Course Code M C 4 3 6

Your 5 digit Candidate Number (from LFY) 1 6 8 1 7 NOT your 9 digit student number

Word Count 3,017

Today’s Date 2 9 0 4 1 9

Where asked, please state the question you have 1 answered

SUMMATIVE COURSEWORK SUBMISSION and PLAGIARISM DECLARATION

2018-19

Refer to the LSE Calendar and the MSc Handbook.

“All work for classes and seminars as well as scripts (which include, for example, essays, dissertations and any other work, including computer programmes) must be the student's own work. Quotations must be placed properly within quotation marks or indented and must be cited fully. All paraphrased material must be acknowledged. Infringing this requirement, whether deliberately or not, or passing off the work of others as the work of the student, whether deliberately or not, is plagiarism.”

Submitting the same piece of work for assessment twice may be regarded as an offence of 'self-plagiarism'.

DECLARATION (without signature, to preserve anonymity): I hereby confirm, by completing this form, that the work submitted is my own (or part of a joint submission where appropriate). I confirm that I have read and understood both the LSE policy on assessment offences and the relevant parts of the MSc Handbook.

Page 1 Start your essay here: Select one or a series of objects, media texts or technological features (news coverage of an event, a blog, a photo, a video clip, a TV series, a film, a statue, an app etc) and analyse its/ their representation of time and/ or memory and its potential impact on collective belonging, drawing on the academic literature.

The Harry Potter franchise and its representation of time and memory have an interesting effect on collective belonging. Particularly as it relates but also diverges from other transmedia franchises (such as Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.). What is perhaps most unique about Harry Potter is the relative authorial autonomy that J.K. Rowling herself has exercised over the franchise. Indeed, beyond the fact that the franchise has yet to span generations (and multiple authors/writers such as the abovementioned franchises) J.K. Rowling has always had a proprietary hold over the canon of Harry Potter. This presents a good analogy for how time and memory are represented in the books. Particularly, the Pensieve—a magical object in the

Harry Potter world that allows one to review memories—it presents memories, as fixed, whole recollections to be perused at will at the individual’s leisure. Both time and memory are suspended and fixed in a certain way that have bearing on the way the fandom collectively approaches the books. Utilizing Colin Harvey’s work on the nature of transmedia franchises to both compare and contrast the varying natures of Harry Potter’s fandom to others, I will explore this uniquely fixed representation of time and memory and how it pertains to fans collective belonging (I will not utilize any particular book or movie from the series, but rather pull from the storyworld as a whole). Accompanying that, I will explore Matt Hills’ work on

“fanfac” or the autobiographical fan’s life and how it feeds in and is borne out of the collective. Interwoven throughout these two articles will be Barbie Zelizer’s more foundational work on the nature of collective memory as a field (citing such seminal authors as Halbwachs) and I will use all this to examine the collective belonging formed out of Harry

Potter and what it has to bear on the current controversies surrounding J.K. Rowling’s newest revisions to the Harry Potter world—particularly as it relates to Hermione’s race in the stage play The Cursed Child and Dumbledore’s sexuality.

Page 2 The way that the storyworld of Harry Potter is set up makes memory and time very constant, unchanging, and less socially influenced than the outside world. Perhaps the best indicator of the representation of memory is the Pensieve—a magical object that acts as a well of memories, it is a basin wherein one can store siphoned off memories to revisit later. It offers the implication that memories are fixed events interpreted and only influenced by the individual. There are numerous instances in the books where a character (often Dumbledore or Snape) will siphon off these memories, which will ultimately be viewed by Harry (in an instance of rule breaking). These episodes contradict many theories of individual memory such as Frederic C. Bartlett’s in which, through a series of psychological experiments, ‘…he concluded that memory could not proceed without some kind of social framework’ (Bartlett

1932). Time is also fixed in that because Wizards eschew muggle technology and live in an insular world, their notions and expressions of societal change are much less substantial. They all dress and act relatively the same, and because they use magic, have no need for any substantial changes or innovations that might change how their society operates. Of course, there are instances where they must contend with venturing into the Muggle world—which presents humorous encounters wherein they struggle with the latest technology or dressing appropriately—but once amongst themselves they have little reason to change.

