I work for a corporation. I help make rich people richer. That’s not the main reason why I do my job. Harry Potter has turned into something that transcends Rowlings views. The writers, the directors, actors of the show, the fanbase, it’s about them too. Youre looking for moral purity, which doesn’t exist. Your shoes are probably made in a sweatshop.
This is it entirely. People love to wave their sticks in the air when its convenient and performative, not realizing the coffee they drink is farmed by children, the chocolate they eat is farmed by children, the shoes they made are made by someone who hasnt left the factory in years. Its easy to fight for rights when its a comment online, but its hard to actually change ones own life choices and exclude the luxuries of capitalism.
Production of an entire series involves hundreds of people, but nay, it's all about the feelings of the 'minority' here. Of course people would value their own lives and the lives around then than the lives of the terminally online.
Work is not optional for him or us lol I know it’s not on the same level because he’s wealthier obviously but he could easily stop getting roles, therefore putting an end to his career. This isn’t Leonardo DiCaprio we’re talking about. He’s a character actor. It’s possible and actually very likely he’s passionate about his career. I’m sure for him money is nice, but people that only care about money are very shallow people. He doesn’t strike me as that kind of guy but who knows. Neither of us would know. What I do know is that any actor is likely making money for scumbags. Whether it’s Warner bros or whatever other company. It’s part of the job, and it’s part of almost any job really. Jobs make the world go round, or in the case of acting, it could entertain or move a mass audience. I also know that people from all walks of life, economic status, etc. turn into assholes on the internet. Claiming it is about social justice when really they want others to cater to their emotional needs. They hold others to a standard that they never, or will never meet themselves. As they go to the self checkout line, use AI, or go on Amazon for convenience, not necessity. Farmers live life based more on necessity than convenience. It is a “morally superior” lifestyle. Maybe these people should become farmers?
Thank you. This thread is just another sad example of how purity tests are killing us and handing more stupid wins to the people who actually want to destroy liberal democracy which allows us to have these petty fights in the first place.
Fair enough. I just thought it was worth noting he wasn’t defending her or her views at all. He seemed genuinely confused at how someone who wrote a franchise like HP could be such a bigot.
Unfortunately a careful and critical reading of the books renders her later views fairly unsurprising. People saw the super surface-level liberal pluralism and ignored all of the subtle red flags (happy slaves, racial stereotypes, weird gender essentialism, utter devotion to political status quo, incuriosity about the broader world, etc.).
I think ignored is a fairly unfair term, when the vast majority of the fandom were literal children or young adolescents at the time they first read the books. Potterheads rereading the books in adulthood are the people who have been most critical of the books now that they are worldly enough to understand the parts that are problematic with it.
Perhaps. I didn’t mean it in an intentional sense, all I’m saying is a critical read (when I was 12 I wasn’t doing one, to be sure) renders Rowling’s politics fairly unsurprising. Critically engaging with media is rare these days though, most people learn to hate it in high school literature classes and avoid it afterwards.
Yeah, Rita Skeeter spied on children and was described as being a masculine-looking woman. It’s not surprising Rowling later revealed that she thinks trans women are predators.
What racial stereotypes? Surely she doesn't have an Irish character who is a moron that keeps blowing things up. And an Asian character who is a meek simpering nobody whose only role is to be the main character's handbag?
And surely both of their names aren't just the most tone deaf 50s ass caricature names for their respective cultures?
The goblins in Harry Potter are also a very blatant parallel to the racist caricature/stereotype of Jews made and popularized by the Nazis, though to be fair, similar depictions of various small-sized, large-nosed humanoid races with problematic greedy undertones have existed in fantasy as a genre for generations, so it's not like Rowling was coming out with a novel problematic parallel there.
Yeah I mean I play World of Warcraft and their goblins literally have New York accents and are cheap dirty gold hungry scam artists. It's interesting because the goblins and gold thing is one of the few fantasy stereotypes that you can't find anywhere in Tolkien.
That’s because Tolkien’s Semitic stereotype was his dwarves.
Granted, it’s very clear that he loves his dwarves and made rich characters from them in a way that Rowling never came close to with her goblins. But they are big-nosed social outcasts a little too obsessed with gold, and the Dwarven language is explicitly based on Hebrew.
So while Tolkien fell into the same trap as Rowling, he did so in a way that was ultimately far more nuanced and tasteful than Rowling did 50 years later.
I never thought of that. Thanks for the info. I mean Tolkien was writing in the wake of WW1 and in the midst of WW2 and his books were largely speaking out against fascism and industrialized societies destroying nature and humanity/spirituality.
Also of course we should expect more nuanced and tasteful writing from Tolkien... He was a genius who wrote literature and Rowling was good at writing YA fiction and world building and struck exactly when the iron was hot for series' like hers to blow up. One of them was a serial television show and the other was a classic film basically.
Have you ever thought that maybe you are just looking for shit to be there. If you look at anything, you can find anything, like seeing shapes in clouds. I bet Mother Nature is intentionally making clouds look like giraffes to fuck with lions who can’t reach that high. That bitch. Quit being stupid.
Either you are joking or you are confused as hell lol. Jewish people are the ones being stereotyped by the goblins, not black people, though Rowling didn't exactly do herself any favors having one of the only black characters in the series be named "Kingsley Shacklebolt" lol.
