Oh yes. I do that now. It doesn’t even bother me that some of my favourite DW tv episodes are written by transphobes. But I watched those episodes in high school, when I knew transphobes exist. The media one loved as kid is different. You imagine the people telling good stories are also good people. At least that’s how my mind worked then. Maybe I still think like that to some degree. (I always feel that my friends share a more similar opinion with me on things LGBTQ+ since they don’t see any problem in me being trans. They are actually more conservative.) It’s such a reassurance when I saw DT wearing pins and T-shirts in support of trans people—less cognitive dissonance.
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I feel it’s very different with Harry Potter though
JKR is still making money off the franchise, and using that money and fame to stay in the public eye and put more money towards transphobia
She’s said multiple times that she views purchasing her products as supporting her worldview, so even if you don’t, she’s directly making that link, and you can’t seperate it
Also I loved the books and films as a kid, but looking back at them with JKR’s transphobia in mind. It becomes really hard for me to enjoy them at all.
To name a few things
- She makes a point of how the institution of the ministry is broken and inherently corrupt… And then has Harry join it after the series without anything changing
- There’s mention that a lot of fantasy species are joining Voldemort because of how much they’re mistreated by the wider wizarding world… And doesn’t do anything to ever address that or have people make any effort to fix it
- Just everything to do with the Spew subplot in the books, the end result of it basically being that hermione was wrong to try and free the slaves because they all enjoy slavery, and if they don’t they’re weird. Also, side note, with JKR trying to say she always intended for Hermione to be black (which obviously isn’t true but let’s assume it is) Wow does this subplot look so so much worse
There’s separating art from the artist, but genuinely, I don’t think you can do it here at all
As a trans person, whenever people talk about their love of Harry Potter now, especially if they’re actively buying HP products or that, it makes me deeply uncomfortable
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She wrote seven books about standing up to fascism but through the most neo-liberal lens possible
Hell, you can even see some of her own biases in the books, every single character that’s described as fat is a villain and is made fun of for it
Even the fantasy bigotry reflects it, when hagrid, Harry, and Ron are comforting hermione after Draco calls her a mud blood, Hagrid talks about how Draco’s bigotry towards mud bloods is wrong because some pure blooded wizards are awful with magic (naming Nevill as an example), and that there isn’t another wizard who’s as good at spells as ‘our Hermione’.
They’re not wrong to be bigoted towards Herminone because of how much it hurts her or whatever, they’re wrong because their bigotry is factually inaccurate
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I highly reccomend Shaun on YouTube’s video about the series
(also his videos in general are some of my favourite video essays on the site, highly reccomend the channel)
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Thank you @JayPea for these posts. I’m really torn on the whole Harry Potter thing as I did love it when I read the books. I was at the forefront of the popularity wave and read the first book to my Y5 class at the time, before the whole thing went massive, and it was such fun.
I remember reading The Order of the Phoenix and being thrilled by how awful Umbridge was. I remember being frustrated about how badly Rowling wrote death (Cedric’s death had no impact on me whatsoever but is bigged up as this huge deal. The deaths of regular characters were no better). I remember how disappointed I was by Half Blood Prince as its an entire book of set-up for the finale which, ultimately, I don’t think was as brilliant as I hoped it would be.
I thought the films were great and I remember seeing the trailer for the first film and thinking how well they had translated it to the screen.
But as the transphobia started to emerge I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Obviously there’s the ‘separate art from the artist’ argument which I often ascribe to - rightly or wrongly - but you’re right Jaypea that Rowling is still profiting from the franchise and it is still a going concern what with the recent Hogwarts Legacy and the upcoming TV series and of course the ongoing Curse stage play and the studio tour.
I don’t like that something so many people love has to be sullied by her bigotry. To begin with I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Wanting to protect women in society is of course really important and obviously needed. But a threat from trans people is, of course, a fallacy and that’s where she has doubled down (as far as I can tell) making it very difficult to take her seriously.
I also find it difficult because children still read the books in school. Parents are extremely lazy in book buying for kids. They just buy what’s on the shelves in Tescos or Sainsburys - it’s all celebrity authors and Harry Potter. Ironically some church schools had Potter banned because of the witchcraft aspect (when some churches would agree with he current stance) but it’s very hard to wean parents off buying these sort of books for their kids (David Walliams’ stuff is also a problem and his books have quite a few issues). There is so much good stuff out there but no one uses libraries any more and kids narrow their reading breadth far too young.
