Harry Potter News and Commentary
Culture Wars in Harry Potter – this is my talk and the ensuing discussion with Richard Priggie’s class at Augustana College.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ll be the first to comment on my own podcast –
Drinking game with this one: Take a drink every time I say “in a sense” or “on the whole.” You’ll be really happy, really fast, but you might not be awake long enough to hear the whole podcast.
Travis, to let you know it hasn’t shown up in iTunes on my computer in case you upset the Apple gods. Just have to download it the old fashioned way. Looking forward to it after my nap or later if I want to play the game.
Hmmm. No idea why that is. I’ll see what I can figure out.
The feed is working fine. I just pinged iTunes with the update, so hopefully we’ll see it soon. If not, I’ll look into it more.
It’s 1040 MDT Saturday here where I’m at & the newest podcast hasn’t shown up in my podcatcher yet either. I don’t use iTunes but Rhythmbox but it shouldn’t make any difference; I use the RSS feed off of The Hogshead.
Just listened to the podcast a little bit ago. Interesting discussion. Good set up, Travis. I would’ve liked it fleshed out a bit more on the Culture Wars but what you had was good & enough to get going with. Knowing more about the two authors the class was reading would’ve been helpful but understandable in this context when you’re just playing audio from the class.
Thought they might push you more on the effectiveness of the MOM, but JKR wrote it so that not much good could be said of the MOM, except that it was either harmless or incompetent. And much was said of how bad it could be, namely under Fudge in OOTP & even under Scrimgeour & how seamlessly the Ministry transitioned into a prop for Voldemort.
The sorting hat as evil was a new one to me. I know that the school’s division was largely between houses, but it was also about things like blood prejudice and using any means to get what you want. I think Dumbledore lamented that the school sorted “too soon.” Maybe he was worried about automatic prejudice against all occupants of a school house. Or maybe he was worried that students such as Snape would be put immediately in company that perhaps wasn’t best for them. (I wonder what Snape would be like if he’d been sorted into Gryffindor.) Also, this sorting often happened before students had time to consider what house they would like to be in, and the person they wished to be. Might Snape have chosen a different house if not sorted three years later, having spent those three years in Lily’s company? If he’d been sorted later, would Snape be a different man? I think that’s what Dumbledore believed.
Great lecture, and great questions from the students. Wish it would update to my iTunes though. How very odd!