Gabriel Bergmoser
  • About
    • Interviews
    • Bitten By Productions
  • Blog
  • Books
  • Plays
  • Short Stories
  • Screen
  • Contact
  • About
    • Interviews
    • Bitten By Productions
  • Blog
  • Books
  • Plays
  • Short Stories
  • Screen
  • Contact

blog

Harry Potter and the Grudging Anticipation

7/29/2016

0 Comments

 
​Of all the internet fandoms I hate, I think I hate Harry Potter's the most. There seems to be this growing proclivity in people of my generation to share every irritating Buzzfeed list or Tumblr post pertaining to the boy wizard, always with shrill nostalgia and lots of capitalised proclamations of OMG YOU GUISE HARRY POTTER IS DA BEST!!!111.  And considering this is coming predominantly from people in their mid-twenties, at a certain point you have to wonder when everyone is gonna pull their heads in and stop acting like shrieking thirteen year olds.
      I always try to maintain that my personal love of certain things is not coloured by the opinions of others, but damned if it isn’t hard to maintain my passion in the wake of the endless social media proliferation of loud mouthed millennial nostalgia for Harry Potter. I almost find myself resenting the whole franchise. Except, of course, I don’t.
      When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was announced, my reaction was pretty much one of “oh yeah, I guess that’ll be a thing”, followed by a mild swell of anticipation when the script book was confirmed, but I was far from jumping up and down in unbridled excitement for it. Then the previews started in London and despite myself I read the plot and, well, it sounded grim to say the least. It didn’t help that the first Reddit synopsis was mostly capitals, mostly misspelt and practically dripping with the aforementioned hyperbolic wailing about how #AMAZING the whole thing was, but then an altogether more reserved description came out and the prognosis wasn’t much better. The plot of Cursed Child reads like bad fan fiction.
      But, when I walked past a bookstore the other day to see the waiting cardboard stand that very soon would be filled with copies of the script book, a strange feeling came over me, a feeling that was so odd because it was so familiar; I just hadn’t felt it in almost ten years. It’s that feeling of knowing you’re just days away from a new Harry Potter adventure, that excitement so familiar to anyone of my generation who raced into a bookstore to see that brand new cover soon to take pride of place on your shelf. It’s that anticipation of rushing home, itching to dive into the book and spend time in that world with those characters all over again. And it doesn’t matter that this is a play and that it sounds terrible or that I already know the whole plot; what matters is this profound, overwhelming feeling of coming home.
      Because to me Harry Potter was never really about its world, which is fun but doesn’t make a ton of sense (how do wizards learn to read and write?) or plot (look up Joseph Campbell). It’s about the characters. It’s for this reason that the prospect of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which looks a damn sight better than Cursed Child, doesn’t fill me with nearly the same excitement. Seeing photos from the play of Harry, Ron and Hermione hanging out and talking made it hit home for the first time that I will once again be able to spend time with the characters who I considered close friends for a huge chunk of my growing up. I never thought for a second when I turned the last page of Deathly Hallows that I would get that chance again. Tomorrow I will walk into a bookstore, buy a new Harry Potter book and hurry home to spend the day reading with endless mugs of hot chocolate for the first time since 2007. And yeah, maybe all my fears will be realised, but then maybe experiencing the story as written will illuminate new qualities that a one-page rundown couldn’t. Maybe.
      Perhaps the real reason I hate all of those social media posts so much is because they actually reflect how much I myself love Harry Potter, and I’ve been labouring for a long time under the delusion that it was something personal to me, not something shared by a whole generation. Although in some ways, that fact almost makes the whole Potter experience better. Whatever the case, it doesn’t really matter. I am bloody excited for Cursed Child, as much as I pretend not to be.
      Now please let it be good. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    BLOG

    Writing words about writing words.

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.