Anghus Houvouras on whether J.K. Rowling is the new George Lucas…
First, they create something truly amazing. A generation-defining intellectual property that penetrated pop culture at a molecular level. Their sensational story took the world by force and evolved beyond the written word to the silver screen and beyond: Toys, merchandise, video games, theme parks. From obscurity to one of the wealthiest and most recognizable names in the world in a span of several years. Eventually the cultural barometer switches, and while you are forever etched into the cultural lexicon, audiences and the media begin to search for the next defining story.
That’s usually when things get weird.
J.K. Rowling could certainly learn from some of the cautionary tales that George Lucas was responsible for. Both Lucas and Rowling toiled with less than successful projects in the aftermath of their defining stories. Both have spent way too much time tinkering with their hugely successful creations. Both predictably returned to the well.
I can’t fathom what it would be like to be J.K. Rowling. To have created something so iconic, something that has been so inspirational to billions of readers. This is a level of success few achieve. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to let it go once the story has ended. Perhaps that could explain strange post-Potter revelations like Dumbledore’s sexuality. Something that seems incongruent since it really has zero impact on the story being told.
Or the gem she revealed earlier this month when she told everyone that we’ve been pronouncing Voldemort wrong. The ‘T’ is silent, she informed us. Well that’s just great J.K. Perhaps you could have shared that with the producers of the 8 feature films you were handsomely rewarded.
It’s really weird, isn’t it? The kind of inbetween-the-lines revelations she continues to make. As if she’s asserting some kind of weird control over her creation, letting audiences know that no matter how much you know and love the Harry Potter universe, that she’ll always know more and will randomly drop some oddball comments about your favorite characters.
I’m fine with creators who pour over their earlier works and reveal interesting tidbits or lament certain decisions. When Rowling said that Harry and Hermione should have ended up together, many fans replied “YES!” Nothing too mental there, but the idea that you secretly knew how to properly pronounce ‘He who shall not be named’ and let everyone pronounce it wrong for decades is a little looney.
Perhaps Rowling suffers from the same affliction as George Lucas: seeing the world you created becoming larger than yourself. Creating something so enormous that it feels like it no longer belongs to you. And rather than let go of your creation you begin to assert a strange level of ownership and start telling us that we’re wrong. Han didn’t shoot first or the ‘T’ in Voldemort is silent. Dumbledore is gay and old Anakin’s ghost is now Hayden Christensen.
I suppose the price we pay for being blessed with cultural landmarks like Star Wars and Harry Potter is having to occasionally deal with the off-putting ramblings of their creators. Apparently all the money in the world doesn’t make you any less odd. In fact, it probably exacerbates whatever peculiarities that already existed.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker and the co-host of Across the Pondcast. Follow him on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=qvTY7eXXIMg
Originally published September 26, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
