author_by_night | Fan Snobbery or Righteous Annoyance?

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Fan Snobbery or Righteous Annoyance?

So I've been thinking about how I feel about most of Jo's chats/interviews/appearances being catered for her eight year old fans, when IMO there's no way they actually understood TDH.

And wondering how reasonable it is.

I guess I just have mixed feelings.

On one hand, I do get annoyed when she has all these chats, and it's so clear the majority of the kids get the very basics only, and that many of them probably have the books read to them. And when I think about The Deathly Hallows - in what way was a book where a House Elf is stabbed to death, a witch is called a bitch and some guy goes around eating kids a book for eight year olds? I love Harry Potter, but geez, if I were a Mom I'd make my kids wait until they were at least in sixth grade before reading that!

And I see these chats, interviews, etc, and find myself annoyed, because they'll upstage the good questions with questions like "what Harry Potter character do you most relate to" (you'd think Mummy would realize that might have already been asked and suggest thinking of better questions), "why was Ron so angry" (um, re-read the book), and so on.

OTOH, I feel a bit bad, because then I realize that:

1. Not all people have links to Madame Scoop's so they can check what has been asked.

2. If a kid thinks they're a fan, they think they're a fan, and they don't need to be informed that they don't really understand the books they love by JKR just not giving them opportunities anymore.

And it's not just the kids - adults ask pretty irritating questions too. And I guess to a fan who knows the names of characters we've never really met, anyone not necessarily remembering every fact about Sirius's family is going to come across as annoying. Which is actually quite unfair to those fans, because how can they be expected to, if they haven't re-read ten times and/or visited the Lexicon twice a month like the crazies?

Maybe the problem is that Jo needs to try and do more interviews for older, and/or more devoted fans. The Memerson chat was really nice, because Melissa Anelli and Emerson Spartz are crazies (heck, as admins of huge HP sites they're almost the Fruits of the Crazies), and they asked questions that mattered to fans - crazies and moderate. So maybe Jo needs to seek out more like that. I'm hoping her middle and high school chats will offer some opportunities, at least.

And to be fair, not all kid fans are non-readers. for the reading thing I did for work, one of the kids read PoA; he noticed something many Harry Potter fans fail to, regarding the characterization of a character. (I'm not going to elaborate further in order to avoid drama.)

Um.. yeah. So that's my rant/meta. Any thoughts from you guys?

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I'm hoping that as time passes, her screaming popularity will wane a bit, and she'll start going to fan conventions and she'll let us pick her brains. It may take 10-15 years, but I'm patient. ;-P

Thing is, after this last round of interviews, I don't actually hold much stock in the things JKR says in them. She regularly contradicts herself.

If she were older, I'd be really looking forward to studies of her papers. As she really is of an age with me, the likelihood of that happening is pretty slim. It'll probably be my kidlet that gets that opportunity.

What people distill about the Potterverse from her papers will be really fascinating to those of us diehard fans that are alive to read it.

Yeah, I think soem of it IS the hype, but again, that's partly what bugs me. But whatever.

And true, she has contradicted herself a bit, but otherwise she's shown a lot of insight. And really, some of her contradictions I think are more of a matter of her needing to just tell her fans "I never thought much on that." (Like the ages of the Weasley kids - I doubt she ever really thought about it.) Though I would like her to stop with ages in general in that case, since well, her math sucks. (And so does mine. Which is why I'm very careful when playing around with numbers, ages and dates!)

I share your feelings, really - on the one hand, I find the repetition in questions from interviewers in general (if I hear the story about how she came up with the whole thing on a train journey one more time...) annoying, and those ones that inspire a 'did you read the book at all?' face at the screen in particular drive me mad, but I know it's for children, and the people asking or picking the questions can't be expected to have read the things with a PhD student's eye for detail.

I'd really love to see her do an interview that was really tailoured for us obsessives, those of us who would really like to know about the intricacies of her world. I was hoping she might do another interview with one of the fansites so they could pin her down....

Exactly.

I suspect that the most important difference isn't even the level of experience with the books--it's with the focus of the attention. Most readers who participate in interviews and chats are doing so for the enjoyment of having briefly touched base with the woman who created something that they enjoy. On the other hand, those whom you call 'devoted fans' are not necessarily more devoted; they are merely differently devoted. Rather than focusing their devotion on the woman and the experience of reading, they instead devote themselves to decoding and revealing more of the world in which the books take place. For these people, the geographers and sociologists and anthropologists of the wizarding world, the story of Jo Rowling couldn't be less interesting. They want names, dates, statistics, historical occurrences, societal factors that motivate actions; they want what you want, and what you feel you aren't getting from the chats and interviews.

