First of all- as an avid HP fan, The Goblet of Fire is awesome. Anywho, I think that in writing this blog, were all participating in the connection to the text that the Jenkins and Bond/Michaelson articles describe. Harry Potter is a shared experience, and it represents Millennials in more ways than simply on screen or the books. In fact, I think it is the off-screen “magic” of HP that seems to embody Millennials the most. I knew that Star trek and Star wars had extra means of creating a community- but they just aren’t as young as the Harry Potter community. Here we have major websites created BY MILLENIALS and mostly for Millenials. The fan fiction sites mugglenet.com and the-leaky-cauldron.org are run by kids as Harry Potter took off. It was kids who interviewed JK Rowling as the books/film releases emerged and it was kids that blogged about it, argued about it, you name it. You had to get a username to participate- which I guess makes it official . I thought it did at least. It has every kind of information imaginable as far as Harry Potter. It gives movie reviews and spoilers, FAQs…the list goes on. I guess. I admit it…I was an avid fan fiction reader to get my Harry Potter fix in between book releases. Why? Because I wanted to see how other people saw the Harry Potter world. I felt like I was participating in something huge just by reading these online texts. Was their vision similar to mine? How did it differ? And what kinds of things could people dream up? And to answer all of those: there were hundreds of possibilities. And that was the best part, is that I could come back to the site the next day and find something new. Another aspect of the millennials and HP has to do with JK Rowling’s website. Sure she was a Gen X giving us this world, but we were the runs running it. Millennials were the ones interacting with her website (which was really cool) sending in questions to her about everything Harry potter. And YouTube videos involving the HP canon… there are millions. Especially as relationships emerged, fans found expressing their “ships” (relationship pairings) that much easier. Interacting with Harry Potter outside of the book or movie was just so accessible. So why not?
Which brings me to my next point…
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a very good example of “millennial media”. Here we have the trio that we all know and love who every day exemplify what it means to work as a team. We have a heroine, Hermione who displays not only knowledge, but bravery, and feminine strength that even Gilmore Girls would envy. I know I looked up to her growing up. In this particular story, we have kids from other schools coming to stay at Hogwarts, in the spirit of the Triwizard Tournament, but more importantly “ to build international magical cooperation” as Hermione puts it, “to make friends” with students from other places. It is about putting aside all differences and uniting because different backgrounds shouldn’t matter when you’re sharing in something ( magic perhaps?). Most of the times, adults aren’t the ones realizing the true terror ( as Harry and Cedric end up in the graveyard with Harry) and the kids are the ones that have to take action. And they do it because they believe in their potential to change the future. And it’s not just the fictional characters who have this effect to give rise to the Millennial image, but even the ones that play Harry Ron and Hermione are millennials. Just as we’ve grown up with Harry Potter, they have to, and they’ve lived it. I remember WB’s search for 3 actors resembling these fairly new characters when HP first hit the screens in 2000. We were all 9 years old. Wow time flies. And so I I wonder though, as HP officially stops its creative representation on July 7th when the last movie comes out…will the HP world keep growing somehow? Will the magic die? Or is it up to the millennials to sustain it from this point on?
Oh but there’s a theme park… Living the dream.