Collective memory is similarly fixed, in that Harry Potter’s world is situated in a

Manichean, dark vs. light, post Voldemort era of peace. Recovering from, and being only so recently removed from the trauma of an evil dark wizard’s reign of terror serves to bind together the community. An additional unifying force is the fact that Wizardkind has to conceal itself from the “Muggle” (non-magic) world. Indeed, the only thing that serves to fracture the collective belonging of Wizardkind is the allegorical tensions between those wizards of “pureblood” and those that are “muggle born”. The allusions to “purity” and

“bloodlines” that these wizards make obviously echo that of White supremacists, but in the

Harry Potter world those fringe views are relegated to that of Death Eaters (Voldemort’s followers) and those only a degree or two removed from them. Indeed, the only characters

Page 3 that utter the slur directed at Muggle-born wizards (mudbloods) are either Death Eaters or relatives of Death Eaters. All of this is to say that, as Durkheim characterized it, the wizard world’s collective memory, allow the society to ‘renew the sentiment which it has of itself and its unity’ (Durkheim, 1965, p. 420). These two separate traumas, or unifying issues, serve as an active catalyst for continuing a collective memory that ‘…suggests a deepening of the historical consciousness that becomes wedged in between the official markings of the past and ourselves in the present’ (Zelizer, 1995, p. 218). In fact, there are two dimensions to collective memory, that of ‘contestation’ where ‘earlier persistent memories crumble’ due to repeated challenges, and the dynamic of ‘reassigning group loyalties’ through the process of

‘commemoration and recollection’ that are not really necessary in the Harry Potter world

(Zelizer, 1995, p. 219-220). There are fixed states and identities that with only few exceptions require little contestation. There are wizards and Muggles; there are Death Eaters and everyone else.

These representations of time, memory, and collective belonging within Harry Potter, coupled with the largely singlehanded creation of the franchise by one person, has an influence on the collective belonging of the fandom—and can explain the recent controversies over J.K. Rowling’s changes to the canon. Indeed, the recent controversy surrounding the casting of a Black actress (Noma Dumezweni) to play an adult in Harry

Potter and the Cursed Child (a stage play about an adult Harry Potter and his friends and family) represent the type of contestation that the series’ representation, and by extension the fandom’s experience, is new to dealing with. A strong comparison can be made with the idea of the mythologies that serve often to bind what are really disparate groups into a collectivity.

As Maurice Halbwachs’ first defined collective memory, ‘one may say that the individual remembers by placing himself in the perspective of the group, but one may also affirm that the memory of the group realizes and manifests itself in individual memories’ (Halbwachs

1992, p. 42). This is easy to do when, as discussed above, the parameters of time, memory and collective belonging are relatively fixed or homogenous. Indeed, like other franchises before

Page 4 it, Harry Potter is a classic story of good and evil. As Hills found when writing about

“fanfac” (quoting Spigel and Jenkins), ‘an array of…media texts served to evoke a collective past that was discussed in remarkably conventionalised ways. These memories may have differed in details, but their basic narrative form and themes were strikingly shaped by cultural, rather than simply individuated, codes of storytelling’ (Spigel and Jenkins 1991, p.

134-35). That is to say such fan experiences as fans first experiences or the ubiquity of the franchise in their lives are ‘communally shared through specific narratives’ but in reality

‘…collective memory remains a dynamic system, open to renegotiation and fan-cultural struggle’ (Hills, 2014, p. 40). Precisely having White and or normative identities must be taken into consideration—especially considering the current controversies surrounding J.K.

Rowling’s character decisions. As Andre Carrington said referring to the related genres of fantasy and science fiction, ‘…White people, in the aggregate, find representations of themselves in the genre to be much the same as they are elsewhere in culture: normative, benign, and frequent. This presumptive affinity for the imagery typically on display in popular culture is so thoroughly naturalized that it is often overlooked as a defining aspect of White privilege’ (Carrington 2016, p. 17). There were relatively few challenges to the collectivity of the Harry Potter fandom—its speculative fiction existed on the margins, aside from work on the website Pottermore not much else had been put forth for entry into the official canon by

J.K. Rowling—but when the play cast Noma Dumezweni to play the adult Hermione Granger and Rowling officially sanctioned it, there was a backlash from the fans. As Rowling stated in an interview with , ‘with my experience of social media, I thought the idiots were going to idiot…but what can you say? That’s the way the world is’ she went on to say

(referring to an oft cited moment in the book), ‘I had a bunch of racists telling me that because

Hermione “turned white”—that is, lost colour from her face after a shock—that she must be a white woman…’ (Ratcliffe, 2016).

