JKR Backlash ... was JKR on MSNBC "...of the Year" poll

[dracos_boyfriend]

"I really have never understood these things.  Granted, JKR is a
marvelous author, but how could she win Entertainer of the Year 2001?
She hasn't done anything THIS year!  Do you see my logic?  If she
should win awards, it should be for the times she's doing things--like
2000 for the release of GOF.  Maybe I'm just too logical."

I completely and utterly agree.  You're not too logical, you're 
completely right.  In fact, I kind of see this as a wider trend in 
the fandom as a whole.  There is some sort of backlash growing.  We 
all know and appreciate that scripting, casting, consulting and 
filming the movie took a lot of time, and took up time that could 
have been used to write Book 5.  However, now that the hype has 
actually faded again to a more tolerable background level - Joanne 
seems to still be bouncing around the place giving more and more 
interviews and descending still further into tacky publicity.  

She has all the money a person could reasonably want in this life 
now - there is no need for all this stuff - and I really think it is 
time for her to sit down and bloody finish the book.  We have been 
waiting 18 months now and it has frankly stopped being funny - and 
yet she persists in making these tawdry TV specials.  She is becoming 
an active publicity seeker, and it pains me to see her going down 
this road, because it is barely a step away from demanding 'peeled 
white fruit' (Jennifer Lopez) or 'rose petals scattered on the 
toilet' (Barbara Streisand).  I would really hate to see her 
corrupted by the media world, but I really fear that, in my eyes, she 
is clearly not strong enough to resist it.

To add gravitas to my point, yesterday, I was in the Warner Brothers 
Store in my local shopping mall (they're not closing the British ones 
down, for some reason nobody has made quite clear yet) and the Harry 
Potter section was taking up about half of a considerably sized 
retail unit.  There were (and are still) a lot of things I approve 
of - I love the cuddly toys, I love the action figures (and I've been 
collecting them), I think the Lego sets are quite a neat idea, T-
shirts are fine, baseball caps are fine, pyjamas are fine (I'd 
actually quite like some of those, but there aren't any in adult 
sizes), stationary is also fine.

Then I saw Harry Potter skateboards ...

Let's just consider the image, there.  Harry Potter and 
skateboards ... in my opinion, and please yell at me if I'm wrong in 
*any* way ... belong to two completely different subsections of 
children's culture ... if I were to go up to the kind of child who 
uses a skateboard in Britain, and ask him what he thought of Harry 
Potter, he would likely laugh at me ... I just thought that the very 
idea was so, so tacky.  And Joanne put her seal of approval on this 
piece of wheeled tat??  It makes me sad ... very, very sad.

I'd genuinely like to know what you guys think of the marketing hype, 
and JK herself at this point in time.  Do you agree that there's 
potential for a backlash, or not?  If not, why not?  Are people in 
the fandom beginning to get bored with Harry?  Are we suffering from 
burn-out?

Al

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AR: In the Shakespeare play, what was the name of the king who was 
killed by MacBeth?
Contestant: Hamlet.
- The Weakest Link
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