I enjoyed it as a kid. As an adult, the flaws are really hard to look past. From the goblins with massive noses that run the wizarding worlds economy, and is in kahoots with wizard Hitler, to the eugenics related hereditarianism views, etc. etc.
Every single woman character in her books are ridiculed, or plain evil, if they take up space at all. There are like three non-white women, two are basically clones. And every single character is good or evil based on genes. Harry is a mix of both his parents, having personality traits from both, despite never having met them. That’s not how things work.
It perfectly explains why Rowling pushes the politics she does. Her ideology is based on the long since discredited sciences of the early to mid 1900s, the stuff the Nazis were basing their ubermensch stuff on. Also explains why they so readily go hand in hand with neo-Nazis.
to the eugenics related hereditarianism views, etc. etc.
Wasn’t it the evil people who held those views, and the good people found them abhorrent?
That’s like criticizing Tolkien because Sauron wanted to dominate the world…
(I’m not comparing Rowling to Tolkien. I think she’s an awful person and her writing is mid at best; the entire franchise surviving entirely on nostalgia and a huge marketing budget. But let’s not focus our criticism on stupid thing like “the bad guys had evil worldviews!”)
It would be worth discarding as a “just the evil guys” thing if only the evil guys employed it. Alas.
This is literally in the epilogue, I’ve cut down a paragraph describing the appearance of the group.
Draco Malfoy was standing there with his wife and son […]
“So that’s little Scorpius,” said Ron under his breath. “Make sure you beat him in every test, Rosie. Thank God you inherited your mother’s brains.”
“Ron, for heaven’s sake,” said Hermione, half stern, half amused. “Don’t try to turn them against each other before they’ve even started school!”
“You’re right, sorry,” said Ron, but unable to help himself, he added, “Don’t get too friendly with him, though, Rosie. Granddad Weasley would never forgive you if you married a pureblood.”
Given that Voldemort’s whole thing was “pureblood” you’d think the lesson of the story would be that your breeding blood doesn’t matter, but alas. If this was a one-off thing then you could discard it, but it’s not. It’s all over the fictional world she’s created.
Harry is frequently the target of “you have your mother’s/father’s X”, Hagrid is seen as lesser for being half-troll (not to mention how his brother is treated), “Loony” Luna Lovegood is seen as insane, coincidentally just like her father, and Argus Filch is what’s called a “squib”, someone who is born to magical parents, but is unable to perform magic. Ergo he has to be part of the wizarding world, but he cannot partake in it, and he cannot be a part of muggle society. He’s forever an outcast in the world, working at a magical school, manually cleaning a place where the students treat him like shit.
Those aspects are never resolved in the books. There’s never any reflection on “maybe we should be nice to Luna” or “perhaps your heritage doesn’t matter”, instead Voldemort is evil not because of his provably erroneous beliefs about purebloods, but because he’s… what, attacking the good guys?
Then… Gods. Rowling has talked about lycanthropy being a metaphor for AIDS.
As far as I can recall there are two primary examples of werewolves in the stories. Remus Lupin, a good guy, works as a teacher for a while, but eventually quits because he realises that he is a danger to the children due to his condition.
Then there’s Fenrir Greyback who is, and I quote from the Potter wiki
infamous for his general savagery and preference for attacking children
Now what subset of the population is primarily brought to mind when you think of HIV/AIDS? That’s right, homosexual men. I believe up until 2023-ish, I wasn’t able to donate blood in my country because I’m a gay man; my having a preference for men makes my blood dirty. Like mud, perhaps. Mudblood maybe? That’s entirely rooted in the HIV/AIDS hysteria, something which we are still facing the stigma of.
A stereotype we face fairly often, something trans-people also face, is that we’re specifically targeting children.
Out of the two AIDS victims werewolves that come to mind, both are dangerous to children, per her own words. Could this just be a massive middle-aged moment style fuck-up? Absolutely, but you’d think a billionaire would have the money to hire editors and whatnot to catch this sort of thing before they happen.
Jeez, that’s bad. What a ghoul. Apparently the producers of the movie adaptation put a lot of work into removing the worst of it.
I had no clue from never reading the books. Also, that excerpt you included is just really shitty writing. Like what a 10th grade creative writing teacher would have to suffer through.
Yeah, I can believe the film producers cutting down a lot. Partially since they are books and adapting that into a film requires some cutting, but also partially because some of the stuff she wrote was really out there.
I don’t think the new adaptation has the same sense though. I cringed a little when I heard that they decided to cast a black guy as Snape, because the scene that immediately came to my mind is the one where he’s being bullied and hung off a tree by Harry’s father back when they were kids. When you make the target of that a black guy… it kind of paints a different picture.
In a vacuum it shouldn’t matter, you don’t do that to people. But there’s this historic precedent with white people hanging black people from trees. I’m not against gender-bending or race-bending characters at all, but you have to think of the context in which it happens. Dumbledore or McGonagall would’ve made more sense. Or Hermione, which Rowling herself has previously said could be black, why not put that money where her mouth is?
