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All British Literature Videos 53 videos

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ELA 12: Everyone Loves a Critic 16 Views


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Description:

The real witchcraft in the Harry Potter series seems to be its magical ability to brew up controversy.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Shmoop the books from the Harry Potter series have sold a total of over 400 [lots of harry potter books stacked on each other]

00:06

million copies so surely everyone loves them right no well not quite when anything

00:12

gets that popular it's bound to have a critic or 2 or 200 well one wave of

00:16

criticism came from a conservative religious group they accused the series [religious group holding up protest signs]

00:21

of promoting witchcraft in a way depicts magic and Wizardry which is silliness

00:26

even a stuffy old bishop can tell that riding broomsticks with your friends

00:30

would be a lot of fun however this criticism might come from a [two bishopmen riding broomsticks]

00:33

slight misconception its true that witches have their very own religion

00:37

Wicca but what they teach in practice is very different from the goings-on at

00:42

Hogwarts it would be nice to join a religion where Quidditch was a part of [girl flying a broomstick tring to catch a golden snitch]

00:46

the Sunday service but alas such a religion does not exist in our world

00:50

well in other criticism came from feminists who argued that Rowling's [girls marching in protest]

00:54

magical world is too male-dominated well this criticism has been tougher to

00:58

dodge the cast characters is pretty heavily weighted toward male character

01:02

and a majority of the most important ones happened to be male [harry potter characters stood on a weighing scale]

01:06

no one's quite as brave as Harry no one's quite as wives Dumbledore no one

01:09

quite as evil as Voldemort you know well there's even no one quite as mumbling as

01:13

Neville Longbottom good job there Neville well also among the series critics were other [Wizard exploding himself]

01:18

fantasy writers who thought the series wasn't all that imaginative or original

01:23

mmm jealous party of one according to these fantasy writers JK Rowling went to a [woman stood over a well]

01:28

well of relatively common fantasy ideas and tropes without really adding much of

01:33

her own well to be fair to Rowling though she wasn't exactly trying to

01:38

reinvent the wheel or the wheel beasts that infamous fantastical Rowling [woman tapping a wand at an angry looking wheel]

01:42

monster perhaps the harshest criticism though

01:45

came from the professionals literary critics themselves well some

01:50

critics panned to the series as cliched unoriginal unrefined unspectacular [whiteboard with a list of criticisms]

01:55

lacking subtlety and having questionable artistic merit among other things

01:59

basically you could make an entire book out of the criticisms these critics lobbed [harry potter books on a circular table]

02:03

at Rowling and if you have a good sense to put the worst

02:06

Harry Potter on it somewhere well you too might make millions by JK Rowling

02:11

seems to take all the criticisms in stride which is pretty [harry potter critics angrily protesting at the window of a house]

02:14

easy to do when you're worth a billion dollars maybe there is some witchcraft

02:17

layer after all

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