I grew up reading Harry Potter, and it shaped my life to the extent that I have a Deathly Hallows tattoo. As an adult, I wish J.K. Rowling would just me enjoy her books in peace.
Harry Potter hit me at just the right age—namely, ten, when I still had time to hope that I’d get a Hogwarts acceptance letter in the mail. I started reading the series around the time the third book was released, and family friends brought me back an early copy from their visit to England.
Like a lot of children at the time, I was hooked on Rowling’s vision of magic, and her righteous hero, the eponymous Harry Potter. Seeing the strength of this literal child’s convictions was inspiring to me. He always tried to do the right thing, even if he was at times a bit dim.
Also, just like Harry’s friend Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her age, I also had buck-teeth, bushy hair, and was an insufferable know it all. I was destined to become an incorrigible Harry Potter fangirl.
I stayed a fan as an adult, too. Years later, my then-boyfriend brought over a friend of his who had been training to become a tattoo artist, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. The relatively simple design of the Deathly Hallows, a plot point from the final books, seemed like an obvious choice for me.
It’s a vertical line encased in a triangle and a circle, a simple enough design for someone still learning to tattoo people. Also, at that point, my love of Harry Potter had stayed with me through my twenties. I’ll probably like it forever, I thought, or at least be able to justify that the series had been a significant enough part of my life.
Now, nearing 30, that tattoo is as much a source of embarrassment as it is a source of pride. It’s not like Harry Potter is any less a part of my life, or that the books suddenly got bad. I have some quibbles with Rowling’s world building—how does magic work, exactly? — but they’re the same funny, readable books they always were.
The issue is that Rowling can’t seem to help herself from tacking more details on to the books after the fact, and as far as I’m concerned, her additions have only made the series worse.
For me, the trouble started with Rowling’s declaration, after the series was finished, that Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore was gay. This was not an unwelcome piece of knowledge, but Rowling’s method of delivering the information did puzzle me. If Dumbledore’s sexuality was important to understanding him as a character, why wasn’t that explicit in the books? There aren’t any characters in the Harry Potter series that have a same-sex partner, and Dumbledore was beloved.
Up until his death, he had largely seemed to be celibate, and the only hint that he might have gotten close with anyone at all was in the final book, which described his relationship with the dark wizard Grindelwald. When I read that book, Dumbledore’s closeness with Grindelwald did strike me as possibly romantic, at least on Dumbledore’s part.
But I also knew that other readers could come away thinking that it was just a close friendship, especially because Grindelwald didn’t appear to be as devoted to Dumbledore as he was to him. If the message of Harry Potter was about tolerance and acceptance, then why not just make him gay in text?
Since that Dumbledore reveal, Rowling has added even more details to her series retroactively. When Rowling came under fire from fans for not supporting a cultural boycott of Israel (some fans told her Harry would be disappointed in her), she wrote a Twitlonger explaining her stance and implied that, by the end of the books, Harry would be on her side.
“There comes a moment in the final book, though, when Harry, whose natural inclination is to fight, to rush to action, to lead from the front, is forced to stop and consider the cryptic message the dead Dumbledore has left him,” she wrote. In this moment, Harry knows there is a powerful weapon that he could use, but ultimately opts not to.
“Harry cannot understand why using that weapon would be harmful, yet—grudgingly—he decides to act against his own instinct, and according to what he believes are Dumbledore’s wishes,” she continued.
A cultural boycott of a country is hardly the same as a powerful magic weapon. That’s beside the point, though. Harry Potter has many allegorical elements, and Rowling is using her books to explain her point of view.
In the process, she’s also giving us Harry’s supposed stance on Israel and Palestine, and because she’s the author, does that mean it’s canon? This question came up again when Rowling was annoyed that fans of her work kept comparing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to Dumbledore.
