Harry Potter Swancon Panel

[sqbr]

So...it turns out I'm running the Harry Potter Panel at Swancon. By myself. (No fault to Dave, apparently everyone else said no. Bah to them!)

Which is somewhat problematic given that while I have a LOT of opinions (that's why I volunteered) they're mostly negative and uninformed, and thus likely to get me lynched :) So anyone who actually thinks the books are good (and doesn't mind sharing a panel with someone who thinks they're enjoyable but flawed) want to do it with me? Otherwise I'll just coopt the first friendly face to turn up to the panel :D

It's at 2pm on Monday.

Anyone who has ideas on stuff to talk about/useful facts/links etc please pipe up!



Panel synopsis (which I feel comfortable stretching a bit since I didn't write it :))

Harry Potter: The Final Analysis
The seventh and final book has been published, and the back cover
closed on one of the biggest fiction phenomenons of all time. So
what, in the final analysis, does Harry Potter represent? A look at
its effect and influence on children's fiction, fantasy fiction,
Internet fandom and the book publishing industry.

Some ideas I had

I do not have answers to many of these questions :/

What's so special about Harry Potter?
-popularity
-breadth of popularity (not just kids)
-impact on public consciousness
-Intensity of fandom, including large acafandom

What are the reasons for this?
-easy to read but engaging and lots of ideas
-follow on effects from popularity
-uses idtatstic tropes ie Magical Orphan on Quest, "Hero of a Thousand Faces" stuff etc

What effect has it had?
-Encouraged reading?
-Revitalised childrens/sff publishing?
-Acafandom
-Fandom in general
-Strikethrough

What's going to happen next?
-Popularity?
-Academia/literary status?
-Will large scale effects it had dissipate quickly? Have they already?

What do we really think of it anyway?

EDIT: Links and stuff other people have suggested:

• Penny Dreadful very kindly compiled a list of really interesting links
  
• HPforGrownups
  
• Fiction Ally
  

Comments

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

Oh I just replied to this in my other journal in your other post.

I'm a huge HP fan, but I agree with your points about it's appeal and wouldn't overstate at all it's potential to benefit childrens' fiction or publishing longer term.

It's owes much success to the snowball effect of cross-over appeal to a number of audiences, and the eventual concentrated "media phenomenon" intense marketing that kicked in. Fun book, but kid's wanting more of the same limited tropes, by the same authors suits the selling patterns of Borders etc., not small publishers or new authors doing anything experimental with the genre.

Will look for bookseller articles. An interesting angle I haven't seen written on [and perhaps at a con some geeks would know about] is what role in the cultural phenomenon has the youth of the fans played in creating the phenomenon?

Sites like Mugglenet and the numerous visible LJ fanfiction comms influenced commerical media's awareness of it as a cultural phenomenon beyond the books.
The sheer volume of those sites reflects the amount of members of that fandom who are there not because they were into fandom previously - but because they're the 1st generation to grow up with a cross-over between RL cultures and online cultures as a norm for everyone but the very low income, not just geeks and techys.

What's the relation of youth pop subculture generators in directing profits to commercial adult media creators [fuel their product brands and platforms by social networking] who still view then as passive consumers who may be censored for efforts [Strikethrough, authors who oppose fanfic related publishing] .

[alias_sqbr]

You should totally fly over here and help with the panel :)

MMmm, the cross media hypedness I think had almost as much to do with the books success as the book itself.

It hadn't occured to me that's it's sheer hugeness would change media attitudes to fandom and fannishness in general, that's a good point.

*ponders the effects of youth and changing attitudes to media etc*