In a focus group interview I conducted with six adults, Rena (37) spoke about her experience of the Harry Potter “craze” with respect to her relationship with her niece and nephew, four and six years old respectively.
It’s just like any fad or trend that particularly children at school encounter; it does have an impact on what they want their parents to buy them, what they want their aunty to bring down from Auckland. Definitely, they’re right into the Harry Potter merchandise thing. And as an aunty it’s a great relief to know that if it’s got Harry Potter on it they’ll love it! (FGI4)
Knowing that her niece and nephew enjoy the Harry Potter stories helps her purchase a gift for them that will be appreciated. As far as Rena is concerned, the interaction she experiences with them through Harry Potter products is a win-win: she takes pleasure in knowing that she has given a gift that is wanted and desired, and her niece and nephew enjoy investing their pleasure with the
story and its cultural currency through the merchandise. As discussed, gift- giving is an important feature of connecting with others; in this instance Rena shows her love for her niece and nephew by acknowledging their cultural interests and participating in their activities by taking them to the first Harry Potter film.
Rena is uncritical of the commodification of the Harry Potter merchandise, emphasising instead how she can use the merchandise to emotional affect and cement important familial relationships. It could be argued that Rena’s
consumer behaviour typifies the passive consumption that the Frankfurt School argues derives from products supplied by the culture industries, that she is “buying their love”. But equally her gifting of commodified goods implies the complexity of social interactions when immersed in late capitalism. Her
experience shows that the pleasure of gift-giving is entangled with the capitalist economic structure, and it is difficult to give without being implicated in
commercialism. Daniel (34), on the other hand, was scathing about the
ubiquitous Harry Potter goods. He believes that the merchandise detracts from the books and that the driving concept behind the goods is “let’s milk this for all it’s worth.”
Hegemony theorist Martyn J. Lee suggests a way in which the
Fiske represents (to which Daniel and Rena’s positions roughly relate respectively) can be amalgamated:
if consumption is simultaneously the touchstone of the political economy, underwritten by a commercial logic which places the realisation of surplus-value at its core, as well as the site upon which popular pleasures are produced, often as a result of the unforeseen uses and meanings given to goods by consumers in their everyday domestic life, then it is clear that we need to construct a theoretical model of consumption which is sensitive to both its economic and cultural dimensions. (49)
For hegemony theory, social meaning is established through a contested
relationship with cultural products and forms. That is, the consumer good can both mediate and enable social control, and provide the tools through which people construct their everyday lives and culture.
Fiske asserts that consumption of popular culture frequently expresses an active struggle for social meaning and authority. This ability of the consumer to submit to, negotiate with or retaliate against the dominant social order is
inherent in the capitalist system itself. Fiske suggests there are two parallel economies operating dialectically within capitalism – the financial and the
cultural. The financial economy, as the name indicates, is the sphere of
production and distribution. Because production is oriented toward generating exchange value, a surplus, the cultural product is a commodity. Once complete, the commodity then enters the cultural economy, where the focus is the
product’s use value – “the ability of the commodity to satisfy some human want” (Marx, qtd. in Storey, Cultural Studies 223). The cultural economy is the site of consumption; the cultural product is interpreted, giving meaning and pleasure to the audience.
So as to generate as much surplus profit as possible, the financial economy looks to homogenise and incorporate consumers into the dominant social order, thereby ensuring the producer’s viability; however, the cultural economy is motivated by the consumer’s desire to express individualism. The cultural economy is therefore characterised by heterogeneity and resistance to incorporation. It is the conflicting motivation behind these two interacting economies, Fiske claims, that enables agency within a system that intends to constrain and limit each individual’s authenticity, ultimately creating what Marxist critic Mike Wayne refers to as “crippled subjectivities” (185).
