Huge potter fan here (that won’t consume any potter media because JKR is a self-owning ass clown that deserves to watch her empire crumble), and yeah, even well before the Twitter nonsense she started spouting, it wasn’t like a secret or anything that the books weren’t perfect. I still stood on like at midnight for prisoner of Azkaban as a kid, though. But I remember thinking the Voldemort/death eaters thing was a pretty clear WWII/Hitler/Nazi analogy and googling it only to find an interview with her stating it absolutely was not, and people who thought it was were “reading politics” into a children’s story. She’s always been a dumbass, and she’s wrong about her own work. Also, the whole house elf thing was… Really, really rough to read as a kid. I could never understand why no one was on Hermione’s side, and how no one could see that elves didn’t want to be free because their condition would be that of an outcast, and in a world where only wizard’s were allowed wands, nonhuman humanoids were veru clearly subjugated to the point of delusionality.
Which is to say, yeah, the books got problems, even if you love em. I love those books, because the world felt real, even when it was shitty, it felt real. But there are major problems in them, both in the plothole sense, and in the politics (or lack thereof) of the author shining through the cracks
Nobody is on the side of the house elves because Hermione is the pet leftist. Ever watch Downton Abbey? Pretty good show tbh, but if you have, then Tom Felton is the Downton Abbey Hermione. Why is Downton Abbey, of all things, relevant? Because it’s conservative apologia for the way things were, just as HP is conservative apologia; these types of media will often include a zany leftist that they can soften and win over to show how their conservative agenda is good actually. Think about it, HP isn’t left vs right, it’s old conservatism (Dumbledore and his muggle-loving ways) vs batshit insane ultra conservatism (the Death Eaters). If you swap wizarding blood for noble blood, being a wizard for being a noble, etc. it works almost perfectly. Hermione is new nobility that the old nobility doesn’t respect; Harry is from a good pedigree, but was raised by his peasant aunt and uncle and doesn’t know how to act the part, etc etc. The left (Hermione) wasn’t supposed to win (and didn’t), that W was meant for the old conservatives all along.
HP and Rowling have always been conservative, it was just that we misread the struggle being portrayed there.
I got sort of an inverse impression of Downton Abbey. For me, it was about inevitable change, since practically every single truth held by the most conservative characters is at some point bent or entirely overturned, often by themselves. Literally all of the gentry are huge hypocrites.
It also spends a good amount of time creating parallels in the lives of the different classes that, for me, underscored how there was nothing fundamentally special about the aristocracy besides their wealth. Wealth that they never earned and only held onto because a peasant Irish driver who banged their daughter forcibly removed their heads from their assess.
It just doesn’t seek to accomplish all this by making the upper class into Disney villains, since that’s rarely how people actually are. But I never got the impression the show was trying to say this is how things should have or had to have been.
This is a great counterpoint, thanks for taking the time to write this thoughtful response. Imo, Downton paints a rosy picture of the gentry, one of kind, intelligent people who are willing to change with the times if only they understood the need; one where there’s a healthy mutualism between the gentry and those under them (house servants, tenants, etc). Maybe that really is how it was, idk, I’m American and all of our gentry equivalent seem to feel little responsibility to those upon whom they depend.
That’s fair. The rosiness I always attributed to the fact it’s basically a fancy soap opera with a huge budget.
The Crowleys are definitely depicted as kind lords, though the show contrasts them several times with other less humane counterparts. I don’t have the education to rate its historical accuracy, however.
I searched for her denying the Nazi analogy and only found the opposite
Q: Many of us older readers have noticed over the years similarities between the Death Eaters tactics and the Nazis from the 30s and 40s. Did you use that historical era as a model for Voldemort’s reign and what were the lessons that you hope to impart to the next generation?
It was conscious. I think that if you’re, I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime we would think Nazi Germany. There were parallels in the ideology. I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the wizarding world. So you have the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is this great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves in nothing else they can pride themselves on perceived purity. So yeah that follows a parallel. It wasn’t really exclusively that. I think you can see in the Ministry even before it’s taken over, there are parallels to regimes we all know and love. [Laughter and applause.] So you ask what lessons, I suppose. The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think ti’s one of the reasons that some people don’t like the books, but I think that’s it’s a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.
