe 20 years. They play conventions. SPOCK doesn't have 699 competitors, though. And the Star Trek universe is pretty egalitarian - Prime Directive, first mixed-race kiss on air, all species are equal, headed by a bureaucracy that is often subject to question, "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one". 700 star trek bands would be fucking terrifying because that means there are at least 700 people whose principle involvement in creativity is supplementing the ideas of someone else. And supplementing the ideas of someone else is pretty much how the Harry Potter world works: the minute you give it any reasonable analysis it falls apart like a quiddich match with actual athletes in it. I mean, what would Nancy Drew do if Draco Malfoi was in her classes? The fuckin' Malfois would be in prison within days. How would Huckleberry Finn react to hearing about Dumbledore's misfortune? By any reasonable metric, the cast of 90210 had a healthier regard to injustice and criminality than the whole of the Wizarding World. At least Donna has to contemplate what date rape is. Bill and George Weasley legit sold date rape drugs in book 2. And that worries me. That worries me a lot. There's an entire generation of kids who grew up believing that the one thing you never do, no matter how dire the consequences, is question authority. There's a "fandom" out there whose inspiration is a bunch of kids who try (and fail) to lead normal lives under totalitarian rule. There's a broad swath of people who, when confronted with an Oswald Moseley, will continue to invite him and his followers to their thanksgiving dinners. But guaranteed - each and every one of those people has filled out an online petition in the past six months. Hermione spends like three books trying to improve the lot of a bunch of elves that don't want their lot improved... but takes genocidal fascists who murdered and tortured the parents of her best friends as a fundamental basis of her existence. That's fucking unhealthy, and nobody talks about it.
“I was struck by aspects of the books that were really anti-authoritarian, and Harry as a character fighting against that,” DeGeorge told Mashable. “And I thought, ‘Well, maybe Harry would be a good punk rocker.’”
“What they didn’t know was that Harry Potter is the next Harry Potter,” Ross says about media's attempts to dub franchises such as Twilight or The Hunger Games as the next big thing over the years. “This year’s abundant releases and announcements notwithstanding ... this fandom was already on a trajectory to be [continually] growing and thriving.”
That was in 2004 -- to date, there are over 750 wizard rock bands, active or archived, and like the Harry Potter books and movies, in 2016 the music is thriving.
I mean, the "crew" constantly breaks school rules, fights injustice agains the school's evil teachers and undercuts the ministry. They constantly point out how corrupt and mismanaged it is, and do what they need to do despite it being "illegal" or whatever. How the adults let it happen (or why Harry ends up getting a government job in the end) is the confusing part. I guess as a kid reading it, it is more relatable. Because the world feels like a terrible place with shitty rules and plenty of "wrong" things going on, run by adults that don't really do anything about it.
They violate curfew. Never once do they make any sort of stand against rules that are unjust. Hagrid walks merrily into Azkaban. The closest they get to rebellion is hiding Sirius Black after he escapes - nobody ever lifts a finger to argue that maybe he's been wrongly accused. The fuckin' minister shows up for Christmas. When he legit subverts the Weasley's son, they're all well shit I guess we lost a son. And do exactly fuckall about it. "What they need to do" is invariably whatever Dumbledore tells them to. Here's a story about a bunch of Norwegian schoolchildren who steal $9m worth of gold from the Nazis. It's not only old, it happens to be true. After five books (and the downfall of the liberal order), Harry and his friends get off their asses to infiltrate the MInistry of Magic but only after they spend half a book wandering aimlessly bemoaning their plight. This is my beef - as a kid, it is more relatable if you presume that kids should never question authority. You are exactly illustrating my problem - to you, the world is a terrible place and adults don't fix it. But the idea that as a kid, you have some agency over the terrible aspects of your life? That's completely alien to you.I mean, the "crew" constantly breaks school rules,
fights injustice agains the school's evil teachers
undercuts the ministry.
They constantly point out how corrupt and mismanaged it is
do what they need to do despite it being "illegal" or whatever.
I guess as a kid reading it, it is more relatable.
Because the world feels like a terrible place with shitty rules and plenty of "wrong" things going on, run by adults that don't really do anything about it.
Here's my thing about Harry Potter: It's a book series about a race (or group, or caste, or aristocracy) of privileged people (wizards) who have power (magic) over a race/group/caste/proletariat of the underprivileged (muggles). The villains want to enslave the underprivileged and prevent race-mixing, while the good guys are firmly against this--one of the protagonists is even mixed herself. So far so good. The point where you start to run into problems is when you start naturalizing this hierarchy. See Innuendo Studios on the origins of conservatism: conservatism (and eventually, fascism) is what happens when people begin to believe that some people are inherently better than others, that the natural world is full of hierarchies and so any attempt to produce a fully egalitarian society is stupid and counterproductive. We return to Harry Potter: the problem with even the good guy wizards saving muggles from Voldemort or whatever is that even in this scenario, the wizards are better than muggles. Even in this scenario, good wizards have to save the muggles from the bad wizards because obviously the poor disadvantaged muggles can't do it themselves. And why should the good wizards do this? Because racism is mean and those poor lil normies :/// It's aristocratic, colonialist, racist, Tory bullshit: a white savior complex in kid-friendly form. And these dumbasses call it punk?
