Hey Everyone,
So this post is going to be a little bit different. Originally, I was planning to do a post on watching the Harry Potter movies over the last week but because of the Hogwarts Legacy video game release there has been such a massive glut of opinions on The Wizarding World franchise that I didn't think I could add anything more to it. Plus, I came across this 2 hour long video from one of my favorite youtubers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJeeD6a3b2M
I thought this was perfect. Over the last week and a half I have watched a lot of videos and read a lot of opinion pieces and reviews on Harry Potter and I think a lot of these are now colored by views on JK Rowling's political activism (and not just what she says about trans-people). This video though, takes out all of that and purely focuses on the movie series...and it's also hilarious.
So, if I had nothing to add then why does this article exist? That's because I came across a couple of comments on YouTube.
I am fortunate enough to have a small platform on Instagram. So, I thought I might address this. I won't be promoting this post on IG. Just wanted to get this out of my system.
The Right Wing's bizarre relationship with JK Rowling
There are really two things that you need to know about JK Rowling. The first is that politically, she is a neo-liberal. A Neo-liberal is basically someone who is more or less fine with how things are currently. Socially, they are progressive and would generally speak up against racism at the very least (this might seem a little odd considering what we will get to later on). They would also prefer more social welfare programs.
For Conservatives, there's a very easy way to tell that that's what she is about - people keep calling her a TERF - Trans Exclusionary Radical FEMINIST. I think the F in that seems to F off these days. So, naturally what passes for the right wing these days would probably hate her and they did. Until JK Rowling made her initial comments about the trans community, the right wing absolutely hated her.
In fact, here is people's favorite conservative news talking head making fun of her during Brexit -
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/846539097112018948?s=20
The Hogwarts legacy boycott has been a complete failure. I have always had the same opinion when it comes to boycotts - they don't work. Especially, in 2023 where everyone has an HD camera in their pockets with internet connectivity to broadcast their opinions to everyone. In such a world, all you would do is create a Streisand effect where you would end up bringing it a lot more attention than it would have gotten if you had just kept quiet about it. Do you know how I know that? Because the last Fantastic Beasts movie, where people just ignored it was a miserable failure which has likely ended the franchise without it being given an ending. So, yes, I don't believe people should have been running such an aggressive boycott campaign. That being said, all these conservatives suddenly flocking to her defense even though they disagree with her on everything else except this one issue is really telling.
Remember this woman basically made a Trump rally the ending of the second Fantastic Beasts movie.
The second thing you should know about JK Rowling
I really enjoyed watching the Harry Potter movies last week and one of the reasons for that - along with some excellent directors, brilliant actors, cinematography and John Williams' terrific musical score - was that the movies cleaned up a lot of garbage that are in the books.
Now, before we go further, I should elaborate more about my relationship with the franchise. So, back when I was in high school centuries ago - I mean literally, it was in the last century - I set myself a goal to read all the Harry Potter books before the first movie came out in 2001. So, by the end of the year 2000, I finished all the four books that had come out. Then the first movie came out and for a few different reasons, I didn't see it. One of those reasons was that the media at the time said that the book was better than the movie and I didn't want to ruin my experience of reading the book by watching the movie. That's pretty much how it went for me. Until about 10 days ago, I had never seen a Harry Potter movie. I had finished reading the books just a few days after the last book Deathly Hallows came out in 2007. I hadn't had any engagement with the series in 16 years...except for watching the first two Fantastic Beasts movies on a flight about four years ago. I am talking about all this because being in my mid-teens to early 20's when I had read the series, I hadn't noticed a lot of very troubling things in the books.
Just a few things off the top of my head -
Slavery - The house elves are bonded labor to wizard families. Also, it doesn't help that Dobby the house elf in the Chamber of Secrets acts basically like the Harry Potter version of Jar Jar Binks.
Anti-semitism - This is what the goblins who handle all the money and are portrayed as being an insular greedy community look like in Harry Potter -
If that picture doesn't say it all, then Jon Stewart can explain it a lot better than I ever could -
Weird cliched caricatures of minorities - What is the East Asian character called? Cho Chang. Although Cho is a Korean name and Chang is a Chinese name. How about the black character? Kingsley Shacklebolt - Now to be fair, I think that particular name is very cool. But let's take a look at what Kingsley Shacklebolt is wearing. Everyone else is wearing regular clothes except Kingsley who is in a dashiki.
So, am I saying that JK Rowling is a racist slaver? No. Most of the troubling aspects in the series can be explained away when you consider that she wrote about half the series in the 90's when she was a single mother living in the UK. Of course, she thinks that black people wear dashikis because that's the stereotype she has been exposed to. Obviously, the rich bankers are all unscrupulous money grubbers because that is the stereotype she has seen. No, JK Rowling is not racist and doesn't advocate slavery. The thing she is and the second thing you need to know about her is that she is a Karen.
As a middle-aged blonde woman, I hate using the term 'Karen' as much as I hate using the term 'woke'. Yet, much like I can't find a word more suitable than woke to describe the new Velma show, I can't find a more suitable word to describe Rowling. But JK Rowling is not just any Karen. She is the ultimate Karen. She hates being proven wrong about something and that coupled with a chronic hatred of learning has produced some extraordinary moments over the years.