From this perspective it follows that the cultural economy is of primary interest to those looking to understand how such diverse phenomena as authority, social meaning, and identity are negotiated through cultural products. Fiske confirms that:
the workings of the financial economy cannot account adequately for all cultural factors, but it still needs to be taken into account in any investigation. . . . but the cultural commodity cannot be adequately described in financial terms only: the circulation that is crucial to its popularity occurs in the parallel economy – the
cultural. (Television Culture 311)
There are two modes by which the “powerless” resist those with power: the semiotic and the social. The semiotic relates to the meanings and pleasures derived from the cultural product as well as social identity. The social refers to the possibility of influencing the socio-economic system effecting change. Popular culture predominantly relates to the former, with “semiotic guerrilla warfare” (Fiske, Television Culture 316) occurring between those who seek to enforce social meaning and those who refuse or negotiate such impositions. It follows that popular culture is not a site of radical politics, but it is progressive in that it enables resistance.
Although Fiske provides a sense of the dialectical nature of the economic and cultural spheres, his analyses privilege the consumer as active and devious. But as Paul Willis observes, “the market does not provide cultural
over choices – the power to set the cultural agenda” (160). Rather the market offers “contradictory empowerment” (160). Willis points to the irony that capitalism, in allowing critique, offers the very tools for it to be challenged. He suggests that resistance lies within capital relations; that in “supplying materials for its own critique” (139) capitalism permits creativity and protest that takes the socio-political system to task.
One example of consumers’ reluctance to conform with capitalist expectations was the organised protest against Coke’s involvement with the Harry Potter franchise. Parents (primarily) expressed concern that the
attachment of the global corporation to the franchise does not add anything to the consumer’s enjoyment of Rowling’s creation, but merely ferments in young consumers a subconscious pleasurable connection between the sugary drink and the boy wizard. The internet website SaveHarryPotter.com prompts Harry Potter fans to send a generic email letter to the author (notably not Coca-cola), protesting against the marketing deal with “one of the world’s largest junk- food marketers” (SaveHarry.com). The website offers advice (“What YOU can do: Take Action!”) and information (“Dangers of Liquid Candy” and “The Press Room”). This protest has not severed the lucrative relationship between
as a tool through which consumers can communicate and mobilise across the globe. 11
Diane Nelson of Time Warner has stated that, “we have to be very careful not to exploit, not over-commercialise, not to take [Harry Potter] from the kids and turn it into something that it’s not” (“AOL”). However, across the focus group interviews many complained that the merchandising had gone too far. 14-year-old Kelly claimed that she did not want any Harry Potter merchandise because “we all get pencil cases like everyone else” (FGI3). Against the
advertising promise that ownership of these items will confer a unique individualism, Kelly observes instead that these mass produced goods make her indistinguishable from her friends. 13-year-old John also spoke of the extensive merchandising as diminishing the series’ appeal during the pilot interview: “If there is too much hype it destroys the whole thing. I think that is what has happened with Harry Potter” (FGI1). And 15-year-old Claire claimed, “It’s almost too commercial . . . [the merchandising] cheapens it for me”
(FGI3).12
11 Evidence of consumers refusing to “buy into” the merchandising is indicated through 2003 being a bad year for Lego with the Harry Potter merchandise not providing the expected boost to sales (“Loss Likely”).
12 This is not to forget that some people enjoy the commercialization of their favourite text. On TheOneRing website “WendyLadyofLothlorien” complains that the shop at the London The Lord of the Rings exhibition failed to meet her expectations: “To say that I was disappointed with [the shop] would be an understatement . . . the Science Museum missed out on an absolutely
Most of the children interviewed had read the books, watched the films, engaged with the computer games, consumed the chocolate frogs and “Bertie Botts’ Every Flavoured Beans” and had been “sorted” into one of the Hogwarts Houses via the internet. But few interviewees had many other Harry Potter products; for these young people a few computer games, toothbrushes and trading cards characterises the level of participation in the phenomenon. Discussions with the children about Harry Potter merchandising shows that they become more discerning as they mature; my four- and seven-year-old nephews uncritically accept with exclamations of delight anything at all with Harry Potter on it, but as children reach ten years they become aware of the cynical aspect of the late capitalist system into which they are being
acculturalised. Ten-year-old Leo cautiously describes the merchandising as ‘kind of copying”, but believes this is acceptable if it means more people will read the books. Leo is defensive of Rowling’s intellectual property, concerned that the ubiquitous Harry Potter products are undermining her creativity; as Kapur observes, “bringing children into the market as consumers can also politicize them against the market” (161).