I still don't get how even if it's all those things (in retrospect, maybe it made more sense when I was a kid), that J.K. Rowling is the exact opposite politically. And right wing commentators and middle-America hates that shit for reasons beyond religion. Is hierarchy natural? No, but that's because any definition of hierarchy might be inherently flawed. Notice you said egalitarian, not equal. There is neither pure equality or linear hierarchy. Just sheer chaos.
The same way you figure the fundamental lesson of history is that rebellion is pointless. You have your adaptation to what you see as the unchangeable universe, so does JK Rowling. In JK Rowling's mind, the aristocracy will always have power because in the UK, the aristocracy has always had power and it's not worth the fuss to complain about David Cameron and Boris Johnson being in the same pigfucker's union. JK Rowling thinks she's a liberal. You think you're a rebel. It's all the same. The thing is, I blame JK Rowling for your attitude.I still don't get how even if it's all those things (in retrospect, maybe it made more sense when I was a kid), that J.K. Rowling is the exact opposite politically.
More than that, it's a book series about a group of active people who want to use their power and a group of passive people who will allow that group of active people to do pretty much whatever the fuck they want so long as it doesn't disturb the status quo. The only real villain in Harry Potter - the only faction with zero sympathetic characters, the only group whose motives are never made anything other than execrable, are the press. And yeah - the British press are execrable but fuckin' hell woman I like how the stand you took was against the tabloids who were fucking with your life. The fundamental issue Rowling faced was the tension between the wizarding world and the muggles couldn't be maintained through anything other than fascism. If wizards are nice and muggles are nice and the only thing keeping them apart is the MInistry of Magic, the MInistry of Magic has to be dicks. And if the goal of your series is to preserve the hegemony of the Ministry of Magic, you get to be the nazis. And more than that, you only get to be the savior if you follow the rules to the letter.It's a book series about a race (or group, or caste, or aristocracy) of privileged people (wizards) who have power (magic) over a race/group/caste/proletariat of the underprivileged (muggles).
The point where you start to run into problems is when you start naturalizing this hierarchy.
It's aristocratic, colonialist, racist, Tory bullshit: a white savior complex in kid-friendly form.
Sure they have - they date back to an era where Gene Roddenberry was selling swag and memorabilia out of the trunk of his car. Thing is, not only are we talking about a fandom that has never risen above a roller coaster, we're talking about a universe in which the protagonists are generally overly-active.
I disagree. If this was Italian neo-realism that would just be how we are. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? Son, I didn't sell out. I bought in. Dude, that's it. That's what we do. Beyond a certain point, it just feels wrong to keep trying to stick it to the man. Or other people will give you the look of terror. We're all consumers on some level. Presuming Rowling herself had some weird motivations, she appears to be a flaming liberal. Could be unconscious, but what actually happened in the book aside there is an archetype about the middle-class white saviour complex. It's all fun and games until you're actually made uncomfortable by "the poor." Until you try to establish anarchy at your local art show and Jason rolls through with a case of beer and trashes the place. Really what it usually is are adults trying to get you to stop hurting yourself so you can live. And it always hurts to be told no. You mentioned the dictatorial power the Ministry of Magic has in the books but I can't imagine how the story could make any sense without it. Maybe if you want to go there and say the concept of wizards and muggles should be abolished entirely but if you start from that point you basically need the secret police. Because information itself can't be leaked. It's like Men in Black, nobody must know the aliens exist. What are you going to do if someone finds out? Extralegal, extra-constitutional kidnapping basically. So while I'm inclined to believe in Harry Potter itself being some kind of authoritarian nightmare the real sin the characters commit is they just don't care. Which is more accurate. Fucked shit happens around you all the time as a kid and it's a lot easier to stand by than do something and many, many times it's not like fighting back accomplishes anything. Harry Potter appeals to people you might describe as outcasts because it posits the existence of a secret world with hidden powers that nobody else (the normies) can see. And sometimes it gives them the leg up for having that power. That's social exclusion, that's creative arts, that's a more colourful dress sense, that's an alternative sexuality. It's not really an authoritarian head-trip, anymore than maybe some of those people would prefer to remake the reality in a different way. Ender's Game is the real fucky book. Harry Potter is a microcosm of what being a kid is about. They don't fight back any more than anyone does in real life.Harry Potter passive-protagonizes his way through five fucking books in which his every civilization-dooming discomfort is caused by the inflexibilities of a corrupt system to become... a mid-level clerk in that corrupt system. The message it sends is FUCKING GHASTLY.
"I proudly announce my fealty to the marketing of Time-Warner, Disney, and Universal." Really, "fandom" means "I subvert my creative energies to the products of giant corporations."
SPOCK doesn't have 699 competitors, though
698 if you count Warp 11. There are others. I'd never really noticed how Hermione is an SJW who wants to free the Elves who are clearly the British service class who clearly don't want to be freed because really, the English caste system is better for everyone
And that worries me. That worries me a lot. There's an entire generation of kids who grew up believing that the one thing you never do, no matter how dire the consequences, is question authority. There's a "fandom" out there whose inspiration is a bunch of kids who try (and fail) to lead normal lives under totalitarian rule. There's a broad swath of people who, when confronted with an Oswald Moseley, will continue to invite him and his followers to their thanksgiving dinners. But guaranteed - each and every one of those people has filled out an online petition in the past six months.
