I’d be a pretty poor excuse for an arts columnist this week if I didn’t say something about Harry Potter.
Harry Potter, for those who have been living in an isolation tank for the past few months, is the young wizard protagonist of a series of children’s books by J. K. Rowling, which are selling in unprecedented numbers.
The enormous success of the series is, in my view, well-deserved. The fact that there are other books that deserve similar success and haven’t gotten it doesn’t detract from the fact that the Harry Potter books are very good books that I recommend whole-heartedly to everyone.
Not all commentators feel the same. Among the more prominent dissenters is Rex Murphy, Canada’s self-appointed curmudgeon-in-residence, who wrote a long piece in the Globe and Mail Monday, July 9, decrying the success of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as nothing but the latest product of the global hype machine. His primary thesis seemed to be that all this publicity is somehow destroying the last untarnished intellectual pleasure to be had in the world, the simple reading of a book; that the inevitable movie and product tie-ins will somehow destroy the literary experience.
To which I say, “poppycock,” not to mention “humbug” and “balderdash.”
All art, from literature to visual art to theatre to music to movies, exists apart from what is said about that art. Some art forms, such as motion pictures and Harry Potter, get a lot said about them. Some, such as the work currently appearing in countless small galleries across the country, get talked about very little. But whether a piece of art is hyped, promoted, talked about or ignored, the art itself is what it is–and ultimately, its success or failure as a work of art, as opposed to its success or failure as a commercial property, comes down to its effect on the individuals who view it, read it, hear it or experience it.
I write children’s books, too, none of which have, or are ever likely to have, the success of Harry Potter. From a purely financial point of view, I would much prefer that they did. But from an artistic point of view, I consider each of my books a success–because readers have told me that they are. “A pure good story,” said one young reader in Glasgow, of all places, about my novel Soulworm–and I knew that I had succeeded. Similar comments about my other books tell me that where it really matters, in that intimate collaboration between reader and writer that creates the experience of a book, I successfully crafted something that works.
Rex Murphy, in his diatribe, expressed the opinion that this intimate collaboration between artist and audience is somehow destroyed or cheapened by success and promotion. But it can’t be, not really. People may read a book or see a movie because of the hype, but that does not significantly alter their individual experience. The words or images affect the audience on a one-to-one basis, not as a group. Even when you’re with a large audience, you watch a movie alone. You may all laugh at the same jokes, and you may even laugh at jokes you don’t really find funny because of the people around you, but what you take out of that movie theatre, the impact the movie has on you, is yours alone.
In the theatre, we’re very familiar with this phenomenon. I’m currently performing in the musical Tent Meeting as the Station Arts Centre in Rosthern. Each night, we say the same words, sing the same songs, perform the same actions. But each night, the reaction those words, songs and actions get is different, because the audience is different–a new collection of new individuals, each of whom brings something different to the experience of going to the theatre than the individuals who made up the audience of the night before. Their collective differences make the way in which the audience reacts different. Laughs come in different places. Songs are applauded one night and not the other. Everyone claps along, or no one does.
That’s because each person out there is really having his or her own private show. Surrounded by others, they are nevertheless having a unique experience. The show my parents saw when they came to Tent Meeting is different from the show the four people from Toronto who were at last night’s show saw; not because of the minor differences in performance (though that figures, too, in live theatre) but because of the differences between my parents’ backgrounds and theirs.
The old question of whether a tree that falls in a forest with no one to hear makes a sound has a definitive answer in the case of art: art without an audience is not art at all. We each collaborate in the making of art every time we read a book, view a painting or go to the theatre. And for each of us, the art that succeeds or fails will be different.
That experience is intense and intimate, and cannot be cheapened or destroyed by any amount of hype–not even the amount surrounding Harry Potter.
