So I couldn’t sleep and decided to watch this documentary on my handy Netflix Instant. I’d heard a lot about it but avoided it because….well…we’ll get there.
I’m a Harry Potter fan. By that I mean that I’ve read the books score(s) of times, can answer pretty much any question about the literary canon and spent seven years discussing it with literature profs, MFA students, theology scholars, comparative religionists and other writers on the Yahoo Group Harry Potter for Grown Ups. I went to three book-release parties and have occasionally listened to some of the podcasts.
A few years ago–several years after I became a Potterfan, I might add–I started to notice there was a movement of fans coelescing on the web. They started at places like LiveJournal and some fansites and became more of a large mass of friends united in real life as well. That’s a good thing in a lot of ways, because for many people it seems that Harry Potter served them in the ways that Star Wars and Star Trek served me. Potter and ParaPotter culture paved the way for introverts, awkwaverts and other Species Geekus to find likeminded friends and running mates.
What bothers me a bit though is this: Members of the ParaPotter universe have this habit of looking down on those of us who don’t go to Wizard Rock concerts, fan meetups and LeakyCon as being less than legitimate in the fan world. That’s the main reason I had avoided seeing We Are Wizards. I don’t like that sort of hierarchy that has built up around the Harry Potter world. At two distinct points in the film, people mention their uberfan status. One woman–the chronically ill young lady who started PotterWar to fight with Warner Brothers over intellectual property–tells a salesman at the local Ferrari dealership that she had been a “major player in the Harry Potter fan community”. At another point author Melissa Anelli talks about how she as a fan now has fans of her own.
Now, I confess to listening to a few of Melissa’s podcasts, following her on Twitter and buying her book. (I haven’t read it yet. I’m saving it for coming down from my next readthrough of the books). But I do this not because I think of her as a better fan than I, but because she seems like an interesting person to discuss the books with. In short, I don’t view her as a person of whom I’d be a fan but as a person I could befriend under favourable circumstances. To be fair I don’t think Anelli was saying this as a good or bad thing, but merely commenting on its existence.
It kind of weirds me out a little bit that some people appear to be trying to turn what was once a gathering of like souls into a hierarchical society. I’d imagine there are one or two sociological papers in there somewhere. Perhaps it’s just me feeling left out when other fans write me off for not going to Leakycon. But I really don’t like seeing these excellent books turned into yet another tool for making outsiders feel more outside.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Well, these are people who (by your account) may have gotten a latish start on ordinary, positive socializing. They may have to go through the adolescent “I’m cooler than the uncool kids” period anyway. Or they may think they have to, since that’s what the cool kids did to them back when they were the uncool kids, and it’s the only way that’s been modeled for them of exhibiting cooliosity. Only since it’s later on in life, it looks a tad more out of place. I imagine they’ll get over it.
Hmm, I hadn’t thought about how what I said to the gentleman at the Ferrari dealership could have been perceived that way. That’s been one of the weirdest parts of being part of a documentary like this – I know what I’m thinking throughout my experiences in life, I know what my intentions were. Obviously, no one else but me knows what those intentions truly were, so it’s been an interesting experience in separating my own intentions from my experiences. (If that makes any sense…) By separating myself and what I was thinking from what I participated in, I’m seeing glimpses of my own life as someone else would see me; from the outside, not knowing me, not knowing what I thought or what I meant. I think that’s an experience that’s made me a better person. At least, I hope so.
I will say, though, what you didn’t see about that encounter speaks volumes. What you didn’t see was me explaining what I meant by what I said about being a player in the Harry Potter fan universe.
As for me, I’ve never been to a LeakyCon or anything like that (I’m almost ashamed to say, I don’t even know what that is… but then again, I’ve been away from the Harry Potter fan universe for years.) What I was conveying in that conversation with the man at the dealership, Mr. Finney (who has since become a close friend), is that my involvement in the Harry Potter fan universe helped to shape its legal legitimacy. Do I think I’m a better fan than anyone else? No. In fact, most people wouldn’t even call me a proper Harry Potter fan anymore, since I don’t even know what a LeakyCon is. But you know what? I’m okay with that.
Like you, I bristled at the societal structure that Harry Potter fans were imposing upon themselves and others. It irritated me big time, because it was that sort of thing that we were trying to fight during PotterWar. Let me explain.
A few months into PotterWar, Warner Brothers shot back with a website, where a fan site owner could register their website and make it “official”. A lot of fans loved this idea and thought we should instantly end PotterWar, because they said it would give us the legal legitimacy we wanted.
My partner, Alastair, and I thought otherwise. No, if we had stopped then, all we would have accomplished was to divide the entire Harry Potter subculture into “legitimate” and “illegitimate” websites. Meaning, some sites – if they registered with WB – would then become more viable than one that was just started by a little 12 year old who’d just found out about the books and wanted to join in on the fun of the fan culture. I saw it as potentially creating a divide of legitimacy between that little 12 year old and those who had been around long enough in order to get Warner’s blessing.