This is utterly, unredeemably, irrevocably incorrect and you should feel bad. The antagonists of Harry Potter are innovators. They're the ones changing the rules. They're the ones upsetting the status quo to benefit themselves. The message sent is that bad people innovate. And you have accepted it hook, line and sinker. You are substituting an absolute for a gradient: you are arguing that a kid drawing a "cool S" on his Trapper Keeper is no different than a kid buying a Deathly Hallows™ sticker for his car. Again, you are arguing that "two" is the same as "seven hundred." This is an argument beneath your rhetorical skill, and illustrates that you are debating from a position of weakness for reasons unrelated to the debate. ...at which point you fall back on your cultural mores in order to get you over the hump. My basic argument is that the cultural mores that JK Rowling embraces are the ones that produced Downton Abbey, not the ones that produced The Sex Pistols and pretending Harry Potter is some how "punk rock" is like pretending Coachella is Woodstock. The Harry Potter novels are authoritarian because JK Rowling believes in an authoritarian universe and fundamentally preaches the glories of authoritarianism to little girls and boys. Even though she thinks she's a liberal. No. No it is not. There has been a definite shift that way due to Jon Walsh, America's Most Wanted, the ABC Sunday Night Movie and the general "small child in peril" school of journalism that has dominated since the '80s but in no way has it ever been "adults trying to get you to stop hurting yourself so you can live." It has ever and always been "adults trying to get you to take care of yourself so they can get back to drinking and sleeping in on weekends." We call that a "fundamental flaw." When we say something is "fundamentally flawed" we mean that there is no way to fix it without making it "fundamentally" different. The argument is not "if only JK Rowling had done X different Harry Potter would be a wonderful series" the argument is "Harry Potter, as a series, is fundamentally flawed." This is exactly the consequence of books like Harry Potter - your instinct is to fucking take it. This ignores the fact that adults in general care about adults, that generally whatever hardships kids are suffering are opaque to adults, and that even if you were to ask for things to be better, suck it up, buttercup. What you're missing is that most kids who are reading Harry Potter novels aren't dealing with hardships at a level of Harry Potter. They're dealing with early curfews and restrictive dress codes. My high school class was given ID cards; we threw them into the ceiling of the lobby where they were embedded too high for anyone to pull them down and walked out. There were no ID cards for us for three years. The high school class below us was given ID cards; they took them meekly. The next year they closed the campus. The year after that they forbid students from driving. The year after that they put up metal detectors. You, King Rebel of all Rebels, have internalized the idea that it's better to suck it up than fight for your right. And I blame Harry Potter. LOL Harry Potter is two theme parks and $7b in box office revenue. We aren't talking about The Warriors here. It's really "an authoritarian head-trip" and part of the trick is that she's got you thinking you relate to it because it appeals to outcasts, not because it's completely fucking universal. You're right: Ender's Game is a deeply fucked up book from a deeply fucked up man. But that doesn't make Harry Potter NOT fucked. Your argument is bad and you should feel bad.If this was Italian neo-realism that would just be how we are. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? Son, I didn't sell out. I bought in. Dude, that's it. That's what we do. Beyond a certain point, it just feels wrong to keep trying to stick it to the man. Or other people will give you the look of terror.
We're all consumers on some level.
698 if you count Warp 11. There are others.
Presuming Rowling herself had some weird motivations, she appears to be a flaming liberal. Could be unconscious, but what actually happened in the book aside there is an archetype about the middle-class white saviour complex. It's all fun and games until you're actually made uncomfortable by "the poor." Until you try to establish anarchy at your local art show and Jason rolls through with a case of beer and trashes the place.
Really what it usually is are adults trying to get you to stop hurting yourself so you can live.
You mentioned the dictatorial power the Ministry of Magic has in the books but I can't imagine how the story could make any sense without it.
Fucked shit happens around you all the time as a kid and it's a lot easier to stand by than do something and many, many times it's not like fighting back accomplishes anything.
Harry Potter appeals to people you might describe as outcasts because it posits the existence of a secret world with hidden powers that nobody else (the normies) can see.
They don't fight back any more than anyone does in real life.
And I blame Harry Potter. Part 1 is correct and Part 2 is incorrect. Part 2 is wrong not because Harry Potter doesn't have authoritarian themes but because no kids are reading or watching those films and getting the takeaway that "authority is cool" and applying it to their personal lives. You're reading too much into it. You're doing literary criticism that 94% of the population isn't. You might be right but kidzz are not disempowered by Harry Potter any more than I was beating a hooker to deathed by GTA: Vice City. GTA is less popular but you see my point. Kidz are in the tank because like you mentioned, their issues are blacked out. Check it. That's the problem. Nobody, nobody has less freedom or power or anything in the society than kids. They can't do shit. You fight back and you won't graduate. And everyone around you is so scared shitless that if you raise your voice you probably won't inspire another to action, they'll just vilify you. I did it, it worked, they agreed, but fewer and fewer agree every year. I liked your story because it worked. Me, I tried to run for president of the student council at my school and I would have won until the teachers blocked me because they didn't like me. The next year they picked the council. The year after that they got rid of it entirely. The year after that they cancelled even sports because they were worried kids were going to show up drunk. I wish kids would fuck up the plan. That's what I did, that's what I want, that's what I encourage. But fuck if we don't ever live in a disempowering time and it's not because of JK Rowling, even if she sucks. It's because of adults, bitch. Uptight assholes at the school board. Part of being able to fight back is believing you can and even that's been taken away from kids. By school, by parents, by law, not by media. Her crimes are aesthetic.You, King Rebel of all Rebels, have internalized the idea that it's better to suck it up than fight for your right.
