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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday December 3, 2001 Volume III Number 49 |
FOCUS - Muggles in Your World
J. K. Rowling has a name for those who believe her work is somehow a subversive threat to the well-being of children. She calls them Muggles.
The Dursleys, Vernon and Petunia and their spoiled chubby son Dudley, are Muggles. That doesn’t make them inhuman. They are simply unbelievers. As unbelievers, there is no magic in their world. Their home looks pleasant enough, and from all appearances seems “normal.” But there is no warmth. No affection. No sense of wonder. No magic. Only demands and duty and obligation and bickering and barking and chores and rules and heavy handed discipline.
The Dursleys take in the abandoned child, Harry. There is room in their house – in a closet under the stairs. But there is no room in their hearts. The orphan Harry, like Cinderella or Anne of Green Gables, is useful only insofar as he serves the needs of his host family by cleaning and scrubbing; and is acceptable as long as he remains unseen, tucked away in some dark corner of the house. Harry’s step-brother, the self-indulgent Dudley, whines and complains and bemoans this annoyance and that interruption and receives more than his share of snacks and treats and presents from his doting mother who seems to think her only child somehow benefits from an excess of pampering.
Harry is the only sensible one in the house. He soon learns that he is quite capable of coping with the absurdities of this family of Muggles. He discovers that he has the power to frustrate – and with a sly smile, he employs his techniques with glee. And we are gleeful with him… because these Dursley Muggles are so hopeless.
The first thing I heard about the Harry Potter series of books was that they were controversial. Controversial and wildly popular with children - children who before Harry Potter would prefer a video tape or video game, suddenly looked for a quiet corner of the house, found a comfortable chair and would sit and read. For extended periods. Harry Potter seemed a cure for attention deficit. Children’s eyes widened as they plowed through one more adventure. And something in this fantasy struck a responsive chord with the mind and heart of the legion of young readers. Their parents and their teachers were hooked, too.
Muggles considered it a dangerous spell, cast on mindless masses by a reckless writer of fiction, bewitched by a commercial fad. Flirting with the occult. Many of the fearful among us confessed they never read the stories. But anything with sorcery and wizardry must by default be harmful, they said.
So while crisscrossing the State of Indiana
in a rented car, we listened to the book on tape, hoping to find out for
ourselves from whence cometh the wrangling. What we found was a well written,
enormously engaging, humorous story about a boy being a boy. He’s a boy d
ealing
with the harsh realities of a dysfunctional home, a boy processing the demands
of the world around him, in school, on the streets.
His coping mechanism is his wild imagination. And in his imaginary world, magic happens. It’s a wonderful magic – a Disney kind of magic, where puzzles need solving, and competition is keen, where some teachers are mean and angry and demanding, others are filled with all the wonder of their subject and their world is a playful curiosity and learning is fun. His is a world where it is possible to fly, where reading and doing your homework pay off, where some kids are selfish and prideful, and others are your best friends.
Now that the movie is in the theaters, the popularity of Harry Potter is a matter of record. We had to take a couple trips; and finally found a theater with open seats for a late afternoon week-day matinee.
I now predict that Harry Potter will be around for a long while.
* * * * * * *
J. K. Rowling hit some rough bumps. An unemployed single mom, a graduate of Exeter University, after a nasty divorce she lived on public assistance in a small flat with her infant daughter. Her writing kept her sane. While her daughter slept, she would slip away to a café around the corner in Edinburgh, Scotland and while sipping coffee, she wrote furiously about the world of a lost little boy named Harry Potter. Later she wrote, "I was very low, and I had to achieve something. Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad."
There is a fairy tale quality about Rowling’s personal story. She wanted desperately to be a writer. James Michener, the prolific American novelist once bemoaned, “As a writer, it’s possible to make a killing but it’s impossible to make a living.” Michener made a killing. Rowling just wanted to make a decent living. And now, barely ten years later, so has she, like Michener, made a killing. She began with nothing but an idea and a love of language and a heart for children and a penchant for getting words on paper and a little girl of her own and a rich imagination. Today, she’s the richest novelist alive.
Harry Potter is not simply the main character in a series of children’s books, he took this lonely divorcee by the hand, from the dark corner of a lonely café to the world stage – book tours and television interviews and a dream cottage somewhere in a posh neighborhood in the Scottish countryside. Now the gardens and the hedgerows belong to her… thanks to Harry.
The first chapters were so clever and full of promise, that early on, the Scottish Arts Council gave her a substantial grant to complete the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (as it was called in the first UK edition). From its first printing under the Bloomsbury and Scholastic Book publication, the rave reviews poured in from both sides of the Atlantic. Shortly afterwards, J. K. opened her mail and found the announcement, Harry Potter won the coveted British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year… and shortly thereafter the Smarties Prize. Contract offers poured in, and soon she signed rights to the book in England, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Spain and Sweden.
Rowling just kept on writing. She let the attorneys and publishers work through a trusted agent. She never left her world of wonder.
