Speakup and View Comments

          Front Page  upfront

Tuesday, July 14, 2009


Unifying Force

By Hailey Heinz
Journal Staff Writer
      The latest Harry Potter movie opens at midnight tonight, and I can't wait.
    It's not because I am excited to see how director David Yates will portray the inferi or how well the on-screen chemistry will work between Harry and Ginny. As a fan, I am eager to see those things, but that's not why I'm jonesing for a hit after a two-year Harry Potter drought.
    I'm excited because Harry Potter is my touchstone in a society that increasingly allows us to pick and choose our cultural experiences. Almost nothing is universal anymore, and hasn't been for most of my life.
    Except Harry Potter.
    Let me start, as print journalists do, by blaming the Internet.
    The Internet allows us an infinite array of music, television and information precisely to suit our taste. Where once everyone had to listen to the radio, watch prime-time TV and, yes, read their daily newspaper, now we can divide up into niches and experience only what we choose.
    For those of us in our early 20s, this phenomenon means we have had an almost total lack of artists, songs or movies that unite us. We don't have Elvis or the Beatles or even Michael Jackson figures, because our tastes are splintered and we have the means to seek out what we like.
    Except Harry Potter.
    I am of what you might call the Harry Potter generation. I was 12 when the first book was published in the United States, and Harry, of course, was 11. My peers and I grew up alongside Harry, Ron and Hermione.
    We were sharing their experiences as the trio progressed from 11-year-old kids through all the awkwardness of adolescence, dating and, of course, a healthy dose of teen angst. (In the fifth book, Harry is actually having a fit of teen angst throughout the entire story. I assume, although it is not addressed in the book, that he was also writing bad poetry at the time.)
    I was 17 when the fifth book was released and also was writing bad poetry.
    I do really like the books. They're good stories with good characters and are nearly impossible to put down. But that, to me, has never been the point. I love the Harry Potter books — and movies — because they are my generation's only shared pop culture experiences.
    I loved nothing more than curling up with a new Harry Potter book right after its release, mostly because I liked the feeling that just about everyone I knew was doing the same thing, experiencing the same laughs and gasps and losses.
    I like that in any group of my peers I can make a reference to Quidditch and people will get it.
    Last year, I giggled along with everyone else when rapper Kanye West proclaimed himself "the voice of this generation," famously saying that he would be to music what Michael Jordan was to basketball. Aside from the breathtaking arrogance of the statement, I think Kanye failed to notice the generation he claimed to speak for had made a crucial shift, experiencing pop culture in a personal rather than communal way and defying any one person to be their voice.
    Except Harry Potter.
    The Potter series means what it does to me because of the way it caught on, sweeping nearly everyone up in its wave and uniting young people who were splintered in nearly every other way.
    If there is a voice of this generation, he has glasses and a lightning-shaped scar.
    UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. You can reach Hailey at 823-3843 or hheinz@abqjournal.com.