Reading Harry Potter: Popular Culture, Queer Theory and The Fashioning of Youth Identity

Abstract

Popular culture provides materials out of which people create their identities. Since it plays such a prominent role in current society, particularly with youth, it is crucial for clinicians to engage with popular culture as a therapeutic tool. This article espouses some of the key tenets of the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies, a useful methodology in analyzing popular culture and the mass media. Paying attention to how therapy clients make meaning of media texts can be a powerful therapeutic tool. A case example with a gay youth, Steven—who inserts himself into the text of the Harry Potter stories—illustrates a cultural studies-informed therapeutic approach that draws both upon cultural studies methods and a strong theoretical partner, queer theory. By using a queer cultural studies viewpoint, Steven uncovered some of the hidden “queer” readings and messages in the Harry Potter books that helped him find support for his own sexual identity. In contemporary society, popular media culture is the dominant culture. The culture industries (organizations that produce and distribute art, entertainment, and/ or information) produce images and messages that provide the very materials out of which people constitute their identities (Barker, 2000). Media images supply the models out of which people construct their sense of gender, race, class, nationality, sexuality, and ethnicity. Media stories also provide the symbols, myths, and resources which help constitute a common culture for the majority of people in contemporary global, capitalist societies. Media culture helps induce individuals to identify with dominant discourses, values, institutions, and practices (Miller, 2001). Since media and consumer culture is so ubiquitous, it is important to learn how to understand, interpret, and critique its meanings and messages. In contemporary