The other day I was at home by myself and
extremely bored...out of my mind, and as I was talking to myself I came across a question that inspired a very
interesting conversation. It would have been more interesting of course if it was between two or three people rather than one, but none less it
grabbed my attention. The question was "Why do some books or series explode in pop culture or become so popular?" Now if your a smart cookie you will have figured out I'm talking about such series as
Harry Potter and
Twilight. How did these books become so "big"? This is such an interesting question because they are
completely different
series. Even beyond the plot and the characters, it's just different
writing. To answer this question let's first take a look at
Harry Potter.Harry is not the first to to become famous by saving an entire world from
destruction.
Frodo also had a lot of luck in that
category as did the
Pevensie orphans. Now, the important connection between
Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and
Narnia is not that the main character were saving
a world, but the fact that the
author created an entire world to be saved.
Tolken was very
descriptive with
Frodo's world going as far as creating maps. The world of
Harry Potter is
intricate enough that Warner Brothers is able to build a theme park
modeled after it. And behind the wardrobe Lewis writes
descriptively of the vast lands of Narnia. There must be something about creating an
entirely different universe that intrigues
people.
But how then, did
Twilight make the cut? It is not really in the same
category as these others
because Myres doesn't
create another universe. She takes characters from other fictional stories such the vampires and
werewolves, but puts them in a regular town. How did this grow to such
monstrous proportions? Why is this book so popular? My answer: merchandising and franchising. At first maybe what is said above about taking different creatures and putting them in
today's world is what got people's attention, or maybe is was the
intense love story for a plot, but the reason it is one of the biggest things in pop culture today is the
franchising. It took years to even make the movies for
Narnia and
Lord of the Rings. The movie deals for the
Twilight Saga took no time at all. Warner Brothers had to ask J.K Rowling
repeatedly before she even considered putting Harry on the big screen and even though when the movie came out there was merchandise, it is no where near the amount of Twilight products on sale today. Don't
believe me? Yesterday I walked into borders and saw an entire section not full of books, but instead of
lunch boxes, pens, journals, T-shirts, posters,
figurines,
jewelry, and more all of the Twilight genre. When
Harry Potter became popular there was a table of shelf full of merchandise, not a whole section.
So, you see, I really didn't reach an over all conclusion here. Which is more powerful the people's want to
escape their own reality and fall into a new
universe, or is it the merchandise? This entire conversation did not end here. I went on to ask myself Why people feel the need to ban books such as
Harry Potter? Could
Harry Potter one day become a classic and be put on a
syllabus?
To be
continued...
