World Building And The Potterverse

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 167392

 
> > >>Pippin:
> > I'm not sure she does want us (ie adult readers) to believe the WW
> > is a real place. I think she honestly feels that if you're old      
> > enough that it matters to you whether the numbers add up or the    
> > economy works, you're old enough not need to believe in magical    
> > wonderlands in order to appreciate their uses. 
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Like Neverland? No, I don't buy that idea.  Because while Neverland 
> was filled with the glorious lack of logic of young childhood or 
> specifically young boyhood (as I recall, there's a wonderful scene 
> where the lost boys stalk the pirates who stalk the red indians who 
> stalk the lost boys until they all go to sleep to start up again in 
> the morning), JKR has a world where children grow up to be young 
> adults who worry about passing their tests so they can enter into 
> their desired career.  Ain't much magical or wonderland about that, 
> IMO.  That's what I'd call cold, hard realism.  (Nothing colder or 
> harder than looking for a job.)
> 

Neri:
I don't think JKR has ever intended HP to be realistic. It was not
intended to be world-building fantasy like LotR either, or
world-building sci-fi like Niven's Known Space, and as you say,
neither pure illogical fantasy like Peter Pan. Most world-building
aspects in HP are either required by the mystery plot, or are
unintended byproducts of JKR the storyteller falling in love with her
own backstory.

What JKR did intend the WW to be, I believe, is first and foremost a
*parody* of the real world, a parody were entertainment is derived
from the deliberately unresolvable contrast between the fantastic
stereotypes and the realistic RL concepts. To take your example, the
tests necessary for entering your desired career are named OWL and
NEWT. the OWL name (Ordinary Wizarding Level) might be very remotely
described as realism, but the NEWT (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding
Tests) is obviously JKR poking fun of both the fantastic stereotypes
and the RL realties. In a book where the werewolf is named Remus
Lupin, the Herbology teacher is named Professor Sprout and the
sadistic teacher Severus Snape, any reader looking for hard realism is
doing it on her own risk. Realism is there mainly as one element of
parody, to demonstrate that even a fantastic world cannot be perfect
and even magic is mired in bureaucracy and careerism.


Neri