Sometime last week? this week? somewhere on the web (see goodreads) Stephen King said "Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend."
I was irked by the tone of condescension. I haven't read Twilight; I wouldn't be surprised if it's not very good.* But I can't abide snottiness. It's second on my list of vices, after laziness. And so my first formulated response was, "Harry Potter's not allowed to have a boyfriend."**
But as I was paraphrasing King's comment to my faithful dinner companion that night I had one of those occasional experiences of hearing myself from outside myself, and found my self – or one of my selves – thinking, "God, he sounds like a bloody libertarian."
Which lead me to think about that list of Harry Potter virtues – they are virtues of the lone heroic individual; they are not virtues of interdependence or relationship. (Why is Romance the largest genre by volume of book sales? Why do women keep wanting to re-imagine the world as kind to them?)
And suddenly I saw King's list of virtues as essentially gendered. Which I'd never seen before.
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*Which goes to show, again, that the words themselves are not what we read for.
**(Dumbledore's gayness was revealed in a post-Potter comment by Rowling. It’s not indicated in the books.)
