Anna Lang

Dr. Powers

ENGL 281

2 April 2018

Monday in Pauxia

Like the flash of lightning, bars of blue light came down upon the door, blocking students from entering or exiting the dark, dungy classroom. Pauxia, Academy of Wizardry, is no stranger to lockdowns. When you’re an unfunded public school in the projects of Philadelphia, lockdowns and locker searches are just part of a typical week. From the sounds of the students’ gossip in Professor Kramel’s remedial potions class, it sounded like this lockdown was because someone managed to smuggle a wand silencer through security today. Impressive, if you think about it, since those security wizards went through intensive training at New York’s Wizarding College of Protection, kind of like the No-Maj police officers that are seen running around the neighborhoods of Philly.

Wand silencers were hard to come by on this side of Philly, especially since the recent crackdown from Philadelphia’s Safety Commissioner got re-elected for a tenth year in a row. Simply put, a wand silencer was a small, thin black rectangle that hooked onto the bottom of any wand, making them virtually untraceable and undetectable. The few that were still floating around the crumbling city belonged to gang members who only emerged under the cover of darkness.  

Birdie Benentt sat in the back of her potions class, arms crossed as she watched Professor Kramel pull out the binder from his desk in a swift motion. The orange binder held all the procedures that professors were suppose to follow if something happened; whether it be lockdowns, fights, or missing students. Karmel was only here for a few month, and in Birdie’s opinion, he only had a few more left before this school chewed him up and spat him back out. Although Professor Karmel was a nice enough teacher, his overly large nose, his naturally green hair, and boring class was often the butt of jokes in Pauxia. There had only been two lockdowns before -which was a record low at Pauxia- and poor Karmel was a stickler for rules and procedures, hench why he was now fumbling through the pages of the binder to look up what to do.

Students were suddenly excited and loud with the sudden appearance of the blue bars over the door. Pretty much all of them knew how these lockdowns worked, and in in the spirit of chaos, they wanted to make their own.

“Settle down guys!” Professor Karmel whined through his huge nose, hoping his class would quiet down long enough for him to think. Once he glanced down at the binder, he grabbed a silver basket under his desk. “You know the drill. First row, please come up and put your wands in the basket.” Grumbles ensued. The first row didn’t want to move from their seats, and some outright ignored the instructions and were busy gossiping with their friends around them. “If I don’t have wands in here in 10 seconds, you can all kiss the love potion lesson goodbye!” he shouted. That was enough to get the class moving.
Birdie slumped down in her seat, waiting for her row to be called on. She traced over the moving graffiti on her ancient wooden desk, watching a poorly drawn dragon fly around. Handing over her wand during lockdowns was always the worst; her wand was the only thing that gave her any sense of power in her drabby life. Between her deadbeat mom who was always high or drunk, a her father that was barely around because of work, and a cramped apartment with no privacy, there was enough stress for Birdie. At least at Pauxia, she was able to actually use her wand and be her own person. Who knew how long this lockdown would go on for.

“Row five, your turn,” Professor Karmel said. All six of the students, including Birdie, rose from their seats and walked over to the silver basket, dropping their chipped, secondhand wands into it. The basket had a special hex on it, simultaneously recording to make sure each wand actually belonged to each student, they didn’t have any silencers or illegal charms on them, and were sealed in the basket until security came around to each class to release them. But that could take hours. Returning back to her, Birdie slumped forward on her desk, flicking a piece of her curly, kinky hair out from her eyes. Her school’s tie- an ugly orange and light blue- coiled on the desk next to her head. On the back, she could read the tiny tag, which stated: PROPERTY OF PAUXIA, ACADEMY OF WIZARDRY.

“Settle DOWN class,” Professor Karmel snipped at the rowdy class of 25. Calypso, another girl with a reputation of running her mouth, whined back.

“How long is it gonna take Mister?” she said. “I’mma leavin early today, and I can’t be late for my hair appointment again.”

“I don’t know, Calypso,” Professor Karmel said. “But until we get the all clear from Principal Levvy, we are going to try to continue with our lesson.”

The class collectively moan in protest. Calypso started to talk back over the roar students, something about how they should watch a movie or something. Anything would be better than potions class right now. Birdie nestled her head in between her arms on her desk, and closed her eyes to try to ignore the class. She picked one of her hands up from the desk, and felt her right pocket to make sure her stack of tarot cards were still there. Reading tarot cards was something she loved doing, and according to the astrology Professor Gambi, she had a natural talent of reading the past, present, and future.