Corbyn. Is. Not. Dumbledore.https://t.co/yjyK5ZmAXe https://t.co/bYI0wbTpuJ
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 31, 2016
Rowling is free to dislike Corbyn, but her readers are also free to draw parallels from her books into their own lives. At least, that’s the logic behind the literary criticism practice of “Death of the Author,” although in this case, the author has seemingly made Harry Potter a living document, since she keeps on tweeting more additions to the text.
Her insistence that Harry Potter must be read one way — her way — and her continuing to add on revisions to the text has only made me like the books less. It also reveals problems within the text that I was able to overlook, at least until Rowling kept pointing out the extent to which her own politics are supposedly supported by her characters.
When she talks about whether or not her characters are like Corbyn, who campaigns for a Labour party that supports the many and not the few, I can’t help but remember that while she criticises the classism of old, rich families like the Malfoys, similar prestigious families like the Potters don’t get the same scrutiny. When she waffles on whether or not to boycott Israel (and claims Harry would have felt the same way), I recall the strange portrayal of race is portrayed in her books—both the portrayal of her “fantasy” races and the human races from our actual world.
There’s the house elves, who are totally OK with their perpetual enslavement, and then there’s the human characters of colour, who are simply not given the same amount of character development as other characters in Harry Potter.
The major characters of colour, like Dean Thomas, Cho Chang or Parvati Patil, rarely take the spotlight. In Thomas’ case, the official Harry Potter lore website Pottermore reported that Rowling had intended for him to have a bigger part in the first book, but that “his backstory was cut to make way for Neville Longbottom’s (necessary) storyline.” Patil and Chang both serve as short-term love interests for Potter and Ron Weasley respectively, until both heroes end up with the (white) girls that they eventually marry. Patil and Chang’s affections are portrayed as either over-emotional and draining or superficial and flighty.
None of these characters get the growth or empathy that Rowling’s main trio do. As much as I related to Hermione growing up, I wished there was a major character that turned the tides of the Second Wizarding War that was also black, like I am.
Notably, in the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hermione is portrayed by a black actress. The play has also sparked debate among Potter fans who think that aspects of it don’t line up with the accepted canon.
Those additional elements, including the question of Hermione’s race in the books, remain in limbo. Rowling, meanwhile, has pointed out that “white skin was never specified” for Hermione in the books. So, it’s perfectly conceivable that Hermione could be black, but she’s also portrayed in the movies by Emma Watson, whose sleek curls are a far cry from the bushy hair that comes out of my head.
It’s also weird that there are no explicitly Jewish characters in a series of books that makes analogues to and draws on the imagery of the Holocaust. The prison that Grindelwald built to house his opponents, in which he was later jailed, is called Nurmengard.
That name sounds very similar to Nuremberg, a site of Nazi rallies that later became the site of a prison for Nazi war criminals. The villainous Voldemort also preaches about the purity of blood and his intentions to wipe out wizards from mixed families. The ethos of the Death Eaters, his followers, also echoes that “blood purity” ethos of real-life white supremacist groups, as well as Nazi Germany, which introduced blood purity laws.
Now, Rowling has said that Anthony Goldstein was Jewish in the series, although it’s not mentioned in the books at all.
If she can include a tutorial on how to pronounce “Hermione” disguised as a conversation between the heroine and her then boyfriend Viktor Krum in the fourth book, you’d think Rowling would have found a way to include one Jewish character.
In Fantastic Beasts 2, the next entry in the Harry Potter franchise, Rowling has yet again introduced a new element to her text. Nagini, Voldemort’s pet snake and a macguffin late in the series, has been revealed to be an East Asian woman that was cursed to be a snake.
Rowling has explained that her inspiration for this came from Indonesian mythology, as well as Betawi, Chinese and Javanese cultures. Yet the actress who plays this character is South Korean. She will eventually be an evil white man’s pet, and retroactively, this disturbing piece of information about Nagini is now canon.
The Naga are snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology, hence the name ‘Nagini.’ They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi. Have a lovely day ????