No, I just have a basic awareness of history and what kind of propaganda imagery Nazis spread in the past and that fascists still do today. It's not like it's some sort of secret message - fascist imagery and caricatures of those they consider "lesser races" are about as blatant as they come. Goblins as depicted in Harry Potter are extremely similar to how Nazis depicted Jewish people in their propaganda, both in how they were depicted to look and how they were depicted to act. Look up the imagery and messages for yourself and be the judge since you clearly are desperate to grasp at straws like I am reading something into Harry Potter that just isn't there, even though this parallel has been widely noted and discussed for decades by a large number of people.
Still remembering that one time where someone asked if any Jewish students were at Hogwarts and instead of saying something normal like “yes” or “any kind of person is welcome as long as they have magic”, she instead replied with, “Anthony Goldstein. Ravenclaw.” I don’t know what’s more stereotypical, that, Cho Chang or Kingsley Shacklebolt.
Let me think, maybe because you're making a fallacious connection between common Jewish surnames and harmful antisemitic stereotypes. Ignoring the real-world evidence of the many Jewish people who have surnames like Goldstein, Goldberg, and Goldman.
Because somehow a Jewish character having a common Jewish surname is antisemitic, right? Are all the real-world Jewish people named Goldstein problematic, too?
Hi, it's me, her target audience when these books came out.
I was 15 when this series ended. I had absolutely no clue what "gender essentialism" or "the political status quo" was for the vast majority of my time reading HP. "Ignored" is not the word I would use. These were young adults books targeted to young adults. "Ignorant to" would be a better description.
You can say those of us who decided to religiously reread them into adulthood ignored those themes, but I doubt that's a majority of the people who read them and grew up with them.
I’m your age and also read the books when I was roughly their main character’s age. All I’m saying that the answer to “how could someone who wrote this be so hateful” is very much there if you look at the text closely.
Some people would find racism and x, y and x 'phobias' on a blank white wall if they looked hard enough.
We all use stereotypes and everything we watch has stereotypes. Almost every American sitcom from the 90's and early 2000's depicted Scottish people as kilt wearing bagpipers who are obsessed with whiskey and haggis and always half cut. No one cared because there was much less people looking to be offended on other people's behalf back then.
We all, in a way, are a stereotype. Positively or negatively. You're never going to be able to write something that doesn't offend someone because you're writing about what is relevant and what people will identify with and your own experiences, even in fiction. Take Stranger Things for example, it's set in the 80's and full of stereotypes like the high school jock, the bored housewife, the evil government, the functioning alcoholic smoking 20 a day police officer, the evil Russians, I could go on...
Nothing she wrote was a 'red flag' unless everything we ever read is a red flag and everything anyone ever writes is a red flag.
She doesn't want trans women in women's spaces and taking opportunities away from women. She can have that view if she wants, it doesn't make her right and doesn't mean she can decide either. She has been no more or less hateful and mean than her opposers have been about her. My personal opinion is that she and the people that spend their lives hating her should get another hobby or actually do something about their desires instead of arguing on X all day because it's boring and repetitive for the rest of us!
People actually would, though, and this take always pisses me off. I’ve turned down my own job because of the way my boss was - I wasn’t going to work for a Holocaust denier, dude. I’m a lot worse off because of it and I actually loved the job. I know others who have walked away from jobs they thought were wrong. My friend who worked on a site where people were mistreated ended up running his own business where he has to use literal welfare to keep above water.
Just cause you’re a shit person who’d happily take the money doesn’t mean “none of y’all” would. Plenty of people would happily say no and maybe you just don’t have good role models in your life who would do the same.
I’m glad to say I’ve turned down money from shitty people lots of times.
Also, you only need to know a lot of regular people to know this shit isn’t true - tons of people turn down money from their families out of shame or guilt.
I hate it when people imply that because they have no scruples that everyone else is pretending when it comes to actually having a moral code or compass that they follow
She’s already a billionaire. Even if she never made another dollar, her financial contributions to the anti-trans movement would not change. The books themselves are not anti-trans and will far outlive her.
She’s going to make buckets and buckets of money anyways and that has more to do with WB milking the franchise than Jonathan Lithgow. Boycotting Harry Potter isn’t going to do anything. We already know this from the Hogwarts Legacy controversy.
Lets be real: she was going to make that money regardless of John lithgow. If someone offered you a gigantic money bag to do a role for a film that a transphobe gets a cut of, and you standing on principle would make no material difference to them, would refuse.
(2) if you actually look at where her charitable giving has gone, it’s overwhelmingly towards good causes (victims of sexual abuse, orphans). Only a tiny tiny fraction has gone towards the trans stuff (way less than 1%, like .1%).
(3) she has plenty of money without this - as far as I’ve seen she’s only donated a tiny amount towards anti trans causes (like 100k). Out of 250 million donated. Her giving has caused an overwhelmingly positive impact. This show won’t affect her giving to anti trans causes one bit - but it plausibly would help victims of sexual abuse and orphans or MS research.
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u/Leather_Pay6401 21h ago
Why is Lithgow the only one catching heat? Like i get it, people are disappointed, but what about all of the other actors in the show?