So you can allow Harry Potter to live, but you have to sterilize him

March 30, 2018 11:10 PM

Washington Post columnist Elizabeth Bruenig's husband Matt has never read or seen Harry Potter. Here, he tries to reconstruct what the story is about based on political journalism written using Harry Potter analogies.

The syllabus:

Ross Douthat, "The Muggle Problem"

Heather Wilhelm, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Balderdash"

Charlotte Ahlin, "9 Political Lessons We Can Learn From Harry Potter"

Alyssa Rosenberg, "The Political Lessons Of 'Harry Potter'"

Buzzfeed Quiz: Who Said It: Steve Bannon Or Lord Voldemort?

posted by Knappster (31 comments total)

I really don’t know why I find these things so delightful.
posted by greermahoney at 12:24 AM on March 31, 2018

An awesome and necessary project, but for the bit about having to read Ross Douthat.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:30 AM on March 31, 2018 [13 favorites]

(I've neither seen nor read any of the source material either, BTW, and had just about exactly the same impressions Matt does, on most every count. Geert Wilders might not have been my go-to comparison, though.)
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:38 AM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

To be paid for sniggering fondly at one's spouse is truly living the dream.
posted by hawthorne at 5:06 AM on March 31, 2018 [19 favorites]

"So who's the protagonist of Harry Potter? A softball one."
"Well, it's Harry Potter, I didn't pick that up from anything I read but obviously, that's the name of the series."
"So it's eponymous. What can you tell us about Harry?"
"Well, he's mixed-race."

(I enjoy that the verbal tics of the hosts essentially act as speaker markings.)
posted by Merus at 6:50 AM on March 31, 2018 [8 favorites]

I think that’s more or less how most of us have learned what we know about, say, the Bible (and Christianity). That is to say, by absorbing it via secondary and tertiary sources dissolved in the cultural soup. Mostly we get it right, or right enough to comprehend what’s happening around us.

Now I’m off to RTFA to test the accuracy of that.
posted by notyou at 7:47 AM on March 31, 2018 [4 favorites]

Oh. It’s audio.
posted by notyou at 7:48 AM on March 31, 2018 [19 favorites]

Oh. It’s audio.

(My secret reason for transcribing the start of the actual conversation was to entice you to put up with a 25 minute audio recording instead of a nice 5 minute article, to come back to it when you have room in your life for an audio recording.)
posted by Merus at 7:58 AM on March 31, 2018 [7 favorites]

I also haven't read any of the books or seen any of the movies, and a lot of my impressions are the same. (Actually, I did see maybe 15 minutes of one of the movies. I think they were getting ready for a party, and then there was a party?) We have a big Harry Potter Festival and our town every year, and my acapella group is one of the strolling entertainments. Nobody's ever told me i've gotten a song choice wrong, so I guess enough of it is in the zeitgeist for that.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:59 AM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

(Oh, audio is fine! I would have known it was audio had I comprehended the source before commenting.)
posted by notyou at 8:04 AM on March 31, 2018

I normally skip audio, but it's a day off work for me, so... this was incredibly delightful. I laughed and laughed. When he decided that Harry must be sterilized...
posted by pwinn at 8:24 AM on March 31, 2018

That is to say, by absorbing it via secondary and tertiary sources dissolved in the cultural soup. Mostly we get it right, or right enough to comprehend what’s happening around us

I like to imagine future cultural historians inferring the canon of Western culture through references in the Simpsons, just as medievalists discover unknown legends from off-hand references in Grail stories.
posted by zamboni at 8:56 AM on March 31, 2018 [17 favorites]

Zamboni, I’ve often thought about the Simpsons as popular culture repository for future generations to analyze. I’m confident there will be many dissertations written on the series in the coming centuries.
posted by darkstar at 9:11 AM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

Zamboni and darkstar, you are not alone. I heard about this recently:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Burns,_a_Post-Electric_Play
posted by Vigilant at 10:01 AM on March 31, 2018 [6 favorites]

Mostly we get it right, or right enough to comprehend what’s happening around us

Or we base our opinions on Ross Douthat articles and come away thinking a certain supposed secret cabal of ruling elites, and those who share their ethnicity, should be rounded up and shot.

