Why has the very English Harry Potter attained global status at this moment? The cheap answer that all this is down to hype - does not explain how a book for children published in a print run of 500 by a small publisher comes to the worlds attention. The answer has nothing to do with whether or not the books are original or good or follow any particular spiritual or moral code. It is because J.K. Rowlings creation is contingent upon a great deal of the changing political and cultural world.
A retrolutionary, British moment
In order to assess the contemporary we have to make sense of the ways in which the British use the past in order to make the present bearable. We exist in modern life, but most of us want to live somewhere else; and many of us choose to inhabit tradition.
Either the old is remodelled so that it can contain the new, or the new is represented as old or traditional. This combination is retrolutionary - a word used in the mid-1990s when Jaguar presented the latest incarnation of the XJ series. The car looked like the previous models, but underneath all was hi-tech.
Harry Potter, too, is a retrolutionary creation. The stories look old and deal with the new. Harry is like Cinderella, or the young King Arthur, helped by magic to his destiny; he is like an Enid Blyton hero, achieving among friends; and he is the school-story hero who helps to win a cricket match. These parallel stories are combined and repackaged for contemporary readers.
In 1997, at the moment of Harry Potters literary birth, British politics was also moving in a retrolutionary direction. Heading for political power for the first time in a generation, the Labour party presented itself as New Labour, wrapping its modernity in the trappings of established styles and past achievements. New Labour was elected with one key phrase, education, education, education. Its reforming initiatives included schemes designed to address a perceived decline in literacy, especially among boys.
Boys were a problem. Moral panics over joyriding and youth crime were part of a general anxiety over the male future. For the first time, Helen Wilkinson reported in 1995, girls were outperforming boys at every level of educational attainment below first degree. Literacy hour, time set aside for primary school pupils and teachers to read and write, was among a host of initiatives designed to address this sense of failure.
If Harry Potter is a hero of our times, it is because of his effect on childrens reading habits. Single-handedly responsible for a revival of reading among the children of the Playstation era, Harry Potter has provided a magical solution to the problems of the state education system: Harry Potter is literacy hour.
Why? Partly because the books are exciting stories which involve sporting contests - appealing to boys. And partly because they are not merely exciting stories in which the hero wins sporting contests. The Harry Potter books are also about reading and the effects of reading on the lives of readers. In each story, the library is used when there is a mystery to solve - in the search for clues about Nicholas Flamel in book I, in the hunt for the Chamber of Secrets in book II, the preparation for the defence of the hippogriff Buckbeak in book III, and in the effort to understand the tasks set in the Triwizard Tournament in book IV. The characters read in order to act.
But the stories dont read like a Victorian improvement manual. Harry isnt the model sorcerers apprentice - Hermione gets better grades - but flying on his broomstick for the first time, he knows instinctively what to do. The young male reader will encounter readers; but the hero knows what to do anyhow, so hes one of them. Harry Potter is literacy hour; but Harry Potter is a contemporary boy.
Harry Potter and the Cultural Turn
So why magic? The arts - painting and sculpture, literature and music - depend on an aura of magic. Creative artistry is the property of genius; which it is assumed most of us do not have. The ways in which painted canvas or sculpted stone, written or spoken word, or sound move us are claimed to be inexplicable. The best is therefore removed from the ordinary world through public subsidy.
This mystification was held to be true most strongly while most work was repetitive, hard physical labour. In the post-industrial world, we work in the cultural industries, strongly supported by New Labour. Creative activity - culture in its widest sense, including the arts - has been transformed into work. In creating, we can all work - and say goodbye to mysticism and state subsidy for the arts, hello to art in the service of capital.
The Potter series features one shining example of the transformation of work through the entrepreneurial use of creativity. When we first meet, them the Weasley twins, Fred and George, are tricksters having fun at the expense of anyone within range. They learn what they need to amuse themselves; they dont do well in exams.
In book IV, however, they reveal that they have been working on a range of magical devices for practical jokes such as ton-tongue toffee, and they plan to go into business. They try to enter the Triwizard Tournament in order to raise capital for their joke shop, which will employ creativity and the imagination in the service of the economy. New Labour would be proud of them.
Their family isnt. The Weasleys are a caricature of the 1950s family - the caring mother at home and the father a hard-working, underpaid civil servant. The family wants the boys to have civil service careers of their own. Harry, however, supports the twins. Having once again faced the dark forces, and come through to win the tournament, Harry is awarded a thousand Galleons in prize money. He hands this over to Fred and George - so a new business is funded from old money, and creativity will be put to work by a new generation despite the fear of those working in the public sector.
This is the real meaning of the use of the imagination for the new industries of leisure, entertainment - and education. Creativity and the imagination are more completely at the service of capitalism. Sales of childrens books are up by 25% since Harry first appeared. Bloomsbury publishing doubled its turnover in the first six months of 2000, largely due to Harrys success. This truth has been realised in the very names of J.K. Rowlings creations. The name Harry Potter (and of all the other characters in the books) has been patented by Time Warner. The names have become rights to be sold and exploited. As with the name Bloomsbury itself, the name Harry Potter is now a brand; nay, a celebrity brand, as one Financial Times journalist noted: As far as the stock market is concerned, the names Bloomsbury Publishing and Harry Potter go together like Posh and Becks. Quite.