This ignores the fact that adults in general care about adults, that generally whatever hardships kids are suffering are opaque to adults, and that even if you were to ask for things to be better, suck it up, buttercup.
You have made no arguments to this effect. We're here arguing in a thread about the 700 bands who have decided to make Harry Potter music. Again, you are denying the gradient: GTA didn't cause kids to go on a murder spree therefore pop culture is utterly without influence on children. "“Momma! There’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!“ What's interesting to me is that you're arguing against introspection: "You're doing literary criticism that 94% of the population isn't. " One need not be conscious of the symbolism in order for it to have an effect; exactly the opposite in fact. Being consciously aware of something allows one to consider it and embrace it or disarm it as one chooses. being unaware of the symbolism simply gives you a pattern. And patterns matter. Take your student council example. What would have happened if your fellow students stuck up for you? What would have happened if they collectively walked out? What would have happened if they made themselves ungovernable? My sister's boyfriend didn't want to take his chemistry midterm so he called in bomb threats every day for three weeks. The administration decided we'd make those days up by staying until 5 every day. And at 3, we all got up and walked out. Now - had I gotten up and walked out all by myself, it would have been detention. But everyone? The administration made the prudent choice that the discipline was overshadowing the education and dropped it. In 7th grade there was a beloved teacher who was being let go. 50 students walked 8 miles to the administration (including across a gas pipeline over a canyon that's closed to foot traffic) to demand a reconsideration. They still let the teacher go... but one kid on that pipeline would have been arrested. 50 kids? It made the paper. More than that, it taught the administration not to fuck with us. You tried to run for president of the student council. Me? I declared myself the antichrist. Put handbills up all over the school. When the vice principal sent a minion to summon me to his office, I told the minion that if he had a problem with my freedom of expression he needed to come see me. In the end, the only rule he could get me on was failure to seek pre-approval of a "religious organization" so I had to take them all down. I taped one on my back and added a legal defense fund line and made $28. Because by that point, they'd been trying to stick it to us at least once a year for five years. And they knew that we weren't going to take it. We. The collective. As a group. You want to pin this on parents as if somehow parents decided to fuck up childhood. As if they wanted to encourage a culture of acquiescence. As if they wanted to make sure that kids were perpetually under the thumb. As if their kids' heroes should only display token resistance and always do whatever grownups tell them to do. Red Dawn came out when I was in 6th grade. The Bachman Books were published when I was in 5th. I graduated from a parking lot full of loaded gun racks; Columbine changed the world forever when I was a junior in college. Adults weren't really afraid of kids until then. But they are now. And a nice, cozy hero story in which the anointed, predestined aristocracy restores order through patience and obedience definitely aligns with the goals. The difference between my story and your story is Harry Potter. Not Harry Potter exclusively, but a culture that has identified Harry Potter as a "punk rock" rebel rather than a passive simp who lets his stepbrother beat him up on the reg despite being the most bitchin' wizard kid in the history of Hogwart's. Ask yourself: would Encyclopedia Fucking Brown put up with Dudley Dursley? The authoritarian paradigm is you do what your wicked stepsisters tell you to do until your fairy godmother swoops in to punish their cruelty as a deus ex machina and whisk you to the aristocracy. That's the kind of tale you tell when you want the peasants to be comfortable with their lot. The 20th century, however, was full of Tom Sawyers and Pippi Longstockings. Katniss Everdeen wouldn't put up with Delores Umbridge. Neither would Tris Prior. And I think that's a good thing.Part 1 is correct and Part 2 is incorrect.
Part 2 is wrong not because Harry Potter doesn't have authoritarian themes but because no kids are reading or watching those films and getting the takeaway that "authority is cool" and applying it to their personal lives. You're reading too much into it. You're doing literary criticism that 94% of the population isn't.
