With our fearless pub proprietor taking another step towards celebrity this week, I’m left to lay out some news. Check the Press Release below! (And yes, we can all say, “We knew him when…”)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK (Oct. 12, 2009) – PotterTeeVee will launch this week with a live webcast straight from Midtown Manhattan this Monday evening. New York City Harry Potter fans welcome literary scholar Travis Prinzi to speak about the spooky, eerie and gothic elements of the Harry Potter stories. This seasonally-appropriate lecture entitled “Harry Potter, Dracula & Frankenstein: Fear and Gothic Elements in J.K. Rowling’s Best Selling Novels” will be hosted by the Tutuma Social Club at 7pm on October 12, 2009. PotterTeeVee is proud to stream the entire lecture live as its first official broadcast following the network’s launch this week.
A new media resource for both the casual Harry Potter reader and rabid fan alike, PotterTeeVee offers free broadcasts of live events, music and original programming from the Harry Potter fan community. PTV strives to provide the best in live and on-demand content for the international fan community of the Harry Potter books and films. Though based in New York City, the web channel will be broadcast via Livestream from all four corners of the globe for the enjoyment of Potter-lovers everywhere.
“Harry Potter, Dracula & Frankenstein” will be attended by some of New York City’s most dedicated Harry Potter fans, The Group That Shall Not Be Named, the New York Harry Potter Meetup Group, another of PotterTeeVee’s partners. In addition, by choosing Livestream this event has the potential to reach thousands of viewers online, allowing fans unable to attend to benefit from this fun, intriguing and educational presentation.
Travis Prinzi is the author of Harry Potter & Imagination: The Way Between Two Worlds and editor of The Hog’s Head Conversation: Essays About Harry Potter. He has spoken at numerous seminars and Harry Potter conferences including Prophecy 2007 and most recently, Azkatraz 2009. Mr. Prinzi expressed excitement about PTV’s upcoming launch, saying “I’m honored to be helping launch PotterTeeVee on Monday night. It’s going to be a great resource for Harry Potter fans, and I’m excited to be a part of it.”
The archived recording of the webcast will be available at http://www.livestream.com/potterteevee and soon at http://www.potterteevee.com. To keep up with updates at PotterTeeVee, follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/potterteevee or become a fan at http://facebook.com/potterteevee.
ABOUT POTTERTEEVEE
PotterTeeVee (www.potterteevee.com) is a not-for-profit web channel for broadcasting live events, original programming and music from the world of the Harry Potter fandom. PotterTeeVee strives to become the leader in live and on-demand original content for the worldwide fan community of Harry Potter series. Though the Harry Potter fan community spans the globe, PotterTeeVee operates primarily out of New York City.
ABOUT LIVESTREAM
Livestream (www.livestream.com) provides everything needed to easily webcast live, build an engaged audience and monetize these efforts. Founded in 2007, the company is based in New York and includes Gannett Co. as a minority shareholder and investor. Producers can use Livestream to create live, linear and on-demand Internet television to broadcast anywhere on the Web through a single embeddable player widget.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Great talk Travis! I really enjoyed what you had to say. You look way too young to be a sage Potter Pundit, but Potter Pundit you are. It was a very charming talk and I was glad to see it on the very new Potterteevee.
You mentioned a list of Gothic Novels to start on. Might I also add Goethe’s Faust (definitely an early foreboding of Voldemort’s fear of Death) and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (which has so very many Snape elements to it. In fact, I see young Snape as Werther sometimes sacrificing himself for this love of a married woman).
My laptop at work had a melt down and I had to stay late…unfortunately I missed your talk Traivs. I’m so glad that there’s a recording – I’m looking forward to watching it!
Fantastic news! I look forward to watching the recording.
Great talk Travis. Apart from Greg Wilbur’s discussions of the series this is the only other time I’ve watched or listened to a lecture on all things Potter (apart from all the great reads here and over on John Granger’s site).
Never would have thought I’d get into Gothic lit, but I’m really enjoying it. Superb talk, Travis! Your comments on Wuthering Heights made me think that book might have a point worth reading it for, which is a first for me.
Have only watched the first 27 minutes, but already am fired up to debate the proposition that Harry is a passive character who regularly gets rescued like a Gothic heroine. I’ll watch the rest before I respond.
But as a preliminary shot across the bows: I don’t think you can make the argument that JKR feminized Harry because she toyed with the idea of making him into a Harriet. From The Connection, Oct 12, 1999:
Q: Why male protagonist, not female?:
A:”He was too real to me by then to turn him into a girl. He was a boy in my head and I already had Hermione and I had Ron and I was too fond of them by then to want to tamper with them”
Is there really a question as to Ms. Rowlings decision as to have a male or female protagonist? And if so – who cares? I am confused as to the revelance of it in comparison to the overall arc of racism and thus the final solution of Hitler, which is the ultimate of evil presented here. Simple though it may be.
Harry feminized or Hermione masculanized makes no difference.
The charge is racism.
Though, correct me if I am wrong.
Joivre, I think the Potter books are more complex than that. Racism is certainly a part of the tale–you’re right there. But there are other driving forces in the story, quite a lot of them, some of which are even more central to the story than the theme of interracial relations. For instance, the alchemical drama and Christian symbolism, and the facing of death with courage and love.
I think the Gothic themes of the book play into that last particularly well. If Harry takes on the role of Gothic heroine, and I tend to think Travis and John Granger are right in their analysis there, he does so with some value to the story. It’s not about Harry being effeminate, it’s a literary trope; he plays the sort of role that Mina Harker plays in Dracula, wandering about in the dark and getting exposed to danger, challenging an evil too great for himself, discovering that he and the monster are part of each other, and offering himself as a sacrifice for the good of his friends.