This, according to the famous Henry Jenkins, media scholar at MIT, could be the way the next wave of activists gets nurtured. Jenkins calls this “Avatar Activism.”
About 100,000 Harry Potter fans have been mobilized by HPA for causes including marriage equality, genocide prevention and literacy. They raised enough money to send five cargo planes to Haiti bearing medical supplies after the earthquake there, and they’ve bought thousands of books for libraries in Rwanda and the Mississippi Delta.
Harry Potter: Boy Wizard … And Real Life Activist? addresses what may be an evolving phenomenon around activism. Reading this, I am reminded of Plato’s Republic and how he warned that the poet is a threat to the State. I’m wondering whether this new form of narrating could be a place for storytelling for a new generation?
This is further proof of Scott Page’s logic surrounding diversity in problem solving. Through this we can realize first hand that it doesn’t take the most intelligent academics to solve a problem, but a passionate group of people from diverse back rounds dedicated to a problem. Our generation is constantly in need of instant satisfaction. The use of these simple stories with easy to understand language and writing can provide a good basis for a movement because they have the ability to reach the millions of americans that wouldn’t make it past page ten in a more gloomy, dense diagnosis of the genocide in Rwanda or the earthquake in Haiti.
This was fascinating and I can definitely understand the appeal. I like what he said about adding creativity and fun to activism and social causes. I can really see this going somewhere!