In some ways, this controversy has brought to the fore the cultural as political and revealed, much like other forms of mythmaking, that open and fluid process that truly is

Page 5 collective belonging. As Carrington says, ‘…I would argue that the stakes of cultural politics in our lives motivates Black readers and viewers to engage with popular culture from an ostensibly “political” position, embracing, in effect, a practical consciousness regarding how our creative and interpretive efforts in relation to media come freighted with hazards (such as playing into stereotypes) as well as opportunities’ (Carrington 2016, p. 8). Noma

Dumezweni’s casting reveals the challenge to the ‘normative, benign, and frequent’ representation that White people enjoy without acknowledging their privilege and raises a new consciousness. What complicates it is Harry Potter’s uniquely closed story world that is influenced by its proprietary creator and its fixed representations. For example, regarding the recent controversies and discussions surrounding the character Dumbledore’s sexuality,

Rowling herself has been criticized for appearing to simply tack on that revelation outside of the canonical text. As John Cloud said, writing an opinion piece for Time magazine after

Rowling’s revelation back in 2007, ‘yes, except, why couldn’t he tell us himself? The Potter books add up to more than 800,000 words before Dumbledore dies…yet Rowling couldn’t spare two of those words to help define a central character’s emotional identity: “I’m gay”.

We can only conclude that Dumbledore saw his homosexuality as shameful. His silence suggests a lack of personal integrity that is completely out of character’ (Cloud, 2007). Other franchises, such as Star Wars, have more latitude in exploring alternative storylines or expanding on character’s backstories because they decrease the primacy of the canonical text.

As Harvey suggests, ‘the example of the predesignation of the Expanded Universe material as legends…points to a recognition…that fans are interested in alternative stories to the ones which are presented as “real” within the storyworld’ (Harvey 2015, p. 156). Another way to look at this is Harvey’s explanation of ‘personal canon’ or ‘…an individuals subjective opinion on what constitutes collective “reality” of the storyworld’ (Harvey 2015, p. 4). Harry

Potter certainly has its share of ‘personal canon’ texts produced by fans, but it does not exist in the same dynamic interplay of ‘cultural intermediaries’ as conceptualized by Bourdieu

(Bourdieu, 1993) and utilized by Hills to refer to the fact that these intermediaries in many

Page 6 franchises ‘…are not limited to…industry professions…this category also includes…”everyday” citizens’ (Hills 2014, p. 20). This shows that both in the way the story constructs collective memory and belonging for its characters, and the way the franchise was created and the primacy placed on its canon play an important role in challenges to the collectivity of Harry Potter fans.

Another way to look at these contestations is through the lens of childhood. Dan

Fleming, describing Lyotard’s three syntheses, utilizes his third in talking about the importance of first memories with fandom. ‘The third point of synthesis…referring to the idea that the child has yet to be sufficiently inculcated in the cultural and social systems that construct fully grown adults, that in this sense he or she is “inhuman” and resistant’ (Fleming

1996, p. 199-203). Hills’ corroborates this notion in his article, stating that, ‘ironically, in the very moment that it binds fandom together in collective memory, it posits an unrecoverable past, since adults fans will never be able to affectively experience just as they did in childhood’ (Hills 2014, p. 42). Thus the intensity of this unrecoverable childhood recollection that is ironically simultaneously separate from the eventual influences of culture but is reinforced by the collective belonging of the fandom, adds another wrinkle to the truly dynamic process that collective memory ought to be—especially when facing down challenges to normative identities that need to be renegotiated. As Barbie Zelizer said, ‘in both commemoration and recollection, memory’s collective dimensions have forced us to reassign group loyalties, constituting new groups as wide-ranging as the neighborhood book club and the nation-state. Such new groups have in turn rearranged the text of memory as it was initially instantiated’ (Zelizer, 1995, p. 219). Harry Potter fans then have a multifaceted struggle of resistance to change because of a common inclination to associate fandom with a childhood untainted by the processes of socialization and cultural indoctrination, a storyworld that is more closed and controlled than other transmedia texts (making the negotiations more difficult), and because of the relative youth of this franchise as opposed to other more heavily studied franchises, they have ahead of them the task of reassigning group loyalties, and either

Page 7 rearranging the memories that instantiated those collectivities or walking away from it entirely. Indeed, this time could be viewed as a critical juncture for the Harry Potter fandom, as Matt Hills said, ‘some fans, even whole generations, may not fit into the collective memory of the group, of course, but their failure to do so is represented in precisely these terms, as a failure to correspond to an imagined ideal that carries fan-cultural symbolic power’ (Hills

2014, p. 33). If we think of a generation as approximately 25 years, then we are coming up on

22 since the publication of the first Harry Potter book. Perhaps it is too reductionist to think in these concrete terms—it is not as if when the clock hits 25 the road will diverge and fans will choose which path to take. However, it is necessary to note this struggle and to recognize, as Barbie Zelizer and other scholars have, that, ‘in the contemporary age, memory has come to be seen as depending on an array of media technologies, from radio, cinema, and computers to the printed press’ (Zelizer 1995, p. 233). In Zelizer’s analyses this method of transmission in the memory function is both for recording real events, as well as art or fictional media. As Zelizer goes on to say, ‘externalizing memory outside of the human brain has thereby engendered diverse alternatives for its embodiment elsewhere’ (Zelizer 1995, p.