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 26, 2018
The Harry Potter books feel like an ever-growing house of cards. Rowling can’t seem to help herself from adding more and more cards to the tower, and even though all I want to do is cherish my memories of reading these books as a child, I can’t look away from the impending disaster.
Comments
73 responses to “J.K. Rowling Needs To Stop Messing With Harry Potter”
It’s almost like sometimes media is better when authors don’t pointlessly bend over backwards to slam their politics in their work…
In some works it’s appropriate. This is a case where it probably isn’t.
It also doesn’t help when the author in question is a hack who got lucky.
I don’t know. Her detective books are pretty good too.
I don’t like her… but I can respect her work.
I like her vision, but in terms of narrative and character building she is sub-par in my opinion.
They’re books for kids. Nothing wrong with adults reading them but gees, don’t go expecting Hemmingway.
I put her in the same place as George Lucas.
Created an incredible world, but is a terrible writer.
Ever the contrarian…
LOL maybe, but in this case it is my considered opinion 😉
Got lucky how exactly? Yes, to succeed in a creative industry takes a certain amount of luck, but to attribute dismiss her success as a hack who got lucky seems a bit presumptuous. She wrote a book that tens of millions of people enjoyed. That’s not luck, that’s countless hours of research, backgrounding, drafting, revisions, pitching etc. I’m not suggesting she’s a Tolstoy or Austen, she’s writing young adult fiction here, but that’s what her audience wanted.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying she didn’t work bloody hard to get where she’s gotten to. A large part of her success can be attributed to a kind of global hysteria, similar to Beatlemania or Justin Bieber (as he was then). Kind of like McDonald’s. I can see why it got so popular, but I don’t really find it that appetizing.
There is a bit of luck with hitting a zeitgeist like that, agreed. It relies on what the popular themes and genres are in various media at the time, as well as timing to avoid other big crazes that have occupied audiences attentions, as well as sociopolitical events sometimes, too. But yeah, you don’t even get the point of being able to roll those dice without tremendous hardworking and skill in the first place.
Oh do sod off. You’re a passenger on this ride, not the captain. Yeah I’m still banging this drum, that devs, authors and screenwriters/directors have 1st, last and the only say in THEIR creations. It’s ruining your childhood? Boo effing Hoo, once we’re done stringing up Michael Bay and Zach Snyder we’ll let you know we’re a-hunting JK, ok? At least it’s hers to ruin if she wants too. But this bullshit armchair commentary of “surely she coulda done blah”, coming from a *COUGH,COUGH,COUGH* -sorry, I get a real hacking cough while reading this journo lately. Nevermind. What would ciswhite me know anyway, right?
For me, once an author publishes a work, that’s it. I pay no attention to ‘afterthoughts’ such as what Gita is complaining about. Writing as an art is open to interpretation. Unless something is explicitly stated within the work, there is usually room to theorise about whether or not it is the case. This is something that fans love: discussing theories about characters or plot points.
That being said, yeah, Rowling can say what she wants. Gita’s free to ignore it if she likes.
Similarly, Gita can also say what she wants regarding her opinions on the matter. And people are free to ignore what she writes.
And yes, this also means that Kotaku posters can also say what they want about her article and other people are free to ignore it. And yet, here I am replying what I want, and people are free to ignore it. But will they? It’s turtles all the way down!
LOL, too true!
For once, I agree with Gita.
I mean, why change stuff which wasn’t in the book? Why draw the real world into it.
Because it’s her IP and she can do what she wants with it?
Of course she can.
But, say you’re a fan of the ASOIAF books… wouldn’t you find it distasteful if George RR Martin tweeted the following:
“An interesting note. Ned Stark would have been a Trump supporter. He would have seen the virtue in….”
or;
“Jamie would have voted for Hillary. In fact, he would have donated his time to the campaign. Also, Jamie was a secret pedophile in the books.”