“Birdie, please get your head off the desk, and pay attention,” Professor Karmel said all of the sudden. Gritting her teeth and biting her tongue before she said something stupid, she reluctantly sat up in her uncomfortable chair. Today, she thought, was going to be a long day.

I really loved Sarah’s idea for her fanfiction. A story in which Neville was the chosen one rather than Harry would change nearly everything. For one, once Voldemort learned that it was Neville, Severus would have had no problem letting his parents die. He would have no reason to ask Voldemort for the “favor” of not killing Lily, and in turn, would not have gone to Dumbledore to ask for his additional protection. Therefore, Snape would remain a Death Eater, and would not be there to protect Neville for all those years throughout his time at Hogwarts. Unless a different character were to perform the actions that Snape did to protect Harry, the wizarding world would be in a significantly more dangerous position. Because of this, I would really love to see how Sarah would write the rest of the fanfiction. It would be so interesting to get her perspective on how the events might have taken place. My favorite part of her excerpt was when Neville was surrounded by the huge crowd inDiagon Alley and his grandmother dispersed them. I thought that during this part, we were going to see Neville use his powers for the first time, because of the stress he was under, and that didn’t happen. Instead his grandma stood up for him and by the power of her own voice could dispel the crowd. It genuinely caught me off-guard, and I love to be caught off-guard when I’m reading. I think her story was well thought-through and she clearly put a lot of time and work into writing and outlining her story. I believe that she did a fantastic job with this project.

Kylie’s take:

I would like to respond to Anna’s remix, in which she wrote a fanfiction about what a wizarding school might be like in an urban area. I really enjoyed that she thought through the place that the students would enter the wizarding world from the muggle world, and that she included information that the students would most likely be African American or Latino because of the school’s location. I think that her PowerPoint slide really helped me to visualize the school and its students, and it helped to discern her correct name for the school. As I sit towards the back of the room, I couldn’t hear her very well, and I thought she was saying “Apoxia.” Additionally, the assertion that eagles might be used in America to deliver messages rather than owls is certainly clever, and realistic (considering American pride) in my opinion. Again, it was difficultto hear her while she was reading her excerpt, so most of what I’m responding to is based on the PowerPoint slide. Anna is super intelligent, though, so I have no doubts that her fanfiction, or flash fiction was well-written. It was very clear that she put a lot of time, and work into this project.

Anna Lang

Dr. Powers

ENGL 281

8 April  2017

“Truth Is Stranger Than Magic: The Marketing of Harry Potter”

I found that this particular article was actually really insightful to how we as Americans love to market and profit from various pop culture. Whether it is the big, greedy corporation of Walt Disney, or Universal Studios building an entire Harry Potter World, one thing is for sure that corporations have noticed: there is money to be made in expanding a whole fictional universe.

Take this into consideration. According to an article from Forbes.com, the box office hit movie “Avatar” raked in $2.7 billion US dollars close to eight years ago. It is one of the most highest grossing films in American culture. It won several Oscars, thanks to the award winning director James Cameron. And yet, up until very recently, ‘Avatar” has left no pop culture footprint. Compared to the Harry Potter films, where there’s a theme park, fanfiction, games, clothes, “wizarding classes,” conferences, and more. But up until the last few months, the most impact that ‘Avatar’ had in our culture, was the knowledge that there were to be additional movies to come out in the future. Whether the cooperation (aka Disney), saw the financial benefit of creating a sequel for the film, or saw the additional benefit of building a theme park in Disney World (which will be opening in early May) isn’t known for sure at this point. But, based upon the facts and figures that Anne Galligan gave readers from her article about Harry Potter I think it is safe to say that ‘Avatar’ may be trying to get to the same level of popularity and marketing ability as the British book series, possibly trying to implement to same marketing tackets.

We can also take a look at the literary phenomena series The Hunger Games. This three book series created a dystopian universe where children are hunted and killed by other children to maintain order in society, as well as to provide entertainment for that society. Other than creating a three book into a four movie series, the Hunger Games franchise has been the launchpad for clothing, accessories, and now, a brand new museum in Louisville, Kentucky. Some scholars have tried to make parallels between Harry Potter and the Hunger Games, often claiming that the Hunger Games is the next Harry Potter, citing similarities between the remarkable, successful marketing of both franchises. Like Harry Potter, the Hunger Games was able to capture the attention of millions of children and teens, whether it be through reading the books, watching the movies, or (most importantly to the franchises) buy the merchandise. Anne Galligan raised interesting viewpoints of how Harry Potter was able to shape America’s culture, and arguably, the Hunger Games accomplished the same goals of having a lasting impact over our culture. I wonder if it is detrimental to arguably exploit these adolescent books to be mass marketed to the entire world. Does the book serie itself lose something when factors for the stories are marketed to to public, or does it add something special to an entire country, or multiple cultures, with its popularity?  

