Hmmmmm ...

[blamebrampton]

Quick question inspired by occasional peculiar comments over the years ...[Poll #1678773]

Comments

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

I don't really believe that novels are ever set in the 'real world' because they are always, necessarily, selective and thus distorted versions of reality. Which can still be true, but fictional.

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Also, I think it's clear that St Brutus' School is as fictional as St Mungo's hospital. And that Little Whinging is as fictional as Ottery St Catchpole. Even the non-magical parts are hardly an attempt at brutal realism.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I think that's a good point, and am now wishing I had a category for 'A world similar to our own but exaggerated for comedic or dramatic effect.'

Though I have known a few St Brutus's; although they had far more PC names than that -- talking to the teachers, that was definitely how they were run!

[potteresque_ire]

I'd check these two:

- read it as though it takes place in a world very much like ours, but with wholly different popular culture.
- read it as though it takes place in a world like ours, but with wholly different political culture.

I think it can totally be in the real world... as there are more surprises in our real world than the HP one :D

[hollyxu.livejournal.com]

I would have ticked the 'pop culture' as well, but I do remember that we're seeing our world filtered through Rowling's eyes, with added magic!AU, so that would account for most of the differences.

Otherwise, yeah, it's meant to be taken as a version of our world.

[vaysh11.livejournal.com]

If it had existed I'd ticked:
read it as though it takes place in a world like ours, but reimagined into the early 50ties and with an added magical universe.

:)

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

I only wish there was more spotted dick in canon.

;)

[lokifan]

Tunnock's tea cakes and Kipling's exceedingly good cakes are blates extant in HP-world. OBVIOUSLY.

[rickey-a.livejournal.com]

This topic comes up a lot w/respect to the abuse inflicted by the Dursleys. How could the schools, teachers, neigbors, doctors, etc. not pick up on what was happening to Harry. In my mind, the Muggle world in canon is still fictional. Yes, much like our own, but still fairy tale-ish in that Cinderella evil step mother way. So your comment above about being altered for story effect, is sort of more how I see it (but close enough to "but with multiple differences" so I checked that.)

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

If the abuse doesn't show - lots of kids are skinny - then as long as they don't fall down the stairs too many times and have too many bruises that show everything's okay.

It's hard enough to get schools to stop blatant bullying, and even then it's not successful. And the Dursleys were pretty darn careful to preserve the exterior.

I'm afraid that in the real world it would have been all too easy for the Dursleys to get away with far worse.

[groolover.livejournal.com]

I had spotted dick (Heinz, of course) yesterday. With proper custard. Yum.

[blueboyfey.livejournal.com]

None of the options really fit my interpretation. But given small clues (signposts) found here and there in the text, I think not only is it a different culture, it's an entirely different epistemology operating in it's own moral universe where symbolic meaning and value are contested and are entirely made evident by small changes through time. I don't believe the addition of magic is a separate process or phenomenon that simply exists along side material and symbolic culture. It is intrinsically woven with it, changes over time (is mutable), and they affect each other to an extent that it's threads can no longer be teased out.

As Clifford Geertz said:
"The concept of culture I espouse...is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning."

[inamac.livejournal.com]

I may possibly have read to many fairy stories, but I read it as taking place in a parallel world which lies alongside the real world and touches at some points (and that seems to be what JKR was aiming at).

It's the same sort of world that Shakespeare seems to have inhabited (and E. Nesbit, for that matter).

[pingrid.livejournal.com]

I want to tick 1,2,4 and 5. I skipped the spotted dick one, because I didn't think you shipped Weasleys? ;)

[jadzialove.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

*giggles some more*

Awesome.

[emmacmf.livejournal.com]

Tunnock's tea cakes are totally canon, as are Tunnock's caramel wafers, Tunnock's Snowballs, Hob Nobs and Jaffa Cakes. In fact, I think I'll write Tunnock's tea cakes into my next fic.

[arcanetrivia]

Jaffa Cakes are canon in every fandom. EVERY.

[azurelunatic]

Including SG1.

*ducks*

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Heck, *I* barely noticed the existence of the Falklands war, or any of the other conflicts since then (graduated high school in 1984), but then I avoid the newspapers like the plague--I hear more news by seeing my friend's reactions to it here and on FB than I have at any other time in my life...

[why-am-i.livejournal.com]

I view it as the magical realm running alongside, and mirroring, the real world, but inhabiting its own bubble. The magical world has its own popular culture quite distinct from the real world, which is what lead me to select that particular option. While the political issues at play are unique to the fantasy, I find them in essence to reflect and occasionally critique real-world politics.

I read it as 'people are people, magical or not', as the magical characters have a very mundane tendency toward foibles, artifice, corruption, political alliances, and of course positive attributes as well.

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

I was going to choose the last option, but I think the two worlds are less similar than that option implies. SIGH.

[jadzialove.livejournal.com]

Wait.

Are you saying that some of that stuff isn't real?

[mrsquizzical.livejournal.com]

i think i meant to click the first one, but the last one was charming. so, that, but with added hidden magical world. ftw

[grey-hunter.livejournal.com]

For the wizards depicted in the books, the Muggle world is like this whole other country, and the few who dare venture out of their own little pond seem to be in a constant culture shock. So, yes, I have no trouble imagining that JKR wrote about our world from the POV of a secluded subculture that has no idea or doesn't really care what happens in the world of the non-magical people because they cannot identify with them.

[chantefable.livejournal.com]

I have no opinion on queues and spotted dick, but the glimpses of real (as in Muggle) life I got in the books did not seem very brutally real - and rightly so, I don't expect bleeding edge realism in a fantasy book where I'm already suspending disbelief (massively). OTOH, it may have something to do with Harry's POV and his own cultural background, upbringing & references. So yes, I am aware that it's meant to be real, and it feels more real & familiar than the magical world, but since I am ALREADY immersed in a narrative where I have to accept parallel magic/RL realities, the 'RL' in the book is automatically different than the RL I expect outside the narrative, sitting in my armchair in the real, external world outside the book.

I think.