233). That is why this particular moment in the Harry Potter fandom represents a critical juncture—embodied in the media memory is this site of contestation and the fan cultural struggle. Fans are now negotiating with these changing identities, facing up against challenges to identities that were long accepted implicitly and without recognition. Another way to look at it is through the lens of the cultural as political, accepting particularly Carrington’s definition of culture as something that ‘…forms the basis of many people’s livelihood and influences their quality of life and it is the material out of which many people fashion very meaningful understanding of the conditions in which they live’ (Carrington 2016, p. 12). All of this is to say that although up until very recently Harry Potter—due to its representations and its receptions by audiences—existed as a very fixed media object that generally had a cohesive collective belonging (related to the types of memories as described by Hills) it is now a site for a positive struggle towards a more inclusive collective belonging. It is still an

Page 8 uphill battle, as demonstrated by fans frustrations with both changes they thought were too radical (in the case of Hermione’s casting) and where they think the changes do not go far enough (fans’ disappointment with the perceived laziness of Dumbledore’s “coming out”). It is further complicated by the primacy that the franchise has on canon and the authorial authority that J.K. Rowling wields over the storyworld. However, as described above, the fact that Harry Potter, unlike other franchises, is still within its first generation means that there is more flexibility for contestation in this fluid, open-ended process that is collective memory and by extension collective belonging.

I’ll close this argument by considering how Andre Carrington approaches his analyses of speculative fiction. As he said, ‘the lesson of this study, for my purposes, is that conceptualizing how marginalized subjects overcome barriers to “joining” existing cultural traditions should not always be the focus of a critique of cultural production. Instead, it can be more instructive to observe how users orient their participation towards unexpected aims’

(Carrington 2016, p. 200). He is referring there to the way that fans engage in their own speculative fiction in order to immerse themselves in a storyworld with incomplete representation. And while that is a fruitful area of inquiry, I would argue that this current moment in the Harry Potter franchise must harken back to the first point—how marginalized subjects overcome barriers. Now more than ever Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling (and her collaborators) are listening and responding to the protests, questions, and inclinations of fans.

They may still not be going far enough in responding and adequately reflecting the will of their fans, but it is a step in the right direction. J.K. Rowling, with her recent decisions, has opened and exposed the Harry Potter storyworld, its characters, and their fans, to that more open process of cultural intermediation and contestation in collective memory that presents a positive potential impact on the collective belonging of the Harry Potter fandom. While it may destroy the tenuous, homogenous collectivity that existed when the storyworld was closed and identities unchallenged, it presents a step in the right direction for a collective

Page 9 belonging constantly in dialogue—confronting memories, identities, and each other to form the healthiest and most inclusive collectivity.

Page 10 References

Bartlett, F. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge, : Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1993), The Field of Cultural Production, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Carrington, A. M. (2016). Speculative blackness : The future of race in science fiction. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Cloud, J. (2007). Outing Dumbledore. TIME Magazine, 170(19), 72–73. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.gate3.library.lse.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN= 27257716&site=ehost-live

Fleming, Dan (1996) Powerplay: Toys as Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Halbwachs, M. (1992b). The social frameworks of memory. In On collective memory (pp. 37- 189). Chicago: University of Chicago Press [orig. pub. 1951].

Harvey, C. B. (2015). Fantastic transmedia narrative, play and memory across science fiction and fantasy storyworlds. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hills, M. (2014). Doctor Who’s textual commemorators: Fandom, collective memory and the self-commodification of fanfac. The Journal of Fandom Studies, 2(1), 31-51. doi:10.1386/jfs.2.1.31_1

Ratcliffe, R. (2016, June 05). JK Rowling tells of anger at attacks on casting of black Hermione. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jun/05/harry-potter- jk--rowling-black-hermione

Rowling, J. K., Davidson, A., Rowling, J. K., Rowling, J. K., Rowling, J. K., Rowling, J. K., . . . Rowling, J. K. (2015). Harry Potter: The complete collection. : Bloomsbury.

Spigel, Lynn and Jenkins, Henry (1991), ‘Same bat channel, different bat times: Mass culture and popular memory’, in Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio (eds), The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and his Media, New York and London: Routledge/BFI, pp. 117–48.

Thorne, J., Rowling, J. K., & Tiffany, J. (2017). Harry Potter and the cursed child. London: Little, Brown.

Steiner, L., & Zelizer, B. (1995). Competing memories. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 12(2), 213-239. doi:10.1080/15295039509366932

Page 11