Identifying with Muggles in Potterverse WAS: Re: DD at th...

[zeroirregardless]

No: HPFGUIDX 158154

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "quick_silver71"
<quick_silver71 at ...> wrote:
>
> Maybe it's me but to a certain extent the "culture" situation in
> Wizarding world mirrors Canada (minus Quebec) in that you have a
> smaller very diverse culture always in the shadow (and seemingly
> under threat from) of a large culture (in Canada's case the United
> States). Indeed Quidditch's status in the wizarding world seems very
> similar to ice hockey's status in Canada (sorry to the Canadians
> that don't like hockey). Within certain circles of Canadian culture
> a defining oath seems to be that they're not American which could be
> seen as a parallel to the wizards defining themselves from the
> muggles based on one trait (magic).

Zero Irregardless:
     It's much worse than Canada and the USA. Canada has a population
of over 32 million. JKR says the wizarding population of Britain is
about three thousand. (We all know that JKR and numbers don't go
together. But from the fact that one school handles the secondary
education requirements for the UK plus Ireland, the population  can't
be as much as 10 times that. The town where I went to high school had
a population of 12,000 and had two high schools, one government school
 and one Catholic school. And the government school I attended had
several times the students per year as Hogwarts. Yes, wizards live
longer, but only about twice as long.)

     So the British wizarding world is like a quite small town
embedded in a country of tens of millions.

    How many novels of lasting worth would you expect to have been
written by people from one small town? How many painters of note would
come from there? How many "serious" composers and musicians? If my
town is any guide, "zero" would be a good rule of thumb.

     My expectation is that there is no such thing as wizarding high
culture. There just aren't enough wizards. It would be like Stoneham,
Massachusetts having a separate high culture from the rest of the
country. Here is a cutting from Wikipedia:

Notable people from Stoneham
    * Mario Cantone: comedian and actor
    * Nancy Kerrigan: two-time Olympic figure skating medalist.
    * Mike Ness: singer for punk band Social Distortion.
    * Bill Peirce: Libertarian candidate for Governor of Ohio in 2006.
    * Joe Vitiello: former Major League Baseball player from
1995-2003; 1st round draft pick (7th overall) of the Kansas City
Royals in 1991; played for the Royals, San Diego Padres, and Montreal
Expos.

(Cantone = Gilderoy Lockhart.
 Kerrigan = Gwenog Jones.
 Ness = lead singer of the Weird Sisters.
 Peirce = Luna Lovegood's father.
 Vitiello = Joey Jenkins of the Chudley Cannons.)

     So, Hogwarts doesn't teach wizarding high culture because there
isn't any. It doesn't teach wizarding popular culture because it isn't
necessary. It doesn't teach Muggle high culture because Muggle culture
is forever threatening to overwhelm wizard culture anyway, why help
it. (Indeed, perhaps this is the real reason the wizarding world
separated itself from the muggle world.)

    Hogwarts is like a vocational school, providing skills useful to
the local industry. In this case, the local industry is magic.
Everyone at Hogwarts has aptitude for it, and probably will use it for
the rest of their lives. And it's about as much as such a small
community can manage.

Zero Irregardless