hey do you think you could expand a bit on separating the art from the artist? clearly youâve done it with jk rowling but what are your thoughts on it as a general idea?
Okay, but youâre not going to like the answer.
Hereâs the truth: you canât separate the art from the artist. Not entirely. HP Lovecraft was an incredibly talented, but much more incredibly racist man. It would nice to say you donât agree with his views but you can enjoy his works without that leaking in but.... well, Iâm afraid that would be misunderstanding his books entirely.
Consider, for a second, that Lovecraftâs works were horror stories about extradimensional creatures having mutant children with humans; they were about invasions from distant aliens; they were about the purity of quaint, white, American towns being tainted. Now consider how this may have all been influenced by the fact that he just simply despised anybody who wasnât white. Consider how his opinions on âmixing the racesâ might feed into this; consider why being unable to maintain the âpurityâ of white Americans was the scariest thing of all to him.
This extends to Rowling too.
I would love to say we can just acknowledge that she is an awful, racist, antisemitic, transphobic person and then say âbut at least her books are good,â because, well, they are, arenât they? I would say so, for sure. But to suggest that one can separate her from them is.... ridiculous, and itâs an insult to fans, can know and do better.
Consider why an antisemitic woman wrote about a species of goblins who live among us, but who for the most part keep to themselves and are maybe a little discriminated against on an individual level, but also hold all the cards, all the money, run the banks.
Consider why a racist woman would write about a species of slaves who loved being enslaved, who enjoyed working for no pay, and cleaning up after humans, with the only small caveat of that they didnât want to be beaten. Imagine that only the most radical of their species wanted to be free, and he still spent the rest of his life working for no pay and helping out a little white boy and his friends wherever he could. Consider why the only person in the story who thought they should be free, that they should have rights, was treated as an overzealous joke, who was acting against the wishes of those slaves who really LOVE being enslaved. Consider that Rowling went on to say that she kind of considers that girl to be black, now.
Consider why JK Rowling, an open and proud transphobe, wrote Rita Skeeter as having a large square jaw, thick âmanlyâ hands, and dressing incredibly gaudily with the most obvious fake nails and fake teeth and fake hair and fake everything. Consider why a woman who tweets about how trans women are âfoxes pretending to be hens to get in the hen houseâ might write this Rita Skeeter character to then illegally transform her body in order to spy on children.
Harry Potter is full of Rowlingâs bigotry, start to finish. Not even tangentially, like, âoh the goblins are bad, Rita Skeeter is bad, the house elves are bad, but most of itâs good!â because the deeper you dig and the longer you think the more you realise the entire story is based on her prejudices.
Harry Potter pretends to be an aracial story about found family, but if that were true, why are Harryâs distant ancestors important to who he is today even in the seventh book? Why does Harry have to live with his cousin and aunt and uncle? Because magic inherently prefers blood ties. Whilst Rowling was writing a story that seemed to say, âyour heritage is not that important and doesnât make you better than othersâ she was still writing a story about a boy who got all of his money through his bloodline, who was protected by living with his bloodline, no matter how evil, who was uniquely able to stop Voldemort because his bloodline passed down the invisibility cloak for generations and generations. Any step Harry takes he is compared to his perfect parents who were exactly like him â he looks just like his father, but he has his motherâs eyes, you know! â consider WHY a woman who is racist mightâve written a story like this. A story that on its surface, condemns a blood caste, but still in every step it takes, validates the idea that blood is thicker than water, and your geneological origin is what makes you special.
You can enjoy Harry Pottwr, of course you can. There are fantastic parts. I love a small group of teenagers deciding to become anarchist rebels and train to fight against fascism in secret. I love the murder mystery plots, I love how the series tells kids that itâs a good thing to be brave, and a good thing to fight injustice, and a good thing to challenge the government. But I cannot separate it from its author because it is such a product of its author. All of the structures of the world, the way things work in the universe, are drenched in Rowlingâs beliefs, her bigotries. Of course they are: she made them.
Again. This doesnât mean you cannot enjoy it. But I think we are past the day where we can pretend that disavowing a bigoted author is enough, and that that somehow separates the text from its bigotry. I think we are past the day where we can pretend that Harry Potter isnât a deeply, inherently bigoted piece of media. Even the bits we love. I think we are beyond the day where we can truthfully pretend to separate it from her, because she is present through all of it. We MUST recognise its flaws. We MUST admit that she is in every part of it.
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