:::: One Part FANDOM RETROSPECTIVE, One Part ANALYSIS ::::
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play that premiered in London, 2016. It was met with praise by theatergoers and disdain, even hatred, by those who read the script. Today, there is a...
Another famous Harry, American President Harry S. Truman, had a small sign sitting on his desk that read "The Buck Stops Here". It was a constant reminder that he, alone, was ultimately responsible for every decision made under his presidency. Truman never allowed himself to delegate that ownership to the leaders under him. The same goes for J.K. Rowling. The success or failure of HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD, while a product of many voices, ideas, and performances, fundamentally rests with Rowling.
The buck stops with her.
Therefore, while many of us may want to call JKR the villain of this disaster, the rest of the case I'm going to lay out comes more to her defense. I'm going to "pass the buck" for the next couple posts.
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At the beginning, J.K. Rowling would exhibit those tell-tale signs of a silent writer, like when she first joined Twitter. It was adorable and everything you wanted out of a famous author, who occasionally peeked out of the shadows to wink at you, before scurrying back into her little hole (that you just KNEW had a kettle of steaming tea whistling on the stove) to write intriguing stories that you were eager to read. Now, like many of our parents and grandparents, who tend to overshare with a touch of contempt on social media, she often leans into her Grangeresque, insufferable know-it-allism. Slightly less cute, but at times hilarious and emblematic of someone who could create both Harry Potter and Peeves the Poltergeist.
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But I think if you took away the tweets and boiled her actions down to their essence, you would find a people-pleaser. As an author, JKR wanted to tell us a story. She found a connection between the characters of her mind and the people of the world. Ultimately, this drove her to want this connection to deepen. And it did, far beyond the bounds of her imagination.
"I never set out to build a big community, but I don't think there is a writer alive who wouldn't want to have that many people react to their work. That's what happened. People came inside the world with me."
Once that bond was created, she was surprised to find that her fans were beginning to imagine her world on their own through fanfiction. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that she didn't know that sort of interaction even existed in the fandom until she was a few books in.
