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An audience of one is all you need… (1955)

I’d rather stop you breathing than let you doubt how I feel.

Surely you and I are beyond speaking when words are clearly not enough.

And then I felt guilty that I showed even a sliver of excitement over something created by a person whose beliefs I find reprehensible.

And then I reminded myself to pick my battles, that maybe consuming something that brings me joy is a form of self-care, that if there’s an entity out there tallying up my ethics points, I could do worse than read a JK Rowling novel.

We are in a pandemic, and life is hard. Shouldn’t I be allowed my private comforts? Why should I punish myself, I’m not the transphobe.

I still have to reckon with whether or not I’ll be consuming Troubled Blood. If I do, it will be quietly as to not advocate for it, add myself to the number of people who might give it the false sense that it’s a hit.

If I do decide to consume Troubled Blood and Lethal White, she isn’t getting a penny out of me. I might or might not take full advantage of the free marketplace that is the internet.

The book series getting cancelled because of poor sales (not because of censorship–which she feels especially martyred by) is probably the only way she’d finally realise that she is, in fact, not too big to fail. And that there is no more room in society for bigotry.

It could still happen. I don’t see Cormoran Strike having any sort of true cultural impact outside of a tiny fandom. A metric for success would be if it launched Tom Burke an Holliday Grainger into a level of cultural relevance as other leads of her other franchises has achieved (they have not).

I would feel bad if the TV show gets cancelled for the workers who earn real people wages, and hope that they have other eggs in other baskets.

Tom Burke seems complicit as fuck lol. Stayed silent despite being a cismale “advocate” for women’s rights. And also implying, repeatedly, that there was nothing that was going to keep him from playing this character despite having two legs. He might draw some lines, but apparently not ableism. 

Holliday Grainger ain’t shit either. Also profits from playing LGBTQ roles. They both seem cool as cucumbers, enjoying the privileges of their cishet whiteness.

I don’t know what my point is, really.

I think I just want to say that, if you want to consume JK Rowling content, go for it. I do think saying that you’re ‘done with the author’ but demonstrably not done with her work is daft. That’s not how ‘death of the author’ works. That’s shit Harry Potter fans say to live with their deathly hallow tattoos. 

If consuming Cormoran Strike content brings you some relief in these hard times, then do it. But also understand that you cannot, in any way, consume it without being in some way complicit yourself. 

There is no mental gymnastics that should work well enough for you to uncomplicatedly consume it. Feel guilty. Because you are doing something that goes against your ethics.

(If you don’t feel that guilt, guess what– you’re complicit to transphobia. Congrats!)

I can’t condone or support this person’s views or contribute to her wealth, or the wealth of those who support and facilitate her hateful, dangerous, ignorant transphobic drivel. I will look out for the book in charity shops (where I contribute to their coiffeurs instead) and then take long showers to try make myself feel less unclean.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t plan on watching the show (and I’m not still sadly looking forward to it airing this weekend) but I feel shame due to what it now represents. There is a wider question here about how we separating the art and the artist in every case, but one votes with their money and in a capitalist society it’s the only real power we have. 

Lastly, it does not surprise me that the actors have defended her. The reason I left the acting industry is because you’re nothing other than a contracted puppet, and that’s when you’re “successful”. But that’s a conversation for another time. Disappointing but these days nothing about that industry surprises me. You are asked to sell your soul. I politely declined.