{"id":1220,"date":"2017-04-06T03:57:54","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T03:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=1220"},"modified":"2017-04-06T03:57:54","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T03:57:54","slug":"the-phoenix-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/04\/06\/the-phoenix-project\/","title":{"rendered":"The Phoenix Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out the site here!<\/a><\/p>\n

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Artist\u2019s Statement<\/p>\n

Other than a short epilogue in which everyone has gotten married, had children, and is appearing to be living happily ever after, J.K. Rowling gives us little insight into the state of the Wizarding World after Harry Potter defeats Voldemort. As is the case among fans, I imagined a possible future for the universe. In this future, the events of the series are taught in a History of Magic class, and I theorized about the reactions of the muggle born students upon learning about the people who had died fighting to ensure their place in the Wizarding World. Therefore, my Haunted Media Artifact is an in-universe memorial page, The Phoenix Project, created by these muggle born students for those who died fighting Death Eaters in Harry Potter.\u00a0 <\/em>In crafting my project, I combined elements of parasocial relationships, online memorial pages, and Internet trolling to reflect the complexities of online grieving.<\/p>\n

Civil Rights in Harry Potter<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am currently in the middle of a Harry Potter<\/em> re-read, and am struck by how integral civil rights are to the overarching plot of the entire series.\u00a0 Although I struggled to find much scholarship on it, the central conflict of Harry Potter <\/em>is a fight against racial supremacy.\u00a0 While the struggle is represented allegorically through pure blood and muggle born witches and wizards, it is clearly speaking to a history of civil rights battles.\u00a0 In the Harry Potter <\/em>universe, the slur \u201cmudblood\u201d is meant to denigrate the less privileged in society for their lineage.\u00a0 Authors, particularly ones as masterful as J.K. Rowling, are deliberate in their every move.\u00a0 Rowling invented a racial slur for her universe to emphasize that racism operates within it just as it does in the non-magical world.\u00a0 Voldemort rises to power by demonizing a disadvantaged minority group and asserting his, and his followers\u2019, superiority over them.\u00a0 Under his rule, muggle borns cannot work in the Wizarding World, have their wands confiscated, and are liable to be jailed.\u00a0 In this re-read, I have found myself focusing on Hermione\u2019s experience of racism in the Wizarding World, and I have thought a great deal about the experiences of muggle born students in such a hostile environment.<\/p>\n

Parasocial Relationships<\/strong><\/p>\n

My project was heavily influenced by the concept of parasocial relationships.\u00a0 Coined by Horton and Wohl , parasocial relationships are bonds people feel with public figures despite not knowing them personally (215).\u00a0 While Horton and Wohl\u2019s paper focuses mostly on television personalities, the concept of parasocial relationships has extended far beyond that original limited scope.\u00a0 These relationships, as we have seen with the amount of beloved celebrities who passed away in 2016, can be quite intense. \u00a0In crafting my project, I wanted to draw on the idea of bonds with public figures.\u00a0 I imagined that in the Wizarding World, muggle born students would feel a particular affinity with those who had died fighting for muggleborn equality, and therefore created a backstory involving four original muggle born characters.\u00a0 Many of the characters who died in the Second Wizarding War were not famous at the time of their death, but like we have seen with scores of celebrities or public figures, from Bob Ross to Emily Dickinson, fame is frequently achieved posthumously.\u00a0 In our digital age, parasocial relationships are easier than ever to achieve.\u00a0 While the internet does not exist in the Wizarding World, and these figures would likely only appear in history textbooks, muggleborn students would have grown up with exposure to the internet.\u00a0 It is therefore their experiences with forming parasocial internet relationships, not only the importance of muggleborn rights, that make them particularly apt people to create such a project.<\/p>\n

I acknowledge that it is probably unusual to form a parasocial relationship posthumously, I think it could be possible, particularly in the Wizarding World, where death operates somewhat differently than it does in ours. \u00a0Pictures move in this universe, so it would be easier to understand and connect with someone deceased. \u00a0Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape both have talking portraits hung in the Hogwarts castle, allowing students to interact with them in a very life-like manner.<\/p>\n

Website Design<\/strong><\/p>\n

In crafting the memorial page, I took some cues from existing online memorial pages, but also endeavored to depart from certain elements.\u00a0 As Brubaker et al. observed, online memorial pages usually include an obituary component as well as a memorial guestbook (154).\u00a0 I included both of those elements in my website, with individual biographies for the deceased and a guest book that allowed users to leave messages.\u00a0 In crafting those messages, I followed the observations Brubaker et al. had made that people who knew the deceased tended to address their comments to them directly, while those who did not know the deceased personally generally addressed the creators of the website (155). \u00a0Also, acknowledging that some people do come to online memorial pages simply to wallow in false grief, I added a few inane comments. I also added messages from internet trolls, as they tend to be a common presence on online memorial pages, but I will address those comments in depth later in the statement.<\/p>\n

