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The Global Pottering Effect There was time when Russians were haunted by the importunate idol of Lenin – today this place has been taken by Harry Potter. The fact that lots of publishers have lost sleep over Harry Potter’s boosted up popularity is obvious.
The episode ‘Crimes of the Hot’ of the Futurama animated cartoon series ironically highlights this “Global Pottering effect”; at the symposium dedicated to the global warming the head of Al Gore starts its report as follows: “My fellow Earthicans, as I discuss in my book, “Earth In The Balance” and the much more popular “Harry Potter And The Balance Of Earth” we need to defend our planet against pollution. As well as dark wizards.”
The global fashion for ‘Potterism’ has hyped the Russian book industry to fabricate numerous clones and parodies of Joan Rowling’s characters. Let’s have a look at some of them. Writer and candidate of philology Dmitry Yemets has made up tales about a girl named Tanya Grotter (www1.grotter.ru), a pupil of the school of magic Tibidox, and about teenage magician Mefody Buslaev (www.buslaev.ru). As a result he’s got large-scale PR and the printing run. In response to the accusation of plagiarism by lawyers of Joan Rowling in 2002 the representatives of Ecsmo publishing house stated they would not stop issuing Dmitry Yemets’ books and explained that “the lawyers just got frightened of a powerful competitor”.
Later there came about parody books about Porry Gatter (www.gatter.ru), a boy from a family of magicians, by Andrei Zhvalevsky and Igor’ Myt’ko. Young wizards Denis Kotik (by Alina Boyarinova) and Larin Pyotr (by Yaroslav Morozov) enlarge the list of pseudo-Potters.
How do you find the title of the book ‘A Boy Named Harry and his Dog Potter”? This ‘masterpiece’ about a 9 year-old boy and a magical dog called Potter was written by Valentin Postnikov.
Moreover, the name of Harry Potter can be found even in the titles of books by Deacon Andrei Kuraev (www.kuraev.ru), philosopher and professor of Moscow Theological Academy. In these books Deacon Andrei dwells upon the adventures of Harry and his friends stating that there is nothing bad about the fairy tale, and proper comprehension of the book can help bringing up children as good Christians. Everyone is free to judge about the worth of Harry Potter and his success on one’s own… But…is he/she? The regular attacks of Harry Potter and his clones are ruthless: one cannot but surrender. The hands are automatically drawn to this or that book displaying the names already imprinted in mind. Have mercy! There are too many of you willing to profit from the “global pottering effect”! September 5, 2006 12:56 |
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