Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Harry Potter Is in League with Teh Patriarchy

That's the premise of Echidne of the Snake's post on Harry Potter.

I wrote a post about this earlier where I suggested that there would have been no comparable mania if the books were about Harriet Potter. Boys don't want to read about girl heroines. Girls are fairly used to reading about boy heros (sic) and on the whole don't seem to mind it as much. I'm pretty sure that this difference is not an innate one but has to do with the fact that being a boy is still a better thing than being a girl.

This silliness gets debunked in Echidne's own comment section where numerous people give examples of popular children's books with female protagonists. One of the more interesting examples was the Frank Baum Oz books.
Oz was huge. It's hard to reckon now, but I would say that it was much like Harry Potter in its day. There was an immensely popular stage production, written by Baum, there was music, there were silent movies, and later, radio shows too. Baum's writing was originally intended to be the first truly American fairy tale, and I think he succeeded, creating something new, and pretty wonderful. Baum wrote in very colloquial language, especially in the later books, which made them much easier to read than Alice, Peter Pan, and other children's novels of the time. Although it was easier to be a popular children's author in those times; there wasn't much literature being published for children at all. And it was pretty much US only, since at the time (early 20th century), it was much, much more difficult to sustain a worldwide fad.

There were many more examples of hugely popular children's fiction with female leads, and it surprised me that Echidne--who prides herself on her research--would publish something so obviously uninformed. Plus, her analysis of the Harry Potter series left out a few inconvenient facts: the single most intelligent student in Hogwarts was a girl. Hermione wasn't just the lovable sidekick of Harry Potter, and she was frequently more interesting than he was precisely because she took the academic angle of magic more seriously.

Besides Hermione, there were many more girls in the Harry Potter story who played powerful roles: Ginny, Luna, the Patil twins, Pansy Parkinson, Professor McGonagall, Professor Trelawney, Mrs. Weasley...the list goes on and on. And the farther into the series you go, the more important those other characters become.

Echidne's premise that girls will read books with boys as protagonists but boys won't read books with girls as protagonists is shaky, at best. My son, for instance would rather read books with animals as protagonists than any book with kids in the lead. My oldest daughter was a huge Matt Christopherfan. And none of this mentions the fact that elementary school-age kids tend to sex select. That is, girls go with girls' stuff and boys go with boys' stuff (besides the fact that there's far more variation in girls' stuff than boys' stuff).

I hate to rain on Echidne's Teh Patriarchy parade, but many of the sex stereotypes she's complaining about don't really apply to modern children's entertainment choices. Go to the Disney Channel's home page, and you'll find a large number of shows that feature female leads, from That's So Raven to Hannah Montana to Kim Possible (and this doesn't include past favorites like Lizzie McGuire and Sister Sister).

The entertainment industry is making a much bigger effort to create shows that appeal to girls as much as boys. That's because girls' parents are just as willing as boys' parents to shell out money for books, movies, games and more that show children as empowered and intelligent individuals.

This isn't 1972 when male stars dominated children's literature and entertainment. The industry is far more savvy than that now.