Not above the influence... or, How I live my life by Harry Potter and why I'm not ashamed of it

Did I ever tell you who taught me how to foster a mix of analytic curiosity and wonder at how the world works? His name was Atrus. You probably haven't heard of him, he doesn't live on this world...

Or, how about the time Hermione Granger taught me how to better understand my morning prayers? It was in the middle of book seven, when they were on the run in the woods...

I could even tell you the number of times that Edmund Pevensie or Eustace Scrubb confronted me about the power of selfishness and the joy of repentance...

...I'm not even going to bring up why I secretly wish choral conductors used batons when leading ensembles...


I probably haven't mentioned any of this because I'd imagine you'd probably look at me rather funny. If you didn't cast a stare that said straight-up "you're a weirdo," then you'd at least probably heave a sigh and think "how immature." At least, that certainly seems to be the mentality I get from the general world these days. But does that really make a lot of sense?

I'm hardly going out on a limb to say that stories (books, films, video games) are a mirror of our own societies. Nor is anyone shocked when some argue against them because they're too violent or dark (think Quentin Tarantino or Grand Theft Auto). But you rarely get discussion about how the good stuff does its job. At that point, we generally tend to stop at sentimentalism.

Now, I'm not trying to make a point about violent movies, or the negative influence of video games. Although it's perfectly worthy to talk about, and closely related, that's a different discussion for another day... For now I'm hoping to strike something more positive. However, the one point I do have to establish before moving on is that we are affected/effected by what stories we see. [editorial note: I hate that semantic spelling issue, so from this point on, don't read into the implications of my word choice on that one.] You just can't get around the fact.

Think about this for a moment. We don't like movies that fail to affect us. Have you ever gone to a suspense film that flopped? It's a frustrating and embarrassing ordeal to go through. When you go to a thriller, you want to be scared. Likewise, when you go to a romantic comedy, you want to believe at the end that storybook-happy-ending-discovery-of-love-in-the-rain really can happen. (Which, I also assume, is why people generally take their significant other with them as well, in hopes that they'll get the same feeling, too.) So really, it's there.

And if you do a little historical digging, you'll see we're really one of the first societies to ignore the fact. Plato had all kinds of things to say about what Art is good for a society in The Republic. Despite being a prominent humanist and Enlightenment scholar, Jean Jacques-Rousseau petitioned the Swiss government to keep theater illegal in Geneva. Remember the entire tradition of banned books?

Now my question is why do we then brush it off so superficially today? Moreover, why is it that when the occasional person really admits this, that they're labeled obsessed or a freak if they show it?

Well I for one will come right out and say it: I read a lot of fiction, much of it fantasy and sci-fi, and those books have taught me a lot about how to live. Really. All those examples above are true, and I could give dozens more. Sometimes, I'm downright exhausted after listening to a piece of music or watching a movie, because I didn't just watch and hear what happened, I personally experienced it. As in, those things were added to my experiences, which I will draw on in the future to decide how to act and feel.

I am quite convinced I'm not extraordinary in this fact. Though I'll readily admit that perhaps I'm more self-aware or sensitive to it than others. But I'm not so sure that makes me the odd one.

There are many aspects to this that I haven't touched yet, such as the danger of escapism, or the complexity of exactly what it is we "experience," but I'll leave it at this point before going further. I'll just throw in one final challenging question.

What ways have stories taught you? You just might be surprised if you really look into it... you don't have to be a bookworm either, we've all watched far too many movies, video-games, books, an television shows to be except by lack of stories...