While I did model my page using the general template of online memorial pages, I also wanted to depart from some elements I did not like.\u00a0 As Graham et al. found in exploring Australian memorial websites, some, such as the popular Heaven Address, contained \u201cFeatured\u201d and \u201cMost Visited\u201d profiles (43).\u00a0 This design struck me as disrespectful and inappropriate.\u00a0 The idea of competing for online popularity even in death seems almost sacrilegious.\u00a0 Additionally, I found the world cloud component of the Heaven Address memorial pages as somewhat too silly for my website.\u00a0 The notion that death, particularly as casualties of war, deserves a certain seriousness drove the design of my website.\u00a0 I attempted to balance an attractive aesthetic with a degree of solemnity.\u00a0 While the color palate of Heaven Address is bright, featuring white, yellow, and green, my website is predominantly black with white text and some light red accents.\u00a0 I chose to emphasize black because it is the traditional color of mourning.\u00a0 This choice naturally lent itself to white text to make the website as easy to read as possible.\u00a0 However, in an effort to add visual interest to the page, I added some light red, which looks nice but maintains the seriousness I meant to convey in the site.<\/p>\n

The choice of fonts was also very deliberate.\u00a0 I spent a good deal of time playing around before deciding on which three to use.\u00a0 All three fonts were deliberately sans serif, because I wanted a minimalist, elegant look to convey solemnity.\u00a0 For titles, I chose a font called Marzo, a thin, almost spindly font.\u00a0 I wanted something eye-catching for the titles, but did not feel that playful fonts with curlicues or fun shapes seemed appropriate, so this unusual but simple font seemed like a good middle ground.\u00a0 For the paragraphs, I chose Avenir Light, which was simply a plain, sans serif font that worked well for bodies of text.\u00a0 For other elements and accents, I used a font called Lulo Clean.\u00a0 I did not want all the sans serif fonts to look too similar, so this font was chosen in contrast to Marzo.\u00a0 While Marzo is thin, Lulo Clean is an all-caps, blocky font, which provided a good visual contrast without being too decorative.<\/p>\n

Trolls<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>No corner of the Internet is complete without at least a few trolls, and as we have found, memorial pages in particular tend to attract a certain vitriol from anonymous Internet users.\u00a0 Combined with the fact that this page is commemorating people who died fighting for equality, trolls seemed inevitable.\u00a0 As Whitney Phillips found, trolls tend to target those whose grief they view as inauthentic.\u00a0 In general, trolls do not target the families of friends of the deceased, but rather mourners who never knew the deceased and yet still grieve publically.\u00a0 My memorial page is crafted by those who never knew the deceased, and therefore could be seen by trolls as simply an attention-seeking, tacky, unnecessary online grieving display.\u00a0 According to Phillips\u2019s research, my website would be the perfect place for trolls.<\/p>\n

The anonymity afforded by the website also opens the door for vicious, inflammatory comments. \u00a0Haines et al.\u00a0found that anonymity allows users to feel more comfortable expressing support for questionable or socially undesirable positions or behavior (779-780).\u00a0 In the real online world, there is no shortage of racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted sentiments, particularly on platforms like Reddit or Tumblr, where one can remain anonymous.\u00a0 \u00a0As The Phoenix Project allows anonymous commenting, it seemed in-keeping with online culture to sprinkle in a few pure-blood supremacist comments along with the usual sensationalist trolling.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>As with anything, our conception of death and methods of grieving are changing with the rapid expansion of technology.\u00a0 The Phoenix Project was meant to integrate several components of that changing landscape.\u00a0 I focused primarily on the idea of parasocial relationships with the dead, especially in light of the broader social context of the Harry Potter <\/em>universe.\u00a0 I was very deliberate in the crafting of this memorial page, and tried to embody some of the best aspects of online culture\u2014the accessibility of information and the ease of communication and community-building\u2014while avoiding those elements\u2014an obsession with popularity and the commercialization of nearly anything\u2014that I find distasteful.\u00a0 I wanted to depict the potential value of public grieving sites in uniting people and creating a sense of community while still acknowledging the presence of grief-policing trolls. Ultimately, while The Phoenix Project, and those memorialized within it, are entirely fictional, I hope it provides some real insight into how the Internet challenges some of our attitudes surrounding death<\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

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Brubaker, Jed R., Gillian R. Hayes, and Paul Dourish. “Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Grief and Mourning.” Information Society<\/i> 29.3 (2013): 152-63.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Graham, Connor, Michael Arnold, Tamara Kohn, and Martin R. Gibbs. “Gravesites and websites: a comparison of memorialisation.” Visual Studies<\/i> 30.1 (2015): 37-53.<\/div>\n
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Haines, Russell, Jill Hough, Lan Cao, and Douglas Haines. “Anonymity in Computer-Mediated Communication: More Contrarian Ideas with Less Influence.” Group Decision and Negotiation<\/i> 23.4 (2014): 765-86<\/div>\n
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Horton, Donald, and R. Richard Wohl. “Mass Communication and Para-Social<\/div>\n
Interaction.” Psychiatry<\/i> 19.3 (1956): 215-29.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Philips, Whitney. “LOLing at tragedy: Facebook trolls, memorial pages and resistance to grief online.” First Monday<\/i> 16.12 (2011): n. pag. Web.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Check out the site here!   Artist\u2019s Statement Other than a short epilogue in which everyone has gotten married, had children, and is appearing to be living happily ever after, J.K. Rowling gives us little insight into the state of the Wizarding World after Harry Potter defeats Voldemort. As is the case among fans, I … <\/p>\n

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