Target Age marketing discussion (cross-post)

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 44763

Sorry for the cross post, but the discussion on Mirror_of_Maybe set off one 
of thiose little epiphanies, and I though I'd share it. It's slightly OT for 
everyone but HP for Grownups, it's actually on topic there. 

<< Original post;
<<Rather, what does everyone here think the books would have been about if 
they had been aimed at an adult audience.  Any ideas?  For starters, I 
believe Snape would have been a more prominent character.>>

Original reply; 
I agree. I also think the books would have focused more on the adults 
interaction and background. For example, we'd learn more about Lupin and 
Black than a brief physical description (which by the way, is it me, or are 
those descriptions *very* basic, brief and lacking in detail?) and their 
relevance to the immediate story. There would have been greater room for 
possibility and change of direction and sexual tension. Considering the basic 
story would be the same, the books would have been placed in the 
sci-fi/fantasy sections, and as such would have a much larger possibility for 
slashy goodness. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking... ^_^; >>

I don't agree. Rowling may be writing the books for herself, but she knows 
damn well that just about any book told from the point of view of a child 
(with the notable exception of ones told in first-person narrriative) is 
going to be marketed to children. And the humor which she laces them with is 
solidly targeted at the middle-school level. She knows that she is writing a 
children's book series and has been doing so from the beginning.

And I'm not even convinced that she would have given us any more detail or 
sexual tension if she HAD been aiming it at a more general audience. (This 
story would never have been aimed at an *adult* audience.) I have finally 
identified just whose tradition she is largely writing in. It took a while 
because the genre is different and the style has a degree more embelishment 
than the model. And the answer is;

Agatha Christie.

The same background outline with "just enough" detail so the reader can fill 
it in for themselves even if they are coming from an entirely different time 
or place. The same deliberately stock character types, just barely roughed 
in, which the reader pigeonholes accordingly, so when they turn out to be 
whatever twisted interpretation the plot needs everybody is left gasping with 
shock. The same pretty much bare-bones narriative which is accessible to all. 
The same quintessential "Englishness". (The same class stereotypes and 
mild-to-not-so-mild contempt for the inteligence of servants.) Christie 
didn't always lead the reader up the garden path. Sometimes the plot went 
exactly the way you expected it to. But she always could, and she did it 
often enough that you didn't dare forget it. She wrote plot-driven stories, 
and sometimes, especailly in her early work they were complex as bedamned. 
The biggest difference that I can see is that Rowling is writing at VASTLY 
greater length, which in itself creates the biggest differences. If 
Sorcerer's stone had been 70-100 pages shorter, it would have been the 
internal, emotional freight which would have been jettisoned, and we would 
have been left with something singularly like an "Agatha Christie does 
fantasy" story.

Think about it. Also, if you can find a copy, look up Robert Barnard's 
bibliography on Christie ("A Talent to Decieve") and read his introductory 
essay analysing the wide appeal of Christie's work.

-JOdel