Why is Harry Potter condemmed from a religious perspective? (According to Cockrell)
The view that many Fundamentalist Christians have of witchcraft is that, "Like angels or the voice of Satan it is out there, unseen but ready to swallow up the hapless child who can be turned toward its seductive allure." (Cockrell, 2004. pp.26) In a study undertaken on imaginary friends, fundamentalist parents believe that they're associated with the devil and thus- "fantasy will lead to lying and other decietful behaviour." feeding a necessary need to 'Protect their children from evil forces in the imaginary world'. (Cockrell, 2004.) It must be terrifying for the people who believe this that so many children find the Harry Potter series so appealing, and that fantasy is such a popular genre for childrens fiction.
What Cockrell (2004) also suggests is a threat to religous parents who already have worries that their children are slipping away from more a more traditional belief system is the way in which media infiltrates our daily life and pervades over a large section of society. Due to the popularity of the Harry Potter books, fandom is spread throughout the media... There are countless fansites on the internet and hysteria is built and mediated through mass marketing and merchandise. Movies have been made from the series as well as video games. There are fears among many that their children will fall to the allure of Harry Potter and in doing so break away from the control of their parents and beliefs without them being able to see or stop it. Much like the Dursleys are unable to stop the onslaught of letters being sent to Harry from Hogwarts, despite travelling to a deserted shack perched on a rock by the sea.
A further point to be made is that the Harry Potter series belong in the realms of low fiction. witches, wizards and an array of supernatural creatures inhabit the world of contemporary London (and other parts of Europe) alongside Muggles. "The magical world is not in Middle Earth, it is here, in our world and at any moment it may manifest itseld. There is no escape. If it wants to find you, it will find you." (Cockrell, 2004. pp27) It is all too close to home, whereas, high fantasy takes place in otherworlds that create distance between 'readers' actual lives and the material they are reading'. When the boundary between fact and fiction is blurred within the setting of a story like it is with the Harry Potter books, the reader questions what is really true, this might be threatening to those who only want one truth... (Cockrell, 2004. pp 28.) Ursula Le Guinn's 'A Wizard of Earthsea' follows the tradition of high fantasy, by putting characters and events into Earthsea, a world created of imagination. I mentioned in my last post that the way that Ged and the other characters live in Earthsea is kind of primitive and almost like they're in the middle ages again. So although this setting is still recognisable, it isn't really comparable to our world now, and the pop culture of today's youth... My opinion is that it's familiar enough to visualise, but not so familiar that we could imagine living there as we do now... and is perhaps a reason why, unlike Harry Potter, it is free from from religous condemnation.
References:
Cockrell, A. (2004). Harry Potter and the Witch Hunters: A social context for the attacks on Harry Potter. The Journal of American Culture, Vol 29, No 1.
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