Author, stars and fans from across the globe met in Trafalgar Square on 7 July 2011 at a mammoth premiere event, with the preview launch of the film of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. The franchise has lasted for ten years, and the books upon which the films are based began publication in June 1997.
"Each and every person, not just here in this square but around the world who have watched these films for the last ten years, will always carry the films with them for the rest of their lives," Harry Potter actor, Daniel Radcliffe, told fans. Now that J.K. Rowling has announced a continuation of the Harry Potter story brought about by the interaction of fans with a new web facility, Pottermore, his prediction may well come true.
The Harry Potter serial
This urge to continue the story seems new in the case of the Harry Potter fans, because the Harry Potter movies and books appear to have become a unique media phenomenon. Yet there are precedents in popular culture history. The pivot of their continued popularity is their seriality, coupled with audience strategies for coping with, and enjoying, the repeated cycles of anticipation, satisfaction and deprivation that characterize serial consumption.
The popularity of most mid- to late-nineteenth century UK authors was fostered by serialised publication in Dickens’ magazine Household Words. Jenkins (2007) poses a direct comparison between the arrival of the next instalments of popular stories then, and the excited anticipation of the seventh and last Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, “One can't help recall the stories of the mobs that swamped the docks awaiting the latest shipment of Dickens serials from London,” Jenkins says.
Theories of seriality and repetition
This strong history for serial consumption of narrative develops from Dickens's magazine to weekly newspaper serials, from Saturday morning cinema (when the Buck Rogers movies began, for instance) to radio and television soap opera. For UK child readers, the original audience for the Harry Potter series, this was developed through children's magazines called 'papers' in the nineteenth century, then through series of novels based around one place or situation, such as the Chalet School or Biggles novels. In the 1950s the audience exploded into vast readerships for the series novels of Enid Blyton while in the US Nancy Drew and many others captured popular imagination.
Seriality is well understood among popular fiction readerships, and the repetition that goes with that is tolerated because the audience expects that each new volume will deliver something new, some innovation, as well. Even in formulaic fictions where the ending is predictable, this innovation is perceived in the detail. Such is the essence of genre readership or fandom.
Genre and seriality
For movies, seriality of feature films is a recent phenomenon, being used to attract repeat visits to theatres at a time when regular cinema attendance is the exception rather than the rule. The Fantasy genre seems most successful in this, from the beginning of the Star Wars series and moving forward to the Avatar features yet to come. The Harry Potter series of eight movies is the longest sequence in the age of Multiplex cinemas and has the most mainstream audience.
Arthur Asa Berger uses Eco’s discussion on innovation and repetition as an introduction to his list of suggested methods of approach to analysing and understanding how genre works in popular culture. Indeed, this pattern of innovation and repetition is one of the key concepts in understanding how genre fiction and film continues to attract audiences.
The last ever Harry Potter movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 opened in most movie theatres on 15 July 2011. How the fans cope with the end of their fantasy world may well be demonstrated in their activities on the internet, and in gauging whether or not their engagement with the stories has the longevity of the Lord of The Rings trilogy.
Sources
Arthur Asa Berger (1992) Popular Culture Genres: Theories and Texts Sage
BBC News (2011) ‘Harry Potter premiere: Stars and fans bid tearful goodbye’ July 7
Henry Jenkins (2007) ‘Everybody Loves Harry?’ May 21 online article at Confessions of an Aca-Fan USC
N. Moody & C. Horrocks (eds) (2002) Children’s Fantasy Fiction: Debates for the Twenty First Century, ARPF/LJMU
Valerie Williamson - Dr. Val Williamson is a freelance journalist and academic specialising in historical and popular culture topics.
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