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FINAL Current Developments at the Intersection of British Children ONLINE VERSION
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Harry Potter
anything seems viable in the parody. The author’s favourite means of scorn are 99 This fact challenges the compatibility of The Looking Glass Wars and parody. Indeed, the novel can be considered a borderline case. 100 Beddor, The Looking Glass Wars, p. 3. 101 Colours, font and last but not least the name of the hero speak for themselves. 246 word puns, snide remarks and wickedness on the part of the characters. Here, Gerber sets up a cascade of pyrotechnics for everyone ready to laugh about the original without any flights of fancy. Barry is the negative mould of Harry, representing everything Harry is not. Although this Dirty Harry is naughty, he is far from being clever and cultivated like an Artemis Fowl. Rather, he moves on a base, sometimes even vulgar level. Interlarded with innuendos, the novels relate the mediocre life of Barry, who, in contrast to Harry, enjoys sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Like The Looking Glass Wars, Barry Trotter reverses the order of original and parody. Lazy and selfish, Barry wins fame only because a certain Mrs Rolling writes over-exaggerated books about a fictitious Barry. In line with the relaxed attitude of Barry, who through no fault of his own happened to become famous, the unpretentious preface already explains the author’s intentions with an ironic wink. He tries to jump onto the bandwagon as long as money can be earned with contributions to the Harry Potter craze. Having declared his point of view by this straightforward statement of not striving to write a novel of comparable rank, the author does not feel obliged to bind himself to quality standards of the genre. The reader accepts this by reading on. Even so, the jokes do not manage to level out a very sketchy plot. Unperturbed by this obvious weakness and having given himself carte blanche, Gerber generously avails himself of ideas and motives from other bestsellers of children’s literature and implements them into his novels. As the authors of Bored of the Rings (1969) have already done before him, he openly confronts them with his calculated, insolent demand to purchase the book. Book covers of respectable novels of the genre advertise for their contents in various ways. These are for instance an interesting, mysterious and/ or catchy title, an expressive scene from the novel as a cover picture or an elaborate, imaginative and creative presentation in the form of an intricate design and colour scheme. Current publications of British fantasy novels for children increasingly work with a combination of tactile and optical features. Books glow in the dark, are covered in three-dimensional goose pimples (Endymion Spring), have multilayered front covers which by the means of recesses permit glimpses into the inner (Stravaganza: City of Masks), holographic elements as in Molly Moon, The Children of the Red King , Abhorsen or Artemis Fowl. Parodies of such novels, however, are not designed as costly as the originals. It is in the nature of a parody that it does not reach the same broad readership as an original, so an elaborate cover is too expensive. Still, parodies tend to imitate at least the colours or a characteristic feature of original covers, symbolic of the textual similarities. 247 Whereas an original tries to break new ground in form and content, a parody provides a new, funny viewpoint on the basis of the given literary prerequisites. Since jokes and puns only work to their full extent if the allusions are noticed, parody lives off intertextuality. Combined with its inherent permissiveness, parody can lay claim to poetic licence and go through constellations and possibilities the parodied work does not feature. This can also apply to novels which are originals in their own right but which in parts parody other works and the characters therein. An example for such intertextual parody is Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, an anti-Harry Potter that explores the main character’s negative traits. In contrast to serious fantasy novels, where fun is made of others, yet neither of the hero nor of the villain, parodies permit to laugh about them. Whereas it would be unthinkable to laugh about Voldemort or Sauron, Muddle Earth features a clumsy hero and a teddy-bear villain. Against a backdrop of nonsense-elements like singing curtains, Dr Cuddles’ megalomania and madness are minimised. With some temporal distance, when the potential of current British fantasy novels for children will have fully crystallised, many parodies will still be written. However, it is interesting to note that there are a number of immediate parodies of just as immediate bestselling originals. It remains to be seen whether instant parody is a result of instant response in the age of communication and whether it will gain acceptance. As with anything, additional time allotted for reflection can also be an advantage as to what quantity and quality are concerned. 248 |
