ap_Cultural+criticism


 * //Although //****//Time magazine//** **// named Rowling as a runner-up for its 2007 //****//Person of the Year//** **// award, noting the social, moral, and //****//political inspiration//** **// she has given //****//her fandom//** **//,[106 ] cultural criticisms of the series have been mixed. ////Washington Post// // book critic Ron Charles opined in July 2007 that the large numbers of adults reading the Potter series but few other books may represent a "bad case of cultural infantilism", and that the straightforward "good vs. evil" theme of the series is "childish". He also argued "through no fault of Rowling's", the cultural and marketing "hysteria" marked by the publication of the later books "trains children and adults to expect the roar of the coliseum, a //****//mass-media//** **// experience that no other novel can possibly provide".[107 ] //**
 * //Jenny Sawyer wrote in the //**<span class="wiki_link_ext">**//25 July//** <span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> <span class="wiki_link_ext">**//2007//** **<span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> <span class="wiki_link_ext">//Christian Science Monitor// //<span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> that the books represent a "disturbing trend in commercial storytelling and Western society" in that stories "moral center have all but vanished from much of today's //**<span class="wiki_link_ext">**//pop culture//** **//<span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> ... after 10 years, 4,195 pages, and over 375 million copies, J. K. Rowling's towering achievement lacks the cornerstone of almost all great children's literature: the hero's moral journey". Harry Potter, Sawyer argues, neither faces a "moral struggle" nor undergoes any ethical growth, and is thus "no guide in circumstances in which right and wrong are anything less than black and white".<span class="wiki_link_ext">[108 ] //**
 * //<span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);">Chris Suellentrop made a similar argument in a //**<span class="wiki_link_ext">**//8 November//** <span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> <span class="wiki_link_ext">**//2002//** **<span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> <span class="wiki_link_ext">//Slate Magazine// //<span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> article, likening Potter to a "a trust-fund kid whose success at school is largely attributable to the gifts his friends and relatives lavish upon him". Noting that in Rowling's fiction, magical ability potential is "something you are born to, not something you can achieve", Suellentrop wrote that Dumbledore's maxim that "It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities" is hypocritical, as "the school that Dumbledore runs values native gifts above all else".<span class="wiki_link_ext">[109 ] In an 12 August 2007 //<span class="wiki_link_ext">//The New York Times// //<span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> review of The Deathly Hallows, however, //**<span class="wiki_link_ext">**//Christopher Hitchens//** **//<span style="background-color: rgb(69, 69, 165);"> praised Rowling for "unmooring" her "English school story" from literary precedents "bound up with dreams of wealth and class and snobbery", arguing that she had instead created "a world of youthful democracy and diversity".<span class="wiki_link_ext">[11 //**