I guruan-fucking-tee there’s going to be a new character who’s basically just a transgender boogeyman
Whether or not you should consume HP Lovecraft media despite the fact he was a racist is entirely up to you because he is long dead. He doesn’t make any money. He isn’t even racist any more. Because he’s dead.
I always say “If you’re going to be a shitshow of a human being but a talented artist, the least you can do is also be dead.”
See also: Phil Spector, Pablo Picasso.
HP Lovecraft was more a clinical xenophobe and expressed that in his writings. He was afraid of different races, but he was also deadly afraid of scientific advancement and even the color indigo. He also didn’t fund terrible politicians or get into feuds on twitter. You also don’t see terrible people on twitter using his writings to justify their beliefs.
JK Rowling is actively funding and bragging about making other people’s lives worse.
Yeah, I actually think Lovecraft was doing what was probably the healthiest thing available to him at the time with all his fucked up phobias by turning them into inspiration for spooky stories. He was creative and articulate enough that he could have been writing political screeds and trying to get others on board with driving out all the immigrants, but instead he wrote about crab monsters from space. Far from the worst possible outcome considering a lot of the other possibilities from the time.
There’s also something to say about someone that was a racist in his mind, but made some effort to move in a better direction and/or live in isolation, versus someone that’s actively moving toward ruining other people lives with the benefits they reap.
I’m probably gonna watch it because it’s interesting to see what they made of it, I’m gonna pirate it and seed it far and wide tho lol
Reminder: “separating the art from the artist” is an approach to engaging with an artwork, and is a separate question from whether or not you should engage with an artwork when doing so has real life consequences.
Whether or not you should consume HP Lovecraft media despite the fact he was a racist is entirely up to you because he is long dead. He doesn’t make any money. He isn’t even racist any more. Because he’s dead.
When you consider whether or not you consume Harry Potter media, you must consider that JK Rowling will make money and will donate that money to anti-trans groups. If you still go on to buy licensed merch, or pay a streaming service to watch it, you will literally be helping to propogate transphobia. Continue to enjoy anything you currently own if you want. That is where separating the art from the artist comes into it. But if you still actively promote the material online and thereby increase the demand for it; again, transphobia, arguably.
Only applies to artists who can no longer enjoy the spoils.
It’s up to society if we should separate a work from its artist. We’ve collectively agreed that this work shouldn’t survive the century. Not only that, you can’t separate an artist from their work when they’re literally tangled in it and controlling it
JK Rowling is rich enough to fund anti trans groups for decades without any input from us. Boycotting HP has no effect on trans rights.
In addition to my loathing of the author, I have to say I am also really bothered how the books normalize slavery, glorify blood purity and elite privilege, treat systemic child abuse as comic relief, use goblins as thinly veiled anti-Semitic caricatures, reduce fat characters to jokes, sideline women or box them into tired tropes, justify authoritarianism with a shrug, romanticize magical servitude, paint non-human creatures as inherently dangerous, and act like destiny is a substitute for character development — all while the wizarding world runs on a caste system and no one ever questions it.
So I will be passing on this series, personally.
None of that matters, as it’s a book… The problem is her as a person.
sideline women or box them into tired tropes
Which makes it mind bogglingly insane how many claimed “feminists” support her because of her stance on trans people.
Hermoine and Ron ending up together is shit. He treats her like garbage throughout the series.
Bellatrix is presented as this fucked up “Daddy’s Little Monster” to Voldemorts Joker.
All of the “good” women are passive little teachers and moms.
What happens to Tonks is especially gross as shit. You have a GNC women. Goes by a shorten, masc-ish name. Short hair, colors, dresses ambiguously.
Then she gets married off to the other queer coded character. (Werewolf = HIV, I’m pretty sure she straight up said that at one point.) He calls her her extremely feminine birth name, and iirc the text even mentions that she is vaguely uncomfortable with that? Then gets knocked up and killed off. She gets to die a “proper woman.”
TERFs say “trans men shouldn’t transition! Just be a non confoming woman!” But it’s a fucking front. They are a conservatives in disguise. They don’t want GNC people to exist, just like they don’t want trans people to exist. “Just be non-binary! But also, shave your legs and wear makeup and make sure to present in a feminine way.”
If I was a billionaire feminist who could buy courts, I could think of several better priorities.
If I were a billionaire, the amount of low-to-no cost housing, green energy, and fiber internet I would build would be off the charts. And with Elon Musk money, I’m fairly certain I could ensure that NO ONE in the US would ever have to worry about where their next meal would come from. Certainly not schoolchildren. Also, I would commission a third season of the classic 1999 anime Big O, with the original writers and showrunner.