Look, those are extreme cases. But George RR Martin can post whatever he wants about his IP, right? Doesn’t mean we have to slurp it up like eager fools.
Nobody, not even the most brilliant among us, is perfect. Not even I’m perfect. Sometimes you need others to point out when you’re doing more damage than good. This weird “adding lore via Twitter” thing leaves a sour taste.
But perhaps she doesn’t give a damn, and alienating fans is the last thing she cares about. Shrug.
id proabably want to read why Ned was a trump support, and would lose sympathy for season 1’s finale.
Because it’s HERS. JK owns it, she made it, she can destroy it too if she chooses. Do you have to like it? No. Don’t buy her next one if that the case. Does your opinion (or mine) matter in regards to what JK does with it next? Fuck no. Sorry, but that’s the truth.
Read my comment above.
It’s funny… this is the exact argument I had about Assassins Creed when all the babies were crying that it didn’t have selectable genders.
Shoe is on the other foot now.
Still… books are books. You write them and release them and people digest them as they are. I’m not against gay Headmasters or Israeli sympathizing protagonists one iota – I just think she’s going about it poorly by shoehorning information into a finished series.
My opinion. Perhaps I’m wrong.
I’m not a huge fan of Twitter lore building either but I thought the post hoc reveal of Dumbledore’s sexual orientation was interesting. It’s certainly not the perfect way to do it but it added clarity to some plot points that were suitably ambiguous and was presented as a matter of fact, avoiding any sort of reductive gay character as a trope plot points. He was gay, but he was a private person, it didn’t have any bearing on the plot that followed Harry and nor did it have to. Not perfect, but interesting.
There was also the reason of why it was revealed, which was because the filmmakers were going to shoehorn a hetero romance in one of the films for Dumbledore and she had to explain to them why that would not be appropriate for the character. I found it was a refreshing switch from the presumption that the default orientation of all unpaired characters to be hetero.
Oh I didn’t know that. Interesting!
The issue at heart is that when we as people adore a piece of literary or artistic work, we internalise it and make it our own, and in so doing, we apply our own cultural, ethical and implicit biases on them, most of which will not be something the creators intended. When the creators then adjust or add to these now internalised ideals, it can cause anger and resentment in the fans. Just take a look at Star Wars.
As to the point about Nagini, yes she is being portrayed by an asian female, who is destined to become a snake, JK argues that Nagini was inspired by the Naga, of asian lore. Perhaps before we jump on the bandwagon of shouting down bad representation, maybe, just maybe we should wait for the actual story and motives of Nagini to be revealed. In this headlong rush to prove a point, with only a begging point, and an end point for a story arc to draw from, don’t jump to a conclusion before the story is actually told. Maybe wait to see if Nagini made a deal with the devil to prolong her life in exchange for being by her greatest loves side and becoming intrinsically a part of him, and he a part of her.
Can you have a Jewish character in a series where Muggle religions aren’t held by the Wizarding community?
Shhhhhhhh you’re ruining her attempt to shove identity politics into it…
Interested in your basis for saying that, considering Rowling has explicitly confirmed it (admittedly post-publication).
That’s sort of the point, so I guess the wizarding world subscribes to Judaism? I guess its the sort of silly revisionism that people are prone to (cough George Lucas, cough) with these sorts of epic media, often the change makes zero sense, but the creator does it anyway.
Shrug.
Ha ha, if Rowling does a Lucas there’ll be a great disturbance in the Force!
They do celebrate Christmas after all…..
Christmas is predated by Pagan festivals such as Yule, Modraniht and the Wild Hunt, which considering paganisms links to magic, isn’t out of place.
Consider that the term Jewish can refer both to a practitioner of Judaism as well as a person who is ethnically Jewish (these are not necessarily overlapping!)
Which is an absolute crock of shit when looked at objectively, and has its basis in a healthy degree of perceived ethnocentricity and a healthy dose of racism and bigotry rather than genuine ethnic differences.
