There’s an entire section of the books about how slavery is okay because the slaves like it actually
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sxan@midwest.social 2 months ago
She didn’t get blatantly bigoted until after the series.
Maven@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I feel like that was more so her self insert, hermoinie, can be “on the right side of history”
This is my little headcannon theory and not a hill I even wanna fight on, so if there are blatant holes I’m interested I’m hearing but also keep in mind this is just something I “believe” because it amuses me.
Maven@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Hermione is basically ridiculed and becomes a stereotypical “irrational activist” character during it. If she was trying to make Hermione the one in the right here she did everything she could to make her look like she was in the wrong.
asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah I know and agree. It is her self insert or who she “identified” with the most, so I hand wave the plot holes of my theory away with the same literary finesse Jk Rowling has exhibited in recent decade or two. Like I said, not a hill I’m even willing to fight on lol.
The reality is she is an awful racist person, but I like to make both things true in my headcannon. Idk doesn’t everyone have loose silly things they kinda choose to believe in for fun?
then_three_more@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Even if that were the case the salves should been shown that freedom was better ( they like it because of Stockholm syndrome) by the end and freed. Instead we’re just shown that you should be nice to your slaves (Harry and Kreacher).
asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah
Instead she made it like hermoine is wrong and the elves really do love being completely subservient to another species to the point of abuse and literally having no choice but to stay unless you’re given CLOTHING. It’s the most wild fucked up obvious lowest rung of society that desperately needs advocates and just… kinda stops there. It would be one thing if they just existed and we all later were like wait rhats messed up, like with the goblins. But no she brought attention to it throughout the book made it a whole side plot and absolutely nothing was ever accomplished. I think even later books sort of call back to this in a humorous way.
But I still like to imagine my headcannon being it. It makes me laugh more than being just a plain bigot does. It’s funnier if she is writing something she thinks a moral good character would do as her self insert and just still fails so miserably.
sxan@midwest.social 2 months ago
What? Which book? In the original septilogy?
Glemek@lemmy.world 2 months ago
House elves
sxan@midwest.social 2 months ago
Do they? We see, what, two examples: the first, one who is overjoyed when freed; the other, a villainous character who echoes the morals of the slave owners. Where’s the evidence they like being slaves, outside of slave owners saying they do?
Twinklebreeze@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Death of the author means I can still listen to Ignition, but I have to kill R Kelly if I ever see him.
steeznson@lemmy.world 2 months ago
My mind is telling me “no”…
Default_Defect@midwest.social 2 months ago
Stop giving her more money to validate her current views.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Pirate anything JKR from here on out, got it
pyre@lemmy.world 2 months ago
or don’t, your know, she’s bad at writing.
Default_Defect@midwest.social 2 months ago
Acceptable, but I’d rather just indulge in better stories instead.
sxan@midwest.social 2 months ago
That’s a fair point, and if someone were to suggest less legal ways of acquiring her work, that would be acceptable.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Not blatantly, but there are signs of it even in the first book; and as the books go on, you can see almost in real time her political views shift from criticizing the system to defending it as she started becoming wealthy and benefiting from the system.
I highly recommend watching Shaun’s 2 hour video on the subject, as it goes into great detail on the subject and makes for perfect podcast material.
Some highlights include:
LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I feel like most of those things are not accurate, or are not good faith criticism. It’s worth remembering that until the whole trans thing, the Harry Potter series was seen as very liberal to the point where some conservatives boycotted it.
-Harry isn’t a “cop”, like hes not walking the beat arresting people, hes a dark wizard catcher. Which is perfectly rational given dark wizards killed his parents and they’re pretty explicitly fascists.
-a pretty huge part of the books is devoted to how good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. Barty Crouch Sr is a whole character who is there to show how the good guys can end up being nearly as bad and brutal as the bad guys because they think the ends justify the means and in times of crisis people are willing to compromise their morals.
-Hermione is ridiculed for sticking up for house elves but she’s also right, as Harry starts to realize by the end of the books. It’s worth noting that the two most steadfast supporters of house elves are Hermione and dumbledore, aka Rowlings “always right about everything” characters
-Seamus is pretty yikesy in the movies but 90% of the stuff isn’t in the books. Idk I thought he was a little racist, although still ultimately a good guy. Cho Chang has a stereotypical name but so what? I don’t think it’s racist in itself. I literally work with a guy named Ying Yang.
-I don’t think obesity is used as a failing, gluttony is used as a failing, as in a favorite expression among leftists, the “fat cat”. There are plenty of other overweight characters that are good and righteous like Ms Weasly, Slughorn (kinda), and Hagrid.
-I’m not sure who you’re referring to with regards to describing teenage females as unattractive but that seems kinda cherry picked. Harry ends up with Ginny who in the books is described as a tomboy. The biggest female villain is arguably Umbridge who is very stereotypically feminine
I’m not defending Rowling as a person at all, or her statements about trans people, but the criticism of Harry potter feels very much like going back and reexamining them with an agenda. You can do the same uncharitable thing with any fantasy series. Hell, off the top of my head I can think of much worse criticisms of lord of the rings or game of thrones but people don’t seem to want to nitpick those the same way.
Maven@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Id recommend watching the video that was linked in that comment. The points they gave were very much just summaries that don’t include the evidence to back them up.
LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fair enough, I will check it out when I get the chance.
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
He’s part of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the closest thing to his job IRL would be something like a cop in a gang task force.