The problem is always the extent. At no point have I denied any gradient. My argument is "Harry potter can't possibly be that big of an influence on society, even if what you're saying is correct." I'm not arguing against introspection and you know this. It's the weighting of parameters. It's when you focus too narrowly on one thing and you miss the big picture. This is a generation that grew up absolutely glued to the internet and its totality of information for 2 decades now. Whose attention spans are too short to sit through fucking harry potter without checking their phone. Who go see this shit because they're bored and it's mainstream, stupid entertainment. It's like why superhero movies are popular. They don't watch TV or get social norms from movies because they spend such little time consuming those forms of entertainment anyway. Okay, so older millenials and GenX, aka a lot of those staff I was railing about. You know what. Now it all makes sense to me. You're right. My teachers growing up were those authoritarians. Maybe they got fucked by Harry Potter because I read the books when I was like 10. But they really got fucked by Columbine. And the politics of fear. And when the world gets crazier and crazier and suddenly the internet and smartphones pop out of nowhere and adolescents go crazy with it you reach for the simplest solution. Total control. Which is increasingly becoming the arm of the criminal justice system. My school had 8 girls get arrested for bullying. That was never proved in court. That's what the stakes were for my generation. Have beef with someone and the teacher will find out and you'll go to jail. But people have been doing that shit forever. It's lame mainstream tastes from people who aren't rebels but if it wasn't Harry it'd be some other family friendly kill the bad guys type moron. These are all 30 something neckbeards in these bands, not even kids or 20 something losers like myself. I had done all kinds of crazy shit leading up to this. I had gotten suspended for hacking, I had broken into the teacher's lounge, I was exchanging drugs (they didn't find out about that one though). I nearly got the cops called on me because they lent me the teacher's keys and I couldn't give it back right away bcuz the dude was on stage playing piano. I still had really good grades. They didn't march for me but some kids decided to pull one last prank at the end of the year as revenge. Because me being shot down was just one symptom of the overall climate of repression. Nobody cared the school was falling apart, or there was no toilet paper, or the teachers were being dicks. Rampant sexism. The VP had a meeting in the resource room with all the black kids. When you're 16, 17 you often can't mount a sophisticated defence. You usually just act out, like you mentioned. And "adults" aren't going to love you in the paper. They're going to villify you as a stupid teenager even if you're totally correct. I applaud Greta for being so fucking composed because I would have lost my shit. And please remember that climate protests are often school sanctioned. Walking out because your school is dehumanizing you in 17 different ways? Gonna need an HK demand sheet for that shit Those kids got expelled. The teachers locked the rioting students in the atrium. Forcible confinement, literally. One kid got arrested. And then the year ended, no newspaper ever found out or cared. A walkout for me would have been great but their attitude would have been "how do we regain control as fast as possible" and in your case that was laying off discipline. In my case? I had to fake a suicide attempt to avoid getting suspended a second time. I would have expelled for "inciting a riot" or some shit. "Misbehaviour". Like Little Pump. Because I was already the "bad guy." They would have literally called the police. There would be truancy officers. It would have been a nightmare. And you still need to get your diploma and go to college and get your nice job or whatever. I backed down and tried to be the Buddhist at the last minute but HOLY HELL DUDE I should have taken your advice and burned that shit to the fuckin' ground. What you mentioned that resonated was adults going crazy. But fuck if Harry is screwing up kids. If he screwed up the generation that taught me than he did it to the 30+ crowd. I manage a store because I'm a loser but when some sixteen year old girl tells me a story of her outrunning 6 uniformed police officers at a party with underage drinking I'm happy. I'm happy that there's still love in the world. I can't say it, because that's fucked, and that's irresponsible, and yada yada yada but I'm happy. And she's definitely seen those boogie fucks on the Suite Life on Deck. And Harry Potter. And iCarly. And all that horrible shit. Now I gotta re-read it because it's been a minute.Again, you are denying the gradient: GTA didn't cause kids to go on a murder spree therefore pop culture is utterly without influence on children.
but a culture that has identified Harry Potter as a "punk rock" rebel
Take your student council example. What would have happened if your fellow students stuck up for you? What would have happened if they collectively walked out? What would have happened if they made themselves ungovernable?
"Whelp, guess I gotta burn my sneakers now. Sucks. I really like 'em." - My 29-year-old roommate who does whatever Twitter tells him to It's been interesting watching you morph from the criminal to the victim in your head. Yeah. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Between Harry Potter the first book and Harry Potter the first movie, Columbine and September 11 happened. By Harry Potter the book I was designing cybernetic implants and mixing industrial bands to pay for college. By Harry Potter the movie I was a fuckin' architectural consultant. I was hatched. My little second cousin who does nothing but pot in Reno? He was three years old. If you were ten in '97 you graduated a year or two before the Great Recession. You are the millennial crushed in the maw of the new economy and by now you're just getting used to the fact that you'll never truly be able to afford a house. Your teenage years were the ones where bullying was that thing that got the cops involved. If you hot-dropped out of college into teaching high school you are the embodiment of overprotective authoritarianism and those neckbeards in the Harry Potter bands? They're the perpetual fandom that has convinced themselves that it's somehow okay for a 30-year-old man to be into Evangelion. Not everyone, of course. It's never everyone. But it's enough: why the fuck are people driving around with Deceptacon stickers on their cars? What the Actual Fuck? Back when you could still reasonably watch actual Deceptacons on TV in 6th grade, you'd get your fucking lights punched out for mentioning them in 7th. Now? Now we measure our tenuous cultural allegiances by whether or not we wear a "Property of Hogwarts" hoodie while we jog in our Lululemons. Here's what I'm saying: shit changed, yo, and Harry Potter is a part of that. Not the only part, not the most important part. But what you make your dreams out of influences how you live your life. But if you're ten when Katniss Everdeen comes on the scene? You're 21. You've learned that governments exist to be overthrown. You've been backed into a corner your whole life, discounted in everything you do and treated as a problem by a generation that doesn't know how to fucking live. One of the many, many poignant aspects of going to school with a bunch of surly Running Start kids in my mid '40s was hearing a 17-year-old mutter "goddamn millennials" under his breath while talking about his instructor. I did a spit take and he said "what? They're indecisive, they're always on their fucking phones and they have no idea how to get anything done because they're so wishy-washy!" He's gonna be fine - he's programming CNC punches for $80k a year after 2 years of school. His instructor? Begging for $29k with an MFA in teaching. You - you're conflating a couple things. Yes by all means you're a rebel and being a rebel is tough. But you're also a hooligan. Hooligans do not get the concessions that rebels do. After I declared myself the Antichrist I had a family court judge release one of my younger friends into my custody because he was in jail for beating his mom. I was definitely one of the surlier kids in school but I committed no petty crime that would give them an excuse to treat me as a hooligan. Hooligans lose. Always. Petty criminals never get the respect or leeway that prisoners of conscience do. Me disagreeing about the authority of the vice principal over my freedom of expression? That's a political discussion. You breaking into the teacher's lounge? Hooliganism. Try being a rebel for a while without being a hooligan. 
