What Does Harry Potter Mean Now? [111:00-116:05]

Death of the author is not about ignoring the author's influence on a text. It's about looking beyond it so we can see the full complexity of a text's meanings. I don't think Joanne has destroyed our original interpretations. She doesn't have that power. What she has done is forces to look beyond them. And now we have to contend with a less singular and less certain understanding of these books. And that was always going to happen. Maybe not quite this dramatically, but the meanings of a text naturally evolve and change and age and take on new meanings. We've all had the experience of revisiting something we enjoyed in our youth, only to find it doesn't mean the same thing to us anymore. We, the Potter generation, are in our thirties now. They would be weird if we still read these books the same way we did as children. Because we change too. The whole world changes. Sure, we can't pretend Potter didn't happen, or that it never meant what it did. But we also can't preserve it in amber. In another timeline, the HBO show might have actually had some power to reinvigorate these stories, to write a better ending for the house elves, or to actually address the injustice of Muggle segregation. Maybe even lean into its queer elements and become genuinely trans-affirming, to let the story change as we have. But what with Joanne's involvement and the movie still looming large in the public consciousness, the teaser trailer uses the same music, logo, and even the same castle. This is clearly more about caching in on nostalgia than a sincere attempt to retell this story. The biggest criticism it's received aside from the backlash to Joanne, are people questioning what the point of it is. As much as the fandom does belong to us, and we have the freedom to do with these stories, whatever we want, fandom is fringe. Most people aren't going to choose trans-spitefic over mass media. Most people aren't thinking about Potter as much as we do. A lot of normies don't even realize the meaning of Potter has changed, at least not yet. But the worst Joanne gets, the more we have this conversation, the more complicated people's feelings will get. So I'm throwing my lot in with Miriam. Harry Potter is wonderful, I'm very grateful to it, it's over. That's what I think. One day, of course, the author will actually die. That's not a threat, Twitter, that's just how time works. Maybe then it'll be possible to retell this story in a new and better way. But instead of waiting around for that, we don't actually have to reclaim Potter in order to reclaim what it means. That's already happening. Just as Potter is written with the voices of authors who came before it, so two are new authors writing with Potter's voice. As we know, Potter has had a profound influence on our culture. It inspired more young people's fiction about politics, there's been a wave of young adult stories set in dystopian worlds, with a more critical eye towards systemic problems. It was part of a trend that brought fantasy to the mainstream, with more supernatural allegories, often more robust than the ones in Potter. And the new stories, which are most directly influenced by Potter, are iterating on its ideas, often in ways which address its contradictions. Because you know, you can learn magic or whatever, and anyone can, but if anyone can, then no one's specialty now. We've been coasting along under the assumption that people are born with certain gifts. What we instead have is a possible worldwide resource of limitless power being hoarded by people who could absolutely share it with any and everyone. According to the rules, a good which needs to focus, focus. You can only pick one of the nine tracks. But all the tracks are so cool. Is there some sort of enchanted article of clothing that could sort this out for me? Well, there used to be, but... Oh, I'm so excited! And now I'm food! People often beg Potter fans to read something anything else, often quite rudely, but they do have a point. There are other stories out there with similar ideas, except more thought through, more curious, more mature, and some of them the characters even get further than second base. Probably nothing else will recapture that feeling of reading Potter for the first time. But, I'm sorry, neither can Potter anymore. Potter mainly happened because it was the story we needed at the time. But it's not the story we need now. We don't have to forget about it, we don't have to destroy it, but I think the best thing we can do is take the echoes of the late JK Rowling's voice, understanding the good parts and the bad, and use it to make something new. This conversation isn't finished. It's going to carry on for years. It's going to carry on in my