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January 31, 2006

When I was in high school, it was all about who you knew. If you knew the right people you got into the best parties, sat at the best lunch tables, and got asked out by the best guys. These people set the fashions, created the social classes, and ultimately ran the school. Now, a lot of what they did didn’t make much sense. For example, why on earth would you voluntarily grow an afro if you could help it? There was no rhyme or reason to it, and it certainly didn’t look good, but everyone stood in the mirrors between classes and teased their matted hair a little more. Girl friends of mine pursued the guys with afros simply to follow the trend, when normally these ugly pimple-faced boys wouldn’t have been touched with a ten foot pole. I never got into all that and somehow the popular kids respected my independence and still liked me. I, on the other hand, counted down the days until I could get out of that place.

I was in for a rude awakening, however, to find that cliques, social status, and popularity contests are a part of every day life. You find it in college, in apartment complexes, in your working environment, and yes… even Harry Potter fansites. There are several layers of fansites, ranging from the upper echelon of fansites, to the middle-class sites, to the absolute jokes. The upper echelons decide who gets to be in their little club of fansites—induction is rare, however. The webmasters and webmistresses of these sites have their own fan clubs, have internet stalkers, and followers that visit their site just because they’re obsessed with the owners. These “high class” sites have over 50 people working for them, running every aspect of their site to keep the 500,000 + daily visitors happy. When middle-class sites send them news to use on their sites, they outright refuse to link to them—the only sites worth linking to are the ones in the upper echelons, they reason.

Then we come to the “middle-class” sites. These sites strive to one day become inducted into the upper echelons. They spend hours brainstorming, coming up with ideas no other site has tried. These are generally the most up to date on Harry Potter news because, hey, how else are they going to distinguish themselves? Everything they do is to get more users, and really, the only difference between them and the upper echelons is the number of people that visit every day. They have the SAME information (message boards, ff archives, galleries, etc.) as the upper echelons, but they haven’t been recognized and thus, they remain middle-class. When die-hard fans of the upper echelons visit the middle class sites, they become outraged, thinking the middle class sites must have copied the upper echelons. They post comments such as, “you have forums too?! How dare you copy ***.com!” or “Your site has a black background just like ***.com! You stole their idea!” This apparently makes sense to the die-hard fans—to them colors can be owned and the upper echelons always think of the ideas first; middle class sites only steal. To these die-hard fans, if we don’t have our own fan clubs, we have nothing to give the Harry Potter world.

The absolute joke fansites are barely worth mentioning. These are sites thrown together hastily, where the webmasters or webmistresses run the entire thing themselves, post news once a month, and have nothing to offer the visitor. These sites are frequented only by friends or family members of the owner. They also fancy themselves as good as every other Harry Potter site. These sites will never be more than a hobby to their owners because they can only go so far with their limited resources and skills.

You see now that there is indeed a social class to Harry Potter fansites. These cliques will never go away because they’re so fundamental (unfortunately) to every aspect of our lives. For some fansites their lower status is deserved (I site the absolute joke sites for this statement); for others, they just aren’t apart of the special club that means the difference between 200 visitors a day and 200,000. As far as this webmistress is concerned, Harry Potter should be the one place where popularity contests and cliques are abolished. As I thought in high school and as I continue to think today, popularity contest and cliques are immature and silly. Long live the middle-class fansites!

 

September 26, 2005

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!

Maybe I’m not the cleverest person in the world; the brightest light bulb in the room; the best cookie in the cookie jar…you get my point. But JK has written a lot of things that I did not see coming at all. Ok, so Harry/Ginny was not one of them. I’m sorry to all the Harry/Herm shippers out there, but your fantasy must have clouded your judgment. Harry/Ginny wasn’t even a small HINT in the books, it was about as obvious as Hagrid is when he ventures out in Muggle London. (How’s THAT for a HP simile?!)

But the BIG things, the real plot turners, I submit, have not been so obvious. Again, perhaps I’m just not that observant, but the death in book blew me absolutely away; the death in book 5 was completely unexpected; Ron/Lavendar, while disgusting, were also surprising; the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, totally shocking! And I know I was not alone on this, so don’t be smug and think you’re so clever. You may have been the exception, but the general HP fan world was just as clueless as I was. I saw the fan polls, I know what everyone thought. The general consensus before book 5 came out was that Hagrid was going to bite the dust. People proclaimed far and wide that Dumbledore’s death could not possibly happen until the final show down with Voldie in book 7. Things appear so obvious to us and then… WHAM! JK does something unexpected.

That’s what made me think. Is RAB really Regulus Black? So yes, the HP Lexicon is practically the HP Bible. Yes, they’re hardly wrong. Yeah, the letters fit exactly. Yes, Regulus was once a Death Eater and betrayed Voldemort. Yes, he’s Sirius’ brother, Yes. Yes. Yes. But what if it wasn’t that simple? What if JK is playing with our heads again. All signs point to Regulus, but then, all signs pointed to Hagrid dying instead of Sirius, to Hermione and Ron getting together before now, and for Dumbledore sticking around for another book.

I don’t have anyone to offer up instead of Regulus. Like I said, cleverness is not my thing. For now I’m playing the skeptic. JK has fooled me so many times that my skepticism has grown naturally over the years.

