I think J.K Rowling Might Be… Evil?
What to do when your hero isn’t everything you want them to be.
Nothing. That’s it. The full sum of my advice is that. Nothing. But… but but but, she’s transphobic, hates social justice, she’s a middle aged harridan impeding social progress. She who must not be named… unless of course she’s Robert Galbraith.
But she’s awful because of her views on Trans-rights. So? Nobody forced you to read the books and nobody forced you to put her on a pedestal. Welcome to the world of the embarrassing climb down.
She never asked to be your hero. You did that. This is very much a YOU problem and not really a HER problem. She wrote a compelling narrative, one that was truly excellent. She is the architect of a world you chose to invest emotionally in after it was published.
She owes you nothing more than her talent.
But surely she’s stupid somehow?
On that we agree. But probably not for the same reason. All of the original books were written before the current vogue for aggressive knee-jerk social justice. Harry Potter doesn’t pre-date equality, but it pre-dates aggressive mob justice.
She didn’t include gay characters, her BAME characters are woefully underwritten. So what? She joins Tolkien, Lewis, Blyton and a whole host of other writers who just wrote damn good stories. Are those stories lacking diversity and equality. Sure.
Is that the author’s fault? Nope.
Her mistake wasn’t a lack of inclusivity — a treatise on social justice in Hogwarts wouldn’t have been published and would’ve been 100% unreadable — her mistake was playing identity politics after the fact.
Over a period of a number of years, Rowling either proactively opined or allowed herself to virtue signal the ambiguity of her characters. She let people see things that weren’t there. The absence of Mrs Dumbledore did not de-facto make Dumbledore a gay character — but the newly minted adults enamoured with her world wanted him to be.
And thus gay Dumbledore came out. Outed by the wishes and feelings of the LGBTQ+ community. Then went in again, then came out again and then was just plain complicated. The world of Harry Potter is simple and is a battle of good vs evil through the medium of character archetypes. The modern world is a mess of competing ideologies. They aren’t the same.
Nevertheless in 2007, the plaudits began. It doesn’t hide the fact for anyone with an iota of intellectual curiosity that her inclusivity was shaped after the fact. To be kind to her, as a writer, people often see things that you didn’t intend to put into your text. I’ve had it happen with my characters
But that’s what readers do. They extrapolate their own personalities onto the characters, they feel vicarious feelings. They emote and rationalise complex human experiences by synthesising them through fiction.
Usually when someone presents me with an idea of what they’ve read into one of my characters. I say ‘could be’. That’s how actors make your work better. They interpret whatever they want from your work and look for evidence to back up their case.
In Rowling’s case, there was no evidence for an inclusive agenda. Dumbledore was either heteronormative or asexual, like almost every other bearded mage archetype since the the beginning of time. Nobody wondered if Gandalf and Saruman were madly in love. Nobody ever questioned Merlin.
So why start with Dumbledore? It’s not that it would be abhorrent if he were gay… but it wouldn’t be abhorrent if he were a rhino either. It’s just not necessary for the story to work.
What she should’ve said was. Nope…. I wrote a heteronormative, white character led story. I did that because I’m white and straight. That’s a difficult thing to say, but it happens to be true. More importantly it happens to be true at at a time when nobody really cared. The quality of the story was of paramount importance to children.
The adults they turned into retrospectively applied their ideological bias and conflated this with racism and homophobia.
The books aren’t pro or anti anything other than evil. That’s it. That’s how fairy tales work. The good win eventually.
As society and Ms Rowling found out, once you hop on carousel of subjective oppression, it’s difficult to get off. Suddenly every interpretation of the book had validity, suddenly the books were a hot political football and Ms Rowling was in trouble — and has been every since.
She’s perpetually cancelled for having an opinion out of step with her readership.
If you want to make a more complicated argument for why all books are inherently racist, homophobic or misogynistic as a product of being formed by society then go ahead. I’ll debate you. That position would at least would have some merit and be worthy of a discussion.
I don’t like J.K Rowling’s writing because she disagrees with me on Twitter is a totally different and facile childish argument.
Let me address Rowling and Trans rights
The complex balancing of the contradictory rights of different individuals is how society develops in the crucible of law. The alternative is mob justice via Twitter and policing dissent through shaming, cultural boycotting and depriving people of their income or personal freedom of expression because you don’t agree with them.
This is a hugely ironic thing to do given the reasons for doing so in the first place are to assert personal freedoms of expression. The development and testing of law is slow (but steady), social media outrages are short (and knee-jerk) — I know which one I’m going to be throwing my weight behind to create a fairer society.
And I know instinctively which one she shouldn’t have dabbled in.
Whether people choose to stop reading Rowling’s books is a different matter. If you cannot separate art from artists, and you won’t read, look at or listen to anything by someone whose world view differs from your own, then you’re going to have a very bleak existence.
If you’re going to stop your children reading those books (and some people have) then you’re doing that child a massive disservice. Whether or not you agree with her politically or personally, the books are excellently written.
So, are we cancelling JK Rowling or not?
Let’s see. We applauded her for being a feminist icon, a single mum who conquered the odds and became one of the best selling authors of all time. We loved her being a gay rights activist with noveau-gay-Dumbledore, but we despise her for for her particular brand of TERF.
We applauded her for being a lefty, but not when she was a centre-left activist throwing shade at Corbyn. We love her charity work and her feminism, but we hated that she stood behind Johnny Depp during the Amber Heard debacle… even though it transpired later on that she was right to stand by Johnny Depp… or was she?
The #MeToo movement and the internet is still out on that one.
I’m gonna say it… could it be that the problem is us?
Rowling is a flawed human being with complex thoughts and an extraordinary talent for writing compelling worlds. Nothing about that requires her to adjust herself to your world view. Particularly not given that world views are being changed faster than a soiled diaper.
You losing your hero is a YOU problem not a HER problem. It speaks to your insecurities about the fluidity of the world and the projection of those insecurties into that world.
As your personal list of flip-flopping ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ expand, it’ll become ever harder to enjoy anything creative. Creativity is born from the brains of imperfect humans. Cancel Rowling for not writing ‘woke’ characters is like cancelling Shakespeare for not writing gay ones. The concept came after the creation.
Once you open that pandora’s box of retrospective subjectivity there are plenty of people that you’ve got to cancel.
Shakespeare had the good fortune to die before social media dissected his work and handed it back to him for comment. I’d like to think he would’ve stayed silent. Is he anti-semitic? Are all his female characters under written? Does he use transvestitism as a vehicle for humour. Yes.
Does C.S Lewis attempt to slip Christian theology into his work and evoke in children a latent and sneaky Christianity on a subliminal level? Does that go against everything I stand for a secular human? Of course it does.
Is any of that a problem? Not for me. They’re still writing heroes of mine. Their plays and stories still create joy. That brings me the final point. The answer to your question — what do when your hero fails?
Get a more nuanced understanding of ‘hero’.
People you love and admire disagreeing with your world view is not a form of oppression. You just feel it that way. You’re constructing your world in a way that she didn’t; as a pale shadow of the Potterverse. Thre is one clear reason for that.
People in that world grew up and matured.
Enjoyed this?