I don’t want to get into details on it on a web gaming forum, but oh boy thats a can of worms.
Yeah no. Nothing she has done has lessen the impact of the books or the world she created. She has just made it all the more richer.
To say nothing of her, as a person, she is one of the most interesting public figures around these days. Smart, sashy, utterly fascinating and fearless.
Sure some of her additions are… not always welcome in many ways. this is true. this is I don’t have to agree or like every change or addition. the core story and ideas are still present. the minutia of who’s black or not don’t mean anything to me. Dumbles being gay again means little to the rest of the series. it’s there. it can be used in future works but, it doesn’t lessen the value of the series as a whole.
TL;DR: I may not like or agree with all changes. you may not like all the changes but, as long as the core experience isn’t changed by it, we have no real reason to be complaining.
A pity her writing is so mediocre…
That is a matter of tastes… some of the best musicians in the world arent actually accomplished music theorists. Being a good linguist is only part of being a legendary writer. There is inspiring an audience, telling a story, building a world, being more ‘readable’ over being didactically and theoretically precise. All those things and more, matter just as much as the physical words on a page.
You’re not wrong. I can see that McDonald’s is food and can even be fairly tasty, but for some reason the thought of eating it turns me right off. Just a matter of taste I suppose…
Suggesting she is the McDonalds of writers, is rather hyperbolic. It is not hard to respect her as a writer and all she has done, even if you dont like her. I actually despair of people’s inability to think of things in adult and complicated ways these days. When they dont like something, its never enough to simple be satisfied with a ‘as an author, i dont like her’ response, then going on to discuss the positives and interesting aspects she brings to the world versus her short comings. Why do those things which take time and intelligence and insight, when you can just dismiss someone as ‘McDonalds’.
You realise McDonalds is a worldwide franchise enjoyed by millions, right?
Perspective.
If she can include a tutorial on how to pronounce “Hermione” disguised as a conversation between the heroine and her then boyfriend Viktor Krum in the fourth book, you’d think Rowling would have found a way to include one Jewish character.
What about a Muslim character? Or a Hindu? Or a Buddhist? Or Scientologist?? Where’s the Senegalese characters, the Zimbabwean, Native American, Turkmenistani or Aboriginal?
Does J.K.’s bigotry know no bounds?!
Not that Jewish representation isn’t nice but it’s also not nearly so significant outside of the US and Israel.
The US has nearly 6 million Jews. The UK has less than 300,000.
It’s quite a US-centric point of view.
There’s far more significant populations of many non-Christian/non-white groups who I’d see take precedence.
Black representation in Britain is appalling, considering the black percentage of the population.
The best thing about her tweets is some guy made a bunch of pretty hilarious fake ones and spread them all over the internet. One actually made it into a reprint of a HP book.
http://www.collegehumor.com/post/7054422/how-i-accidentally-got-published-in-a-harry-potter-book
LOL at the Hufflepuff group masturbation sessions!
I’m getting glared at on the train as I laugh hysterically about Cho’s “monster dumps” being so big they block magical plumbing! Gold!
So THAT explains it!
We’re talking about fiction here. Which means you can have the story any which way you like, how it was originally written, how the additions have adjusted things or your own unquie cocktail of interpretations. It doesn’t matter. She can say whatever she likes about the series
She is the author. The book is her creation. She can do whatever she wants with it.
She shouldn’t try to appease the fuckwits on twitter. She adds an Asian character to increase diversity and they complain it’s the wrong type of diversity….
They have to move the goalposts and start splitting hairs every time they get what they want, otherwise they’ll have nothing to complain about.
Prime example of how people like the author will never be pleased.
Get given diversity… Suddenly that diversity isn’t accurate enough.
Yeah, when will minorities learn that close enough is good enough?
When will majorities understand that they don’t get to decide what’s “enough” for people that are not them?