I actually didn’t notice that, I mean I never really put much thought into it and never finished watching the movies. That’s kind of weird though when you explained the details.
Viceversa@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hermione is a hero, professor McGonagall is loved by everyone, as well as Molly Weasley and so on.
Dojan@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
You’re right, that was hyperbole. What I should’ve written is “every character that expresses traditionally feminine interests”, save for of course, the tradwife, like Molly Weasley whose entire character is just being a mother. Does she have interests beyond being a mother? No, with seven children who has time to be a person?
Hermione doesn’t engage with anything traditionally feminine, she’s a “not-like-other-girls” type character, hell she doesn’t really have any friends that aren’t boys. Even so, she’s often not taken seriously. She’s mocked for studying hard, and she’s mocked for her anti-slavery coalition, which people only really join half-heartedly in order to placate her.
There’s obviously Dolores Umbridge. She’s into cute, frilly, fluffy, pink things. She’s also a sadist. Her punishment for being bad is to be carried off by centaurs to get raped in a forest.
Luna Lovegood was introduced as another character to be bullied, and she remains on the outskirts throughout the book, but Rowling softened up on her once she got extremely popular with the fans of the series.
Ah right, the massive genocide of Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, and other minorities back in the mid 1900s was okay because the Israeli state is now running a genocide of their own. Rowling was correct to be antisemitic actually!
Viceversa@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hermione doesn’t engage with anything traditionally feminine, she’s a “not-like-other-girls” type character, hell she doesn’t really have any friends that aren’t boys. Even so, she’s often not taken seriously. She’s mocked for studying hard, and she’s mocked for her anti-slavery coalition, which people only really join half-heartedly in order to placate her.
There’s obviously Dolores Umbridge. She’s into cute, frilly, fluffy, pink things. She’s also a sadist. Her punishment for being bad is to be carried off by centaurs to get raped in a forest.
Luna Lovegood was introduced as another character to be bullied, and she remains on the outskirts throughout the book, but Rowling softened up on her once she got extremely popular with the fans of the series.
Ah right, the massive genocide of Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, and other minorities back in the mid 1900s was okay because the Israeli state is now running a genocide of their own. Rowling was correct to be antisemitic actually!
Excuse me, but I can’t agree with your position here.
Is a woman not allowed to realize itself through motherhood?
Also Molly was smart and fierce (remember flight with Bellatrix Lestrange?
Dojan@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Of course. And according to Joanne KKK Rowling, that’s the only way you can be a woman; if you can produce children. Women are the ones with the large gametes! That’s the definition of woman, nothing else. Screw all cis-women who don’t fit the mold.
You’re not allowed to be too feminine, but also if you don’t adhere to white-feminine beauty standards you’re also bad.
I do! “NOT MY DAUGHTER YOU DON’T!”
No matter what, Molly is nothing but a mother. There’s no character there beyond that.
You’ve missed my point. My point is, there are many ways of being a person, and many ways of being a girl or a woman. Rowling doesn’t believe that, and the narrative she pushes explicitly defines what is and isn’t from her perspective, an acceptable way of being a woman. She very clearly values men over women.
Ember Green did an excellent video essay that touches on this topic.
There’s a Wikipedia entry on Jewish sterotypes. You could turn it into a drinking game, if you’d like to die of alcohol poisoning.
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Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Are you for real right now
kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
She actually does, in the ballroom party thing - a beautiful dress and hair, taking a feminine role as a beautiful lady, and all that. That does not invalidate your point though, since there being a single instance (I could think of), just highlights what you said.
Dojan@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Ah yeah, I’d forgotten about that. Pulled up the book to that chapter, and came across this
A boy with a vault full of gold, couldn’t give his supposed friend something better than his uncle’s knobbly, “oldest and foulest, mustard yellow” socks. His slave friend appreciates it nonetheless, but like, surely he had nicer socks?
I can’t with this author. The fact that at the end of all of this, nothing has changed; people’s worth is still determined by breeding and bloodline, the slave race is still enslaved, just kind of makes the entire journey seem pointless to me.
Oh yeah, you killed wizard-Hitler but the wizard-nazi ideology is not just at large, but commonly practised by everyone, including by the good-guy rich-orphan turned wizard cop and his friends.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hermione was ridiculed for thinking House Elves shouldn’t be slaves. Even by her own friends.
Viceversa@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
To me, her cause seemed just.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I stopped reading half way though the books, but I had assumed that the SPEW storyline would come back up later and vindicate Hermione. I was very surprised when I heard it never got brought back up. The last word on that story line was that House Elves were a natural slave race and Hermione was wasting her time channeling that. If you read Hermione’s cause as just, that’s because you have better morals then Rowling.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes, you think it seems just, but the books don’t treat it that way