Unfortunately if you were a billionaire you’d be a selfish sociopath so wouldn’t think of any of these things.
Correct me if I’m wrong - I’m not American, so I wouldn’t see this regularly - but I swear I heard about a lotto jackpot or two that hit the billions of dollars (maybe it was close, if wasn’t that much). So it’s possible (rare as all fuck, but possible on occasion) to get to that - or close to it - without building it on the backs of the working class. If that happened to DominusOfMegadeus then that would be awesome! All for it. It’s unfortunately more likely that you’re crushing people’s spines as you climb the mountain of them to reach that amount though. Blargh…
Projection much?
Huh? My point was that there’s a reason we never get good billionaires.
It was phrased as an accusation
It actually wasn’t.
She did give away a lot of money to charity. About 16% of her wealth when she became a billionaire iirc. Gave to help children in poverty and to fight the disease MS.
I don’t know much about her stance on trans people other than she seems to believe that there is a difference between trans and biological women. Feel free to drop a good link where I can educate myself.
Anyway, reading comments here make it sound like she’s a modern day Hitler that’s never done anything good in her life, and that sounds both unfair and untrue.
I have no idea what book series you read (or if you’ve read it at all) but you are…very off on this take.
Don’t get me wrong, JK Rowling is a total piece of shit, but the books themselves are distinctly anti classism, “blood purity,” slavery, misogyny, and a whole host of other things you listed.
Are they without any flaw? Certainly not. Is it okay if people boycott the media because of Rowling’s ongoing transphobia? Absolutely. But most of what you’ve listed about the book series is blatantly untrue…
Doesn’t HP end up a literal magic cop at the end of the series? The whole caste system is also upheld throughout, at no point is revealing the wizarding world to muggles even considered an option despite the fact that little kids are dying from cancer all over Britain/the world that could be magically healed in an afternoon. The whole SPEW thing is just profoundly racist and always has been. “Cho Chang” – nuff said. The whole point of Hogwarts is that it’s a boarding school, which proudly inherits all its real-world British characteristics which are intrinsically linked to the more problematic parts of the British class system.
Rowling has always been a bigot and I will die on this hill. Any progressive messaging that people read into harry potter is at best performative (for instance yes she explicitly denounces “blood purity” pretty early on, but that’s super performative considering her entire worldbuilding is built on the premise that some people are just inherently magical and others are inherently not invited to the party. “Blood purity contests” are only bad when wizards to it to other wizards.).
I don’t think she’s a good enough writer to have done most of the racist/classist/misogynist messaging intentionally, but nonetheless her reactionary poorly thought-out world view transpires through every bit of her writing.
EDIT: Trying to expand on my own thoughts here. I’ve always despised HP as a franchise so to try to be fair to HP let’s contrast and compare with the piece of shit author who did make a book I like, Ender’s Game. I pirated it a couple years back, and I won’t pretend it’s not obvious at times that he’s a homophobe and a religious nutcase with some obvious cognitive dissonance with some of his (at least at the time) progressive views. I guess the good thing about that particular IP is that there’s no new stuff coming out besides one awful movie, so everyone can agree Orson Scott Card can get fucked and move on with their lives. But it’s important to acknowledge that his religious zealousness did impact his writing and to take a step back even if we decide to still appreciate his work.
The problem is that HP fans are in a much tougher situation because the writing just isn’t good so if you drop the flimsy pretense that 2000s Rowling was a champion of liberal ideals, then you really don’t have much left besides a profoundly flawed worldbuilding with shitty characters who only work to uphold the wizarding status quo. Yeah I’d get pretty mad too if I had spend my teenage years obsessing over that heap of trash.I agree she is anti classism, and anti “blood purity,” but there is no redemption for the enslaved elves. Hermione written as irritating and the strong women are housewives and spinsters.
I think people like to take all the poorly written parts of HP and conflate them with bigotry. Its possible, but jk Rowling is just a shitty writer who does not plan ahead at all. I still think fans wrote the last three books via posting theories on HP forums.
I will definitely concede that her writing is amateurish and poorly conceived at best, and it’s entirely possible some of these issues are due to that. However since all of it came out of her brain, and these themes are how she thinks about the world, it might be trickier than that to separate the two so neatly.
JK Rowling sounds like an incredibly talented author. Most people just massage things into place. Reuse tropes. But you’re saying she baked her worldview into practically every sentence?
