This week, we finish up our Patterns in Potter discussion for Book 5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This time, we focus on Harry’s visions (courtesy of Lord Voldemort) and his driving urge to understand the truth of these visions, and what knowledge they can bring in aiding in the fight against evil. It’s quite an interesting discussion, and we end up talking about Gödel’s Theorem, for those of you who know what that is (for those of you who don’t, that’s why there is Wikipedia), and discuss rationalism, existenialism and religion.
Send us your thoughts, we look forward to hearing from you! You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.
No Moaning Myrtle in Half Blood Prince. The actress who plays her is busy checking out nursing homes (oh snap, that was mean. I know. I apologize to Shirley Henderson, but come on- she is old.)
In the week’s episode, we continue our discussion of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and the central theme of truth and knowledge, specifically how the book presents the theme in context of Hogwarts, education, careers and experiential vs. learned/taught knowledge. It’s even more exciting that I can describe.
We look forward to hearing from you. You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.
Through May 11, 2008, Amazon customers are invited to vote for their favorite submission in both age groups. Each winner will receive a $1,000 Amazon Gift Certificate, as well as the opportunity to square off in another round of customer voting–beginning May 13–to determine the Grand Prize winner of the trip for two to London, England and a weekend with The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
In order to vote, you must be signed in to a valid Amazon.com account (account holders for amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr, and amazon.de should automatically qualify). Make your choice carefully and vote just once–your first vote is the only one that will count.
In what will go down in history as being HPProgs’ finest hour *or* our worst episode yet, we bring to you Episode #77. We decided to go a slightly different route for part of this episode and after our very short news discussion we re-enacted part of the J.K. Rowling vs. Steve Vander Ark/RDR Books trial. All we can say is that those of you who called Greg’s accent rubbish are going to wish you had saved your insults. On a side note, when I was editing the episode I realized that we botched the name of SVA’s lawyer. It is David Hammer, not Barry. Apologies to Mr. Hammer.
Speaking of accents, we played a voicemail from Potter’s Number One Fan in which he picked up Greg’s gauntlet and gave us a multi-character Harry Potter narration. Excellent job, in my opinion.
We finished off the episode with the introduction to Patterns In Potter for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”. You’ll have to trust that we are telling the truth when we say that Book 5 has a good theme.
As promised the links to the court transcripts are here. Thanks to Cris for the tip:
Finally, HPProgs has a Twitter account so please join in the fun and start following us so you can get all of our updates!
We look forward to hearing from you. You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.
So what does this mean? Now that almost a year has passed since “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was released, is Harry Potter slowly but surely fading into obscurity? I know it isn’t reasonable to assume that Harry Potter would stay on the Best-Seller List forever, or that JK Rowling would continually be honored for her influence on the world of literature, but this seems like a hasty fall from grace in my opinion.
More and more schools are making Harry Potter required reading so children will still pick up the series and hopefully devour it with the same zest that we’ve all done. Unfortunately there won’t be any “between the book excitement” that helped to make the series as exciting as it was; however, we can hope that these children will still eagerly anticipate the beginning of each new book as they finish the last one.
But one has to wonder how many new adults will start reading the books at this point. Have we come to the end of the mature examination of this series? Adult fans of the Harry Potter series were forced to analyze the books prior to the release of each one. In order to get the most out of the series, we spent hours pouring over the books to look for clues and hints to what was going to come. This won’t be the case anymore. Analysis will be all but unnecessary and this saddens me the most.
So now we can only hope that either JK Rowling will somehow decide to continue the Harry Potter Series or hopefully the next JK Rowling will emerge sooner rather than later.
BALTIMORE, April 25 /PRNewswire/ — Becker Group, in partnership with
Warner Bros. Consumer Products, today announced it will bring worldwide
audiences “Harry Potter: The Exhibition,” a state-of-the-art exhibition
highlighting artifacts from the Warner Bros. films based on J.K. Rowling’s
beloved book series. The 10,000 square foot experience will premiere in
Spring 2009 in a major market, and will appear in ten or more cities around
the world throughout a five-year span.
“Harry Potter: The Exhibition” will include elaborate displays of
authentic costumes, props and artifacts from popular environments featured
in the films such as those from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,
including the Gryffindor common room and Hagrid’s hut. During its run, the
exhibit will also be updated to include artifacts from the final
installments of the Harry Potter film series. The exhibition will be
displayed in major cultural and entertainment venues, museums and
institutions, and will be supported by a multimedia promotional effort and
advance ticket sales worldwide. Tour information, updates and ticket
availability will be posted at http://www.harrypotterexhibition.com as details
become available, or for more information, call 866-231-8328.
