Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Talking Potter my generation

“I belong to the Harry Potter generation. Before the movies, the fame and the merchandise, came us, reading the books before bedtime.”- Vhari Leishman

(There are no spoilers in this post).

There were a lot of people, and when I say a lot, that may be an understatement, waiting for the Harry Potter book on Friday. Yes, I know everyone is talking about it. I also know that it is massively hyped in the media and some people may be sick of hearing about it.

I am not in this post going to talk about the book, but instead the reaction to the book. As I was saying, there has been a lot of waiting going on. I have been reading these books since I was 13 years old and I really have grown up with them. In those years, Harry Potter became more of a media storm, as we all know, when the movies started coming out. Of course the whole thing is going to get back lash, you can’t have good press without the bad press. There are people that argue that Rowling cannot write that the whole thing is a scam and a complete waste of time. In other words, of course there is negativity about the books. I wouldn’t think it would natural if there wasn’t.

On Friday 20th of July I was standing outside of Waterstones on Oxford Street along with thousands of other fans. I was not waiting for the book, because I hadn’t bought a tent. I wanted to see instead the reaction of these people who to love the books as much as I did. Some people had made a real effort; spend literally hours on their costumes. I think the creativity that went into some of was genius. These people were really loving coming together and celebrating a mutual love of something that is a solitary activity; reading.


So I get highly annoyed when people are posting videos of themselves running around shouting spoilers that were leaked onto the web, just before the book was released

Why on earth do people think it is funny to go out and ruin something that people have waited for, for as long as ten years? Those few seconds they shouted spoilers in the book store, ruined all those years of waiting to see what had happened. It’s simple, if you don’t like HP, then don’t read it.

I am not arguing for the books, but I am arguing for people’s rights to not want to know what is going to happen, until they have read it. Of course people also have the right to go out and ruin something if they choose, that’s not what I am debating. But they should not be ALLOWED to do it. You can argue that the Harry Potter media frenzy, all of it, wizards, magic and all is immature and pointless. Well so then, is what these people had done to ruin the collective enjoyment that thousands of people were getting out of this. Perhaps when they had finished, they went home to their one bedroomed sad and pathetic lives, where they could think of other ways to ruin people’s enjoyment in a sad attempt to try and make up for the fact that don’t get any other form of communication from people. I am very glad I didn’t run into them personally, to those that did, I am sure that like me they still enjoyed reading the book in bed. Here’s to the Harry Potter generation.

3 comments:

Rosalind said...

well said Sarah.
As we both know, i'm a very strong anti-Harry advocate but I HATE it when people ruin endings of books (or films) - whats the point in watching/reading if i know whats going to happen. part of the fun is the suspense - the urge to know - especially after such a popular series.

what a shitty circus.

vhari said...

I TOTALLY agree. I managed to steer clear and managed to remain completely spoiler free as I read the book, which I think is the only way to do it. But I honestly wanted to smack those who thinks its funny, or whatever to ruin it for others like that.

hope you enjoyed the book.
Vhari.-Thanks for using my quote :)
p.s I found this by google-ing myself...is that sad?

Rebecca said...

Haha, Vhari. =D

My friend phoned me up while I was reading the book. She hadn't read it yet but she has literally no desire to find things out for herself, she just wanted to know what happened as quickly as possible. I was a few hundred pages in and told her what had happened. Then we got to talking about what we thought was going to happen later, specifically who we thought would die. I theorised that Harry would, she wasn't so sure. Fun fun, I hung up the phone to get back to reading.

THEN, about half an hour later she phones up again.
"Harry... [tells me the answer to the above question]. My cousin's already finished the book."

Cue a couple of seconds silence while I'm stunned, faintly garbing out something along the lines of "And why would you think I'd want to know that" (great grammar, I know). I hang up phone, and don't talk to said fried for six months.

She still doesn't understand wy I was so upset...