Part of me still wants to visit the Wizarding World in Orlando and, a bit like my comment about Bang-Bang-a-Boom there are many creatives innocent of Rowling’s bigotry who also are part of this franchise (and have challenged it in public), I would hope that the franchise can become bigger than her and her narrow-mindedness or maybe, just maybe, she’ll have a change of heart. But that’s my naivety, I’m sure.
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Yep I was going to post this exact same thing, but @JayPea got there first.
It’s a shame because I would have totally bought all the Harry Potter LEGO going. She’s saved me a lot of money by being a bigot!
But I’m making light of a very serious issue. And @deltaandthebannermen is right that kids are still big fans of the books. My niece and nephew love it, and I cringe inside whenever they mention it. I declined going to visit the UK theme park (don’t even know what it is called), and I won’t play the game (they do), because I don’t want to give any of my money or attention to her.
Apparently the Fantastic Beasts films have been a big flop and so there won’t be any more, that’s at least a good thing.
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I used to be into the Harry Potter books. In fact, as I remember, they were so big that I was initially avoiding reading them, then got sucked in.
I actually liked them less and less as the series went on. Reading the last two books was mostly me getting some closure on the series rather then actually looking forward to them. And also, I was big on reading Harry Potter fanfiction at the time, and needed to be familiar with the base material.
At that point, I was just feeling like she didn’t finish the series off particularly well, though.
After all the anti-trans stuff came out, I was feeling less and less into the series, and these days, if I look back on it, I start seeing all the problematic stuff in the series
Because, yes, you have fat=evil: Vernon, Dudley, Marge, for example. Ugly women are evil: Petunia, Rita Skeeter, Umbridge, Marge.
Millions of relationships in the books, and the only gay one isn’t actually written in there, was Dumbledore with wizarding Hitler, and it doesn’t seem like Dumbledore ever had a relationship again… (Could have been easily fixed; Remus x Sirius is pretty obvious.)
The goblins definitely feel antisemitic.
All the house elf stuff is very problematic. Not when it was introduced, but when she backtracked and decided that Dobby was weird for wanting to be freed and that the rest of them quite like being slaves. And that Hermione shouldn’t have been fighting for their freedom.
And the ending is such a preserve the status quo ending. They didn’t change the corrupt system, so they’ll be another Voldemort along in a generation or two. Harry went on to be a wizard cop and house elf owner.
There are a number of problematic authors, though. I do my best to try not to support the ones who are still alive, though it’s difficult occasionally.
(A random list of problematic authors would include: JK Rowling, Marion Zimmer Bradley, David & Leigh Eddings, HP Lovecraft, Orson Scott Card, Piers Anthony, and is starting to include Neil Gaiman…)
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I agree with you completely, and whenever I make this same argument on Twitter, I just get a load of people telling me I’m wrong.
My argument is that if you don’t separate art from the artist, there will come a point where you can’t enjoy any piece of entertainment. You’re unlikely to find any celebrity who is perfect and has no controversies whatsoever.
Even Sir David Attenborough has been accused of being racist (although I don’t agree): https://medium.com/the-frog/attenborough-is-a-hypocrite-a8288fda2b99
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It is an area with multiple things to consider:
One would be how bad was what the person in question did, whether they are they going to be benefiting from you purchasing things they were involved in. From my list, Marion Zimmer Bradley supported her husband against pedophilia charges when she was alive, and after she died, her daughter came out saying that she was actually the worse of the two, and had abused her her whole life. Similarly, before they started writing, David and Leigh Eddings had adopted a 4 year old boy, and would put him in a cage and physically abuse him (and were, in fact, caught in the act by the police).
Terrible people I would not want to support, but it’s also notable that all three are dead. They aren’t seeing any benefit from buying their works. (I actually own a large collection of MZB books, all of which were bought before any of this came out.)
Another question is how much what they did shows in their works. It does somewhat in MZB’s books. Lovecraft’s beliefs are very much part of a lot of what he wrote. How much this bothers you is going to depend on the situation and person.
And then there’s cases where that person was not the only person involved in the work. Sure, Joss Whedon sucks, but that doesn’t really reflect on the writers and actors involved, especially since they were the ones that had to deal with him.