Anna Lang

Dr. Powers

ENGL 281

2 April 2018

Monday in Pauxia

Like the flash of lightning, bars of blue light came down upon the door, blocking students from entering or exiting the dark, dungy classroom. Pauxia, Academy of Wizardry, is no stranger to lockdowns. When you’re an unfunded public school in the projects of Philadelphia, lockdowns and locker searches are just part of a typical week. From the sounds of the students’ gossip in Professor Kramel’s remedial potions class, it sounded like this lockdown was because someone managed to smuggle a wand silencer through security today. Impressive, if you think about it, since those security wizards went through intensive training at New York’s Wizarding College of Protection, kind of like the No-Maj police officers that are seen running around the neighborhoods of Philly.

Wand silencers were hard to come by on this side of Philly, especially since the recent crackdown from Philadelphia’s Safety Commissioner got re-elected for a tenth year in a row. Simply put, a wand silencer was a small, thin black rectangle that hooked onto the bottom of any wand, making them virtually untraceable and undetectable. The few that were still floating around the crumbling city belonged to gang members who only emerged under the cover of darkness.  

Birdie Benentt sat in the back of her potions class, arms crossed as she watched Professor Kramel pull out the binder from his desk in a swift motion. The orange binder held all the procedures that professors were suppose to follow if something happened; whether it be lockdowns, fights, or missing students. Karmel was only here for a few month, and in Birdie’s opinion, he only had a few more left before this school chewed him up and spat him back out. Although Professor Karmel was a nice enough teacher, his overly large nose, his naturally green hair, and boring class was often the butt of jokes in Pauxia. There had only been two lockdowns before -which was a record low at Pauxia- and poor Karmel was a stickler for rules and procedures, hench why he was now fumbling through the pages of the binder to look up what to do.

Students were suddenly excited and loud with the sudden appearance of the blue bars over the door. Pretty much all of them knew how these lockdowns worked, and in in the spirit of chaos, they wanted to make their own.

“Settle down guys!” Professor Karmel whined through his huge nose, hoping his class would quiet down long enough for him to think. Once he glanced down at the binder, he grabbed a silver basket under his desk. “You know the drill. First row, please come up and put your wands in the basket.” Grumbles ensued. The first row didn’t want to move from their seats, and some outright ignored the instructions and were busy gossiping with their friends around them. “If I don’t have wands in here in 10 seconds, you can all kiss the love potion lesson goodbye!” he shouted. That was enough to get the class moving.
Birdie slumped down in her seat, waiting for her row to be called on. She traced over the moving graffiti on her ancient wooden desk, watching a poorly drawn dragon fly around. Handing over her wand during lockdowns was always the worst; her wand was the only thing that gave her any sense of power in her drabby life. Between her deadbeat mom who was always high or drunk, a her father that was barely around because of work, and a cramped apartment with no privacy, there was enough stress for Birdie. At least at Pauxia, she was able to actually use her wand and be her own person. Who knew how long this lockdown would go on for.

“Row five, your turn,” Professor Karmel said. All six of the students, including Birdie, rose from their seats and walked over to the silver basket, dropping their chipped, secondhand wands into it. The basket had a special hex on it, simultaneously recording to make sure each wand actually belonged to each student, they didn’t have any silencers or illegal charms on them, and were sealed in the basket until security came around to each class to release them. But that could take hours. Returning back to her, Birdie slumped forward on her desk, flicking a piece of her curly, kinky hair out from her eyes. Her school’s tie- an ugly orange and light blue- coiled on the desk next to her head. On the back, she could read the tiny tag, which stated: PROPERTY OF PAUXIA, ACADEMY OF WIZARDRY.

“Settle DOWN class,” Professor Karmel snipped at the rowdy class of 25. Calypso, another girl with a reputation of running her mouth, whined back.

“How long is it gonna take Mister?” she said. “I’mma leavin early today, and I can’t be late for my hair appointment again.”

“I don’t know, Calypso,” Professor Karmel said. “But until we get the all clear from Principal Levvy, we are going to try to continue with our lesson.”

