Finding the Fantastic Subculture within the Familiar World
While portal fantasies are usually about children crossing a portal into a fantastic magical realm, other more contemporary fantasies blur the lines between our normal everday world and the magical subculture that co-exists along with our world. In addition, the contemporary child protagonist often discovers that he is special, raised in the normal world yet born of the magical subculture, and destined to be a hero that will save both world from the greatest evil.
What is so special about Harry Potter? For the first 10 years of his life, he believes he is an ordinary boy. Then on his eleventh birthday, he finds out there an entire magical subculture and that he is a wizard born with special powers, but not just any wizard. Harry is special even among the wizards because he was the only known person to survive an attack from the evil Voldemort.
Along the same lines, Rick Riordan's popular series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In the first book, The Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson, a twelve year old troublemaker who has been diagnosed with dyslexia and ADD, discovers that his weaknesses were actually signs that he is a demi-god, half-god. Because his father is one of the most powerful Olympian gods, Percy himself has more power and the greatest destiny to save his friends, his family, and both the magical and real world.
Holly Black's dark fantasy Tithe stars a teenage girl who thinks she is half white and half Japanese, but in reality she discovers she is a changeling, a minor faery, which is even more "other." Yet her mind is very much a mind of this word, and her tolerance for iron is higher than most faeries, which helps her overcome her enemies.
Another fun consequence to having the fantasy culture co-exist with the ordinary world is seeing the hidden magical side of our world reframed in magical terms. Whether the Hogwarts Express is hiding at Platform 9 and 3/4 or the Mount Olympus is perched secretly at the top of the Empire State Building or the secret side of the hill is where the Dark Unseely Court congregate, our familiar, ordinary world has an additional fresh fantastic facet. Usually, the normal humans are in complete ignorance of the existence of magic, so the children usually are further stressed to cover up their magic for fear of being found.
Why are fantastic stories about magical multicultural children so popular nowadays? Perhaps a sign of the times? Before the 1970s, there few magical stories of a child raised with humble beginnings and then realizing they were really special, and not all of them were American. The King Arthur story is perhaps one of the most famous.
For Americans, there could be so many reasons. Perhaps because we were heavily influenced by the Star Wars original movies released almost 30 years ago. Perhaps also because the children born since the 1970s have grown up after the Civil Rights Movement. Also in 1970s, there was a national interest towards finding one's cultural roots. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston had mentioned in her talk, America has evolved from assimilation and elimination of one's family culture of the melting pot to a mosaic model, which allows celebration of different languages, foods, customs.
The powerful link between one's blood and cultural heritage is compelling even if it is magical, since one's sense of self can be linked to knowing one's genetic heritage.
Any thoughts or suggestions for other titles?
What is so special about Harry Potter? For the first 10 years of his life, he believes he is an ordinary boy. Then on his eleventh birthday, he finds out there an entire magical subculture and that he is a wizard born with special powers, but not just any wizard. Harry is special even among the wizards because he was the only known person to survive an attack from the evil Voldemort.
Along the same lines, Rick Riordan's popular series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In the first book, The Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson, a twelve year old troublemaker who has been diagnosed with dyslexia and ADD, discovers that his weaknesses were actually signs that he is a demi-god, half-god. Because his father is one of the most powerful Olympian gods, Percy himself has more power and the greatest destiny to save his friends, his family, and both the magical and real world.
Holly Black's dark fantasy Tithe stars a teenage girl who thinks she is half white and half Japanese, but in reality she discovers she is a changeling, a minor faery, which is even more "other." Yet her mind is very much a mind of this word, and her tolerance for iron is higher than most faeries, which helps her overcome her enemies.
Another fun consequence to having the fantasy culture co-exist with the ordinary world is seeing the hidden magical side of our world reframed in magical terms. Whether the Hogwarts Express is hiding at Platform 9 and 3/4 or the Mount Olympus is perched secretly at the top of the Empire State Building or the secret side of the hill is where the Dark Unseely Court congregate, our familiar, ordinary world has an additional fresh fantastic facet. Usually, the normal humans are in complete ignorance of the existence of magic, so the children usually are further stressed to cover up their magic for fear of being found.
Why are fantastic stories about magical multicultural children so popular nowadays? Perhaps a sign of the times? Before the 1970s, there few magical stories of a child raised with humble beginnings and then realizing they were really special, and not all of them were American. The King Arthur story is perhaps one of the most famous.
For Americans, there could be so many reasons. Perhaps because we were heavily influenced by the Star Wars original movies released almost 30 years ago. Perhaps also because the children born since the 1970s have grown up after the Civil Rights Movement. Also in 1970s, there was a national interest towards finding one's cultural roots. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston had mentioned in her talk, America has evolved from assimilation and elimination of one's family culture of the melting pot to a mosaic model, which allows celebration of different languages, foods, customs.
The powerful link between one's blood and cultural heritage is compelling even if it is magical, since one's sense of self can be linked to knowing one's genetic heritage.
Any thoughts or suggestions for other titles?
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posted by Emily Jiang at 4:52 PM
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2 Comments:
From my perspective as an upper elementary teacher for three decades, the fantasy interest isn't that new. I personally always loved such books and always had kids in my classes who did too. However, adults tended not to like such books at all. I remember starting a thread on child_lit in 1994 called "Fear of Fantasy" trying to understand why Americans (especially teachers) were so lukewarm on it. Then I wrote a book for teachers called Fantasy Literature in the Elementary Classroom to try to encourage my colleagues since no one else was. (In elementary schools other genres are still preferred for teaching.)
The big change was indeed Harry Potter. The book's success resulted in a lot more fantasy being published here. And being a fan of fantasy literature became okay at long last.
I've a post about Harry Potter and multiculturalism and would love more folks to weigh in on the topic. http://medinger.wordpress.com/2007/07/28/remembering-harry-multicultural/#comment-8173)
Monica - great observations and interesting article. I was so wrapped up in my own definition of HP as a multicultural character that I did not stop to think about the token race character issue.
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