Throughout the
course, I was amazed that mostly every week the theories that were discussed
relating to popular culture directly applied to my popular culture topic, Harry
Potter. The discussions on Ritual and
Stereotype (Module 3), Heroes and the Cult of Celebrity (Module 4), and Formulas
(Module 5) I feel best related to my topic and therefore made it easier to
analyze my topic in a way that I never thought of before.
I think the most
interesting analysis that I uncovered with my topic was the theory of the
formula and how it related to numerous things in our popular culture from
television, video games, music, books, and movies. I thought it was interesting how my topic was
very formulaic when you begin to compare other popular franchises in our
popular culture such as Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings series to name a
few. Although they are all years and
years apart and were huge successes in their time, the formula behind them
never really changed which may be a reason why they are successful and
memorable in our popular culture even though the stories behind them are very
different from each other.
After analyzing my
topic through the theories given from this course, I have come to understand
that although I had found my topic interesting merely for my own entertainment,
the topic itself is a reflection of the values that our society finds important
at this point in time that is delivered through our popular culture. I think that there is more “beneath the
surface” to understand about my topic than merely a commercially successful
book and movie franchise but rather what this topic represents about our society
and popular culture through analysis of the different facets of how the story
of Harry Potter is written and shown in the movies.
