The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II post. (Come now. I write fantasy. You knew it was coming.)

This last Thursday night, like ever so many other human beings in the English speaking world, I saw the grand finale of the Harry Potter films. Watching movies at midnight has been a long time past time of mine. Often in costume. In fact, just last month, I saw a special showing of The Two Towers extended edition armed with home made lembas bread. But this wasn't just another pirate movie or something I could choose to watch at home on VHS (yes, another testament of my geek-dom. I still watch those). This was the last of a cultural phenomenon, a series that has taken over ten years to translate into film. So despite the fact that I had work at eight AM the next morning ,and despite the fact that it came after a long day at the DMV, I visited three theaters in person and then spent over an hour on line to get a hold of a ticket.

Eventually I ended up at Horton Plaza downtown San Diego. Needless to say it was crowded. The mall was swarming with young wizards and excited fans but there was something . . . different about these fans compared to those I've waited in line with for other movies.

First there was the costumes. Most of them were store manufactured. They were very accurate of course, but showcased none of the ridiculous dedication and knowledge it takes for a geek to piece one together on his own. There was one home made costume but after puzzling for some time over the inaccuracy I discovered (because the wearer of said costume was asked) that it was meant to be a Gandalf costume.

This was the first sign that something was wrong. As the night progressed many other strange things took place.

My brother and I sat in our seats, drawing each other Harry Potter themed word puzzles to pass the time

The ingenious and excruciatingly difficult Harry Potter word search my brother drew for me to do. You can tell how ingenious it was because he broke down and gave me hints (note the arrows) and I still didn't finish it before the movie started.



The slightly less ingenious crossword puzzle I drew for my brother. You can tell it is less ingenious because he finished it in a matter of minutes. Or maybe he's just a genius.


While we did this a light saber fight broke out somewhere in the theater, met with enthusiastic cheers from the crowd. A beach ball was released and thrown back into the air with shouted quotes from Spartacus. My little brothers' friend admitted to me that not only had he read none of the books but hadn't seen the last two movies.

I slowly began to realize that I was not surrounded by fellow die-hard fans of the boy who lived out to watch the final battle with he who must not be named and compare the adaptation to J.K. Rowling's original. I was in an excitable crowd of people harboring varying degrees of fondness for Harry Potter who were out to have a good time. If I was certain you had read Terry Pratchett's Going Postal I would tell you that they were not true pin-heads. They were merely *gasp* hobbyists.

When I first began to read the Harry Potter books I was reluctant because they were so popular (a bit of my inner emo manifesting itself there). But my sister insisted that however much the books were overestimated in the eyes of the public they were equally underestimated. They are praised and hyped at every corner of the universe because they've made so much money and, well everyone else is talking about them, but few people really take the time to recognize their true literary value. The believable aging of the characters, the progression of the themes as Harry gets older, the way Rowling sets up plot twists so far in advance and then hides them with school yard drama.

With that in mind I don't suppose it was much of a surprise to see that Harry's last moment was over shadowed by his own popularity. The world is full of people who want to be excited about something and one hit movie will do as well as another, but what really struck me, and made me feel just a teensy bit lonely, was that they were playing the game of the geeks. Except that it wasn't uncool anymore and it wasn't as meaningful. I can't help but wonder, does this always happen when something good is discovered by everyone else? Is it maybe better to let some things remain unknown?

Scop of Gleeman?

Scop --Anglo Saxon poet who wrote and recited heroic epics about battles and morality and glory

Gleeman --minstral or bard, more interested in entertainment than heroic themes


Scop of Gleeman? Poet or entertainer? Teacher or creater of divertions? Sophisticated literature or genre fiction?

I sometimes feel like there is a line drawn for writers. On one side deep thinking social comentary chocked full of elaborate allusions to our predisesors and on the other J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown and Stephanie Myers. We must choose if we want to write 'real' inovative literature or best sellers.

My question is why not both? Or niether. Does every story worth telling have to be a great masterpiece? Is it only worth anything if it makes a lot of money?

The clasifications aren't really so different. I'm not afraid to strive for perfection but I don't think I'm the only who has read some of the great classics and felt like there were places they could be tweaked. I still enjoyed them, recognized genius in them but the perfectionist is never satisfied.

Not all the great classics were written with 'greatness' in mind. Kidknapped is a classic 'blood and thunder'. Shakespeare wrote histories that were more or less court propoganda but they managed to stick around. They were entertainments with enough thought provoking matter (or simply emotions that we can connect with) that we still find them worth reading hundreds of years later. We are still diverted and entertained by them. Profound doesn't usually happen on purpose.

Granted Twilight probably won't be taught in schools a hundred years from now and a lot of the books that are didn't make any amount of money worth mentioning when the author was alive. Still, a story is a story and the question shouldn't be "How much money will it make?" or "What is the great meaning behind it?" but "does it want to be told?"

Scop or Gleeman? Poet or player? Literary or Genre? What's the difference?