Hello everyone,
I saw recently another post on Lemmy which was fairly negative towards fans of the HP universe (some people announcing that they would block other people because those are HP fans)
I guess we can all agree by now that JKR’s transphobia is bigotry and should be condemned.
However, that still does not say what do to with that universe that we love.
I found an interesting article on that topic: https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/harry-potter-fans-jk-rowling-transphobia-essay-49214964
I guess the most important part is
Still, there may be a way to enjoy Harry Potter as a trans person or ally. Over the years, many fans have found creative ways to engage with the series’s magic while also acknowledging its creator’s bigotry. In her paper “Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction, Trans/Queer Reader Response, and J. K. Rowling,” Jennifer Duggan, an associate professor of English at the University of South-Eastern Norway — says that it’s possible to interpret the text of Harry Potter itself in ways that would certainly horrify its writer. “My central thesis—one which has also been argued by other academics like Thomas Pugh and David Wallace — is that the Harry Potter novels are deeply queer,” she tells POPSUGAR. “I mean this in both senses of the term: they champion nonnormativity through the contrast of the ‘perfectly normal’ Dursleys and Harry, and they are, at their heart, a story about a boy with an ‘abnormality’ (as the Dursleys call his magic) who comes out of his cupboard under the stairs and discovers and finds and affinity for a hidden, colourful, queer world. I take this argument further to argue that the novels are easily read through a trans lens, since there is a focus in many of the books on shapeshifting, including several cross-gendered transformations.”
Fandom, she adds, can provide spaces where Harry Potter fans can explore the series’s queer undercurrents while celebrating their own sexualities. “From what I have observed, I have concluded that for the most part, the Harry Potter fandom continues to offer queer and trans fans a positive space,” she tells POPSUGAR. “The two main trends I have seen in fan works are an ‘answer hate with love’ reaction, in which fans focus on trans positivity, and so-called ‘spitefic,’ which are works that are framed as revenge on Rowling for the hurt she has caused. These works are usually trans-positive, too. That said, I fully understand why some fans feel they can no longer engage with the texts in any way.”
Link to the research paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10583-021-09446-9
Seems an interesting way for me to re-appropriate the universe, what do you think?
Harry Potter isn’t a good book written by a bad person. It’s a bad book. At Christmastime in Grimmauld Place they dress the severed slave heads up in little Santa hats and beards. Hermione makes fun of Umbridge by triggering her (probably rape) PTSD. The series ends on the line “all is well”, but nobody has done anything to solve the problems of slavery, second class citizens, oppression, and fascist social attitudes that created Voldemort. Harry becomes a cop for a government that he watched fall to corruption and evil.
The plot isn’t the best, the list of issues is so long it’s almost embarrassing, but the world is whimsical and comfortable, especially in the first few books. Characters description is well done, their behaviour is believable there is some moral ambiguity for some of them (Dumbledore and Snape, among others). There is a reason the series was so successful, and its popularity was never reached by similar series.
The later books are quite disappointing, especially by not addressing the underlying issues of the magical society, as you said.
In the early books you’ve still got Azkaban set up as the punishment for criminals, even for a crime as small as having an animal without a licence. Harry Potter immediately went to the grimdark without any sense of criticality to the atrocities in its world. At least Warhammer 40K is supposed to be a satire of fascism. I feel more comfortable reading the Horus Heresy than going back to Harry Potter.
Do you have more details about the animal licence leading to Azkaban? Doesn’t ring a bell, is it in reference to Hagrid having illegal animals? I had a look at the list of knows Prisoners of Azkaban, and didn’t find any on this list
HP world during the series is not a satire of fascism, but it shows what happen when the government gets complacent instead of addressing the core issues. That is mostly visible with the sack of Fudge, and then Scrimgeour desperately trying to correct the course.
Oh, I’m misremembering. Hagrid actually goes to Azkaban during the second book under suspicion of opening the chamber of secrets. No trial, no proof, they just sent him to super jail because he likes beasties.
Yes, and that is indeed to show how the magic government is corrupt.
They should have addressed those issues at the end of the series, and it would be fine if there was no epilogue, so that every reader could imagine what would happen. Personally, I don’t consider the epilogue to be canon.