This message is going to make no sense to anyone who hasn't read the Harry Potter books, but you should, so no apologies. Anyway. if you do want context, the Harry Potter series is this series of four books - ultimately there'll be seven, but only four are released so far -written by a British writer, J.K.Rowling, about a boy, Harry Potter, who one day discovers he's a wizard and goes off to a school for wizards. They are technically 'children's books', but all the best children's books can be read by any ages, and as a devotee of children's books, I can confirm these are very high quality indeed. In fact, they are totally fucking brilliant, and hugely enjoyable, and very deservedly they have been a publishing sensation, selling in such huge numbers that in the US Harry got the ultimate accolade - he made it to the cover of Time.

Any other Harry Potter devotees out there? There's this cool pair of articles in Slate, which has just popped up on the msn site, debating, among other things, the gay subtexts in Harry Potter. Out of mercy for others on this site I'm not sending the whole thing, but here's a relevant extract:

Which brings me to an intriguing point in your letter. I owe you a silver sickle, since it seems plain to me that the homosexual themes are already there, and treated with the sublimation and symbolism you predict. Well, not homosexual themes per se, since whatever sexuality there is in the books is conventionally and safely infantile. 

What I mean is that being a wizard is very much like being gay: You grow up in a hostile world governed by codes and norms that seem nonsensical to you, and you discover at a certain age that there are people like you--what's more, there's a whole subculture with its own codes and norms right alongside the straight (muggle) one, yet strangely invisible to it. In out-of-the-way spots in the middle of large cities are secret places--bars, bookshops--that cater to this special clientele, and suddenly, one day, you find your way to them. The reaction of many straights (muggles) is hostility and denial, on the order of the Dursleys. But some muggle parents, like Hermione's, love their wizard children and support them. (Hermione reciprocates by taking a course at Hogwarts in muggle studies, the one moment in the series that made me laugh out loud.) Consider too that there are wizards born of muggles and muggles born of wizards, so that having magical power (like being gay, at least according to some schools of thought) is, while not hereditary, clearly innate. 

Your use of the phrase "a place for us" was especially suggestive (though by "us" you meant the muggles), since that's the title of a fascinating book by D.A. Miller (published last year by Harvard) about the role of the Broadway musical in forming, at once in secret and out in plain view, modern gay male cultural identity. The process of acculturation he describes (which involves playing the cast album from Gypsy in your parents' suburban basement), is not unlike what Harry undergoes in the early chapters of Sorcerer's Stone.

Is this completely crazy? I won't be offended if you say yes. Will Jerry Falwell now take out after Harry Potter, having raised the alarm about Tinky Winky? Our dear colleague Chatterbox, that estimable muggle, thinks he might, but for other reasons, namely that the Potter books take a benign view of paganism, magic, witchcraft, and other things that scare Christian fundamentalists. A few years ago they went after Barney because he could fly, and because he taught kids about the powers of the imagination (in their crusade they had the tacit support of parents across America, who are fully prepared to believe that the purple dinosaur is the instrument of Satan). There have also been outcries raised about Dungeons and Dragons, and about the mere use of the word "imagination" in school textbooks. So I'm sure it's only a matter of time before school libraries start getting calls from concerned parents complaining about our dear Harry. Which makes me like him all the more, of course.

That's the extract, by somone called A.O.Scott. Anyone who wants the whole exchange and can't find it in Slate, email me. And I'd just like to say that I have to admit I hadn't quite thought that the whole world of wizardry was a metaphor for homosexuality (though of course I'm only too happy to accept it). But I did think that Professor Lupin in the third - and best, in my opinion - book might be gay. Of course, he's a werewolf (sorry to spoil it for those who haven't read the book) which is not exactly the sort of comparison one wants to have to deal with (mainly because its an awful idea that you 'spread' it the way werewolves spread through biting others). But Lupin is a sympathetic character, and I sort of wanted him to have a gay affair with Sirius Black, since in general I'm all for having positive gay characters in children's fiction.

-- Compiled by Vikram
Uploaded on 08-Feb-2002