Now there are four Harry Potter books, and more coming. The World Wide Web is jammed full of sites where fans can sort through the myriad of characters and places and courses from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
And now the movie rights.
Warner Brothers got a bargain. They purchased the rights for a measly $700,000. The film boasted a juicy movie-maker’s budget of well over one hundred twenty-five million and as of this writing has established itself as one of the all-time top-grossing films to hit the theaters, and promises staying power.
All of which assures us that the sequels will come along with DVDs in boxed gift sets with all sorts of high-tech wizardry (pun intended) included… Harry Potter will be a story told and retold for generations to come.
* * * * * * * * *
Clearly, the world seems ready for a fresh new thoroughly British fairy tale.
English literature is full of these children’s stories that teach values and capture the wide-eyed imagination of children. Alice in Wonderland. Peter Pan. When Walt Disney discovered full animation, and when he looked for stories to tell children he found them in English literature. Mickey Mouse appears in Fantasia as a Wizard, Cinderella’s pumpkin becomes a carriage thanks to her Fairy Godmother with a wave of her magic wand, Gipetto’s puppet Pinocchio becomes a real boy as a fairy makes his wish come true, Snow White’s cruel Queen consults a magic mirror in quest the answer to her the haunting question, “who is the fairest of them all?” What of the 1939 classic, the Wizard of Oz. “Ding dong, the Witch is dead!” we all sing as the wicked Witch of the East screams “I’m melting!” Or what about Merlin’s place in King Arthur’s court?
J. K. Rowling has given the world another fantasy with witches and sorcerers and wizards and magicians, complete with a British accent.
And the reading world is rejoicing.
Well, not all the world.
Apparently there are some who believe that mere exposure to the whole idea of wizardry is somehow harmful to children.
The argument seems rather flimsy to me. Perhaps some children become so obsessed with the whole notion of magic that they become vulnerable to the underworld of evil and spiritism. But I have a hard time believing that a reading of Harry Potter will cause a youngster to fall headlong into the occult.
Lindy Beam made the big attempt to give a Christian response to the mega-hit books and movie for the readers of her ministry’s widely read monthly magazine. She works for a major para-church ministry and was rather surprised at how much controversy she encountered. She got more letters than ever… most of them highly charged. Some sarcastic. Some angry. Here are two she quoted…
"Reading the Harry Potter books promotes investigation by children into the occult? Preposterous."
"To in any way condone entertainment that glorifies that which is born in the pits of Hell is to court disaster."
In an attempt to walk the line, she alienated both ends of the spectrum. She couldn’t win.
I think Rowling is on to something. It’s as though some folks would like to take magic away from the children. To say perhaps that imagination itself is harmful. To snuff out the wonder and the curiosity and the fantastic stories that cause children to say “Wow!” These people are Muggles.
As a child, I loved stories about characters who could fly. I’d watch Superman. And Mighty Mouse. And Peter Pan. I knew that people couldn’t fly, really. Birds could fly, but not people. I tried a couple of times, jumping off the roof of the garage in hopes that I would catch the wind and soar above the telephone wires and buzz the treetops over to the schoolyard and impress my friends. But it didn’t work. These were stories, fanciful stories that triggered all kinds of wonderful imaginings.
Then I learned later that flying could be a metaphor. A metaphor for achievement. For excellence. For high octane performance. And when I watched Michael Jordan on the court, it was as though he could fly. And when I listened to Sandi Patti sing the National Anthem at the opening of the Super Bowl game, it was like she was airborne. Or when I listen to Tony Evans preach a sermon to a stadium full of men it’s like he’s taken the wings of an eagle and soaring high above, and bidding us to fly up there along with him.
I’m not a Muggle. Realism sometimes misses the point. Discipline sometimes eliminates joy. Science sometimes snuffs out the arts. Humorless Muggles need to lighten up.
I guess I believe in magic.
* * * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader. You are surrounded by Muggles.
They tell you it’ll never work. They’ll give you all the reasons why it’s impossible. They’ll clip your wings. They’ll throw icy water on your ambitions. They’ll take the things you cherish the most, and make a cynical joke.
They’ve been grounded for a long time. It’s a shame.
Harry hopped on the train at Platform 9¾. He ate chocolate frogs. He listened to the big hairy giant Hagrid who told him more than he should (“I shouldn’t have told you that”). He took in his best friends Ron and Hermione and together they studied and listened and learned to fly on broomsticks and play Chess and take on monsters and explore dungeons and wander into forbidden territory and overcome the odds and master the game of Quiddich. Professors Dumbledore and McGonagal opened up new worlds of ideas and adventures that will pick up where they left off when the sequel hits the theaters.
Don’t listen to the Muggles in your world. Dream big. Think outside the box. Keep forging ahead. Imagine how things might be.
Maybe you’ll even learn to fly.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
LeaderFOCUS is brought to you by Good Stewardship Associates
Special Thanks for Design by my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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