Of course, I could just be making things up. ^_~

No, you have a good point - it is very possible that it IS what people read for and care about. You know, I even see this with tv show and theater fandoms - many people wish to discuss the people involved more than the story being told, simply because that's what matters to them. Maybe it's the same thing with the people who ask who JKR based whom on.

I'd love to hear her talk about writing - things like story construction and how she kept track of her plot lines and how she kept going writing the most public WIP ever.

And I guess to a fan who knows the names of characters we've never really met, anyone not necessarily remembering every fact about Sirius's family is going to come across as annoying. Which is actually quite unfair to those fans, because how can they be expected to, if they haven't re-read ten times and/or visited the Lexicon twice a month like the crazies?

That's the difference between fans and fandom. Being one doesn't mean you're automatically part of the other.

Maybe the problem is that Jo needs to try and do more interviews for older, and/or more devoted fans. The Memerson chat was really nice, because Melissa Anelli and Emerson Spartz are crazies (heck, as admins of huge HP sites they're almost the Fruits of the Crazies), and they asked questions that mattered to fans - crazies and moderate. So maybe Jo needs to seek out more like that. I'm hoping her middle and high school chats will offer some opportunities, at least.

I don't think this will happen, mainly because the series is over -- but also because there's only so much "OMG YOU WHORE HOW COULD WRECK MY 'SHIP/THEORY/ETC." screeching from disappointed and hugely overreacting fans a human being can take.

Jo doesn't "need" to try and do more interviews for her fandom. It'd be nice if she did, but it's not necessary.

Well, true, but it also doesn't mean you have to be in the fandom to know the deeper facts. I know fans who haven't read a fic in their lives, but know the smallest detail. I also know fandomers who don't necessarily remember every detail, but both groups of people know enough to as helpful questions at chats. (Although even helpful is relative - one person's "oh wow" is someone elses's "no shit sherlock", or "so?")

And I think Jo could be a good judge on who to have an interview with. You're right though that she doesn't "need" to do anything - I did not mean this as in, if she doesn't I will lose all respect for her. But it'd be very nice.

You know I'm going to ask you later to tell me what the kid said, right? that's my fave of the books!

I'm hoping she can at least answer more stuff on her website. Yes, the casual fan goes there but she HAS to know that we do, too!

Yeah, I get a bit annoyed when they have these contests and you can only enter if you are under 18 years of age. Hello? There are probably millions of adult fans too! I entered the contest to go to the Carnegy Hall thing in October, but I guess I didn't win one of the 1000 seats. :(

Yeah, that's really irritating. :(

Oh, I know. :(

I think there was a poll (of general readership, not fandom) around HBP's release that placed the average HP reader at age 22. And that's probably increased significantly since then with a growing fanbase and darker books.

The thing that always makes me curious is why some of the questions are picked in the first place! The recent web chat didn't actually contain too many questions I found to be ridiculous, but I always wonder how questions about the most basic elements of the book make it through -- questions that I'm sure even the majority of younger fans know the answers to.

To be fair to her younger fans (and the less obsessive ones), I still find their questions 87 times better than those often asked in professional interviews. How many times can the woman explain where she got her inspiration?

Personally, I'd prefer for her to move away from interviews altogether and answer more questions on her site. I've generally been satisfied with all of the information given there. (Plus, she has more time to formulate an answer and avoid contradictions.)

IMO she wont talk to adult fans because they might ask difficult questions like why she is pushing the issue of faith in the last book, when she had seemed to be heading for a more secular story that didn't rely on such things.

Also the less sycophantic fans might ask why she gets things wrong, like DD’s death date and is it just me or did she write that DD collected James's cloak twice, once at the end of July around Harry's birthday and then again shortly before James and Lily were murdered in October.

In the letter to Sirius, in which Lily thanks Sirius for Harry’s gift for his first birthday and tells him…

“James is getting a bit frustrated shut up here, he tries not to show it but I can tell -also Dumbledore’s still got his Invisibility Cloak. So no chance of little excursions.” (Pg.149, Bloomsbury Edition D H.)

So in July DD had the cloak but then Dd tells Harry…

“the Cloak was in my possession on the night your parents died. James had showed it to me just a few days previously.” (Pg.572, Bloomsbury Edition DH.)

So DD seems to think he got the cloak at the end of October 81 or am I going mad.

And don’t get me started on secret-keepers and being inside other peoples memories and them being objective.

I think this is why she stays away from adults, she certainly wont talk to adult UK fans she just ignores us and says the her books are for children and I believe it is because we are not so precious about things like religion and will challenge her on the subject.

Equally you are right she keeps going for her 11 year old reader forgetting that the original 11 years olds who have been on this journey with her from the start deserve a little bit of acknowledgement for staying the course. Sadly like all people in her situation those she has converted to her dogma no longer matter, she is only interested in those who need converting.

