A suggestion for discussion

[fpb]

In the last decade or two, the United Kingdom has produced two tremendous cultural phenomena that have gone around the world: the Harry Potter series and the Wallace and Gromit animated movies. SUBJECT FOR DISCUSSION: Do they have anything in common, and do they have anything in common with other British successes such as the Dr.Who franchise or Alan Moore's comics?

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Please read more carefully. I was speaking of translating HP in Vietnamese, Ukrainian and Japanese. What is more, I know for a fact that it has been a massive hit in Italy before the movies. (And in spite of an unspeakable translation.) I can also tell you that some American and British ideas don't travel, especially in the field of humour. Anglo-American cultural dominance is not an acquired fact, and is less forceful now than it was forty years ago. In Italy, for instance, there is a strong Japanese influx, a huge (and, to many, incomprehensible) market for Brazilian telenovelas, and last but not least an increasing interest for local product, shown both in the rediscovery of formerly-despised local productions and in the vast success of recent items such as La Piovra, featuring heroic Carabinieri officers fighting the Mafia in Sicily. That Harry Potter should find its own place among all these was by no means a certainty, and in my view it did so quite simply because it is a superb piece of work.