Potter Note

[subplotkudzu]

Wizards don't have television. Or Movies. No mention of them anywhere. 

I guess Theater and Radio Plays are still big things in Wizard society. Must take this into account with Year 2's DADA professor.  

Comments on mass media in the Wizarding World welcome.

Comments

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Magic makes "moving pictures" a much earlier development.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

yes and no. Sure, we get pictures where the people in them move and wave, but we don't see pictures that tell a story, advance a narrative or even speak. Sure, the pictures move, but they're not Motion Pictures in the Muggle sense. Add in the acrid smoke and bulbs of the Wizard cameras (as seen in photographing Glideroy Lockheart and it's distinctly anachronistic.

Something else occured to me in my pre-game reread of Book 2 - the Chamber of Secrets was constructed into the original school a thousand years ago (give or take) that makes it built around 990 AD. But the entrance is through the plumbing of the girl's lav. Who had indoor plumbing in 990 AD? Never mind indoor plumbing that included flush toilets and hot and cold running water?

It's as if one of the founding Wizards had a Nostradamus like prediction of what some parts of 1930's Muggle technology would look like and constructed the school around it. That acted as an incubator of these ideas in Wizard society. Now that Muggle tech is past that point the Wizards can't catch up, not even able to grasp telephones and escalators (Arthur Weasley is supposed to be a Muggle expert, after all, and these things baffle him).

Of course, you could also say the magic of the school keeps it up to date with advances in archetecture, and the Chamber's entrance keeps shifting to accomadate for that, but that feels like rather a cop out....

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I assumed that there were renovations, yes. And the magic of the Chamber of Secrets allowed it to remain, er, secret even when the things on top of it changed. Salazar was one of the four master wizards of his time.

In our own Hogwarts game, we've assumed a lag of 50 to 100 years (usually closer to the latter) in technology, fashion, etc.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, and I'll probably drop the idea of a Nostradamus prediction and allow that Salazar's magic let the chamber keep moving it's entrace to whatever was most logical as the renovations continued. It did get me thinking about how rcitical Hogwarts is to Wizarding society as an educational point for british wizards, paving thr ground in their psyche to accept other things like the Ministry. That sort of history is something I'm enjoying exploring in the game, as you can see from the Monster of Amristar.

Why they lag 50 to 100 years behind in adapting even the trappings of Muggle tech is something else again. Is it that they're very conservative? Not very innovative? What? Just wondering.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

there's no hint of radio either, but most images seem to be animated or at least animatable; newspaper photos are short, silent loops,collectible trading cards share real time glimpses of the subjet, and portraits have animated and speaking, interactive subjects.

A wizarding form of television could be a portrait of a company of actors for fictional programs, a portrait of a crier for news, a lecture hall for educational programmes....

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Ah, but they do have radio: 'And unless Harry's ears were deceiving him, the old radio next to the sink had just announced that coming up was "the Witching Hour, with the popular singing sorcererss Celistina Warbeck."' Chamber of Secrets p 34 (American hardcover edition). They don't have any radios at the school (or at least the students don't), but the minsitry clearly maintains a Wizarding Broadcast Network.

And there's just no sign of anything resembling television - even if the magicla technology couldn't support it there's never any mention of the kids watching TV, or even the presence of such a thing in the Weasley home. No way that we'd be watching a family that large for the time that Harry was there and not have a mention of the Entertainment Portrait, especially how Rowling makes a big deal about so many other Wizard-Muggle analogues.

Nothing wrong it with it mind you, but I'm going to be exploring how entertainment works in this book, so it seemed important.

[adoxograph.livejournal.com]

The Foine Arts in general all seem skewed; we've mentioned the unique properties of painter art and photography, but HOW does it happen? A spell in the camera/brush? Is it just to much to try and use that spellwork for each frame of a film, does it not translate to video?

Or is it simply that the fantastical aspect of those media is lost on wizards who can turn brooms into a bucket brigade? Imagine the beginnings of TV when they were trying to work out early effects, and wizards of a certain caliber - the ones who could afford a set - just watching and saying "Oh really, that's just wingardium leviosa. I can do that." I imagine it as not a baffling technology, but more of a needless one. It probably had a hukla hoop fad phase and then...

It was a long drive yesterday. I thought about this. :)

[adoxograph.livejournal.com]

also excuse spelling. like I said, long drive.