Will check the link a little later (just woke up to pee. Lol). But this was years ago, like around the time PoA came out, or maybe halfbood prince? Either way, it was ab article, not s video. I’ll try to find it later today
It’s a transcript from a Q&A session she did in 2007, around the time of the last book and the OotP film, so a few years after PoA (book and film).
Edit: And here’s an interview with a dutch newspaper from 2007 where she says Voldemort is kind of a Hitler https://archive.is/Pi45t (warning, it’s in Dutch)
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I promise I didn’t just make that up! I can’t find the article I saw when I was young, but it was, like, openly hostile to the idea of it. Maybe it was someone else and I attributed it to her or something. :/
I’m not saying that she didn’t say it, she said a lot of stuff over the years. I assume she changed her mind, given you said it was around the time of PoA. If I’m not mistaken she had quite some influence on the films and in the last two films you literally see people running around in what look like Nazi uniforms.
Also, the whole house elf thing was… Really, really rough to read as a kid. I could never understand why no one was on Hermione’s side, and how no one could see that elves didn’t want to be free because their condition would be that of an outcast, and in a world where only wizard’s were allowed wands, nonhuman humanoids were veru clearly subjugated to the point of delusionality.
The motivation behind the idea was a good one, the execution of the idea was absolute cringe.
Let me explain. The intention was to highlight that the wizarding world has its own logic, and trying to apply the morality and philosophy of the mundane will end in failure, but Hermonie can’t see that being too smart for her own good in this area…
Unfortunately JK picked FUCKING SLAVERY as the way to make this point, because she is a dumbass. No, that’s underselling it: She’s a fascist who only had Voldemort be evil because the book needed a villain. JK Rowling legitimately believes that some groups of people are perpetually below “The normals”
Like take the concept of Royalty (Some people are better than others because they are of Noble Blood) and turn it onto its head, that there are people who are lesser than others because they are of dirty blood. (To JK these include the Irish, transgender people, and anyone who isn’t white)
“Mudblood” being a slur in the HP Universe is just JK’s way of projecting her worldview onto perceived enemies.
Oh and one last thing. JK did the “Wizard morality is different because it’s wacky and whimsical” a second time, in the Fantastic Beasts movies, where the worst crime in Wizard History was… drumroll Trying to stop the Nazis from coming into power… (You see why Harry Potter just doesn’t work with serious stories?: JK herself is impossible to take seriously, and infact is outright dangerous because there are those who attempt to do just that.)
JK hates the Irish? I don’t keep up with her or Harry Potter much, but I know about her twitter meltdowns about trans people – didn’t know she had a whole thing about Irish people tho lol. She’s such a nutjob 😂
Harry Potter has a character called Seamus Finnigan, his whole thing is to act like he’s drunk and blow things up. (It’s a stereotype in England that Irish people make cars into bombs and are literally domestic terrorists)
And if you look into the extended lore, well ya know how Hogwarts bizarrely has a house intended for Dark Wizards (Why is that a thing? I don’t remember “Serial Killing” being a major in Community College) named for the most second evil wizard in history (The first was Grindelwald who… wanted to stop the Nazis), Salazaar Slytherin.
If you look into the backstory of Salazaar Slytherin, he doesn’t really have any evil deeds to his name, he’s just Irish lol.
Also JK Rowling’s house elves are based on “Brownies”, stories Slave Owners would tell their children about how black people were “Really magic faeries who like working” and will “Disappear forever if you give them nice things”
Basically lying to children so they don’t realize their parents are “the baddies”
She’s a disgusting person.
