Read Online Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Mitchell
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instead – on DVD, cable repeat, iPlayer or Sky/Virgin/Freeview Plus. Daytime pap has never been so avoidable. If it’s still getting viewers, isn’t that a sign that it’s not just feckless freelancers who are in the market for inconsequential television?
I still take issue with that slogan, though. I have a suggested replacement: “BBC1 Daytime. Because there’s always tomorrow.”
*
On the occasion of the launch, in August 2011, of JK Rowling’s new website, Pottermore …
Harry Potter is like football. I’m talking about the literary, cinematic and merchandising phenomenon, not its focal fictional wizard. He isn’t like football. He’s like Jennings after being bitten by a radioactive conjuror. But, as with football, reports of Harry Potter-related events, products and personalities are everywhere. Like football supporters, Harry Potter fans seem to have an insatiable desire for more news, chat and retail opportunities related to their enthusiasm. They’re standing in a monsoon screaming “I feel so dry!” while the rest of us are getting soaked.
It’s bizarre. It has the intensity of a fad but it’s been going for the best part of two decades. I think I’d find it easier to understand if I hated it. At least that would be an emotion ofequivalent strength to the fans’. But, for me, it doesn’t conform to the Marmite model: I’ve read three of the books and seen three of the films. I quite enjoyed them. I liked the third of each no less than the first two. I didn’t feel the series had “gone off”. It was just something that I only liked enough to consume so much of. It seemed perfectly good but I’d got the idea. I didn’t mind not knowing what happened.
And then, obviously, because I am perverse, I was put off it by its ubiquity and other people’s enthusiasm. Others’ loss of perspective about its merits made me lose my own. Maybe I was trying to lower the average human opinion of the oeuvre closer to what it deserves by artificially forcing mine well below that level. Incidentally, this is where the parallels with my view of football end: even if that were a struggling minority sport only played by a few hundred enthusiastic amateurs, I would still consider it an overrated spectacle that lures vital funding away from snooker.
The most amazing aspect of JK Rowling’s achievement and that of the Harry Potter marketing machine is that they have produced so much stuff for so long – kept the profile so high, the advertising so pervasive – and yet somehow contrived to leave a huge section of their audience still wanting more. They’ve given Harry the attributes of pistachio nuts and crack cocaine without the health risks (opening thousands of pistachio nuts can cause severe thumb-bruising, I can tell you from bitter experience of my life on the edge).
But, with the launch of the new Pottermore website, are they finally pushing their luck? In its opening weeks, trial access has been granted to a select group of a million fans. That’s the real hardcore. Having a Harry Potter tattoo won’t be enough – it has to be on your face. The site boasts material that didn’t make it into the books, such as 5,000 words about which types of wood should be used to make magic wands and anecdotes about where Rowling found inspiration: why she called an unpleasantcharacter Petunia, for example. But a fan writing in
The Times
wasn’t impressed: “As a reader who has grown up with Harry over the years, the site dispels the magic of the wizarding world by removing the air of mystery behind the narrative that sparks debate among fans.”
That’s an attitude that strikes a chord with me and reminds me of
Star Wars
. Every generation must lose its innocence, must see the brightly painted nursery wall smashed away by the wrecking ball of betrayal to reveal a blighted landscape. For our predecessors, it was the Somme, the Great Depression, the Holocaust or Vietnam; for my generation, it was
The
I still take issue with that slogan, though. I have a suggested replacement: “BBC1 Daytime. Because there’s always tomorrow.”
*
On the occasion of the launch, in August 2011, of JK Rowling’s new website, Pottermore …
Harry Potter is like football. I’m talking about the literary, cinematic and merchandising phenomenon, not its focal fictional wizard. He isn’t like football. He’s like Jennings after being bitten by a radioactive conjuror. But, as with football, reports of Harry Potter-related events, products and personalities are everywhere. Like football supporters, Harry Potter fans seem to have an insatiable desire for more news, chat and retail opportunities related to their enthusiasm. They’re standing in a monsoon screaming “I feel so dry!” while the rest of us are getting soaked.
It’s bizarre. It has the intensity of a fad but it’s been going for the best part of two decades. I think I’d find it easier to understand if I hated it. At least that would be an emotion ofequivalent strength to the fans’. But, for me, it doesn’t conform to the Marmite model: I’ve read three of the books and seen three of the films. I quite enjoyed them. I liked the third of each no less than the first two. I didn’t feel the series had “gone off”. It was just something that I only liked enough to consume so much of. It seemed perfectly good but I’d got the idea. I didn’t mind not knowing what happened.
And then, obviously, because I am perverse, I was put off it by its ubiquity and other people’s enthusiasm. Others’ loss of perspective about its merits made me lose my own. Maybe I was trying to lower the average human opinion of the oeuvre closer to what it deserves by artificially forcing mine well below that level. Incidentally, this is where the parallels with my view of football end: even if that were a struggling minority sport only played by a few hundred enthusiastic amateurs, I would still consider it an overrated spectacle that lures vital funding away from snooker.
The most amazing aspect of JK Rowling’s achievement and that of the Harry Potter marketing machine is that they have produced so much stuff for so long – kept the profile so high, the advertising so pervasive – and yet somehow contrived to leave a huge section of their audience still wanting more. They’ve given Harry the attributes of pistachio nuts and crack cocaine without the health risks (opening thousands of pistachio nuts can cause severe thumb-bruising, I can tell you from bitter experience of my life on the edge).
But, with the launch of the new Pottermore website, are they finally pushing their luck? In its opening weeks, trial access has been granted to a select group of a million fans. That’s the real hardcore. Having a Harry Potter tattoo won’t be enough – it has to be on your face. The site boasts material that didn’t make it into the books, such as 5,000 words about which types of wood should be used to make magic wands and anecdotes about where Rowling found inspiration: why she called an unpleasantcharacter Petunia, for example. But a fan writing in
The Times
wasn’t impressed: “As a reader who has grown up with Harry over the years, the site dispels the magic of the wizarding world by removing the air of mystery behind the narrative that sparks debate among fans.”
That’s an attitude that strikes a chord with me and reminds me of
Star Wars
. Every generation must lose its innocence, must see the brightly painted nursery wall smashed away by the wrecking ball of betrayal to reveal a blighted landscape. For our predecessors, it was the Somme, the Great Depression, the Holocaust or Vietnam; for my generation, it was
The
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