I can see why you're pissed off klein, but at the end of the day it's just a stupid fucking book about wizards. You can criticize it, but to blame it for any kind of broader social changes is crazy talk. And holy wack dude! I was ready to hop right on that generational gap wisdom which is why I bothered vomiting personal experience in the first place but I think it's just you. Once you mentioned that 17-y/o in your class hating on millenials. It's not Gen-Z being different because they experience the fucking Hunger Games. It's because you're in CNC class with the fucking pickup truck guys who hate the art kids and libtards. And they're gonna be automated in a few years anyway. I feel like you know this. I sense you're too narrowly focused. Which is why this is turning into what it is. I sense you see the Hogwarts sweater as "just another stupid thing" people are doing but you can drive yourself crazy over other people's bad taste. You're reading waay too much into it. I'm guilty of this too. My friends say "you overanalyze everything." Career direction -> hogwarts? Communist Party? Abstract art? I'm neither a rebel nor a hooligan. I want you to re-read that article you linked; it applies to you more than it applies to me. Cause I'm an apostrophe. I'm just a symbol to remind you that there's more to see. Here's what I'm saying: shit changed, yo, and Harry Potter is a part of that. Not the only part, not the most important part. But what you make your dreams out of influences how you live your life.
Yes by all means you're a rebel and being a rebel is tough. But you're also a hooligan. Hooligans do not get the concessions that rebels do.
Was listening to a conversation (podcast, so I won't bother you with the details) where they disscussed the idea that Gen Z-ers are the first generation to completely abandon the idea of an objective truth, a deconstruction that started after the boomers. That it's all about which ideas are useful, more than which ideas are true, and that Millennials are the last generation to still cling to the idea of some model of the world that'll make sense. I don't know if that's accurate but I found it an interesting thought to entertain nonetheless.One of the many, many poignant aspects of going to school with a bunch of surly Running Start kids in my mid '40s was hearing a 17-year-old mutter "goddamn millennials" under his breath while talking about his instructor. I did a spit take and he said "what? They're indecisive, they're always on their fucking phones and they have no idea how to get anything done because they're so wishy-washy!"
"Live my truth" is a phrase I heard a lot this summer, constantly on the lips of 20-somethings who had been caught in lies or who had found their beliefs of events to be unquestionably incorrect. Ann (to Bob): Carrie says you called her a gutterslut. Bob: I would never say something like that. Dave: I mean, I was there, Bob. you totally called Carrie a gutterslut. Bob: Look, it is what it is. Carrie can believe that but all I can do is live my truth. This works for Bob - he doesn't have to acknowledge being caught in a lie, and he doesn't have to acknowledge that he has spoken ill of others that he is pretending to like. It does not work for Carrie - she's been called a gutterslut and Bob won't own up to it. The problem is, it doesn't resolve the problems Ann and Dave have because when they're with Bob, they're subscribing to Bob's truth. When they're with Carrie, they rely on the ethos of Bob vs. the ethos of Carrie. What's interesting is that the dynamic plays out with people who are willing to subscribe to the same shared hallucination about truth. In a direct confrontation, Carrie and Bob have to battle out who said what when and where and hope they can convince Ann and Dave as to their version of events. What's noteworthy is that these exchanges took place under the watchful eye of dozens of cameras as everything being said was streamed worldwide to the Internet in real time. Objective truth was not a construct - it was a constellation of media files reviewable by all. Nonetheless, there was a collective assent to honor the fiction that there was no objective truth. "Live my truth" was interchangeable with "live my best truth". A couple times I heard the phrase "the actual truth" as if every now and then, everyone had to acknowledge the game they were playing and the fact that there are verifiable facts in the universe but the more self-centered among our victims were generally dismissive of this verification. I think it's a comfortable fiction. By subscribing to the same reality, we have affinity despite the fact that we don't really know how to communicate anymore. It runs into dire difficulty when interacting with someone outside of that collective fiction. "You're late." "If you look at it from the perspective of the traffic I had to deal with and the condition of my car, I'm about as close to on time as anyone could reasonably expect." "You're fired." It's another example where those whose worlds have been bent to suit them are utterly and completely shit outta luck when they interface with the world at large.