I wanna give a shout out to Kingsley Shacklebolt (First name is King, as in Dr. Martin Luther KING Jr., last name is literally a tool from the 1800’s used to keep slaves from jumping off of slave ships), who’s contribution to the series is being black, trying to arrest Dumbledore on false charges, and here’s my favorite being afraid of Voldemort’s quest to kill off the Mudbloods because he… Doesn’t know who his father is and thus cannot verify that he isn’t muggleborn…
Jesus fucking Christ JK, this is almost as bad as when you assumed Alohamora meant “Friendly to thieves” because it’s from an African Language (It actually just refers to the color red)
Not really. Even big potter fans acknowledge that the books have giant plotholes
Huge potter fan here (that won’t consume any potter media because JKR is a self-owning ass clown that deserves to watch her empire crumble), and yeah, even well before the Twitter nonsense she started spouting, it wasn’t like a secret or anything that the books weren’t perfect. I still stood on like at midnight for prisoner of Azkaban as a kid, though. But I remember thinking the Voldemort/death eaters thing was a pretty clear WWII/Hitler/Nazi analogy and googling it only to find an interview with her stating it absolutely was not, and people who thought it was were “reading politics” into a children’s story. She’s always been a dumbass, and she’s wrong about her own work. Also, the whole house elf thing was… Really, really rough to read as a kid. I could never understand why no one was on Hermione’s side, and how no one could see that elves didn’t want to be free because their condition would be that of an outcast, and in a world where only wizard’s were allowed wands, nonhuman humanoids were veru clearly subjugated to the point of delusionality.
Which is to say, yeah, the books got problems, even if you love em. I love those books, because the world felt real, even when it was shitty, it felt real. But there are major problems in them, both in the plothole sense, and in the politics (or lack thereof) of the author shining through the cracks
Nobody is on the side of the house elves because Hermione is the pet leftist. Ever watch Downton Abbey? Pretty good show tbh, but if you have, then Tom Felton is the Downton Abbey Hermione. Why is Downton Abbey, of all things, relevant? Because it’s conservative apologia for the way things were, just as HP is conservative apologia; these types of media will often include a zany leftist that they can soften and win over to show how their conservative agenda is good actually. Think about it, HP isn’t left vs right, it’s old conservatism (Dumbledore and his muggle-loving ways) vs batshit insane ultra conservatism (the Death Eaters). If you swap wizarding blood for noble blood, being a wizard for being a noble, etc. it works almost perfectly. Hermione is new nobility that the old nobility doesn’t respect; Harry is from a good pedigree, but was raised by his peasant aunt and uncle and doesn’t know how to act the part, etc etc. The left (Hermione) wasn’t supposed to win (and didn’t), that W was meant for the old conservatives all along.
HP and Rowling have always been conservative, it was just that we misread the struggle being portrayed there.
I got sort of an inverse impression of Downton Abbey. For me, it was about inevitable change, since practically every single truth held by the most conservative characters is at some point bent or entirely overturned, often by themselves. Literally all of the gentry are huge hypocrites.
It also spends a good amount of time creating parallels in the lives of the different classes that, for me, underscored how there was nothing fundamentally special about the aristocracy besides their wealth. Wealth that they never earned and only held onto because a peasant Irish driver who banged their daughter forcibly removed their heads from their assess.
It just doesn’t seek to accomplish all this by making the upper class into Disney villains, since that’s rarely how people actually are. But I never got the impression the show was trying to say this is how things should have or had to have been.
This is a great counterpoint, thanks for taking the time to write this thoughtful response. Imo, Downton paints a rosy picture of the gentry, one of kind, intelligent people who are willing to change with the times if only they understood the need; one where there’s a healthy mutualism between the gentry and those under them (house servants, tenants, etc). Maybe that really is how it was, idk, I’m American and all of our gentry equivalent seem to feel little responsibility to those upon whom they depend.
That’s fair. The rosiness I always attributed to the fact it’s basically a fancy soap opera with a huge budget.
The Crowleys are definitely depicted as kind lords, though the show contrasts them several times with other less humane counterparts. I don’t have the education to rate its historical accuracy, however.
She’s a classic neolib. Pretending to be progressive while actually pushing regressive, conservative bullshit.
