Potterliteracy: Cross-Media Narratives, Cultures and Grammars
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2004vol14no2art1263Keywords:
Harry Potter, media literacy, multiliteracy, character, characterisation, agencyAbstract
This is an opportunity to think hard about the rhetorics of multiliteracy and media literacy. What exactly do these mean when we look at the detail, at the 'micro-level' of literacy (Buckingham 2003)? How does a particular image or narrative moment 'translate' across different media? If we expect children to learn about the notion of 'character' in literature or film, what does this mean in the context of a game? If they learn the category of 'verb' in language, how do we talk about this category in film? How is the 'verb' different in the interactive media of computer games? And how do these processes relate to macro-literacy, to the broader cultural experience of books, films and games within which such meanings are situated? And what are these different formal structures representing? At the heart of this question, I want to place the question about the social purpose of Harry Potter for children, and the forms of agency the character represents.
Metrics
References
Appelbaum, P. (2003) ‘Harry Potter’s world: Magic, technoculture and becoming human’, in Heilman, E. (ed) Harry Potter’s World. New York, Routledge-Falmer.
Beavis, C. (2001) ‘Digital culture, digital literacies: Expanding the notions of text’, in Beavis, C. & Durrant, C. (eds) P(ICT)ures of English: Teachers, Learners and Technology. Adelaide, Wakefield Press, pp.145-61.
Black, S. (2003) ‘The magic of Harry Potter: Symbols and heroes of fantasy’. Children’s Literature in Education 34, 3: 237-47.
Buckingham, D. (2003) Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Burn, A. & Schott, G. (2004) ‘Heavy hero or digital dummy: Multimodal player-avatar relations in Final Fantasy 7’. Visual Communication 3, 2: 213-233.
Caillois, R. (2001) Man, Play and Games, translated by Meyer Barash. Chicago, University of Illinois Press.
Columbus, C. (2002) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (the film), Warner.
Eidos (1999) Tomb Raider 4: The Last Revelation. London, Eido.
Electronic Arts (2002) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (the videogame). London and Redwood City, CA, EA Games.
Gee, J. (2003) What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. London, Palgrave Macmillan.
Genette, G. (1980) Narrative Discourse. Oxford, Blackwell.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1989) Spoken and Written Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London, Routledge.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2000) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London, Arnold.
Lemke, J. (2002) ‘Travels in hypermodality’, Visual Communication 1,3: 299-325.
Mackey, M. (2001) ‘The survival of engaged reading in the internet age: New media, old
media, and the book’. Children’s Literature in Education 32, 3: 167-89.
Mackereth, M. & Anderson, J. (2000) ‘Computers, video games, and literacy: What do girls think?’ The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 23, 3: 184-95.
McClay, J. (2002) ‘Hidden “treasure”: New genres, new media and the teaching of writing. English in Education 36, 1: 46-55.
Ong, W. (2002) Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London, Routledge.
Propp, V. (1970) Morphology of the Folktale. Austin, University of Texas Press.
Rowling, J.K. (1998) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. London, Bloomsbury.
Ryan, M.-L. (2001) ‘Beyond myth and metaphor: The case of narrative in digital media’. Game Studies 1(1). http://www.gamestudies. org/0101/ (Accessed 25/10/04)
Sutton-Smith, B. (2001) The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Tucker, N. (1999) ‘The rise and rise of Harry Potter’. Children’s Literature in Education 30, 4: 221-34.
van Leeuwen, T. (1999) Speech, Music, Sound. London, Macmillan.