So obviously PotterWar didn’t stop there, we fought against it, and ultimately won legitimacy for every fan, no matter when they started their website or who they decided to register it with.
But of course, after PotterWar, the subculture adopted that social hierarchy and now some fans think themselves more “pure” than others.
You’d really think they would have learned something from the Harry Potter books, about how wrong it is to create such exclusionary classes, i.e. “mudbloods” and all that. But alas, it’s a sad part of human nature to form cliques, to look upon the familiar as good and the unfamiliar as bad. It’s happened throughout all of human history, and as much as we might want it to change, it’s going to take more than the Harry Potter books to teach us to change.
It was when that social hierarchy started appearing that I started veering away from Harry Potter fandom. I found other things that interested me and I felt my part in the story of Harry Potter was pretty much over and done with. But now, looking back, hearing about all the segregation that’s gone on among the fans, seeing it face to face during the filming of ‘We Are Wizards’, it really made me sad. That’s not what Harry Potter fandom was like once upon a time. In the beginning, we were all equal, all bound together by the one thing that we had in common: the love of the books. I guess we were like children at that point, not old enough to learn that there were things about all of us that made us different. What made us the same was still so new and novel, we didn’t see the differences, and thus, we weren’t divided.
Like anything, the Harry Potter fan world got older, we got divided, and now we have problems like this. I chalk it up to the inevitability of human evolution. Like I said, it’s happened in every other human civilization, big or small. Why should Harry Potter fandom be any different? I really wish it was different, but I tried to do what I could to stop it, and yet we’re still here.
Wow, that sounds depressing… Anyway, this comment has gotten long enough. 🙂 Glad you liked the film. (I kinda wish I could say the same… my feelings on it are still mixed.)
Oh, there are stories I could tell you about the “high school” mentality of a certain element of the fandom, particularly those who used to call themselves “BNFs” (Big Name Fans). Back in the day, it wasn’t about going to Wizard Rock shows and cons, but about how many followers you could amass, usually by writing an entertaining, sexy, novel-length HP fanfic. If you want to see a real horror story about the hierarchical side of the fandom, Google “Msscribe” – a famous sockpuppeteer who told many lies and hurt many people to gain standing in the HP fandom. (I’d particularly direct your attention to a 10-part expose written about her by Charlottelenox.)
I should add that, as far as I know (and she’s actually said this many times), Melissa doesn’t consider herself such an animal and seems to find it bizarre when people want her autograph. Which is kind of my feeling – how can you be famous for being a fan of something that someone else is famous for?
I’m very fond of my own experiences in the fandom. They weren’t particularly glamorous, but I made loads of friends I never would have met were it not for Rowling’s books. But I think a part of the heirarchy thing might be inevitable, especially if you engage (as I did) in an “Us vs. Them” rivalry like the shipping debates. I cultivated friendships with people I found interesting, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t part of me who felt pride for rising in the ranks.
[…] found each other on LiveJournal, Leaky Cauldron, HPANA, and all the other little byways on the web. I’ve never been part of that, despite my deep love for the books. Oh, I’ve made friends from discussion fora on the […]
Hi! I found this post entirely by accident when a friend of mine on facebook posted a link to your entry about Harry Potter as a private thing turned public. (Loved it by the way!) I was just about to go back to Facebook when I noticed this entry and just had to read.
Why? Cause um… I’m the chronically ill lady who was in that movie. I just want to say, I completely and utterly agree with you. I also cringed horribly during that scene with myself at Ferrari. Not only was I totally ashamed at how I sounded, but I was also a little disappointed that they cut off the rest of that sentence where I followed that up with something about bringing together all kinds of HP fans in order to protect those that were being targeted by Warner. I hated that it ended up coming across as a whole “Oh I’m so cool” kind of vibe. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I apologize for that.
I do want to say, though, I 100% agree with you about being disappointed to see some kind of hierarchy within the fan community. It disappoints me. What I loved so much about the early days of Potter fandom, and the community that sprung up around the site I built, was that it was very much a meeting of equals. Equal nerds, sure, but equal. I’ve never been to a convention, I had NO clue what Wizard Rock was before I was asked to be in that film, etc. And believe me, I got some major flack for it. Lots and lots of emails and comments from people about how I shouldn’t have been in the movie cause I wasn’t a “true fan” according to some random measurement of fan purity. Sounds like a lot of “mudblood”ing has infection Harry Potter land, which is most disappointing.
That said, they were probably right, even if not for that reason. I probably shouldn’t have done the film. But hey, lesson learned, right? 🙂 Anyway, again, my apologies for that ridiculous statement. I would hate to think I might have contributed to anyone’s sense of being left out.