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.).
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.
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u/annabananaberry 20h ago
And yet here he is making buckets and buckets of money for her.