Why Harry Potter Makes Me Want To Be British

On July 15^th, Harry Potter will pop back onto his broomstick and fly into movie theatres in over thirty countries. All over the world, people will gasp, cheer and even shed tears when their favorite boy wizard crosses wands with his adversaries one last time. What is it about this particular fantasy that has made us pour so much of our hearts and minds into its books and films, and has made sure that the Sun never sets on J.K. Rowling’s empire?

Sure, who doesn’t fancy they could do magic? It would be great to simply say “Hooverus Totalis” and have your floors vacuumed in an instant. But for me, there’s another appeal.

Harry Potter makes me want to be British. “British-ness” in itself seems to be a main character in the Potter franchise, and these films give such a whopping great dose of it, that I find myself saying things like, “I’m just going to nip to the loo,” for weeks after I’ve seen one.

I know, America is # 1 and Britain’s a wet little island with soggy weather and bland food. But there must be something they have that we lack… Diction, perhaps? Perfectly round, bouncing Oh’s and lilting Ahs’s, popping briskly, crisply out, while our American vowels drag out nasally, bleating their last like lambs being carted off for slaughter.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that Harry Potter became so popular just when the world decided it wasn’t so keen on the United States telling everyone else what to do anymore. Maybe there’s a certain nostalgia for a time when someone other than those barbarous American Muggles was there to rubbish things up. Certainly, the word “America” is conspicuously absent from the books and movies.

So much the better. As Americans, we are forbidden from ever being the underdog, but Harry Potter can defeat Lord Voldemort in every book and every movie, and still seem like he has the odds stacked against him every time. He shrugs off his triumphs over evil, and makes self-effacing statements like “Harry Potter’s a bit of a tosser, really.” Harry Potter can make winning look like losing, and it takes being British to pull that off.

The veteran actors in the films embody this particularly British wit and restraint. Alan Rickman as Snape is an actor so wickedly precise he can make a quiet word communicate resignation, spite, and confirmed desperation all at once. Maggie Smith as McGonagall admonishes her young charges with a bemused look and a drolly articulated phrase.

Okay, Great Britain. You gave us constitutional government and the language of Shakespeare, we gave you freedom from Fascism and ketchup on your fries—I mean chips. You gave us Harry Potter, and in return, I agree to walk around speaking in my most terrible British accent for a week after I watch the next movie. I think that’s an even exchange. Pip, pip, Cheerio!

#61 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Willie Loman can’t get a break. All his life he’s been traveling the country, shilling items that are as useless as he feels. Then Willie loses his job, the thing that defined him and gave him purpose. His son Biff has inherited Willie’s lack of ambition, but this has not always been so. Something caused Biff to lose all interest in making something of himself. Was it because Willie always taught Biff that hard work is unnecessary, that being well-liked is enough? Partly. But there is another reason, one that only Willie and Biff know. Willie does not carry it to his grave, but this secret helps to send him there.

#60 Boy by Roald Dahl

One of the most beautifully crafted memoirs I have ever read. Roald Dahl, that genius of children’s literature, enchants us with true tales of his eventful childhood. There was the time he and three friends hid a dead mouse in the gobstoppers jar of Mrs. Pratchett’s candy shop, and the time when, at 9 years old, he had his adenoids cut out from his throat without anesthesia (or even warning). Some of these events one can hardly believe, but one can hardly ignore Dahl’s strident assertion at the beginning of the book that all of them are true. These stories will make you laugh out loud and pause in quiet wonder.

#59 Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

This book is like a 1960s Sex and the City, with more drugs, albeit just as much sex. Anne, our heroine, moves from a small New England town to New York City. where her good looks land her a job at an advertising agency. There, she meets ad-exec and notorious ladies man, Lyon Burke. Anne falls for him immediately, but he proves to be just as elusive as “Mr. Big.” Anne’s sometime friend Neely (who is just plain evil) reaches fame’s mountaintops, in Broadway and Hollywood, before sliding down the slopes of drug abuse and treachery. Jennifer, the blond bombshell, hits the rock bottom of the valley of the dolls.

#58 Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

If you can’t be with your one true love, here’s some advice: marry her sister! That way you can be close to the one you love, at least on holidays and family occasions, anyway. Sounds like an asinine idea, but Pedro, Tita De La Garza’s true love, doesn’t think so. Tita’s mother, Mama Elena, refuses to let Pedro and Tita marry, so Pedro marries Tita’s older sister, Rosaura, instead. Tita, a gifted cook, prepares the wedding feast and her food magically causes everyone to feel her pain. Pedro soon realizes that marrying Rosaura instead of Tita was like substituting water for sumptuous chocolate in the mystical recipe for true love.

#57 The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, Bengali emigrants, name their baby son “Gogol” when a letter from Ashima’s grandmother containing a Bengali name for the baby never arrives. It is the family tradition to have a family elder name new children, and the missing letter symbolizes the inner search that the child must undertake to find his own identity as a Bengali-American. Gogol Ganguli, a.k.a. Nikil, a.k.a. Nick, changes his name in order to shake off his Bengali culture, but soon discovers that changing one’s name does not change one’s heritage or history. Seems like a rose isn’t the only thing that by any other name would still remain the same.

#56 The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Forget what you know about Baloo the Bear. He’s not the “Bear Necessities” singing, Disneyfied bear you think you know. In Kipling’s book, Baloo knows it’s a jungle out there and makes sure Mowgli the Man Cub knows it too. If it weren’t for Baloo and the black panther, Bagheera, Mowgli would have been the wolves’ dinner when he was but a little baby. Instead he is allowed into the pack on Baloo’s word and Bagheera’s offering. Mowgli lives by Jungle Law and becomes a friend to all animals, except Shere Khan the Tiger. Mowgli seems easy prey to Shere Khan, but Baloo has taught Mowgli the bare necessities of survival.