This makes too much sense
I searched for her denying the Nazi analogy and only found the opposite
Source: http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-k-rowling-at-carnegie-hall-reveals-dumbledore-is-gay-neville-marries-hannah-abbott-and-scores-more/
Will check the link a little later (just woke up to pee. Lol). But this was years ago, like around the time PoA came out, or maybe halfbood prince? Either way, it was ab article, not s video. I’ll try to find it later today
It’s a transcript from a Q&A session she did in 2007, around the time of the last book and the OotP film, so a few years after PoA (book and film).
Edit: And here’s an interview with a dutch newspaper from 2007 where she says Voldemort is kind of a Hitler https://archive.is/Pi45t (warning, it’s in Dutch)
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I promise I didn’t just make that up! I can’t find the article I saw when I was young, but it was, like, openly hostile to the idea of it. Maybe it was someone else and I attributed it to her or something. :/
I’m not saying that she didn’t say it, she said a lot of stuff over the years. I assume she changed her mind, given you said it was around the time of PoA. If I’m not mistaken she had quite some influence on the films and in the last two films you literally see people running around in what look like Nazi uniforms.
The motivation behind the idea was a good one, the execution of the idea was absolute cringe.
Let me explain. The intention was to highlight that the wizarding world has its own logic, and trying to apply the morality and philosophy of the mundane will end in failure, but Hermonie can’t see that being too smart for her own good in this area…
Unfortunately JK picked FUCKING SLAVERY as the way to make this point, because she is a dumbass. No, that’s underselling it: She’s a fascist who only had Voldemort be evil because the book needed a villain. JK Rowling legitimately believes that some groups of people are perpetually below “The normals”
Like take the concept of Royalty (Some people are better than others because they are of Noble Blood) and turn it onto its head, that there are people who are lesser than others because they are of dirty blood. (To JK these include the Irish, transgender people, and anyone who isn’t white)
“Mudblood” being a slur in the HP Universe is just JK’s way of projecting her worldview onto perceived enemies.
Oh and one last thing. JK did the “Wizard morality is different because it’s wacky and whimsical” a second time, in the Fantastic Beasts movies, where the worst crime in Wizard History was… drumroll Trying to stop the Nazis from coming into power… (You see why Harry Potter just doesn’t work with serious stories?: JK herself is impossible to take seriously, and infact is outright dangerous because there are those who attempt to do just that.)
JK hates the Irish? I don’t keep up with her or Harry Potter much, but I know about her twitter meltdowns about trans people – didn’t know she had a whole thing about Irish people tho lol. She’s such a nutjob 😂
Harry Potter has a character called Seamus Finnigan, his whole thing is to act like he’s drunk and blow things up. (It’s a stereotype in England that Irish people make cars into bombs and are literally domestic terrorists)
And if you look into the extended lore, well ya know how Hogwarts bizarrely has a house intended for Dark Wizards (Why is that a thing? I don’t remember “Serial Killing” being a major in Community College) named for the most second evil wizard in history (The first was Grindelwald who… wanted to stop the Nazis), Salazaar Slytherin.
If you look into the backstory of Salazaar Slytherin, he doesn’t really have any evil deeds to his name, he’s just Irish lol.
Also JK Rowling’s house elves are based on “Brownies”, stories Slave Owners would tell their children about how black people were “Really magic faeries who like working” and will “Disappear forever if you give them nice things”
Basically lying to children so they don’t realize their parents are “the baddies”
She’s a disgusting person.
I wanna give a shout out to Kingsley Shacklebolt (First name is King, as in Dr. Martin Luther KING Jr., last name is literally a tool from the 1800’s used to keep slaves from jumping off of slave ships), who’s contribution to the series is being black, trying to arrest Dumbledore on false charges, and here’s my favorite being afraid of Voldemort’s quest to kill off the Mudbloods because he… Doesn’t know who his father is and thus cannot verify that he isn’t muggleborn…
Jesus fucking Christ JK, this is almost as bad as when you assumed Alohamora meant “Friendly to thieves” because it’s from an African Language (It actually just refers to the color red)