Me as a 13yo reading the first book: Holy shit, Dumbledore is so badass he just magics up a feast for everyone!
Me reading the later books: Oh, the feast is cooked by elves. Slave elves. Elves that are slaves... Cool cool cool...
Comment on JK Rowling prefers two years in jail over using correct pronouns
Redhotkurt@kbin.social 8 months agoIt’s just the kids reading her books 20 years ago didn’t recognize all the problematic shit she wrote till they grew up.
Adult here who was an adult when the books came out and recognized all the awful racist and sexist imagery. I have nothing new to add to the conversation, I'm just gonna vent. There were quite a few of us here and there who spoke up when the books were published, but we were significantly outnumbered and immediately drowned out by the "shut up and stop complaining" crowd. Yes, all this talk of "problematic" issues in the Potter books are old observations we've been rehashing for two decades...the goblins who run the banks are a horrifyingly obvious Jewish caricature, Chinese character Cho Chang's first name is actually a Korean last name, the one black guy in the whole fuckin series is named "Shacklebolt" (seriously wtf), the one Irish character goes by "Seamus Finnegan," the main female character Hermione is constantly referred to as "bossy"...just to name a few. JFC, what a shitshow.
Ok, one more example that got a lot of attention years back but sort of faded away from public consciousness: in the first movie there's a bigass six-pointed star on the fuckin floor of Gringotts, of all places. You know, Gringotts. The bank......where the undeniably Jew-like goblins work. No fuckin shit, it's right there, plain as day. That one still boggles my mind. I mean, what the fuck, man. https://i.postimg.cc/Jzx2hr31/happry-potter-1-star-of-david-gringotts.png
CosmicApe@kbin.social 8 months ago
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Wow, I’m just realizing the deeper meaning behind gringotts being run by specifically goblins. I kinda knew the big-nosed people running a bank was rather stereotypical, and not in the just lazy way, but it made sense to me that fantasy goblins would hoard treasure, and never connected the two facts.
I was aware of the high amounts of tokenism, with that one irish character, that one black character, that one vaguely asian character, but that’s easier to rationalize away as using stereotypes to communicate things quickly. It’s all over fantasy; Lando is the one black guy, Gimli is the one Dwarf, Hagrid is the one (half-)giant. Looking back on it now, these tokens are pretty shallow, but at the time it was fairly standard. It’s when you get into the lore of these peoples that things get ugly. Often fantasy races are there for splashes of colour, or a simple analoge for some kind of politics, but the reasoning here is heinous, and everyone is just ok with it.
By the time these flaws surfaced, we were already invested in the decent storytelling, and the deep connections never got made. Then the author detonated and it’s only with that context can we see the signs that were right there.
It’s too bad that these stories were built on a bed of such horrible ideas. Some of them were nice.
Globulart@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Hey now, there were at least 2 black characters!
And Dean Thomas is the only example in the book of a dad who left his mum to raise him when he was young…
Smashed it JK.
I think she’s since tried to walk that back by saying he left to protect them and was eventually murdered by death eaters.
Maybe put that bit in the book eh?
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I gotta say as someone who grew up with the books, I’m glad y’all noticed it because as a kid I sure didn’t.
A lot of fantasy from that era has a lot of issues, but when I compare something like Harry Potter to say Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan may have been getting off on his depiction of magic slavery but he at least wasn’t excusing it.
Depictions she made weren’t ok in the 90s. Her politics aren’t ok now. And there’s better stuff too now. Fantasy has gotten so much better in recent decades.
bearwithastick@feddit.ch 8 months ago
As someone who devoured the books as a kid, I’ve been very disappointed in finding out JK Rowlings is a a TERF. Your post sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole and I’ve read up on some of the issues that people pointed out in the books. To me, some are valid, some seem to be a bit far-fetched…? For example, I’m not sure why she is labeled pro-slavery? Just because she writes that people in her fantasy world don’t seem to have a problem with it?
Silverseren@kbin.social 8 months ago
She's the one that chose to make the fantasy world she made up the way it is. And she chose to make it one where a literal slave class of people enjoy being slaves and thinks slavery is great, so long as their slave masters treat them well. And the one person trying to free them is treated as a hyperbolic hippie type for even making such an attempt.
That is the made up world Rowling chose to make.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Because it’s brushed off by the good guys and the narrative. I wouldn’t say she’s pro slavery, but what I will say is that the way she wrote house elves does ring some bells to shit that people who support the American confederacy say about black people.
shalafi@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Holy. Shit. That Star of David is blowing my mind.
CubbyTustard@reddthat.com 8 months ago
shalafi@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I love being wrong about stuff like this!