The Harry Potter fandom is a large international and informal community drawn together by J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. The fandom works through the use of many different forms of media, including web sites, fan fiction, podcasts, fan art and songvids. Harry Potter fan fiction, stories based on the series but written by fans and distributed online, is the most searched-for subject of all fan fiction on the web, surpassing even those in the Star Trek fandom, or Trekdom. However, the fandom not only interacts online in Internet forums, but also gathers at scholarly fan conventions, tours of iconic landmarks relevant to the books and production of the films, and parties held for the midnight release of each book and film.
By the fourth Harry Potter book, the legions of Harry Potter fans had grown so large that considerable security measures were taken to ensure that no book was purchased before the official release date Studies on the fandom have shown that both children and adults are fans, despite Rowling's original marketing of the books towards children aged nine to twelve.
Pottermania
Pottermania is an informal term first used around 1999 describing the craze Harry Potter fans have had over the series. Fans held midnight parties to celebrate the release of the final four books at bookstores which stayed open on the night leading into the date of the release. In 2005, Entertainment Weekly listed the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as one of "Entertainment's Top Moments" of the previous 25 years.
The craze over the series was parodied in Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada as well as its 2006 film adaptation. In the story, the protagonist Andrea Sachs is ordered to retrieve two copies of the next installment in the series for her boss's twins before they are published so that they can be privately flown to France, where the twins and their mother are on holiday.
The series has come with its share of criticism as well. Allegations of witchcraft and the Occult found in the text, and legal disputes, one doctor coined the term "Hogwarts headache" in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine shortly after the release of Order of the Phoenix , the longest book in the series, at 768 pages in the UK edition, 870 pages in the US edition, and over 250,000 words. He described it as a mild condition, a tension headache possibly accompanied by neck or wrist pains, caused by unhealthily long reading sessions of Harry Potter . The "symptoms" resolve themselves within days of finishing the book. His prescription of taking reading breaks was rejected by two of the patients on which he discovered this headache. On a similar note, researchers in Oxford found that the admission rate of children with traumatic injuries to the city's ERs plummeted on the publication weekends of both Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince .
Fan sites
There are many fan web sites about Harry Potter on the Internet, the oldest ones dating to about 1997 or 1998. J. K. Rowling has an open relationship with her fan base, and since 2004 periodically hands out a "fan site award" on her official web site. The first site to receive the award was Immeritus, a fan site mostly devoted to Sirius Black, and about which Rowling wrote, "I am so proud of the fact that a character, whom I always liked very much, though he never appeared as much more than a brooding presence in the books, has gained a passionate fan-club."
In 2004, after Immeritus, Rowling bestowed the honor upon four sites. The first was Godric's Hollow; strangely, the site's domain name is occupied by advertisers and its content is lost, and there is no further record on Rowling's site that Godric's Hollow ever received the award. The next site was the Harry Potter Lexicon, an online encyclopedia Rowling has admitted to visiting while writing away from home rather than buying a copy of her books in a store. She called it "for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home." The third site of 2004 was MuggleNet, a web site featuring the latest news in the Potter world, among editorials, forums, and a podcast. Rowling wrote when giving the award, "It's high time I paid homage to the mighty MuggleNet," and listed all the features she loved, including "the pretty-much-exhaustive information on all books and films." The last site was HPANA, the first fan site Rowling ever visited, "faster off the mark with Harry Potter news than any other site" Rowling knows, and "fantastically user-friendly."
In 2005, only The Leaky Cauldron was honored. In Rowling's words, "it is about the worst kept secret on this website that I am a huge fan of The Leaky Cauldron," which she calls a "wonderfully well designed mine of accurate information on all things Harry Potter." On another occasion, Rowling has called the Leaky Cauldron her "favorite fan site." In 2006, the Brazilian website Potterish was the only site honored, in recognition of its "style, Potter-expertise and responsible reporting." It is the only non-English language website to be awarded.
In May 2007, Harry Potter Fan Zone received the award. Rowling recognized the insightful editorials as well as praised the site for its young and dedicated staff. In December 2007, the award went to The Harry Potter Alliance, a campaign that seeks to end discrimination, genocide, poverty, AIDS, global warming, and other "real-world Dark Arts", relating these problems to the books. Rowling called the project "extraordinary" and "most inspirational", and paralleled its mission to "the values for which Dumbledore's Army fought in the books". In an article about her in Time , Rowling expressed her gratefulness at the site's successful work raising awareness and sign-up levels among antigenocide coalitions.
At one time, Warner Bros., which owns the rights to Harry Potter and its affiliates, tried to shut down the sites. The unsuccessful attempt eventually led to their inviting the webmasters of the top sites to premieres of the films and tours of the film sets, because of their close connection with the fans. Warner Bros. executives have acknowledged that many fans are disappointed that certain elements of the books are left out, but not trying to avoid criticism, "bringing the fan sites into the process is what we feel is really important."
These fan sites contain news updates into the world of the books, films, and film cast members through the use of forums, image galleries, or video galleries. They also host user-submitted creations, such as fan art or fan fiction (see below). Some YouTube member pages devoted to fan videos, which are typically in the form of anime music videos or songvids.
Podcasts
The Harry Potter fandom has embraced podcasts as a regular, often weekly, insight to the latest discussion in the fandom. Apple Inc. has featured two of the podcasts, MuggleCast and PotterCast. Both have reached the top spot of iTunes podcast rankings and have been polled one of the top 50 favorite podcasts. At the 2006 Podcast Awards, when MuggleCast and PotterCast each received two nominations for the same two categories, the two podcasts teamed up and requested listeners vote for PotterCast in the Best Entertainment category and MuggleCast in the People's Choice category. Both podcasts won these respective categories.
MuggleCast, hosted by MuggleNet staffers, was created in August 2005, not long after the release of Half-Blood Prince . Topics of the first show focused on Horcruxes, "R.A.B.", the Goblet of Fire film, which was due for release two months later, and the website DumbledoreIsNotDead.com. Since then, MuggleCast has held chapter-by-chapter discussions, character analyses, and a discussion on a "theory of the week." MuggleCast has also added humor to their podcast with segments like "Spy on Spartz," where the hosts would call MuggleNet webmaster Emerson Spartz and reveal his current location or activity with the listening audience. British staff member Jamie Lawrence tells a British joke of the week, and host Andrew Sims reads an email sent to MuggleNet with a strange request or incoherent talk (dubbed "Huh?! Email of the Week").. MuggleCast is currently the highest rated Harry Potter Podcast on the Internet. On August 18, 2008, MuggleCast stopped recording weekly episodes but are still releasing them every few weeks, or whenever substantial Harry Potter news is released.
PotterCast was released less than two weeks after MuggleCast's first episode. Produced by The Leaky Cauldron, it differed from MuggleCast with a more structured program, including various segments and involvement of more people on the Leaky Cauldron staff compared to MuggleCast. It also was the first and is still the only Potter podcast to produce regular interviews with people directly involved with the books and films. The first show featured interviews with Stuart Craig, art director of the films, as well as Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny Weasley. PotterCast has also interviewed Matthew Lewis (the actor who portrays Neville Longbottom), Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood), Jamie Waylett (Vincent Crabbe), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Newell (directors of the fourth film), Arthur A. Levine & Cheryl Klein (editors of the books at Scholastic), and even the author of the book series, J.K. Row
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Harry Potter fandom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Harry Potter fandom is a large international and informal community drawn together by J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series. The fandom works through the use of many different ...
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