Of course it’s a bank
More on that theme.
This is what it looks like to me – not that she did it deliberately, but that she drew on tropes without thinking about them. She didn’t have a subtle mind when she wrote the first Potter book; I’ve been surprised by the quality of her writing on the trans ideology wars.
I’m not overjoyed about saying this but it’s no good ignoring it or hiding it.
That’s part of what I was trying to say on the other thread. I think it was lazy and it’s exactly that sort of stuff that made me dislike the little I’ve read of the Potter books. There are tales in folkore about greedy goblins with the same sort of physical characteristics and it seems likely that the Jewish stereotype is based in part on this, deliberately or otherwise.
But I mentioned on the other thread that someone like Pratchett might have treated the idea of pre-destined good and evil more imaginatively. I meant to say that he also treated goblins with rather more humanity than JKR. In one of his books (Snuff) he deals with human prejudice toward goblins and reveals their unique, intricate culture, which nobody has previously really bothered to find out about.
It’s a shame that Rowling didn’t do something like that to subvert the trope while she had the chance. It would have been a lot more interesting, as well as avoiding that anti-semitic comparison, whether it was inadvertent or not.
For what it’s worth, I’m always a little conscious of looking at things through the lens of hindsight. I don’t think it changes what seems to me like laziness or the perhaps thoughtless use of the offensive trope, but perhaps she’d have examined it more if she’d had the slightest inkling that the story she was writing would turn out to have the impact it did. I know I’ve written things *cough*PhD thesis*cough* that I might have treated more thoughtfully if I wasn’t racing to meet a deadline (I was) or I thought it was going to have a significant impact (it didn’t).
goblins predate Judaism, never mind European anti-semitism. Rather specifically they are described as being short, dark, and looking like old men, and are often associated with underground places and mines, (eg, the Cornish knocker) If you read Rowling’s actual description, and have any awareness of European folklore, then it becomes glaringly obvious that this bullshit is bullshit, and not at all anything to do with anti-semiticism.
Everyone knows that the real anti-Semite is Jeremy Corbyn (and that JKR called him out for it).
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2018/03/27/the-bogus-antisemitism-smear-against-jeremy-corbyn-was-just-debunked-in-the-times-of-israel/