(Another odd factor in the case of MZB is that I’ve read enough things to make me think it’s fairly likely that her books after she had a stroke were mostly ghostwritten…)
I do tend to feel that it’s going to be a bit of a personal decision whether you still consume things from a problematic person or not.
(Celebrities that are perfect: Weird Al Yankovic, Dolly Parton, Fred Rogers, Bob Ross, LeVar Burton…)
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This is an aspect I completely agree with. I can’t write off something which has the contributions of people innocent of whatever horribleness one person involved - even if they’re the person at ‘the top’. That’s unfair to them especially if they either didn’t know about it, were victims of it or tried to fight against it.
And, as has been pointed out - none of us are perfect and we only know what we know about people. I also think people pick and choose. We know William Hartnell had some fairly egregious views but no one has ever called for his era to be cancelled.
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I mean, I’ve already explained that just doesn’t work in this case (at the very least for me and the vast majority of queer, especially trans people I know)
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This is, of course, the thing - if something is directly related to us, we will always find it harder to ignore. And that’s okay.
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It works for me, but I don’t love Potter anyway. But everyone is different. Some of my friends express the same as you.
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One thing to add that I feel might be being missed here- there’s a big difference to me at least between supporting the art of someone who is problematic only in the sense that they hold problematic views that they largely keep to themselves or have done bad things (as the slippery slope sort of argument that you allude to would apply to), and someone who’s money which comes from their art actively funds hate campaigns such as JK Rowling’s monetary support and lobbying of transphobic causes.
The first is only an abstract moral problem (does someone who isn’t a great person deserve money and royalties as a result of my support of their art). The second is a material contribution to the worsening of trans people’s lives. Which is essentially the role any money directly or from royalties made off harry potter plays, supporting it is directly funding anti-trans campaigns so trying to claim any seperation seems ridiculous to me.
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Exactly this
You may be able to separate Art from the artist with H.P. Lovecraft, with Neil Gaiman, with Orson Scott Card, but you CANNOT, let me repeat again to be abundantly clear, you CANNOT separate JKRs work from her as a person.
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I disagree, I think you can. Whilst I don’t like the anti-trans rhetoric that she funds, it doesn’t have any bearing on the Harry Potter stories themselves. The fictional world of Harry Potter is separate from the issue of JK Rowling funding trans hate groups.
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Pirate the books and movies or get them used if you want to read or watch them to not financially support her or what she represents.
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Except all of her money comes from Harry Potter. The fictional world doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s either on books that you pay money to buy, or in movies that you pay money to see. Even if you manage to avoid paying for those stories (or any merch, or consuming any ad-supported content), actively engaging in the fandom and praising the stories at all is still providing free advertising for them and encouraging other people to pay money that goes directly to her (and from there directly to hate groups). Celebration of her work keeps her culturally relevant, and as long as she’s a culturally relevant figure, her hateful views have influence. She has a very loud voice, and support for her work only makes that voice louder.
(Also there’s still a lot of issues with the content of the stories that I believe has been broken down already elsewhere on this forum)
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I do that with the Strike books as I do enjoy them but you can see a tiny bit more of her prejudice creeping through.
The one thing I absolutely would never buy is a JK Rowling autobiography though because that would feel far more personal towards the author and her ridiculous beliefs. Sad that she’s fallen so far from grace.
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My argument is that Harry Potter has become bigger than JK Rowling by this point. It’s the Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes situation, where the character and the world outgrows the author.
Hogwarts Legacy, for instance, has a trans character in the game, which directly contradicts JK Rowling’s beliefs.
I think being a fan of Harry Potter isn’t necessarily agreeing with or amplifying JK Rowling’s anti-trans stance. I think it’s showing a general appreciation of the themes and messages in the books, which ironically promote the things JK Rowling is so venemously against: the idea that love is the greatest power that can vanquish evil, and the importance of standing against prejudice (Voldemort and the Death Eaters wishing to establish a cruel regime where only ‘pure-blood’ wizards are accepted, and ‘Mudblood’ being a derogatory term for Muggle-born wizards).
I like the general notion of SPEW too, being Hermione’s stance against complicit slavery with the house elves, although I do agree with those who say it could have been handled better, by not making Dobby the only House Elf who doesn’t want to be a slave, and having every other character ridicule Hermione for her stance. Hopefully the upcoming TV Series reworks that.
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