Among the column settings, the most impressive is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
As the place where the most important story of “Harry Potter” takes place, the relevant setting of Hogwarts is not only a realistic treatment of the surreal activity of magic learning, but also the daily routine of the modern school. The living space has undergone a fantasy transformation.
Rowling’s words maintain a subtle tension between “realization” and “fantasy”. While arousing readers’ familiar and familiar life experience, they also refresh the reader’s aesthetic through this tension Experience.
Second, the present ongoing tense of fantasy settings
The readers of “Harry Potter” can be described as diverse and diverse, but most of them still have one thing in common, that is, they have all had or are experiencing modern campus life.
Rowling’s ingenious grasp of “realization” and “fantasy” on the one hand can continuously arouse readers’ sense of immersion, substitution, and resonance, and on the other hand, it adds to modern campus life Many amazing and mysterious fantasy colors.
The subtle superposition of these two effects makes Hogwarts a lasting attraction and call to generations of readers.
Julia Saric(Julia Saric) used to comment on the “magic world” of “Harry Potter” and “Magic A comparative study of “Middle-earth” in “Jie”, he believes that Rowling’s fantasy form is different from Tolkien’s creation of the “Second World”, and Rowling’s fantasy is a “naturalized fantasy”(Domesticated Fantasy), which means “put meThe things we are familiar with are fantastic”.
Stephen Barfield(Steven Barfield) combined “Harry Potter” with Tolkien, Zweitan Todo Love(Tzvetan Todorov) and Rosemary Jackson(Rosemary Jackson)< /span>Comparing the three fantasy theories of three fantasy literary theorists, he believes that “Harry Potter” is different from any of them, and then named the fantasy form of “Harry Potter” “satiric fantasy” “(Satirical Fantasy), that is, the work “points to the defects of the real world in a parody.”
But here, it may be more appropriate to borrow the concept of postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard (Jean Baudrillard), Treat “Harry Potter” as a “simulated superrealism” work, and regard the magical world created by “Harry Potter” as a blurring the boundary between reality and imagination, bridging technology and witchcraft The boundary of the simulation world.
In this world, the “magic” of “fairy tale” or “fantasy” has undergone the alienation of modernity, or in other words, the technology of modern civilization has undergone a magical transformation.
We can take Quidditch as an example. This sport that makes wizards of the wizarding world and readers of “Harry Potter” crazy, is actually a multi-sports sport in modern society. Parody and collage.
The Quidditch rules are a blend of football, basketball, baseball, rugby, dodgeball and other familiar sports.
Because of this, students from all over the world can use the physical rules of the Muggle world to transform this sport of wizards flying in the sky on a broomstick into a Muggle running on a green field with a broomstick. movement.
The related settings of flying broomsticks, those expensive and constantly upgrading brand-name flying broomsticks with built-in “vibration control” and other functions produced by professional broom manufacturers will remind us of brands such as Nike and Adidas. Sports equipment, and Formula 1 racing cars.
And Rowling’s description of the International Quidditch League, Quidditch Pro League, Quidditch Club’s fan culture, and the Quidditch World Cup held every four years will remind us directly of reality. Football.
In addition, in our real world, not only Muggle Quidditch, but also some people really try to use high technology to restore the experience of wizard riding a broomstick.
For example, in Warner Studios and Universal Studios, as long as you use electric brooms, green screen technology and CG technology, or with the help of roller coasters and AR technology, you can ride your broom and fly across the streets of London and fly over Huo Live video of Gwarts.
Here, technology has become an alternative means of achieving magical goals.The two seem to be interchangeable and achieve the same goal by different routes.
3. The intertextuality between technology and magic has become the pivot for moving reality
After taking the example of Quidditch, let’s look at two thought-provoking lines in the Harry Potter series of novels.
First is a sentence from “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. When Harry was on the Cavaliers bus, reading the “Daily Prophet” news report about Sirius Black still at large, He read this sentence:
“The Muggles were told that Black was carrying a gun (a metal wand used by Muggles to kill each other).”
The statement of “Daily Prophet” actually reminds us that in the story of “Harry Potter”, the “wizards” who use magic and the “Muggles” who use technology, their way of life , Behavior, thinking, and language are actually commensurable, and it can even be said that the two have similarities in the same way.
There is another sentence from “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”. In “Hogwarts: A School History”-the official school history of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Muggle technological inventions such as electricity, computers, and radar are all referred to as “Muggles used Magic substitute”.
We can see, In the historical vision of the wizard-centrism of the author of the history of magic, technology is regarded as a substitute for magic.
Of course, from the perspective of Muggle, most of the witchcraft that can be gradually learned in modern full-time boarding schools through classes, homework, experiments, essays, exams, etc. can be regarded as Alternative means of achieving modern technological goals.
The simulation world of “magic alienation” or “technological demonization” constructed by “Harry Potter” can remind us to think about the subtle relationship between magic and technology from another angle:
On the one hand, we often say that modern civilization was established through the elimination and replacement of the witchcraft world outlook and the theological world outlook by the scientific world outlook.
But can we also say that the modern society constructed through the so-called “exorcism” and “disenchantment” is actually through a different path to the same goal, using technology to realize and replace magic / The goal of witchcraft.
The development of modern technology is a process of “magic technology”, a process in which technology substitutes for witchcraft.
On the other hand, the witchcraft that has been “artificially resurrected” in the mass cultural products of contemporary post-industrial society cannot return to its origin, but can only be used as a historical delay and variation. The simulation and replacement of technology project the experience, imagination, fascination and anxiety of human beings in the process of post-industrial society and the new technological revolution about the “magicization of technology”.
In this regard, the “magic-reality” imagery created by the simulation game of “Harry Potter” is not a “fairy tale pure land” conceived by modern “adults” to confirm themselves, seek refuge, and obtain comfort. “It’s not the “mysterious world of primitive thinking” that is binary opposition to the modern world, and it is also different from the purely overhead “second world” of Tolkien’s fantasy. It is a magical alienation that bridges and confuses boundaries. / The simulation world demonized by technology.
It is through careful sculpting of this simulation world that Rowling has finally found a modern establishment that can be used to pry the barriers of “children’s literature/adult literature”, open up the deep space of writing reality and exploring good and evil. Archimedes pivot”.
As a basic framework based on the confrontation between good and evilA fantasy literary work, “Harry Potter” contains a plot structure of disaster and redemption.
The disaster in it contains the author’s reflection and criticism of the technical totalitarianism represented by Voldemort and his political practice of “magic is power” based on the historical prototype of Nazi fascism.
Harry used the “magic of love” and disarming magic to fight Voldemort’s messianic salvation, which embodied the author’s good wishes: fight the drive of death with the power of love, and pursue an attitude of equality and tolerance. Oppose prejudice and discrimination, and resist the alienation of the technological system with the original “life to death” survival plan.
This makes the “Harry Potter” phenomenon an excellent symbol of the cultural contradictions of our time.
The basic paradox of modern society lies in the paradox between the modernity of technological systems and the modernity of human liberation, and the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of “Harry Potter” symbolizes this paradox Vivid fable.
“If you were born between 1985 and 1998, please remember that your Hogwarts Admission Letter did not arrive because Voldemort erased the records of Muggle wizards born during this period from government documents.”
So friends, pack up and go to Hogwarts, maybe it’s still too late.
This article is from WeChat official account: look ideal (ID: ikanlixiang) , author: Lin, compilation: buckwheat wood