The following list is before her comments on trans-people.
1. Harry Potter readers point out that there is slavery in the books when Dobby is introduced in the Chamber of Secrets. Now, a regular person would just ignore this criticism or refrain from commenting on it. In fact, that's what the movies did but Rowling can't leave it alone. So, in the following book Prisoner of Azkaban, there is a whole subplot to portraying Hermione as a crazy activist because she wants to free the house elves - because house elves you see like to be slaves. When the readers pointed out that she is basically dragging up pre-abolition pro-slavery arguments, takes a dig at them in the Order of the Phoenix where a freed house elf is shown to have become a drunk after gaining her freedom. She even makes this worse when in the final book she implies that the solution to slavery is for masters to be nicer to their slaves.
2. Right after the final book came out, Rowling went on a publicity tour which involved interactions with the public. So, someone asked her why there weren't any characters in the series. Again, a normal person would point out that its a children's series where a small cast of characters are being followed. There are gay characters in the universe but she was too focused in telling her story that she didn't give them any storylines. That's a nice deflection from the actual reason - the books were written in the 90's and gay people were sidelined from mass-media a lot. Unfortunately, she can't leave it alone. So, all of a sudden she made Dumbledore gay. Dumbledore the old wizard who looked like a mix between Gandalf and Merlin, yeah, he's gay and he was in love with...oh I don't know...Grindlewald, the dark wizard you have never seen the series.
3. Some random guy on twitter asked her if there were any Jewish wizards at Hogwarts. JK Rowling is a billionaire. She can just ignore random people on twitter but no, there was a Jewish wizard there all that time but Rowling forgot to write about him over 15 years.
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/544946669448867841?s=20
This is actually one of my favorite examples of her never leaving things alone because this lack of Jewish representation (along with presumably her goblins) bothered her so much that the two female leads in the Fantastic Beasts movies are named Tina and Queenie Goldstein.
4. When fans pointed out that Harry could have just traveled back to the past using a time turner, a magical device introduced in the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, to save Cedric Diggory's life, whose death is a pivotal scene in the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire, Rowling decided to have a scene in the 5th book, The Order of the Phoenix where ALL the time turners are destroyed during a fight. Nevermind, that in the third book, they were portrayed as being so common that teachers at Hogwarts were giving them out to students to help them attend extra classes. Readers again pointed out that this was stupid. Again, she could just ignore it but no, this kept gnawing on her so much that when the stage play, Harry Potter and the cursed child came out she decided to base it on an alternate timeline when someone does use a time turner to save Cedric. Except saving him set into motion a series of events that led to him becoming Voldemort's successor and the world being basically ruled by nazis.
5. Speaking of Nazis, a lot of people have pointed out why didn't the wizards use magic to stop the world wars? Since Rowling can't ignore anything, she decided to base the FIVE MOVIE Fantastic beasts series on answering this silly nitpick. Also, this would be a good time to point out that the villain in this series is the guy trying to stop the second world war. Yes, the second worst wizard in her world ever tried to stop the second world war.
So, why have I ruined my Monday night on JK Rowling? Because there is a myth that conservatives have been peddling online with regard to Rowling. It's that she one time piped up some harmless opinion on transpeople on twitter that we disagreed with and since then we have been trying to get her canceled. That is just not true. After the reaction to her initial tweets, she wrote an essay defending her position which the BBC published. When the reaction to that didn't go according to plan, she published several more essays on her own website as well as hundreds of tweets both in defense of her position and mocking people who criticized her. This is the current pinned tweet on her twitter page -
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1618212057496817670?cxt=HHwWjMDQpd3ShfUsAAAA
She has donated millions of pounds to anti-trans groups, attended anti-trans rallies and spoken at anti-trans meetings. She even wrote a 1200 page book, the Ink Black Heart where she shows the apparently horrible treatment she has received for her transphobic comments. By the way, this maybe a tangent but the pen name she uses for her adult book series is Robert Galbraith, the inventor of gay conversion therapy. Of course, she did those things because it fits her chronic pattern of behavior. Whenever she gets called out on something, as we saw in the list above, her first reaction is to somehow prove that she is right.
I disagree with the Hogwarts Legacy boycott but that is because I believe the boycott enriched her far more than it would have if people just left it alone. JK Rowling is a children's book author who has a tendency to get embroiled in topics that she is totally ill-equiped to deal with. Harry Potter hasn't done anything to end discriminatory behavior and her words and behavior towards transwomen have been atrocious.
P.S. A couple more things, I really enjoyed the movies and I have changed my opinion about the books v/s the movies. It's rare that a movie is better than the book it is based on but that's definitely the case for Harry Potter. Second, the books are set in the 1990's and I think that's because that is the final time period where they work. You know in 2023, we have technology that is far better than magic? You have owls delivering mail. We have email and texting. Sirius shows up in the Gryffindor fireplace to talk to Harry. We have Skype, Zoom, video calling etc. Guns are far more superior to the killing curse.