It's Friday night. Children dressed as magicians wave their wands as they weave in and out of hoards of people. College students with book in tow try to look academic while quickly refreshing their memories. Adults smile as they mentally picture the next two and a half hours that will return them to childhood. Everyone is consumed with a chaotic anticipation of the impending tale of Hogwarts, Muggles and the black-haired boy with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead.
After months of waiting, the night has finally arrived. It is opening night of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and the craze has hit Charlottesville.
Since his creation by J.K. Rowling in 1998, Harry Potter has become just as famous in America as he is fictionally in the world of wizardry. This film has taken America by storm, surpassed Hollywood records, inspired elaborate merchandise, enticed children to read and even sparked a heated debate among literary critics.
At 8 p.m. Sunday, the staff at Regal Cinema still was regrouping from the pre-show chaos caused by the crowd at the film version of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
"We've sold out twice today," said Regal Cinema employee Amy Hoebeke, two weeks after the movie opened. "Everyone loves it. I heard a little girl in the bathroom saying she has already seen it three times."
Movie theatres are not the only place to feel Harry Potter hype. The Charlottesville Toys 'R' Us continues to restock its shelves with Harry Potter merchandise two or three times a day, store director Ron Humbert said. The board games "Levitating Challenge" and "Mystery at Hogwarts," the potion set, the figurines, the micro play set and the Hogwarts Express electric train set are the premier toys this holiday season.
"The toys are extremely popular," Humbert said. "Since the movie came out it is hard to keep them on the shelf."
Because of its global appeal, Harry Potter has gone from being a book character to an industry.
"The book gave Harry Potter a start," Humbert said. "But the craze began when the movie made the product start moving."
And it has not stopped moving. Every type of media, from newspaper to the Internet, has taken its turn creating vibrations in the Harry Potter explosion. The interest in reading Harry Potter is for a large part due to the incredibly successful marketing techniques of the publishers and movie producers.
And children are not the only ones reading Rowling's books. Some University students even claim to have read all four books in the series - in a weekend. And it's just this widespread appeal that has everyone asking whether Harry Potter is either a work of literature or merely a product of a successful marketing campaign.
"I love the book," third-year College student Matt O'Connell said. "It made me enjoy reading again. It reminded me how much fun reading was as a kid."
And the movie proves just as popular with University students as does the book.
"I was really excited about the movie," fourth-year College student Kat Thompson said. "I saw it twice the night it came out."
The Harry Potter craze has even begun to take an academic turn. Barbara Garner of Carleton University teaches an entire course on this debate at the Minnesota school. Called "Wizardry, Magic, Fantasy and the Harry Potter Phenomenon," Garner examines a number of fantasy works, such as the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis and "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien. Many of her students who are reading Harry Potter for the first time have jumped on the book's now extensive bandwagon.
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The Harry Potter movie, which hit theaters last week, prompted a craze among young children, many of whom dressed up as the different characters.
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"It appeals to a very broad audience," Garner said. "As one of my students said, [Rowling] is writing adult novels for children, not children's novels for adults. She's able to bring together such a network that is complex yet mysterious."
Professors at the University also are intrigued by the Harry Potter phenomenon. English professor Christopher Krentz shares Garner's view that the element of fantasy makes the Potter series so appealing.
"All the kids I've talked to really enjoy reading fantasy and adventure," Krentz said. "The author also uses traditional elements from fairy tales, such as wicked parents and orphaned children, that seem to resonate with children."
Third-year College student Mike Tierney feels that this combination of elements is exactly what makes the story so successful.
"The combination of several popular genres - fantasy stories, mystery stories, boarding school stories and ghost stories - makes Harry Potter interesting to both kids and adults," Tierney said.
But will these stories go down in the canon of children's literature? Academics think not.
"I would hesitate to put the Potter series on the same plane as Dickens and Alice in Wonderland," Krentz said.
One critic goes so far as to say Rowling's series is not only inferior to most other children's literature - it is downright awful.
"It's really slop," said Yale Professor Harold Bloom during a PBS interview program in August of 2000. "I was appalled that every sentence was a string of cliches, that there was no characterization, that every character in it spoke with the voice of every other character, that it is was finally just a piece of goo."
Bloom further commented on how he thinks the books have negative educational effects on children.
"Their eyes are passing over a page," Bloom said. "No demands are being made upon them. Nothing is happening to them. They're being schooled in what you might call unreality or avoidance of reality. They are going in every direction except inward into the self."
But Bloom's claim remains controversial, disputed by University students and professors alike.
"It is good that such an interest has been sparked," Thompson said of the books. "It is getting kids to read. It makes them interested in books rather than video games and TV."
Despite the fact that the book is cliche-ridden and is the product of mass media dribble, Krentz also commends the Harry Potter series for enticing children to read.
"It is good that kids are reading," Krentz said. "The books seem to get a lot of people interested in reading."
This controversy between good and bad has only increased interest in Harry Potter, and the media just uses criticism to fuel the fire.
But even if the book does not go down in history as a remarkable work of literature, the records the movie has broken and the enjoyment the characters have given, justify Harry Potter as an important part of our popular culture.
"Although Harry Potter may not be an academic classic," Tierney said, "I am sure it will become a popular classic"
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