Harry Potter is fascinating to me because the books have messages against bigotry in them, and you look at the author and wonder how the gap between reality and the story could possibly exist
I feel like, if you think about what the book does, the gap isn’t as big as you’d think.
“Hermione, don’t let being muggleborn get you down. You’re a powerful witch, and therefore have value. …Let’s just ignore how we treat Filch and act like his bitter attitude is his own fault, alright?”
“It is choices that matter, not circumstances. Like how the sorting hat chose for these people to be Slytherins, so they’re all evil and probably ugly.”
“Look at how heroic Harry is for freeing a slave. Now, we’re going to give him a slave and not think too hard about that. In fact, Hermione wanting to free other slaves is annoying and we should laugh at her because of it.”
Everyone’s pointing out the “slaves like being slaves, actually” messaging of the books, which…fair. But there’s so much more to it than that.
Extremely intelligent magical creatures like goblins and centaurs are treated pretty explicitly as second-class citizens. The Wizarding World is an apartheid state, and this is only barely given mention in the series.
There’s fatphobia and some very essentialist language, describing characters like Dudley as piggy.
There’s the much-discussed antisemitic tropes inherent in the way the greedy banker goblins are portrayed.
It has an insanely strong attribution bias. The exact same behaviour or physical attribute can be endearing or evil depending on how much Rowling herself likes the character. It’s why the incredibly creepy incel behaviour of Snape is ultimately portrayed as a positive because he did it in the name of the one-sided obsession that he (and Rowling) called love. It’s why Dudley’s fatness makes him a pig but Molly’s is warm and loving. Some degree of this is, in fairness, to be expected in a children’s series. But it doesn’t lessen as the books age up with their audience, and I think it’s harder to excuse with the behaviours than it is with the physical descriptions (which are, to be fair, from Harry’s PoV).
There’s one of like two black characters being named “Shacklebolt”, the one east Asian character being “Cho Chang”, and the Irish one being the one with a penchant for blowing things up.
Despite one of the strongest themes many of the books most ardent readers got out of the series being about self-acceptance for who you are, we get a fair few examples where people are made fun of for who they are, or are forced to change to fit in by the end of the story. Filch is a stand-in for squibs as a whole in this regard, and is not viewed with much respect. Tonks had strong queer/trans parallels, until at the end she decides to lean fully into her cishet femininity in order to win over a man.
But perhaps most importantly, our protagonist, and through him the narrative as a whole, only ever views things through an extremely liberal lens. The problem is the big bad evil wizard, and the single lazy incompetent Minister than enables him. It’s not a system of oppression and compliance, that starts from when children are sorted into “smart, brave, evil, or the leftovers” at age 11. It frames things as a world where leadership by the Good People like himself or Dumbledore must be a good thing, but if the Bad People are in charge, like the Malfoys or Voldemort, they are the problem. In the end, despite having been screwed over numerous times by the institutions of the magical world, Harry himself becomes a literal magic-world police officer.
And that’s without even getting in to the extended universe. Stuff like the entire continent of Africa having just one school despite the enormous range of languages and cultures. Or one in the Americas having a Latin name despite ostensibly having been founded before European contact. Just generally signs that Rowling really doesn’t care enough about cultural sensitivity to think through her worldbuilding.
And the rest of the house elves think he’s weird for wanting freedom…
I was an adult when I started reading them because my younger sister liked them, back when the movies first came out. I definitely had a few moments of ‘oh thats kinda wrong’ but I thought it was just crappy writing in a kids book and moved on.
And now I know better (well, for years now but you know what I mean).
A video essay I watched once made an interesting point, which was that JK named Hermione Hermione because she didn’t want any real young girls to her bullied because of the books. Basically, she thought Hermione was the worst, and made the boys only barely tolerate her because she was useful to them.
But then a bunch of Hermione-coded girls started absolutely loving the books because they saw themselves in it, and the movies cast a pretty girl instead of an “ugly” one, and suddenly JK’s “oh shit, uh, yeah… hero…” 😛
I think she still thinks she’s fighting against bigotry, she’s just lost the plot (if she ever had it in the first place). There’s lots of absolutely heinous people who fully believe that they’re the good guys.
wonder how the gap between reality and the story could possibly exist
This is because everyone can become an absolute bigoted POS like that terf if they really wish for it. But many of us decide that we don’t really give a crap about other people’s genitalia, let alone about what they do with it so we just live our lives as if that was none of our business. Because, you know, being a decent human being is not that hard and letting people live their lives as they want doesn’t make your life worse.
