Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Spoilers allowed!

[Qu Klaani]

Due to the biennial abomination being released I've been thinking about Potter a lot again, I miss it. Like a lot of people I determined the last Harry Potter book's release as the end of my childhood...that was two years ago next week. It really was our generation's Star Wars.

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

Oh, absolutely, Qu Klaani. I don't think of it as the end of my childhood, but I did view the publication of the final book as the ending of a kind of collective identity for our generation. The films are kind of meaningless, although when the earlier ones came out (when I was still in high school), queuing up with all (and I do mean all) the other kids my age in Canberra at the cinema was a kind of rite of passage. (That being said, we did the same for the LotR films, the Matrix films and the new Star Wars films, so...)

[Jaya]

You don't really have to queue if you're first in the queue

[Qu Klaani]

Best thing I've accidentally stumbled across today, a yahoo answers question:

Does Harry Potter mean more to Gen Y than Jesus?

I think it would be a fair assessment.

[Darragh]

I would not call it the Star Wars of our generation because it lacks the potential parody. The ridiculous. Sure it's more popular but it lacks the set pieces. I think, being 25, I am between the generations but Harry Potter seems more like Pokemon than Star Wars. The Lord of the Rings seems to relate more the the Star Wars feel than the Potter Wars.

Robot Chicken Star Wars seems far more appealing than Robot Chicken Harry Pooter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDHskF-DCnc

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

I didn't think it related to Star Wars in terms of content, Darragh. The comparison is more that both were one of the few common cultural experiences for an entire generation (I've always equated Harry Potter with the Beatles, but my mother - an actual child of the 60s, says that the Beatles only seem like a common cultural experience because everyone in Gen Y now listens to them).

[Alexandra]

I was just talking to my dad about this, and his view of it is that the scale of the HP mania and its impact on society is more reminiscent of the Beatles, but that the HP fandom is more similar to the Star Trek fandom, in terms of dedication and fanaticism (dressing up, going to fan conventions, etc). I think that makes sense.

[Qu Klaani]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/fashion/23nostalgia.html?_r=1

Uncanny.

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/fashion/23nostalgia.html?_r=1

Uncanny.

So true, although I think explaining our early-onset nostalgia with the shock of September 11 is a little far-fetched. September 11 wasn't my innocence-losing moment. Having to work 9-5 was. That sounds incredibly selfish, but I'd argue that the vast majority of Gen-Y people look back with nostalgia to the days of Backstreet Boys CD singles and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for their comparative simplicity to boring office jobs (or lack of employment).

Now, to return the topic to Harry Potter, I'd like to pick up an idea that I mentioned on the film thread.

Something that struck me (a thought that I will take to the Harry Potter thread in the Other Books forum) was how completely bored I had become by the last three books with the storyline related to Harry and his friends, and how I was really reading the books to read about the backstory. James, Lily, Sirius, Remus and Snape (and to a lesser extent until Book 7, Dumbledore) became far more interesting to me, and for this reason, I actually prefer the final three books.

Qu Klaani has already mentioned that he shares these sentiments, and I wondered how many more people felt this way.

Somewhere between books 5 and 6, I stopped reading the (ostensibly main) story of 'unlikely hero saves world' (Joseph Campbell's 'Hero With A Thousand Faces', really) and started reading a story about families: the families that we are born into and the families that we make for ourselves, and the potential of both types of family to do either great good or irreparable harm to their members. That, in its essence, is what Harry Potter is all about to me: being born into a particular family, choosing a surrogate family, and being faced with difficult choices - the outcomes of which depend on whether one accepts or rejects the influence of one's family.

I'll stop now because it's late, my wrists are sore from mouse-clicking, and this is quickly reaching epic length. I feel a blog post on this topic coming on, and I'll edit this post accordingly when I've written said blog entry.

[Qu Klaani]

I stopped reading the (ostensibly main) story of 'unlikely hero saves world' (Joseph Campbell's 'Hero With A Thousand Faces', really)

Yet another example for the ever-expanding list showing that Star Wars = Harry Potter.

I should elaborate on this, and I will later, but essentially I view them as having equivalent positions in their respective mediums, and they hold such positions due to their many similarities. I also think I have a slight twinge of pride that my generation's Star Wars was literary.

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

My thoughts, now with added blog post.

[kaoshoneybun]

Loved it! It made so much sense to me. While I loved discovering more about the parent generation, I was also getting sick of Rowling's obsessions with family trees - I hadn't liked The Lord of the Rings because it became a history textbook full of huge family trees rather than an adventure story.
I haven't looked, but I'm guessing theres more prequel fanfics than sequels as Sirius, Snape etc sound more interesting than Harry & Ron's poor kids.

[Haku]

Well, I do not miss Harry P, because I'm happy with the way the series end and I know he's "ok". The saga ends in a way I accept. But I miss maybe much more the waiting I had between publication of novels.

I quite agree to say it is indeed an element of our generation collective identity. Since fourth installment (I discovered the small wizard before release of fourth book) I often thought "what is going to happen next ?" while waiting for the next book. I also remember having a LOT of long and very active discussions with friends (in live or on the web) about what could happen in the last book, whether or not Snape was good, what could be other Horcruxes, etc... We spent lot of time to guess what could happen (sometimes guessing well, sometimes being totally wrong), and we looked for clues in previous books. I really think this is a big part of the appeal of those books. For our generation who grew during publication, we had to wait, pleasure grew bigger, and when we were really excited, counting down days before realase, some of us came to queue to buy the book. Then we all discovered 'together' (or at least in the same time) adventures of Harry and friends. This lovely aspect is gone, now. Because this is a popular book, future readers will know before opening the book, I am sure, that Harry survives at the very end, or maybe that Snape is not that bad in fact, or other elements like this.They won't have this obligation to wait for answers, they will simply read the following book ! This doesn't mean HP books will stop being popular, but I suppose their status will be different.

As for the feeling I had when closing last book, yes, it was a kind of separation. I had lived six years along Harry Potter, reading his adventures and enjoying his universe. And yes, I had a lot of pleasure to discover stories of other characters, as someone pointed out earlier in this topic. And, by the way, why Ian's version of Harry-Ginny birthday's gift (see page 7 of the topic) does not appear in the book ???

[Zero]

Qu Klaani has already mentioned that he shares these sentiments, and I wondered how many more people felt this way.

I can name at least 2 others, myself and JKR. She is on record as saying she only included as much of the "wizarding at Hogwarts" stuff in the later books because the fans would have been devestated if she had ommited. Personally by book 6 I was moaning out loud "oh god, more ~*iguana*~ quiddich" while reading.

Weirdly, I wouldn't choose to change them or wish for editing - broad appeal isn't such a bad thing as I'm sure JKRs bank manager would be first to attest, but yes by the time the bigger themes became apparent (and TBH just how much I'd underestimated her as a writer) those bigger themes were almost all I cared about.