Harry Potter Essay Sample
Is Harry Potter The Work Of Literature That Defines The Millennial Generation?
It’s unarguable that the Harry Potter series is extremely popular among late Millennials – those who were children when the first book was published and who grew up with the consecutive novels. However, according to many researchers, the books did not only attract the attention of the so called Generation Y but also defined its core characteristics and possibly even influenced its political and social behavior.
Although fictional, the world of Harry Potter is a mirror image of our society where certain groups (beings with magic powers) are more privileged than others (Muggles). Some researchers argue that the Harry Potter series promotes tolerance, embracing of diversity and reaching out to people who are different than us – values attributed to the Millennial generation. Psychologists Loris Vezzali et al. point that “Harry has meaningful contact with characters belonging to stigmatized groups” and that “he tries to understand them and appreciate their difficulties” (Vezzali) . This way Harry perfectly fits in the Millennial generation, not only in terms of age – he first “came into the world” in 1997 – but also in terms of worldview.
Some researchers go even further, claiming that reading Harry Potter may have actually shaped a generation’s political attitude. Because the underlying values of the series are liberal in nature, it is argued that Harry Potter fans are much more likely to vote for liberal parties than their peers who have not read the books. In his book Harry Potter and the Millennials : Research Methods and the Politics of the Muggle Generation author Anthony Gierzynski writes that Harry Potter fans are “more opposed to the use of violence and torture” and exhibit “a more negative view of the Bush years” (qtd. in Kozlowska) . Gierzynski even supposes that having read Harry Potter, young people in America were motivated to vote for Obama in the 2008 elections. A Pew Research Center survey carried out in 2008 does show that Millennials constituted the greater part of the Democratic electorate (Keeter).
One may argue that Harry Potter fandom and political and social attitude are no more than coincidental. But this does not contradict the fact that the book series does promote the values attributed by sociologists to the Millennial generation. Thus, Harry Potter can be viewed as a product emblematic of its time – a fantasy world which mirrors an increasingly more competitive but also more open, tolerant and liberal society.
Works Cited
- Keeter, Scott, et al. “Young Voters in the 2008 Election.” Pew Research Center, 13 Nov. 2008, www.pewresearch.org/2008/11/13/young-voters- in-the- 2008-election/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Kozlowska, Hanna. “Can ‘Harry Potter’ Change the World?” Op-Talk.blogs.nytimes.com, The New York Times Company, 17 Sept. 2014, op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/can-harry- potter-change- the-world/?_r=1. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. - Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., Capozza, D. and Trifiletti, E. (2015), “The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice.” J Appl Soc Psychol, 45: 105–121.doi:10.1111/jasp.12279. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
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