Harry Potter is fascinating to me because the books have messages against bigotry in them, and you look at the author and wonder how the gap between reality and the story could possibly exist
I feel like, if you think about what the book does, the gap isn’t as big as you’d think.
“Hermione, don’t let being muggleborn get you down. You’re a powerful witch, and therefore have value. …Let’s just ignore how we treat Filch and act like his bitter attitude is his own fault, alright?”
“It is choices that matter, not circumstances. Like how the sorting hat chose for these people to be Slytherins, so they’re all evil and probably ugly.”
“Look at how heroic Harry is for freeing a slave. Now, we’re going to give him a slave and not think too hard about that. In fact, Hermione wanting to free other slaves is annoying and we should laugh at her because of it.”
Everyone’s pointing out the “slaves like being slaves, actually” messaging of the books, which…fair. But there’s so much more to it than that.
Extremely intelligent magical creatures like goblins and centaurs are treated pretty explicitly as second-class citizens. The Wizarding World is an apartheid state, and this is only barely given mention in the series.
There’s fatphobia and some very essentialist language, describing characters like Dudley as piggy.
There’s the much-discussed antisemitic tropes inherent in the way the greedy banker goblins are portrayed.
It has an insanely strong attribution bias. The exact same behaviour or physical attribute can be endearing or evil depending on how much Rowling herself likes the character. It’s why the incredibly creepy incel behaviour of Snape is ultimately portrayed as a positive because he did it in the name of the one-sided obsession that he (and Rowling) called love. It’s why Dudley’s fatness makes him a pig but Molly’s is warm and loving. Some degree of this is, in fairness, to be expected in a children’s series. But it doesn’t lessen as the books age up with their audience, and I think it’s harder to excuse with the behaviours than it is with the physical descriptions (which are, to be fair, from Harry’s PoV).
There’s one of like two black characters being named “Shacklebolt”, the one east Asian character being “Cho Chang”, and the Irish one being the one with a penchant for blowing things up.
Despite one of the strongest themes many of the books most ardent readers got out of the series being about self-acceptance for who you are, we get a fair few examples where people are made fun of for who they are, or are forced to change to fit in by the end of the story. Filch is a stand-in for squibs as a whole in this regard, and is not viewed with much respect. Tonks had strong queer/trans parallels, until at the end she decides to lean fully into her cishet femininity in order to win over a man.
But perhaps most importantly, our protagonist, and through him the narrative as a whole, only ever views things through an extremely liberal lens. The problem is the big bad evil wizard, and the single lazy incompetent Minister than enables him. It’s not a system of oppression and compliance, that starts from when children are sorted into “smart, brave, evil, or the leftovers” at age 11. It frames things as a world where leadership by the Good People like himself or Dumbledore must be a good thing, but if the Bad People are in charge, like the Malfoys or Voldemort, they are the problem. In the end, despite having been screwed over numerous times by the institutions of the magical world, Harry himself becomes a literal magic-world police officer.
And that’s without even getting in to the extended universe. Stuff like the entire continent of Africa having just one school despite the enormous range of languages and cultures. Or one in the Americas having a Latin name despite ostensibly having been founded before European contact. Just generally signs that Rowling really doesn’t care enough about cultural sensitivity to think through her worldbuilding.
TBF, the red flags are there.
Hermione gets moked for protesting. slavery is normalised but it’s ok, because one elf becomes free, no one cares about the rest…
And the rest of the house elves think he’s weird for wanting freedom…
I was an adult when I started reading them because my younger sister liked them, back when the movies first came out. I definitely had a few moments of ‘oh thats kinda wrong’ but I thought it was just crappy writing in a kids book and moved on.
And now I know better (well, for years now but you know what I mean).
A video essay I watched once made an interesting point, which was that JK named Hermione Hermione because she didn’t want any real young girls to her bullied because of the books. Basically, she thought Hermione was the worst, and made the boys only barely tolerate her because she was useful to them.
But then a bunch of Hermione-coded girls started absolutely loving the books because they saw themselves in it, and the movies cast a pretty girl instead of an “ugly” one, and suddenly JK’s “oh shit, uh, yeah… hero…” 😛
I think she still thinks she’s fighting against bigotry, she’s just lost the plot (if she ever had it in the first place). There’s lots of absolutely heinous people who fully believe that they’re the good guys.
Maybe the editors forced it to change?
This is because everyone can become an absolute bigoted POS like that terf if they really wish for it. But many of us decide that we don’t really give a crap about other people’s genitalia, let alone about what they do with it so we just live our lives as if that was none of our business. Because, you know, being a decent human being is not that hard and letting people live their lives as they want doesn’t make your life worse.