If I see ugliness in the world, I might express it as I see it. I don’t have to think something is right for me to include it in a story. Do you think I’m special? Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support? Everyone else is forced to include things they personally would vote for. If you write about slavery, that means you love slavery. Is it weird that I’m capable of being against slavery, yet it’s possible for me to include it in stories? Should I be using this power?
I didn’t realize Rowling was one of the best authors. I thought she just reused things without really thinking. I never knew it was 100% meticulous and so… thought out. I don’t think even Tolkien can be said to inject so much meaning into every single page.
Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support?
I can’t speak to that. But I can say that I don’t think that sentiment applies to her. And I think there’s a difference between a viewpoint that one can objectively examine from both sides, and a bias, that is so deeply ingrained to one’s psyche that it colors how one perceives the world. And yes, I do think both things exist.
You realize she didn’t write about slaves right? She made the main character a slave owner and had a plot point about how much the slaves love being slaves and dobby is just weird for not wanting to be a slave.
Never read one completely nor watched a full movie, but it always felt cheap and written from the unenlightened perspective of a simple mind to me.
The fantasy books of my generation, such as The Neverending Story, Momo, The Hobbit, Jim Knopf were a whole different level. Life experience and a touch of wisdom in a great story for children.
But I also think that it might be just my perspective, since my mind has been imprinted like that. I’m not judging anyone for being a Harry Potter fan and try to think of it as different, not worse.
I would imagine reading the books or watching the movies as a child probably endeared them to a lot of people. Don’t underestimate the nostalgia that people have, especially before it was widely known how troublesome the author is.
Piers Anthony was my jam as a kid
It’s pretty simple. Rowling is an avowed bigot who is using all of her means, financially and socially, to punish trans people for existing. She is a hateful person who should be judged harshly and ostracized. It will be a good day for the world when she is no longer able to or allowed to espouse her bigoted views.
Supporting her in anyway, be it paying for her works or even enjoying her content should be stigmatized to the maximum degree. Actors agreeing to work with or for her should lose everything, as they are even worse for helping to continue her pursuit of hate and villainy.
If she were to fall down a literary flight of stairs, I would be most pleased—especially if this were to happen daily until she were unable to fall any further.
Here’s to hoping that anyone that hitches their wagon with hers suffers pain and ruin.
If she were to fall down a literary flight of stairs
She already did - it was called the Harry Potter series.
John Lithgow reacted to the open letter mentioned in this article, sent to him by “a very good friend who is the mother of a trans child” by saying “Why is this a factor at all?” and expressing sympathy for the transphobic bigot.
So it’s unfortunate that he probably wouldn’t know what a social media is if it slammed him right in the asshole - which is the entirety of him - because he certainly sounds deserving of decades of hell. Especially from his now hopefully former “very good friend.”
“I thought, ‘Why is this a factor at all?’ I wonder how J.K. Rowling has absorbed it. I suppose at a certain point I’ll meet her, and I’m curious to talk to her," he said.
“Decades in hell” for being a clueless, out of touch old man? Jesus Christ you people are unhinged. You fucking act like he’s personally bankrolling her anti-trans crusade.
Hopefully he dies early in production. How’s that for winding down?
I wonder if he’d be ok with others wishing he would die. Or is it only acceptable when he’s playing a character or working for bigots? In any case I’m sure he finds it all very exciting.
Because they’re supporting the anti-trans hag?
What? You mean a celebrity doesn’t really give a fuck about people and just wants to make money? But they were so silly and sweet in their interviews!
Unless this hurts their bottom line, I doubt they’ll move. Her behavior is not new and they auditioned and signed the contract anyway, the same way people still buy their house themed merch and take trips to Potter land or whatever the fuck it’s called. That woman’s growing wealth is a sign of just how little people are willing to give up.
It’s always moraly right to pirate any harry potter media.
More morally right to never indulge in any Harry Potter media at all. Don’t reinforce the hype by watching that crap, even if by piracy.
I don’t pirate things I boycott. Professionals have standards.
Not this show. Don’t pirate it, don’t discuss it on social media, don’t make memes about it. Let it die because of cultural insignificance.
Bummer, I like Katherine Parkinson…
Honestly she probably needs the money, I’m least upset about her casting.
Mainstream social media is hell to begin with, that’s why I’m here
the death eaters have already infiltrated…
If we didn’t read books when we didn’t personally agree with the artist’s views then we wouldn’t be reading many books at all
HP is a glorious series and no matter how evil this woman is this is going to remain true
The problem is the money JK Rowling is making on book sales and licensing fees is being sent anti-LGBTQ organizations. There’s little issue with the material itself, the controversy is where the revenues from it are going. It’s her money, she can spend it how she wants, but some people would rather not that she get any more of it.
