Cool post over on the “Duck of Minerva” about the similarities between the Potter “universe” and the Star Wars “universe”

“Harry Potter […] inherits two things from Star Wars: a set of cultural commonplaces on which it draws for much of its evocative power, and the mantle of serving as a root experience for massive numbers of people — especially for younger people, into whose cultural lifeworld notions like ‘muggle’ and the Ministry of Magic have now been firmly implanted. Just as much of cultural life in the industrialized parts of Europe and North America (and quite a ways beyond it) was decisively shaped or colored by the way that Star Wars updated and transmitted the cultural commonplaces that it deployed and utilized, so too will cultural life be divisible into pre- and post-Potter eras, with a ‘Potterian’ flavor going forward.

Fortunately for us, the post-Potter world contains much of what the pre-Potter world contained, because the Harry Potter story — as mythology — is an old, old story. What is new here are the details and specifics, not the basic themes and tropes”

Read the rest here: The Duck of Minerva: What Harry Potter inherits from Star Wars

(And this should probably be required reading for Youth Ministers all around the church – the same way as we all used to need a more than passing familiarity with “The Force” if we were going to be able to connect.)