I had two professors in college named Bing Yang and Chingmin Yang. Both math professors. Had one for probability and statistics and the other for discrete math.
Because that’s exactly what it is. It’s mostly people that were huge fans that know the books well enough for those kinds of analyses, and they mostly didn’t start these kinds of positions on them until JK said things about trans people.
And TERFy stuff was still common enough just 15 years ago that when Mary Daly died all the big feminist sites wrote these glowing memorials about how she was so influential to their feminist beliefs and then most issued an apology, retraction or the like when they realized the size of their trans audience.
uis@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I don’t think Hagrid is obese. At least in books.
LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well, based off the little illustrations in each chapter he’s pretty similar to how he was portrayed in the movies. You can look up Mary grandpré hagrid to see what I would guess is Rowlings original vision.
sxan@midwest.social 2 months ago
Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me, I guess. Money changes people; status and power changes people.
Although, there were fat good guys, and many non-fat bad guys. There wasn’t a particularly late amount of obesity in the books. That point seems a stretch, to me.
Schacklebolt is pretty bad, but I think we also have to consider Rowling’s cultural upbringing. Of she were from the US, it would be blatantly shocking. The UK didn’t have systemic domestic slavery based on race; I don’t know that it’s fair to judge her based on US critical race theory; the UK has it’s own version, for sure, but it has different foundations.
As for Cho Chang, it is common for Chinese proper names to have two syllables (2 and 3 character names account for over 99% of the given names - 1 syllable named account for 0.6%). I don’t remember her background, but if any of her recent ancestors (parents, grandparents) were immigrants, then it would be less believable and more forced for her to not have a multi-syllable name.
Rowling has enough criticizable behavior; we don’t have to exaggerate by turning otherwise non- controversial facts into issues.
That’s most 12 y/o boys, but making it the Irish kid is a fair point.
I think nearly all of these ignore counter-examples where, e.g., every other Irish person in the family isn’t an IRA stand-in. That also ignore the fact that every true villain is WAS(P), and that the “crazy” character is so white she’s practically albino.
It’s defense only used by villains. Hermione actively pursues ending the practice, and it’s described as being a terrible practice. How does the fact that villains - and only villains, or in one case, inherited - in the books practice slavery condemn Rowling?
Are we ignoring that Hermione was one of the four, central hero’s of each of the novels? I don’t remember any criticism of her except by the establishment.
Yeah. I agree, there’s a lot of questionable justification of behavior in this. I mean, everyone lets slide the exact same justifications in GoT, but, hey.
Agreed. An utterly unsatisfying resolution, which I interpreted as a statement that there are no good and bad people, just good and bad behavior. When the key hero turns out to be not such a hero in the end; when you expect something more noble, but what you get is reality - good doesn’t always triumph, people in wars die indiscriminately, and in the end centuries of established practices continue and survive intact despite great upheaval… yup! It’s a depressing statement, but I still think it was a statement.
I think Rowling changed as money changed her; she hid bigotry less as she became convinced of the armor of her own popularity; but she also had a kid who grew and changed in time with the novels, and she changed the story to match the loss of innocence and realization that fighting the establishment is hard, expensive, and not guaranteed to succeed. The good guys do not always win; they don’t always survive the encounter coming out the same person they started as.
I won’t defend Rowling, but I also think some of the criticisms are reaching, merely in an attempt to vilify her as much as possible mainly for her homophobic views. Which, ironically, there were no examples of in her novels, and so nothing to call her out about except by its absence.
reddithalation@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
hermione was criticized a lot by pretty much everyone when she tried to free the house elves and made badges etc.
sxan@midwest.social 2 months ago
Isn’t that the fate of any activist in a communal group? And, in the end, she was right, wasn’t she? Isn’t it better to teach that activism will usually be met with resistance, by even your friends, than to teach people to expect your revelation of inequality to suddenly be universally be adopted by your peer group?
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I’m probably missing context but what’s wrong with the name?
But isn’t that extremely common? I personally know like three people like that and I know a pretty limited number of people from East Asia.
IzzyScissor@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Shacklebolt = Shackled and bolted down = Enslaved
Not a great name for basically the only black person in the books.
Cho Chang = Both are Chinese or Korean LAST names. ‘Cho’ isn’t a first name in any Asian language, so she’s mixing and matching languages and cultures. She also only describes her as ‘Asian’ in the books, furthering how little effort was put in.
It’s like saying ‘Lombardi Fernandez’ is a European name. Ignorant on multiple accounts.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Oh okay, I didn’t make that connection. I wonder if it was intentional, that’d be lol
I don’t know, does every character need that sort of specific cultural background associated with them? You give the example of “Lombardi Fernandez” and just describing that person as “European” or Latino or something liket that would seem totally fine to me. Actually the name being a mix could serve as a purposeful way of having their background be more vague not to tie it down in a specific country or even culture.
And with the name not being “correct”, doesn’t she use some wacky names for characters anyway? So it’s not like name authenticity otherwise is respected iirc.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s such a fucking stretch you should open a yoga studio
silasmariner@programming.dev 2 months ago
I have kids now so I’ve read the first two books again and frankly I’m on the Dursleys’ side. Harry is a shit
uis@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I don’t remember seeing it. At least in translated version. Who? Don’t say Dursleys and Marge, they seem to have inherited condition.
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Well, Ireland is not Scottland, but close enough.
Agree on last two, but it’s bad writing.