The Politics of Fantasy

What happened when J. K. Rowling’s mega-blockbuster—born in the United Kingdom and launched to global heights by Hollywood and the full force of Western marketing—came knocking on President Putin’s door? The arrival of boy wizard and international star Harry Potter in a recently neoliberal Russia was enormously influential, but neither smooth nor uncontested. The franchise quickly became a lens that focused Russian ambitions and fears during an era characterized by both the hegemony of globalized popular culture and a nationalized conservative backlash.  With crisp, engaging prose, Eliot Borenstein leaps from Harry Potter into an exploration of the culture wars and moral panics sparked in Russia by Western-inspired children’s literature, extending back into the Soviet period and through the invasion of Ukraine. As cultural products pitched ostensibly to children, the Harry Potter books and films became the perfect objects for criticism, translation, adaptation, parody, attack, mimicry, and meme-making, allowing Russians to carve out their own space in the worldwide market of magical multiverses.