That’s the moral of this, I think. Knowledge: Get more of it. (Also, Douthat: Get less of it.) (Also also, don’t base articles around pop culture bullshit not everyone is in on.)
posted by Sys Rq at 10:31 AM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

This whole interview was hilarious! Thank you for posting it.

Who is the primary antagonist?
Voldemort is!
Can you tell me a bit about Voldemort?
I get a sense that he is...maybe the dean of [Hogwarts]?

And that bit about Geert Wilders was funny, but the more you think about it, actually not that bad an analogy.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:11 AM on March 31, 2018 [4 favorites]

Please sign in or sign up to open this link
Sigh
posted by The otter lady at 11:23 AM on March 31, 2018

You shouldn't need any sort of login to open a Soundcloud link - only to follow Elizabeth Bruenig's account.
posted by sagc at 11:26 AM on March 31, 2018

Hilarious, but especially because this American couple, of course, fixates on race (and the subtext of slavery) and ignores most of the very English class warfare going on in Rowling's narrative. Since the English class system very much has an essentialist aspect, that's not altogether surprising. (Honestly, as an allegory of England, Harry Potter makes Lord of the Rings look positively Hermetic.)

I would totally read an alternative Harry Potter in which wizards were a magical Homo offshoot.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:36 AM on March 31, 2018 [6 favorites]

This is so delightful, especially for the affectionate spousal sniggering.
posted by lunasol at 11:42 AM on March 31, 2018 [2 favorites]

As someone else who has read one of the Harry Potter books and still doesn't understand just about any cultural references to it, I look forward to reading this!
posted by salvia at 11:49 AM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love the way she loses it and giggles at his wilder rambles but then moments later delivers a deadly serious and accurate summation of his points that makes them seem even crazier.
posted by srboisvert at 12:03 PM on March 31, 2018 [5 favorites]

Can you tell me a bit about Voldemort?
I get a sense that he is...maybe the dean of [Hogwarts]?

And now I’m spending too much time trying to imagine a Harry Potter/Animal House crossover.
posted by bibliowench at 12:20 PM on March 31, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don’t think you can sum Draco up in five words better than “head of a rival fraternity “.
posted by meinvt at 12:26 PM on March 31, 2018 [10 favorites]

I’m also sad he didn’t have much to say about Hermione, despite her rather leading prompt. My conclusion is the world needs more Hermione analogies.
posted by meinvt at 12:28 PM on March 31, 2018 [7 favorites]

My conclusion is the world needs more Hermione analogies.

We had one but a lot people prefered a Ron analogy and wouldn't let it go.
posted by srboisvert at 1:37 PM on March 31, 2018 [20 favorites]

And now I’m spending too much time trying to imagine a Harry Potter/Animal House crossover.

The resultant slash fic would be quite something, I would imagine.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:22 PM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

Larry Kroger/Harry Potter in “Call Me By My Patronus”. Angst, H/C, schmoop.
posted by darkstar at 3:11 PM on March 31, 2018 [4 favorites]

That was a great piece of utterly faux-naive criticism. I agree with almost all of its points, since of course they are the same ones that have been made of high fantasy from the age of Tolkien and before. But there is no way either Bruenig is unaware of this critical tradition, since however well you may avoid Potter or Tolkien, there is no avoiding X-Men if you are of their age. It's especially implausible if you know who Matt Bruenig is (and please let's not derail the conversation to discuss his politics). But given all that, I found it an appealingly blithe, Swiftian trolling of centrist Potterism, and most of its class and (somewhat mis-applied, US-style) racial criticisms are dead on.
posted by chortly at 10:27 PM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah I'm sure he hasn't read the books. I'm sure he's also intentionally poking a bit at the Potter-politics genre. But then once Ross Douthat gets in on it it's about done for anyway.
posted by atoxyl at 11:39 PM on March 31, 2018

Could there PLEASE be an SL-AUTOPLAY tag, please? Just in general. Parents of napping infants that are now screaming everywhere would be grateful. Jesus.
posted by jfwlucy at 1:07 PM on April 1, 2018 [4 favorites]