It's more the breakdown of previously held social norms. It's not invalidating the law of gravity, it's accepting that what colour it's acceptable to dye your hair is not based in scientific truth. "Objective truth" as it pertains to social philosophy has never really existed. And pre-Socratic skeptics thought it was impossible to know anything to begin with. The idea is hardly new. Rather there is an entire slew of right-wing commentators who are conflating "breakdown of objective truth" with "breakdown of my ideology."
Maybe by people who understand the bounds of science and evidence. I have personally seen it used in the spirit of "I reject your reality and substitute my own" without the self-aware irony.It's not invalidating the law of gravity, it's accepting that what colour it's acceptable to dye your hair is not based in scientific truth.
Well that always sucks. But in the current political situation, people are claiming transgender people are invalidating "objective truth" about reality. They're not talking about science, they're talking about the fact they grew up in a world where a boy was a boy and a girl was a girl and therefore objective truth is somehow breaking down. It's not. They mean "objective truth" in the same way the king being the divine representative of God on Earth was "objective truth." I say a trans woman is a woman and my father says climate change is fake. I'm a bit more objective I think.
It's interesting: from your perspective, the concern is people clinging to the phrase "objective truth" to mean "tradition" and that anything that threatens tradition is a fundamental threat to reality. From my perspective, the concern is people rejecting the existence of an "objective truth" as something that oppresses their wants and needs. I'll bet your father believes in the greenhouse effect. He probably even believes in greenhouse gasses. Show him a picture of Antarctica with a pink blob over it and he'll know immediately he's looking at a hole in the ozone layer. The pieces are there, it's the ideology that ties it all together that he rejects. It's hard. My earliest memories of educational television include Mr. Wizard warning us of the impending new ice age. Weekly Reader was all about how acid rain was going to destroy all structures by 1990 and we'd all need to wear SPF1000 sunscreen outside of our silvered biodomes because gamma rays would have sunburned all living matter to death but it would only matter a little because by the year 2100 Venus would be a more hospitable climate than Van Nuys. The population explosion would lead to widespread famine by the early '90s and there would be no petroleum available by the year 2000 because we would hit peak oil by 1978. This, of course, is assuming that we wouldn't die in a nuclear holocaust brought on by the Contras. So I can see how someone could retreat into a belief that climate change is fake. This is probably the reason so many discussions of climate change have been so pedantic for so long: any consumer of media has seen so many nightmare scenarios that they don't bother sleeping anymore. And when we discuss "climate change" we're talking about a constellation of observations that lead to a damning conclusion. If you accept that damning conclusion the constellation makes sense. If you don't they're isolated incidents that you explain away as irrelevant. "Sex" and "gender", on the other hand, have not been widely acknowledged as individual concepts for long at all, at least not in the mainstream. Not only that, straight white males are invariably wrong in these discussions and generally subjected to ridicule. Someone expressing an "objective truth" about cisgender women is someone refusing to use the word "cisgender" because they've never had to before and no one has ever made them feel bad about it. In both cases, the party in question is saying "I'm not going to argue about this" (because it hurts my head). They're asserting that the argument is invalid because the subject is beyond argumentation. The problem is it's being conflated from the philosophical (what is girl if not female) to the practical (I paid you back the $20 I borrowed because I feel like I don't owe it to you anymore).
Certainly. Veen mentioned podcasts so my brain immediately thought "big intellectuals" trying to claim their normative beliefs are objective reality. It's become a trope in popular media. Charles Murray thought his studies were "objective truth." Jordan Peterson tried to come up with his own definition of "truth" to justify why his beliefs were correct. It didn't make sense, but apparently society will collapse without metaphorical, objective "truth" that apparently goes beyond science. https://www.amazon.ca/Nihilism-Root-Revolution-Modern-Age/dp/1887904069 That's the fucking king of Truth right there. Priest made me read that when I was 14. That dude legitimately argues that objective truth comes from God, that medieval peasants were happier because they knew exactly where they were. And once Nietzsche said God is Dead, Truth was Dead and now the world is chaos. There is certainly an urge people have to try and see the world as more logical and objective than it is. He says "oh, the climate has always been changing." I'm not really sure what to make of that. He seems to think whatever humans are doing is having next to no impact - if the Earth is getting hotter it was just as inevitable as the end of the last Ice Age. That human greenhouse gas emissions aren't responsible for anything. I think he's just wrapping his head around what's easy. Banning CFC's? Easy. Stopping emissions? Hard, and detrimental to conservative politics. Almost certainly. But my issue comes from outright denial rather than people saying "oh, it's not that bad" or "we'll get through this" or "doomsday scenarios are overblown and repeated to death." He might believe in the greenhouse effect, but he doesn't think it's doing anything. That just doesn't make sense. These people can't just say "it's not that bad," they have to actively deny the basic mechanism. It depends who you're arguing with. Nailing someone to the cross because they didn't use the word "cisgender" is ridiculous and I would call them ridiculous. I would never discount someone's opinion because they're a straight white man. But these people are outright trying to claim that calling someone a "boy" means their sex (not gender) is male, period. That's objective. We can have an argument whether it's reasonable for people to think that or if we should change language or introduce the concept of gender as separate from sex but regardless, calling something a "boy" is just a decision people made. It's not reality. It's not objective. It's a social convention. There are languages without gendered pronouns and there are languages like French where there are masculine and feminine words. So that's where the deconstruction happens. You have sex, and then you have language where nouns can have genders. And those are associated with all kinds of stereotypes. Ben Shapiro thinks it's objective. So I'm coming at it from politics. People telling lies at your workplace? Fuck 'em. edit: and the practical aspect, the lying, I don't think is increasing under gen Z. Shittiness moves through all ages I think.From my perspective, the concern is people rejecting the existence of an "objective truth" as something that oppresses their wants and needs.
