This weekend the first part of the final Harry Potter movie is being released. The trailer has the quote “The Motion Picture Event of a Generation” attached to it and I can’t think of a more truthful ad in my lifetime.
The Harry Potter series has become my generation’s Star Wars. For those of you living under a rock, Harry Potter was a book series (turned film series) that has since developed an intense fanbase as well as gained an equally large amount of notoriety and controversy.
Harry Potter has managed to develop a fanbase only comparable to Star Wars and Star Trek. To compare it to another popular book turned movie series, they’re kind of like the Twilight crowd (only less sexually charged and terrifying).
However while those fans spend more time wasting money on Team Jacob/Team Edward shirts or camping outside of Hall H at Comic Con, Harry Potter fans spend their time performing songs, recording fake commentary tracks or doing web-shows with puppets. The fandom has gotten so popular there was even an independent documentary made about it called We Are Wizards.
The entire month of November might as well be Harry Potter month (Thanksgiving who?).
Wrockstock was held in Potosi, Missouri the first weekend of November which contained some of the biggest names in Wizard Rock (a genre of music featuring over 750 bands singing about Harry Potter characters and worlds) such as Harry & the Potters, Draco & the Malfoys and The Whomping Willows. Where did Wizard Rock come from? According to We Are Wizards the first wizard rock band was Harry & the Potters formed by brother Joe & Paul DeGeorge. Freya Fridy of Wizrocklopedia says that there had been bands that sang about Harry Potter before Harry & the Potters but it was there “idea of DIY music & playing shows in libraries has expanded to including people from 8-60 years old recording tracks, putting them on myspace, touring the country to play shows & basically giving fans all over a reason and a place to gather together”. Matt Maggiacomo of The Whomping Willows described it as “the most open & accessible musical community in existence”
This past weekend in New York was the “Quidditch World Cup” where college Quidditch Teams from all over gathered to play the wizard sport.
The college I currently work at has a Quidditch team of its own and I have frequently stopped and watched games and I’ll be honest with you, it’s an extremely fun game to watch. Beyond songs & sports there are things like the charity “The Harry Potter Alliance” (which bands Harry Potter fans together to help raise money for various charities), Brad Neeley’s infamous “Dear Reader, Wizard People” (Which acts as a commentary track/book to tape that syncs up with the film Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone), or the extremely popular youtube web-series “Potter Puppet Pals”
It hasn’t been all love to the book series. It was famously accused of pushing kids towards Wiccan and Satanism (which was brilliantly mocked by The Onion). These accusations are clearly from people who never bothered to read the book (for starters, the characters celebrate Christmas). While magic is an important aspect of the books it’s more about loyality, friendship and love (the most power magic of all).
While we all know that the movies in no way live up to the books; the message remained the same (something you can’t say about the Star Wars prequels). It’s almost impossible to not get a little teary-eyed thinking about the troubles of Harry; when characters die you feel the loss, when friends begin to argue you feel bad, you hate Professor Umbridge (the most disturbingly evil character I’ve ever read about) just as much as the main characters.
We are an extremely strong fanbase, while fanbases like Percy Jackson and Twilight may be strong, we will rank with Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia as epic stories that will last a lifetime. We Are Wizards and the Deathly Hollows is our generation’s motion picture event.