Klosterman, Rowling, and the NFL

Recently I had the chance to sit around a campfire with a bunch of boys aged 6-12. For almost an hour they talked about one thing: Harry Potter. Both the books and the movies. Who had read which books, who had seen which films, who preferred the one to the other, ranking the volumes from one to seven (or eight), and so on. The kids who’d read and seen them all were clearly top dog—they held court over the younglings (though not all the older kids had read them all, apparently a demerit). Naturally, an overeager fourth grader spoiled Dumbledore’s fate for a first grader.

None of these boys were alive when any of the books or the films were first released. The first book came out 26 years ago. The final film came out 12 years ago. They aren’t just second but third wave Harry Potter fans. And they talked about it like it was the most relevant, the most vital, the most up-to-date pop culture matter in the world.

Eavesdropping on their conversation brought to mind a short essay by Chuck Klosterman, published in 2012 on Grantland (RIP). It’s called “The Two Lines That Never Cross.” It’s about the popularity of football in America. For years folks like Malcolm Gladwell were sounding the alarm on concussions, head injuries, and the long-term consequences for adult men’s brains of playing football in their teens and twenties. Readerly parents and good liberals stopped enrolling their boys in Pop Warner. The imminent death of American football seemed inevitable. Like boxing before it, football would go the way of the dodo.

It wasn’t to be. Eleven years ago, Klosterman saw why:

To me, this is what’s so fascinating about the contemporary state of football: It’s dominated by two hugely meaningful, totally irrefutable paradigms that refuse to acknowledge the existence of the other. Imagine two vertical, parallel lines accelerating skyward — that’s what football is like now. On the one hand, there is no way that a cognizant world can continue adoring a game where the end result is dementia and death; on the other hand, there is no way you can feasibly eliminate a sport that generates so much revenue (for so many people) and is so deeply beloved by everyday citizens who will never have to absorb the punishment. Is it possible that — in the future — the only teenagers playing football will be working-class kids with limited economic resources? Maybe. But that’s not exactly a recipe for diminishing athletic returns. Is it possible that — in 10 years — researchers will prove that playing just one season of pro football has the same impact on life expectancy as smoking two packs of cigarettes every day for a decade? Perhaps. But we’ll probably learn about that study during the Super Bowl pregame show, communally watched by a worldwide audience of 180 million people. Will the government have to get involved? I suppose that’s possible — but what U.S. president is going to come out against football? Only one who thinks Florida and Texas aren’t essential to his reelection.

If football’s ever-rising popularity was directly tied to its ever-increasing violence, something might collapse upon itself: Either the controversy would fade over time, or it would become a terminal anchor on its expansion. But that’s not how it’s unfolding. These two worlds will never collide. They’ll just continue to intensify, each in its own vacuum. This column can run today, or it can run in 2022. The future is the present is the future.

So far as I can tell, Klosterman was and remains right. There’s not one trend line, but two. They’re not intersecting; they’re parallel. They’re pointed straight up, forever, and they’ll never cross. Not ever.

Now think back to Harry Potter, or rather to that global phenomenon’s author. If J. K. Rowling’s name is in the headlines today, it’s not out of love or celebration. It’s a cause for controversy: something she said, something she wrote, something she did that, once again, has sullied her name and reputation and outraged her (once, no longer) fans. Search “Rowling AND cancel” and you’ll find a million think pieces about her actual/potential/impending/deserved/unearned/fake/outrageous/latest “cancellation.”

And yet. Consider those boys around the campfire. They know Rowling by name; she’s their favorite author, right up there with Rick Riordan, Jeff Kinney, Tui Sutherland, and Dav Pilkey. They know nothing about her social and political views. They know nothing about activists burning her books—whether fundamentalists in the 1990s or progressives in the 2020s. They know nothing about what they’re supposed to think. All they know is that they adore the world and the story and the characters she created, and they want to live in it and relive it constantly in conversation with their friends and in their spare time. They’d meet news of her controversies with a blank stare.

In a word: Imagine two vertical, parallel lines accelerating skyward. One’s made of distressed former fans who’ve repudiated Rowling and all her works. The other’s made of these boys and their peers, a whole generation of children raised on and devouring Rowling and all her works. The lines never meet. They just keep shooting upward, forever.

I think she’s going to be fine.