golden marketing opportunity.” WendyLady observes that those items available for purchase were “lower end”, predominantly t-shirts, mugs, action-figures. What she was looking for were the more up-market products, including reproductions of the Ring, Galadriel and Arwen’s accessories and the wide range of weaponry which is available over the internet
I cannot extrapolate from these interviews that this entire New Zealand demographic (middle-class, Pakeha, and a cross-section of urban and rural), shows little evidence of the “totalisation” by the Harry Potter phenomenon that so upsets those critics of the Frankfurt School persuasion. Nevertheless, what these interviews do suggest is that the ubiquity of the merchandising and the “illiteracy” of young consumers may not be as thorough as some commentators imply; the problem with generalisations is that they tend to fulfil their own prophesying by refusing legitimacy to those not conforming to the
generalisation.
With so many of the items in the books now available for sale, it is worth noting what is not for sale. For me, a significant item absent from the shelves is the “Weasley jumper”, the “thick hand-knitted sweater” (HPPS 147) that Mrs Weasley gives to her children (Harry included) every Christmas. A search on the “Official Warner Brothers Harry Potter Shop” for “Weasley jumper” brings up t-shirts, scarves and ties, but no hand-knitted jerseys. Warner Bros. try hard to evoke a magical experience for the shopper on their website with sparkling icons such as “add to cauldron” (add to shopping cart) and “summons details” (product information) connecting the tone of the story with capitalism. It would seem that there is the ability and desire to commodify “magical” objects (various wands are available for purchase as “authentic recreations” of those represented in the film), but unique hand-made items made with love (such as
Hagrid’s roughly hewn wooden flute [HPPS 147] and photograph album) are immune to capitalism – just as Lily Potter’s love for her son is incomprehensible to Voldemort.
Many fans of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter raised concerns over the “Hollywoodisation” of their favourite stories. Christopher Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien’s son and literary executor, believed that The Lord of the Rings was peculiarly unsuited to film adaptation (“Tolkien’s Son Speaks Out”) and equally sceptical was “Quickbeam” from theonering.net, who asked
rhetorically, “what kind of disaster is this going to be, turning something that is so epic and so deeply revered into another piece of American pop junk?” (qtd. in O’Hehir). How, then, have the culture industries managed the vocal and organised fans to accept the films and related merchandise when the texts evoke such passion and enthusiasm?
Jyotsna Kapur explains the contradictory relationship between the media corporations and fans:
On the one hand, fans do the work of these corporations, buying their products and thus creating profits for them. On the other hand, when fans begin to create alternatives, they threaten the iron grip these corporations seek to retain on their brands. The true nature of the relationship between media corporations and
audiences is revealed when the control of the former is threatened. Then, from posing as democrats who make what audiences want, these corporations transform into powerful policing agents. (161)
The relations developed by Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema leading up to the release of the first film in both series in 2001 illustrate Kapur’s point. Both production companies employed two main strategies to manipulate the pre- existing fan base into accepting the new vision for Harry Potter and The Lord of
the Rings. First, they used a “gatekeeper” through which discourses
legitimating the film adaptation and related merchandise and marketing were disseminated. Second, the internet was employed as a tool through which the production company, as culture industry, communicated with fans around the world. Through these key practices Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema endeavoured to placate concerns and to project the films as culturally
authoritative. According to hegemonic relations, they cannot impose the text upon an audience but must convince fans that they approve of the film and want to purchase the memorabilia. Yet, as Kapur describes, the democratic face of these media conglomerates quickly turns to forceful policing when they fear their intellectual capital is being misused. The following section explores these corporate strategies in more detail.