-“Excuse me waiter, I asked for fried rice and you brought me a risotto”.
-“Yes, and? Both are rice-based meals. Shut up and eat up. And show some gratitude, sheez.”
Sure, ignore the fact that an actors entire profession is about pretending to be something else… And not at all about making characters and roles pretend to be THEM.
And if you want to split hairs because the actor/actress isn’t from the exact same background as a character or its origins, you’ll clearly never be pleased.
I don’t know. I hear people all the time crying out when an American actor plays a British character and vice-versa. Most Asian countries are vastly less ethnically related than that. If you cannot see how that matters to those people (and/or the fact that doesn’t matter to you is inconsequential), you’ll clearly never realise the systemic racism that has enabled you to think like that.
And there it is… The old “you’re racist and you don’t even realise it” bit. Yes, it must be that systemic racism that has enable me to think all the evil I do.
You could give people like the author everything they ask for, and they’d still find something wrong with it.
At this point I’m confused as to why anyone should care about the plight of others, when they’re just going to be dismissively labelled a racist if they ever disagree with something.
Except that I didn’t call you a racist. I don’t know if you are one (hopefully not?) but I’m not assuming it. On the other hand, I know that racism, which was once institutionalised is still very present in the society’s subconscious, fed by the people who regardless of their own opinions were raised on such life views. That’s where the attitude you have displayed in this thread a few times comes from: “Well, minorities should be happy and grateful that we decided to throw them some crumbs, but if they still demand part of the loaf that’s meant for the ‘real people’, then we might as well not even give them the crumbs so they’ll learn their place”.
Don’t you even realise how the way you frame your answers not only subconsciously admits that the majority holds the power to do as they want while everybody else has to deal, but also implies that it is right?
JK could -if she wanted to- make Harry a born again anti-Semite with a penchant for sodomizing goats while being seranaded by Ron playing a symphony of cordless drills gouging out muggle eye sockets. If she so chose. And provided her publisher had been suitably blackmailed beforehand. Granted, it probably wouldn’t be as much of a hit with the kids, but THAT is where a fan’s influence should start and finish (unless the creator states they want any additional input)- BUY IT OR DON’T BUY IT. A case of “SHUT UP AND DON’T TAKE MY MONEY!” if you will. Fans who make up their own headcanon or creepy ass fan fic tripe should do it for their own enjoyment only (imagine the uproar if I shoved my way into a shipping site declaring that the lack of hetero relationships in their story was unacceptable!). And also accept that while it works for them, they have no right to bend others (IE the author of this story that they “love”) to their will, especially if it involves racial quotas or if it doesn’t have the “right” diversity. Fuck off and write your own story if it means that much to you. I’ll happily not read it and not tell you how to write it.
These people (and same with Star Wars fans to an extent) seem to hold some belief that if they aren’t happy with new elements of the franchise they are a fan of it gives them the right to attack the creator.
It’s just madness. They forget they are the consumer. The other person is the creator. Their choice is they get to see the creators ongoing product. They can complain about it. But it’s just pissing in the wind.
A mildly critical thinkpiece being written about your sloppy work isn’t an attack.
Don’t be ridiculous.
Check the comments on Twitter.
It’s interesting that you are seizing this talking point to rant about people who care about diversity, queerness and the such when J.K Rowling herself is as “woke” as they come. In fact, that’s the reason why fans expect (and sometimes demand–which, I’ll agree with you, it’s just a bit ridiculous) even better from her.
Do some people just wake up and think “right, what can I be offended and outraged about today?“
Excellent, except you forget the bit where they then have to tell everyone about it and subtly imply that they are part of the problem.
By contributing their displeasure via 100+ post angry rants in the comment section of Kotaku any time diversity is mentioned in an article, yeah!
I am so terribly proud of how you’ve analysed this thread. We need more keen insights like this about how commenters respond to stories.
