Topic: Harry Potter Domination in Pop Culture

The Boy Who Lived And Captured the World

Harry Potter is a series that had the world enchanted with its storyline as
well as its own universe for the reason that it helped the imagination of hundredths thousands of
teens and adult alike foster in creating their own stories and widening their horizons in the
fictional world for its portrayal of such vastly unique alternative universe where wizards and
witches co-exists with humans having their own system, society and governance as well as a
system that is created to sort people of like characteristics (The Houses in Hogwarts School of
Magic). Since the books’ author J.K Rowling based some of the aspects of the series in real life
happenings, characters from the book offered an escape and a reflection to the reader’s own
environment being the main protagonist, Harry Potter, is an orphan left in the hands of his cruel
relatives that abuses and maltreats him made it relatable as none of the characters were portrayed
as a perfect individual that created a feeling or realism within something so fictional. The Harry
Potter Series were such a hit that it inspired others to create their own in hopes of following in
the footsteps of said series and some examples would be Artemis Fowl, The Spiderwick
Chronicles, and A Series of Unfortunate Events and it even paved the way for books like
Twilight and The Hunger Games to the Hollywood (Tim Masters, 2019).

Despite the criticism that it received from numerous Christian groups all
across the world for it was accused to teach youngsters about witchcraft, paganism and Satanism,
Harry Potter had not only taught children the idea of magic, unity and friendship it also taught
children how to accept diversity within a group and the consequences of racial discrimination
according to an article entitled a study was conducted by a group of researchers led by Professor
Loris Vezzali of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Vezzali, et.al 2016) in Italy to
first only 34 Italian elementary school children where they divided the groups into two groups
and made them meet twice a week and read “Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets”
passages and discuss it with a research assistant. Some passages related to prejudice, like the
scene where Draco Malfoy, a white blond pure-blood wizard calls Hermione Granger, a friend of
Harry that is a nerdy ginger head girl, “filthy little Mud-Blood” as well as non-prejudice excerpts
to Harry’s first time in the Wizarding world and his first time getting a wand and a week after the
last session, children’s attitude were then evaluated and the group that read the passages with
prejudice had a significant change of point of view compared to those who don’t. The results of
the second research with the Italian high school students were the same and one found out that
reading Harry Potter improved attitude towards homosexuality in Italian high school. Vezzali’s
work supports earlier suggestion that children reading novels has implications on social life,
cultural and psychological complexities and can have a positive impact on personality
development as well as social skills.
 Harry Potter did not only contribute to pop culture and growth of teenagers
and adults’ imaginations but also to the growth of vocabulary and sports. As they coined
numerous new ones and although the words need to be ten years older for the Oxford English
Dictionary to be considered, J.K Rowling’s “Muggle” was an exception – a word that made its
debut in the book of The Philosopher’s Stone – was added in 2002 with the meaning of “a person
who lacks a particular skill or skills, or is someone who is as inferior in some way” (Oxford
English Dictionary, 2002) whereas in the Harry Potter universe it was “a person without magical
knowledge or linage”. It also invented a new sport from the book called “Quidditch” which is a
magical sport that is played on magical broomsticks (a Nimbus 2000 if you are lucky) and
involves bludgers, quaffles, and a golden snitch – a small ball with wings. In the real world, it is
a sport played with the same equipments however with some changes such as the broom having
gravity (sorry to disappoint) and the golden snitch instead of an inanimate ball is a person
wearing the signature yellow shirt with Velcro attached to their shorts. This sport started in the
United States around 2005 and has become a global sport with its very own governing body.
United States was the champions for 2018 IQA World Cup that was held in Florence, Italy
between June 27 – July 2, 2018, bringing in the trophy for the third time with Belgium as the
first runner up, followed by Turkey and UK.

In conclusion, Harry Potter is a series that took the world by the storm when
it was released in 1997 despite being rejected for 12 times and this triggered a chain of a
butterfly effect from its failure to its immense success with estimated 450 million of sold copies
translated in 68 languages all over the world (Nicolas Rapp, Krishna Thakker; 2017) created not
only a fandom but a community that continues to grow as the series inspire innovative minds as
well as shaped young minds with the topics of racism, prejudice, inequality and evil as an eye
opener for the future generations. The series helped majority of people find their escape from the
reality they lived in as well as taught them values of companionships, loyalty, and unity to
escape and defeat evil as the series highlight the saying that “There is always light at the end of a
dark tunnel” as Harry’s journey to self discovery was an excruciating and painful one filled with
regrets, mistakes, and death but at the end, he was able to find his light – himself, the power
within him, magical or not is the light to a seemingly never ending twilight. This message was
delivered to every twelve, nineteen or even fifty years old that found their own light in them, just
like how Harry did.
.