Also the less sycophantic fans might ask why she gets things wrong, like DD’s death date and is it just me or did she write that DD collected James's cloak twice, once at the end of July around Harry's birthday and then again shortly before James and Lily were murdered in October.

But are fact-checking questions such as the one about the cloak really more likely to get an interesting answer than the "why was Ron angry" ones? I don't think it's wrong of you to be annoyed by it, but we've known for years that she makes those kind of errors, and if she was asked about it she would probably just say "Oops, my mistake" and change "days" to "months" in the next edition, or invent some elaborate story about Dumbledore borrowing the cloak twice, which no-one would believe anyway.

I think that the best thing Rowlings adult readers could do, if given the opportunity, would be to not ask questions about the "facts" of the Potterverse, but rather about why she made the choices she made in telling her story.
For example, the question "why did you chose to let the SPEW-storyline culminate with Ron and Hermione kissing instead of something that more directly involved house-elf rights?" would be more interesting than "what happened to the house-elves?". Also, non-confrontational questions about the religious issues you mention, or about the gender and sexuality issues that have been discussed a lot in fandom might lead to some interesting answers, though a chat or a Q&A-session might not be the ideal format for these questions.

I agree with the comments posted by

wolfsbaine on why she keeps selecting the questions she does and prefers having sessions with children.

I think children are also more likely to love her/the books unconditionally and not turn a critical eye to things and think "deus ex machina" wand. I think for adults she also prefers to pick people who will keep it simple. While it is very frustrating, I can also completely understand why she for lack of a better way to put it prefers "yes men", it's easier on the ego.

As to violence in the Potter books, I'd have to disagree, fairy tales are just as gruesome and we consider those kids fare. Little Red Riding Hood is eaten alive by a wolf in many versions (as a symbolic rape no less) and her grandmother is eaten alive. Donkeyskin features an incestuous father. The witch in Hansel and Gretel plans to eat Hansel and then Gretel before being pushed into the oven herself. If you read the original Grimm versions (ignoring the antisemitism and religious theology of some of the tales) you have people having their eyes pecked out by birds and children being murdered and fed to their parents.

I can understand why people ask her questions to clarify something, but I wish they'd stop asking her questions about things that it's nicer to just imagine on your own - what various people did for jobs after Hogwarts, who did Luna end up with, et cetera. If those things were important they should have been in the books, and if they weren't, it's more fun to just come up with your own version.

But yeah, I get annoyed when some little kid asks a question and I want to yell, "She answered that in 2002! What a waste of a question!"

First, I'd like to set clear that though I origin from the Tolkien part of the world, and now found another home in the Potterverse, I don't want to insult either of them by comparing. That stated, I'd like to add my two cents ;)

I think that it's a unique chance for everyone involved to be able to communicate, because the author simply is alive in our time.

Tolkien-wise, apart from his own published works of course, we have to relate to notes put together by his son, and everything great minds read from them. Every year, when attending Ring*Con over here in Germany, I'm newly astounded how many men and women doted their academical life to that subject. I'm amazed at their knowledge and feel honoured to share their thoughts.

Regarding JKR: sure, she's free to choose her interactions with 'those who want to know'.. I only hope she's aware of the impact her writings have on many people - and that talking to them is a rare opportunity to share and gain insight. It may sound selfish, but I think.. she created a new world - it took flight - and now she's got a responsibility for it. And a lack of willing to respond to it on her side would, in my eyes, hurt and trivialize everyone who ever neglected 'normal life' over HP-related questions.

And I do hope this somehow made any sense to anyone.

This is an interesting topic! JKR MUST know that her fans are growing up with the books and that little kids will ask 'stupid' questions because they can't POSSIBLY understand the books and how deep they are. I mean, she's not stupid.

JKR seems to be the kind of person (and I might be wrong) who loves children and loves spending time with them and hear their thoughts about everything- I bet she was a really good teacher back in the day. I even remember her saying that she rather spends time with kids than adults. Anyway, my point is that she can choose her audience and if she prefers children that's her choice. I'm not sure if that's reasonable or not, but if given the choice she would probably always choose a younger crowd just because she enjoys it more. And who would bitch about that (exept us here right now)?! There would be much more complaining if she chose adults, I'm sure.

I wouldn't say kids don't understand the books, they do but in a different way and on another level. It's entirely up to the parents to see if their kid is old enough to read about creepy soul sucking hooded skeletons.

And another reason for these 'under 18 readings' might be that Harry Potter books started as children's series and became famous partly because many kids started to read as a result of them. People want to keep that image alive and Rowling reading to 20-year-olds is not keeping that image alive. Sad but true.

All that said, I would love to have more of these deep 'adult' interviews with her, because she really is so smart and interesting as a person, and to ask more challenging questions about her work. I know she's done a bunch of them and probably will do more in the future. Hopefully soon!

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Fan Snobbery or Righteous Annoyance?

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