There have been two “manias” that originated in Great Britain before making their way across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. The first occurred during the early 1960s when fans of the Beatles reacted in such near hysteria that the term Beatlemania was coined as a result. Then at the turn of the twenty-first century, it wasn’t a musical act but a series of books about a fictional wizard named Harry Potter that took the world by storm. While Beatlemania was a full-force gale from the very beginning, however, Pottermania began more slowly before becoming an unprecedented phenomenon in its own right.
Melissa Anelli had a front-row seat during the formation of Harry Potter fandom, having first become active in 2001. Over the next six years, she witnessed the fandom’s expansion as the final three novels and initial batch of big screen adaptations were released. In her 2008 book Harry: A History, Anelli tells the story of that evolution and how it resulted in not only a shared experience for millions but a genuine community that united fans from across the country and around the world.
Although Melissa Anelli had already read Harry Potter during her college years, it wasn’t until she rediscovered the books after graduating from Georgetown University that her involvement within fandom truly commenced. Searching the Internet for news on when the next installment would be published, she stumbled her way through a number of websites until one in particular caught her eye – the Leaky Cauldron.
Anelli soon found herself active on Harry Potter message boards afterwards and, given her journalism degree, even assisted fellow fans in starting an online newspaper called the Spellbinder. Her efforts garnered the attention of the Leaky Cauldron, which invited her to join the website as editor. It didn’t take long before Melissa Anelli was the dominant creative force behind the Leaky Cauldron, which – along with MuggleNet – was the premier source of Harry Potter information on the Internet.
While Harry Potter had already become an international phenomenon by 2001, Melissa Anelli contends in Harry: A History that it was the World Wide Web and the resulting online community of fans that raised the franchise to astronomical levels. In the past, fandoms based on science fiction, comic books, Star Trek, and Star Wars had to rely on fanzines sent through the mail and annual conventions to have any sort of shared experiences. The World Wide Web changed fandom by allowing more immediate interaction across greater distances, something that fans of The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer took advantage of during the 1990s.
By the early 2000s, the Internet itself was evolving with its first batch of social media sites – including LiveJournal and Myspace – finding a foothold. As the World Wide Web continued to grow, the same held true with Harry Potter fandom.
“Now they weren’t only forming social connections but using Harry Potter to explore literary concepts by writing fanfiction… developing their artistic skills by drawing their favorite Harry Potter characters and scenes,” Melissa Anelli explains in Harry: A History. “In America alone Harry Potter absorption was bounding, multiplying, mushrooming outward, and feeding on only itself to do so, and children of that age were the same ones who were most likely to give out information on the Internet or form social connections online. The right people, the exact right fans, at the exact right time.”
This newfound form of fandom had a direct impact on book sales. Before the third installment was released – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – worldwide purchases of Harry Potter books were approaching the one million mark. By the time the final Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published, that number had topped 325 million, while Deathly Hallows itself had a record-breaking twelve million first print run.
Warner Bros. – which not only acquired the film rights but general jurisdiction over all-things Potter as well – had not yet made the connection between the fandom and its positive effects on official Potterdom. In early 2001, the media giant began sending “cease-and-desist” letters to fansites, claiming copyright infringements. Fans decided to fight back instead of capitulating, informing news outlets of their predicament, researching legal options, and even calling for a boycott of Warner Bros. merchandise.
Eventually Warner Bros. backed down in this so-called PotterWar, taking a different stance in which Harry Potter was considered an “evergreen” franchise that needed to be nurtured so that its long-term viability could flourish.
This new approach benefited another off-shoot of Harry Potter fandom, Wizard Rock. Started as a lark by Boston-area brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge – who crafted songs about Harry Potter and performed under the stage name “Harry and the Potters” at local libraries – this budding musical genre reached a peak of over 800 similar bands worldwide by the time Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released in 2007.
Instead of taking a “cease-and-desist” approach to Wizard Rock as they initially had with Harry Potter fansites, Warner Bros. reached an informal agreement with the DeGeorge brothers – as long as they didn’t sell merchandise directly related to Harry Potter on their website, Warner Bros. would allow them to continue using Harry Potter as a source of inspiration for their songs.
This more enlightened Warner Bros. also benefitted Melissa Anelli, who was determined to transform fansites into a legitimate form of journalism. She slowly established contacts at Warner Bros. and book publisher Scholastic, who in turn made themselves available for quotes and information. Soon even mainstream media began recognizing websites like the Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet as legitimate news sources, resulting in Anelli herself being interviewed by the BBC, ABC, CBS, and the New York Times.
Overall Harry Potter fandom continued to expand during this time period as well. In 2003, fans organized Nimbus in Orlando, the first Harry Potter convention ever held. The event was well attended, with a full slate of panel topics and the majority of fans dressed in cosplay as their favorite characters. By the time the Phoenix Rising conference was held in New Orleans a mere two months before the release of the final Harry Potter book, not only were thousands of fans in attendance but Borders Books sent a seven-team crew to film the event. Journalists from Dateline and Salon.com were likewise on hand to report on the proceedings.
The first Harry Potter-themed podcasts, meanwhile, hit the Internet in 2005 and quickly became runaway success stories, with MuggleNet leading the way and the Leaky Cauldron not far behind. In November of that year, MuggleNet’s MuggleCast and the Leaky Cauldron’s PotterCast teamed up for a joint live presentation in New York City. When the number of fans expressing an interest in attending reached 500, Barnes & Noble agreed to hold the event at its flagship store in Union Square. All three floors quickly filled, with many of the over 700 attendees watching the podcast via videofeed.
On July 20, 2007 – the day before the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Melissa Anelli and PotterCast were in Naperville, Illinois, for a celebration that transformed the small town into a Harry Potter dreamland that attracted tens-of-thousands of fans. Paul and Joe DeGeorge, meanwhile, performed as Harry and the Potters in front of an estimated crowd of 16,000 at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Pottermania inevitably faded after the conclusion of both the Harry Potter book and film series but it left behind a legacy of not just a virtual community but physical one as well – filled with newsites, fansites, a legitimate musical genre, and a series of conventions – created by fans for fans that expanded the definition of fandom in ways never before imagined.
Anthony Letizia