Hi Everyone! This is just a heads up that as of now, we will not be releasing episode 77 this week. Things are very busy around here and unfortunately there is no time to prepare, record, and edit the episode this week.
We look forward to returning next week for our regularly scheduled episode, and we apologize for this.
The trial over Steve Vander Ark and his Harry Potter Lexicon continued today in New York, in what appears to be the final day of testimony. According to the WSJ Law Blog (which may be suing HPProgs for copyright, as we’ve been linking to and excerpting from the quite liberally), the defense (i.e. SVA and RDR) seemed to have the upper hand coming out of today’s session. HPProgs legal analysts (read: hacks) think this might indicate that the judge really favors Rowling, but was testing their side more rigourously to see how they stood up to scrutiny. More likely, though, he’s leaning towards RDR/SVA.
The WSJ also posted an interview with an IP lawyer who gave his opinion on the case (long story short: too close to call). Did we mention that Anthony Falzone, one of the attorneys for the defense, used basically the same argument we did in yesterday’s podcast discussing the trial? He must be a listener (we’ll send you a bill).
In the meantime, more information has come to light. Commentor Bill posted a link to a site that contains most of the information that has been submitted for the case (I think lawyers call these things affidavits). Included in Bill’s comment was an excerpt of an email exchange between SVA and JKR’s representatives; what emerges is a very disturbing picture of a case of an obsessed fan taking things too far. This, of course, has no bearing on the legality of the Lexicon as a published work, but certainly adds a nice amount of drama and context to the entire affair.
Check back tomorrow for more updates on the trial. We here at HPProgs are hoping for a settlement; short of that, we’ve got two galleons on RDR/SVA.
Well the hopes of a full settlement were apparently too much to ask for. Darn. The WSJ law blog tells us that when the courts reconvened today, the attorneys informed Judge Patterson that they had reached a settlement only on the false advertising and deceptive trade practices claims. This means only that neither J.K Rowling’s name nor her quote endorsing the online version of the Harry Potter Lexicon will appear on the cover of the book version of the Lexicon….if it is published. Also, Anthony Falzone, who’s representing RDR in the case, told the court that both parties hope to “paper a settlement” on the trademark infringement and unfair competition claims.
The crux of the courtcase; which is Copyright Infringement is still unfortunately on the table and has not been settled on.
So the case moved on…
David Hammer, the lead attorney for RDR, seemed to be most interested in establishing the point that the more creative a work is — a “fantasy” being perhaps the most creative genre of the novel — the more there’s a need for a reference guide to illuminate, for the reader, the unique (and non-existent) world the author has created. Sorensen testified that, historically, lexicons and reference works similar to Vander Ark’s have been helpful for readers seeking to gain a better understanding of such works as J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and C.S. Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Lexicons like Vander Ark’s, testified Sorensen, can educate a reader on etymologies, mythical references, geography (real and imagined) and the vernacular and slang used by the author. She also said that reference guides written by the authors themselves aren’t necessarily the final word on their own texts, since authors can assume too much knowledge on the part of the reader.
In her cross, Cendali returned to the plaintiffs’ legal motif in the case: The H.P. Lexicon takes too much, and does too little. Cendali pressed Sorensen on the point that the Lexicon contains little interpretive analysis. Sorensen conceded as much, but said that analysis isn’t the only value a reference guide like Vander Ark’s can provide a reader.
It should also be noted that JK Rowling and Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. put out an official statement regarding the case:
“A fan’s affectionate enthusiasm should not obscure acts of plagiarism. The publishers knew what they were doing. The problem remains that the Lexicon takes an enormous amount of Ms. Rowling’s work and adds virtually no original commentary of its own. As we’ve said in court, it takes too much and adds too little. Authors have a duty to prevent the exploitation of their works by people who contribute nothing original, creative or interpretive.”
If you are starting to feel lost in all of this legal jargon and want the laymen’s/Harry Potter fan’s version of the events, feel free to listen to our latest podcast episode, “Harry Potter Goes to Court.” We discussed the case so far, as well as the impact that it has had on the Harry Potter Fandom.
This week, we take a break from the Patterns in Potter series to disucss the court case currently underway in New York between J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. on one side, and RDR Books and Steve Vander Ark on the other. There’s been excellent coverage of the trial (and interesting comments) over on the WSJ Law Blog, make sure to check that out.
In the mean time, if you have a thought or opinion about the case, leave a comment or a message and we’ll play it our next podcast. We look forward to hearing from you. You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.
No news this week, other than, you know, that court thingee. We will continue the Patterns in Potter series next week, beginning Book 5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
