Guest post: What, exactly, would be changed?
Originally a comment by Freemage on Imagine.
Okay, I’m gonna leap down this rabbit-hole for a moment, because I think it really gets at the critiques of Rowling and Harry Potter from the TRAs:
H. P. Lovecraft was the creator of the Cthulu “mythos”. He pretty much invented, whole-cloth, the idea of ancient gods who are so far beyond human experience that to apply mortal morals to them is absurd, and to contemplate them directly is to invite insanity. Just as Mary Shelly created the first real Sci-Fi Horror story, Lovecraft pretty much invented the whole genre of Existential Horror. His writings have inspired scores of other writers to produce work in the same genre, as well as art, music and parodies. (I’m fond of the HP Lovecraft Christmas Carol book, personally.)
He was also a flaming racist. And not just by modern standards; even by the standards of a white man in the early 1900s, he was an extremist. (He also was terrified by science and technology, including the notion of air-conditioning.)
And these views are rife throughout his writings. The view that anyone who isn’t a high-born WASP is in some way not merely inferior, but actually dangerous, is [integral] to his stories.
Naturally, this has created some difficulties in the modern era. When retelling his stories in new adaptations, or in new works based on his mythos, writers, filmmakers and others generally take considerable effort to excise the elements that are so offensive. One of the biggest triumphs in the remake category comes from Jordan Peele, whose Lovecraft County takes pretty much everything that’s fun and enjoyable about HP’s writings, and then infuses it with a strong anti-racist vibe. Perfect subversion.
I went on this tangent to show that it’s possible to ‘imagine the art without the artist’. But now, let’s look at the billboard slogan again.
What, exactly, would be changed in a Harry Potter-verse that was written by someone who wasn’t J.K. Rowling? Well… pretty much absolutely nothing. At most, there might’ve been a greater diversity of skin-tones among the characters. But there’s no intrinsic social or political views that are driving her world-building the way there is with H.P.’s. You can’t eliminate her ‘transphobia’ because there’s nothing in the work that contains her views on sex-based differences in the first place, other than the existence of boy’s and girl’s bathrooms.
I had a grandmother who would always open a window when the air conditioner was running. She had some vague notion that it wasn’t safe to run it with all the windows closed. Many of her relatives teased her about this, but she wouldn’t budge.
I thought it was silly that someone could believe that, then later a while society (South Korea) started panicking that people could be killed by sleeping in a room with a fan running and the door closed:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
The idea that humans are rational animals goes back as least as far as Aristotle. Periodically, there are rational grounds for secpticism on that score.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7625093/rallying-cry-for-saturday-protest-getting-louder/?cs=14329
Skeletor, your grandmother might have had good reason if she knew stories about early refrigerators that used sulfur dioxide (SO₂) which is toxic.
I think you may underestimate how motivated some are to find evil in JKRs work (the assertion that Robert Galbraith was chosen in honour of Robert Heath, claims about antisemitic goblins, claims about stereotypical names, etc.)
These things would be ignored in any other writer, but now these people KNOW that JKR is a sinner … There is now a motivation to not just fix bad things in the Potterverse, but actually find them.
I am reading some Lovecraft at the moment, and he is a truly excellent writer, and if Stephen King wrote the same stories I probably wouldn’t notice the themes that exemplify his politics, but they do exist. For example, The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a terrific story,but with a relatively explicit theme that foreign society, religions and racial mixing can destroy a previously ‘decent’ society mentally, socially and physically.
On the other hand he is also one of the best fiction writers on the subject of mental health issues I can remember reading, and I suspect a lot of his fear of the unknown was in fact a symptom of his illness. That is not an excuse, but I think it is a reason.
So I am continuing to read him, but aware that there are some ideas there that I don’t at all agree with. I am perfectly comfortable with that.The only similarity between JKR and HPL is that they both use their first two initials instead of their first name. Other than that i cannot see it.
But HPL is certainly a good example of someone who produced good art while being a terrible person. Hitler was a mediocre painter at best and among the worst people who ever lived, so if I saw someone with a book of his paintings on their coffee table I would probably reach a conclusion about them fairly quickly. HPL is right on the cusp I think, and JKR is nowhere near the line.
CCCC, speaking of coffee table books, I have the original edition of Dictators’ Homes (UK 2005) and its reprint Dictator Style (US 2006). In both editions, pages 22-31 cover Adolf Hitler’s alpine retreat, The Berghof.
If you came to visit, we could debate our favorites.
CCCC@5: I couldn’t agree with you more; that was pretty much my point. It’s impossible to ‘de-transphobia’ her books, because there is none in her books. I mean, I suppose a re-write could include everyone gushing over an inserted trans-Sue every few pages, but other than that….
swanalien@4: Oh, I know there’s a full-blown witch-hunt going on, there. And she’s absolutely getting pilloried over things that Neil Gaiman could include in his books without so much as a murmur of discontent. (I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad idea to interrogate the idea of ‘goblins as Jewish caricatures’, nor racial representation as a whole, but it should really be done independently of individual authors’ works, as a rational discussion topic.)
TERF!
QED.
@dave ricks That is not quite what I was talking about. framing the art in specific terms of being a product of dictators is not the same as the example I envisaged, which was that one would have Hitler’s paintings in a collection without any context of whatever else they had done alongside it. I don’t think that people should not own Mein Kampf or hitler’s paintings at all, but only that one should should do so in their full academic context.
@freemage exactly i think people are reaching to ascribe hatred to JKR. I am not, and probably never will be, a Harry Potter fan, but they seem relatively unproblematic, and a mostly positive thing for children to read.
The Berghof, just in case anyone wants a refresher.
Reading – reading. That’s the thing that seems to be one of the things lost in this woke version of a cultural revolution. Getting kids to read. Reading to kids. if nothing else, JKR accomplished that. In our household, my daughter preferred nightly aloud readings of Harry Potter and, my personal favorite, Lemony Snicket to TV. We read every one of those books and more out loud after dinner. Even now she will come over to borrow a book or two from our home library and reading has become part of her life and gateway to new experiences. One little project we did was to lookup a bunch of banned books lists and see how much of our collection was on it (~40+ % of the fiction, about 20% non). Reading teaches you how to appreciate nuance – of course that’s subversive.
Personally, I’d be in favor of banning stupid people before books.