Well, I've known all this for a while. I mean, you wouldn't expect me to be reading a book and wondering why the wizards aren't off curing AIDS and ending global poverty?
The curious thing about Rowling's world is that I don't think we're ever even given a really good reason WHY the wizarding world doesn't associate itself with our own. Except that electromagnetic based power supplies don't seem to be able to work at Hogwarts. Which is odd because, frankly, cell phones are far more efficient than owls. (Although I suppose I'm neglecting the cost of some Nigerian guy mining for the silicon in the circuits.)
What fundamentally really bothers me about the world building is that you have a bunch of twelve-year olds at Hogwarts who grew up, not in Wizarding world, but in modern-day London. For fuck's sake, so did two of the protagonists!
So what I don't understand is this: obviously, the Wizarding world is archaic and backwards. We see this in Hermoine's futile campaign to help free LITERAL slaves, the house elves. Tom Riddle, the future Voldemort, is a half-blood himself who managed to recruit a bunch of rich pure-blood Wizards to do his class-based evil. So why is it that neither Harry or Hermione, having experience with the outside world, realize that the enclosed nature of their Wizarding world is MOSTLY TO BLAME FOR ALLOWING IT TO HAPPEN?
That book series should have ended with the magical world exposed and forced to integrate with the real world. But, sadly, Rowling becomes too wrapped up in her happy middle-class values to actually do it, and the books end with her pairing the characters off FOR LIFE and then putting their sprog on the train to Hogwarts as if that were a good thing.
I'd write the story that would fix it, but the problem is that Harry Potter has made Rowling a multi-millionaire, whereas if I were lucky I'd like, get paid. It seems cold fish to me.
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Re: http://skywaterblue.livejournal.com/931026.html#cutid1
Date: 2009-07-16 04:44 pm (UTC)The curious thing about Rowling's world is that I don't think we're ever even given a really good reason WHY the wizarding world doesn't associate itself with our own. Except that electromagnetic based power supplies don't seem to be able to work at Hogwarts. Which is odd because, frankly, cell phones are far more efficient than owls. (Although I suppose I'm neglecting the cost of some Nigerian guy mining for the silicon in the circuits.)
What fundamentally really bothers me about the world building is that you have a bunch of twelve-year olds at Hogwarts who grew up, not in Wizarding world, but in modern-day London. For fuck's sake, so did two of the protagonists!
So what I don't understand is this: obviously, the Wizarding world is archaic and backwards. We see this in Hermoine's futile campaign to help free LITERAL slaves, the house elves. Tom Riddle, the future Voldemort, is a half-blood himself who managed to recruit a bunch of rich pure-blood Wizards to do his class-based evil. So why is it that neither Harry or Hermione, having experience with the outside world, realize that the enclosed nature of their Wizarding world is MOSTLY TO BLAME FOR ALLOWING IT TO HAPPEN?
That book series should have ended with the magical world exposed and forced to integrate with the real world. But, sadly, Rowling becomes too wrapped up in her happy middle-class values to actually do it, and the books end with her pairing the characters off FOR LIFE and then putting their sprog on the train to Hogwarts as if that were a good thing.
I'd write the story that would fix it, but the problem is that Harry Potter has made Rowling a multi-millionaire, whereas if I were lucky I'd like, get paid. It seems cold fish to me.