Focusing on the topic that will form one of the early chapters in my thesis, my stall was entitled 'Harry Potter and the marketing of movies: what ideas about British culture are represented?' My poster board summarised the What, Why and How of my research and I also ran two activities.
I had set up a simple voting task to encourage visitors to think about whether or not they considered Harry Potter to represent British culture. 'Yes' gained more votes and I noticed that many of these were cast by international visitors, who referred to specific aspects such as the food (roast dinner and Yorkshire puddings) and Ron's use of the word 'bloody'. A lot of home visitors weren't so sure (voting 'Yes' and 'No' to reflect this) as they felt that it represented a type of British culture but not all British culture.
I also encouraged visitors to analyse the film poster for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, taking into consideration issues of representation, with prompts such as: who is included? What is their race, gender, age? What are they wearing and what is their position on the poster? What else is included? By the end of the day the poster was surrounded by post-it notes with really interesting comments from the visitors.
I am looking forward to the next opportunity to showcase my PhD work: the NECS conference in Amsterdam, where I will be presenting my research to academics in the field of cinema and media studies.
Research without Borders 2018
My stand: 'Harry Potter and the marketing of movies: what ideas about British culture are represented?'