The class collectively moan in protest. Calypso started to talk back over the roar students, something about how they should watch a movie or something. Anything would be better than potions class right now. Birdie nestled her head in between her arms on her desk, and closed her eyes to try to ignore the class. She picked one of her hands up from the desk, and felt her right pocket to make sure her stack of tarot cards were still there. Reading tarot cards was something she loved doing, and according to the astrology Professor Gambi, she had a natural talent of reading the past, present, and future.

“Birdie, please get your head off the desk, and pay attention,” Professor Karmel said all of the sudden. Gritting her teeth and biting her tongue before she said something stupid, she reluctantly sat up in her uncomfortable chair. Today, she thought, was going to be a long day.

In her essay “Harry and Hierarchy: Book Banning as a Reaction to the Subversion of Authority,” Rebecca Stephens explores the Christian outcry surrounding the Harry Potter series. In America, many Christian fundamentalists advocate for the banning of J. K. Rowling’s fantasy series, claiming that it corrupts young readers with its focus on magic and wizardry. In other countries, however, religious organizations interpret the stories differently. According to Bishop Stephen Sykes, “… Children who are capable of reading Harry Potter could be told not to take witchcraft seriously, or might even realize that for themselves” (52). Despite Harry Potter’s global popularity, the United States is unique in its widespread outcry against the novels. Roberta Harrington calls the United States “a violent culture that is home to millions of fundamentalist Christians” (52). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that these fundamentalists reject the story of a young wizard from a nontraditional family.

Stephens compares and contrasts the Harry Potter series with another fantasy series, C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Despite also featuring a significant amount of magic and pagan creatures, such as witches, dwarves, and fauns, Christians seem to have little to say about the series in terms of bashing it. This could be because of Lewis’s focus on the Christian perspective (52). Many aspects of the Narnia series have religious connotations. Aslan’s sacrifice and resurrection, for example, are a direct reference to Jesus Christ’s death and revival. Despite its inclusion of Christian components, however, the Narnia books are not directly religious allegories. This perspective comes from interpretation, rather than direct reference. While Aslan can be interpreted as a Christlike figure, omniscient and self-sacrificing, he is only a lion. Lewis himself recommended not explaining the Christian symbolism in his series to children because “they should simply be enjoyed as stories” until the children are older.

I think that part of the reason that banning Harry Potter is a mainly American fight is because of the difference in American stories. Instead of exploring whimsy, magic, and the supernatural, like British children’s stories do, American tales hold Puritan values close. They focus on realistic settings and establishing morals like work ethics and humility. Unlike British children’s stories, they do not encourage imagination and magic. American stories, like the tall tales of John Henry, Paul Bunyan, and Johnny Appleseed, teach kids to work hard and follow the right path while instilling a moral. If one gets too proud, such as John Henry does, bad things happen. American tales work more to scare kids straight than to instill a sense of wonder in them. They feature realistic characters who use their brains or brawn to get by. Even the Pevensies, despite being in a magical world, are ordinary. They are not handed a wand and taught to cast spells, but rather learn to shoot a bow or to sword fight. Once they leave Narnia, they are regular kids again. Harry does not have the same experience. Once he enters the Wizarding World, his sphere is permanently changed. He cannot cross the threshold back into a normal life. He gets to keep his power even in our non-magical world. What scares Christians more than a blurred divide between Us and Them?

Anna Lang

Dr. Powers

ENGL 281

30 March 2017

“Truth Is Stranger Than Magic: The Marketing of Harry Potter”

I found that this particular article was actually really insightful to how we as Americans love to market and profit from various pop culture. Whether it is the big, greedy corporation of Walt Disney, or Universal Studios building an entire Harry Potter World, one thing is for sure that corporations have noticed: there is money to be made in expanding a whole fictional universe.

Take this into consideration. According to an article from Forbes.com, the box office hit movie “Avatar” raked in $2.7 billion US dollars close to eight years ago. It is one of the most highest grossing films in American culture. It won several Oscars, thanks to the award winning director James Cameron. And yet, up until very recently, ‘Avatar” has left no pop culture footprint. Compared to the Harry Potter films, where there’s a theme park, fanfiction, games, clothes, “wizarding classes,” conferences, and more. But up until the last few months, the most impact that ‘Avatar’ had in our culture, was the knowledge that there were to be additional movies to come out in the future. Whether the cooperation (aka Disney), saw the financial benefit of creating a sequel for the film, or saw the additional benefit of building a theme park in Disney World (which will be opening in early May) isn’t known for sure at this point. But, based upon the facts and figures that Anne Galligan gave readers from her article about Harry Potter I think it is safe to say that ‘Avatar’ may be trying to get to the same level of popularity and marketing ability as the British book series, possibly trying to implement to same marketing tackets.