Hahaha, yeah, and what the people who wake up and think “alright let’s try to find some people talking about representation causes that are dear to their hearts and attempt to shame them into silence by implying that they’re gratuitously and unwarrantedly outraged“?
There’s a lot about the world of Harry Potter people could find distasteful. The treatment of all non humans by wizards, such as the centaurs, giants and of course the house elves. The fact that wizarding Britain is essentially a one party state. The fact that wizards are manipulating muggle governments at their highest levels. But J K Rowling expressing an opinion related to characters and a world she created is not one of them.
The simple solution is to disconnect from the cesspool know as the internet and just read the books over and over. Or read other books. Reading JK Rowling’s tweets is not mandatory, even for the biggest HP fans.
“The major characters of colour, like Dean Thomas, Cho Chang or Parvati Patil, rarely take the spotlight. … Patil and Chang both serve as short-term love interests for Potter and Ron Weasley respectively, until both heroes end up with the (white) girls that they eventually marry. Patil and Chang’s affections are portrayed as either over-emotional and draining or superficial and flighty.”
Surprisingly, I’m the first one to nitpick this. For someone who claims the Harry Potter series was so important to you growing up, you don’t have a very good memory of it. Harry and Ron took Parvati and her twin sister Padma to the Yule Ball in book 4 after Harry asked Cho out but she’d already agreed to go with Cedric. There was no hint of romance there at all, and both boys treated their dates like crap.
Harry had a juvenile and shallow crush on Cho, and when he hooked up with her in book 5 it was a rebound after Cedric’s death where Cho latched onto him because he’d been with Cedric when he was killed, and Harry handled it badly. And Cho CERTAINLY never went out with Ron.
It was LAVENDER BROWN who Ron went out with in a spiteful attempt to make Hermione jealous, and her feelings for him (clingy and immature as she was) were a lot more sincere than his petty childish attempts to annoy the girl he liked for daring to have kissed another boy during the time when he couldn’t man up and tell her how he felt.
If you’re going to criticise Rowling for her race and gender politics, a good place to start would be not making shit up.
I was going to write pretty much the same thing but you beat me to it.
First let me start by saying I agree with the idea of death of the author. In particular, it’s annoying to see those words used by some militants by bash characters or other fans they don’t like.
I don’t think there’s much wrong with the race distribution in the books for THAT PARTICULAR CONTEXT. Considering the percentage of white people in the UK during the early 90s (over 90% at least) it’s not an inaccurate representation of the reality.
This drawing of Harry Potter into political discussions is pretty ridiculous and farcical, especially as the story could be easily used to argue and support the other side.
I am a bit confused by what you think of Hermione’s race. At first you said that Ron ended up with a white girl and you wished a black character had played a big role to turn the tides of the war implying you think Hermione is white and then later on you seem to be agreeing with Rowling that her race was never implied in the books. So which one is it?
“As much as I related to Hermione growing up, I wished there was a major character that turned the tides of the Second Wizarding War that was also black, like I am.”
Remember Kingsley Shacklebot who actually became the Minister after the war. It’s not exactly affecting the war, but its aftermath which is just as important.
Present tense maybe?
For the Nagini thing… I found it profoundly disturbing that she made the only “human snake” in the book the one without any lines whereas the basilisk and boa constrictor from the other books had lines. Yet Nagini, the former South Korean human had none and was shown as a stupid animal who mindlessly did as she was told up until the point where JKR needed a marketing injection for her new film…
Nagini wasn’t important enough to even be given lines back in the day or even referenced as being a human by Dumbledore who likely would have known about her, but hey “now she’s a South Korean woman with a story that matters”. What utter crap. Is it any wonder JKR is being called racist? This a plain retcon with the wrong mythology for the wrong race in an attempt to be “diverse” in the worst possible way. This is just blatant racist on JKR’s part when it should have been in the books if it was so important instead of just a marketing ploy.