 

September 6, 2005

Fandom
By. Cindy
The Whomping Willow #1

People are obsessed with celebrities and pop-culture in general. When people turn on the news, it’s to find out about Brad Pitt’s latest flame. Ashley Simpson’s lip-sync uh-oh seems more important to the general public then genocide in the Sudan or floods in Indonesia. We give them first class status simply for doing their jobs. Aww… Michael Jackson doesn’t abuse children, he’s just a 40 year old man that invites children to sleep in his bed! He’s misunderstood! I am not the exception—I don’t claim to be. Every morning after reading the international section of the New York Times, I go onto Yahoo where the celebrity headlines are nicely organized. And if I ever met Ewan McGreggor or Jude Law, I’d probably give them whatever they wanted (if I could remain conscious).

But nowhere is this obsession more apparent then in the land of Harry Potter fandom. We the fans spend hours theorizing about characters, plots, sub-plots, and rumors. Others make HP websites (*cough*), newsletters, and ff archives. We go to midnight releases of the books and the movies and spend large amounts of money on both as well as other Harry Potter merchandise. We learn the history, birthdays, film-ographies, favorite colors, pet’s names, family member’s names, favorite movies, favorite book titles, and other such meaningless facts about all the Harry Potter actors and JK Rowling.

People young and old have considered and continue to ask questions like, “what if Tom Felton were a few years older?” “What if Emma Watson and I ever met?” We know such questions are absolutely ridiculous as Tom Felton will never magically turn 22 just so he and I can date, and Emma Watson fans have a just as unlikely chance of randomly bumping into her and becoming best friends.

But we continue to obsess and obsess over their lives. We celebrate when we read article about JK Rowling finding her Scottish heritage; we’re nervous wrecks when we hear that Tom Felton has a cold; we send large packages to Daniel Radcliffe when it’s his birthday even though we’ve never met him; we read ridiculous rumor after rumor about JK’s husband quitting work so he can sit home and watch JK write just incase she slips up one day and actually admits it.

And why do we care about all that? Would any of you care in the least to read an article about me detailing my life story. Are any of you interested in the fact that I’m 100 percent Polish, or that I, like JK, am adopted? We’re both adopted, it’s the same situation, but it’s automatically less interesting when it comes from me. Would any of you care if I exclaimed to the Daily Mirror that I just broke up with my boy friend or that my favorite color is in fact black? No, and for good reason. It’s boring.

After theorizing about what exactly drives our obsession, it’s time to consider something else. This may shock and astound some of you, but here it goes. Perhaps the HP stars and celebrities do not like us rummaging around in their lives. In a recent interview with contactmusic.com, Daniel Radcliffe stated that he wishes he could remain anonymous. Radcliffe related the following incident in order to illustrate just how difficult it is to even go out of the house: “Recently I was near a tube station and this kid looked at me, and it was like a moment in a Spaghetti Western where you have two gunslingers staring. But this kid, I could see it in his eyes, he recognised me, and it would have been fine if he hadn't gone, 'Hey everyone, who's that?' And then about 30 people saw me and that was overwhelming.”

It has been the same for every HP star, especially JK herself. Recently there has been one article after the other detailing how JK has had to defend herself against ridiculous rumors (like the one given above regarding her husband’s reason for being jobless). And with the enormous success of The Half Blood Prince, JK has been taking even more ridicule from fellow authors such as Terry Pratchett and Jane Yolen. Yolen, a famous children’s author that has published nearly 300 books, recently accused JK of stealing several aspects from her book Wizard Hall and stated that the HP series just wasn’t well written. Melissa Annelli from the Leaky Cauldron released a response statement on their website confronting the accusation that said,

“We remind those with successful publishing careers that making an accusation of plagiarism is extremely serious and they should be prepared to back it up with proof. The book referenced was published in America in 1991, about the time Rowling was up to inventing Quidditch and had written 10 different first chapters for the first book. She was also teaching English as a foreign language in Portugal, and would have had to go quite out of her way to find Wizard's Hall and incorporate it into her early drafts.”

Some would say that JK and the HP actors have subjected themselves willingly to the public eye. After all, no one forced JK to write the Harry Potter series just as no one forced the HP actors and actresses to be in the movies. To an extent, this is true. They make themselves public, so we the public are interested in them and their lives. But there is a fine line, in fact, it’s not even fine. It’s long, wide, bright red, and sometimes has flashing lights around it. It’s the line between admiration and pure inappropriateness. It has to do with not needing to know something they’re not willing to tell us; accepting the fact that they are just every day humans; acknowledging their right to walk down the street or go shopping without being videotaped or followed; treating them with the same respect we expect for ourselves; appreciating the job they do.

This of course does not mean all HP sites should close down or that we shouldn’t watch the movie premieres, etc. It’s fine that you have a picture of Tom Felton to Emma Watson on your desktop. The Map will continue posting news about the HP world and the people in it. We’ll all continue obsessing over what happens next, whether or not Rupert looks too much like a girl in the GoF trailers, and we’ll all still try and memorize all the birthday of the fictitious HP characters. It’s fun, it’s a hobby, it’s not crossing any lines. I would just ask you, my beloved readers to be considerate. If one day, you see Daniel Radcliffe at the tube, or you see JK at the grocery store, be polite. Thank them for sharing their talent. Do not point or gawk. Do not spread rumors that defame them. Just continue doing what JK and the HP actors would like you to do—enjoy the HP world.

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