I'll bet your father believes in the greenhouse effect. He probably even believes in greenhouse gasses. Show him a picture of Antarctica with a pink blob over it and he'll know immediately he's looking at a hole in the ozone layer. The pieces are there, it's the ideology that ties it all together that he rejects.
This is probably the reason so many discussions of climate change have been so pedantic for so long: any consumer of media has seen so many nightmare scenarios that they don't bother sleeping anymore.
"Sex" and "gender", on the other hand, have not been widely acknowledged as individual concepts for long at all, at least not in the mainstream. Not only that, straight white males are invariably wrong in these discussions and generally subjected to ridicule. Someone expressing an "objective truth" about cisgender women is someone refusing to use the word "cisgender" because they've never had to before and no one has ever made them feel bad about it.
This deserves a longer response than I can give it because I had to stand up to a judge today and then do construction for five hours and I'm tired. I'll say this: "cognitive dissonance" didn't used to mean "being stupid." It used to mean "the mental discomfort and physical pain of holding two competing ideas at once." Clinically speaking, it's something we all try to avoid. We will believe a falsehood over a truth if that falsehood prevents cognitive dissonance. SO: global warming is a lie because it's been a lie all these years and all the data we see is just more noise that will eventually get disproven. The alternative is me and everyone I know are contributing to the destruction of the planet and there's no way out unless we align with all those people who have been calling us monsters lo these many years. Ever met an ex-mormon? They go through this phase where they're dead inside. Mormonism is keenly inclusive and insular; this makes it easy to align with others who believe as you do and difficult to develop a large group of friends outside your religion. It also means that when you've had enough and can no longer swallow the party line, you are lost. Your whole world is has been lost. You've been cast out. And everyone who aligns with a political movement risks this whenever their core beliefs are challenged. And we're all guilty. We're here arguing about objective truths and you can assert that criticism for not using the word "cisgender" is ridiculous but I mean, that's my reality. My wife got my daughter a doll when she was a baby. Same hair color, same eye color. My daughter outgrew it. So my wife brought it to the birth center (which she owns). And told this story about how she wanted her daughter to relate to this doll so she got her with the same hair color, same eye color. And still got an eyeroll. Because my daughter has blonde hair and blue eyes. So this doll? It's fuckin' evil. What's happening is the people who think my daughter shouldn't play with blue-eyed dolls are in a pissing match with the people who think that "boy" means "male" because the future has yet to be decided. I just wish we could do it without ripping each other to shreds. Except Ben Shapiro. I'd totally rip that fucker to shreds. I don't think the lying is increasing under genZ. It was surprising to me, however, to see the rhetorical instrument "it's not a lie if truth is subjective" employed. Over. And over.
To take your tangent analysis off onto another tangent, this quote from that outside piece is simply spectacular: “America’s Finest,” he said, removing his American-flag T-shirt to display his shield-like abs. “Where are you from?” “America.” “But I mean, what unites you as a team? Do you all go to the same school?” “We’re Americans.” “How are you doing?” “Oh and three.” I couldn’t believe it. “But you’re the fittest team here!” “It’s really complicated,” one of their girls said. “And we have temper issues.”“Who are you?” I asked one of the bodybuilders.
A thing a have noticed about Harry Potter fandoms, is that there's a disproportionate amount of queer folks that are really into it. The book never once mentions anything LGBT related. It's not like the wizzarding world is super accepting of anything out of the "norm" either. They're all about traditions and old ways of doing things, so I don't know how positive their stance on gay peeps would be anyway. Maybe it's just the escapism of another world beyond ours that is the appeal? Why it resonates so strongly to a specific niche of people is a bit of a mystery to me.
1) it gives you that "sports" kick without having to participate in any of the sports the people who don't like you participate in. 2) The "fairness" of most sports is core to their playability and comprises the majority of arguments over rules. The "fairness" of Quiddich is taken to be nonexistent - that whole "find the snitch and win" thing is inherently unfair as it makes all other efforts pointless and there isn't a match in the whole of the wizarding world that has any fairness to it. So. It's going to attract people who want to play sports, but not with people who play sports, and who are attracted to unfairness. Nothing puzzling about it.
Christopher Hitchens agrees. I love that review. When I was a kid, I read Harry Potter first. Then I read Phillip Pullman right after. And I'd agree with Hitchens - The Golden Compass is infinitely better, more thrilling, and sends a better message. I only read Harry Potter to get points in the MS Read-a-Thon. Just to clarify - I think JK is profoundly stupid. You're right - her beliefs are rooted in a very simplistic view of the world. But if kids are willing to sit and read 700+ pages of books it won't be very hard for them to move up. Holy hell, I think I should do a standalone review of His Dark Materials. That shit was tight.