Yeah, it’s Harry Potter. Social change is the enemy in the book. At no point does anyone try to improve anything in the book. They don’t even oppose evil that much. They just oppose it when the existing evil tries to go too far by the current standards of evil.
Hermione tries to raise awareness about elf mistreatment.
It’s implied that Dumbledore was trying to influence Fudge to improve things in their regular correspondence before the GoF/OotP story arc.
Then she gets to meet the slave race they keep in the basement and said slaves explain that their enslavement is a fundamental part of magic society and the only reason Dobby in particular had to be freed was because his owners were a bit too mean to him. The message becomes “slavery is fine as long as slaves are treated well.”. Then they drop that particular can of worms because addressing it would require societal change. It is one of few endeavours where the heroes of the story just fail to do what they want.
said slaves explain that their enslavement is a fundamental part of magic society and the only reason Dobby in particular had to be freed was because his owners were a bit too mean to him
Its crazy how a big part of subsequent novels is Dobby being unable to exist without slavishly devoting himself to another wizard. And his arc ends with him literally catching a bullet for Harry because he’s convinced his life is worth less than a wizard’s.
Just imagine reading “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and the whole way through its just Jim finding newer and more obsequies ways to serve at Huck’s whims.
Tries and fails. It never goes anywhere, and she’s mocked as a well-meaning fool for trying in the first place because “welp most elves just enjoy being slaves what can you do shrug emoji”. Jkr sets up something with Hermione and the elves and then doesn’t follow through with it in any meaningful way (and I don’t count commentary from her outside the books as following through) so it’s left to just sit there uncritically as “slavery is a thing in this universe and is seen as completely normal by most characters, and only one person ever tries to do anything about it and she’s depicted as a cringey radical in the process”. Jkr doesn’t even show the beginnings of societal change like more elves coming to Dobby’s side of things once they see it’s an option and that Dobby’s is happy that way, or other house elves being motivated to think differently about their situation and starting to unlearn their generations of indoctrination. We don’t even see a glimpse of Winky starting to recover instead the last we see of her is as a depressed alcoholic whose life was ruined by her being freed from slavery. Jkr depicts it as “yeah slavery is bad but you can’t change the way the world works so might as well not even try.” the house elves’ servitude is treated as something so fundamentally tied to their species that it seems to be biological and thus humans taking advantage of that is to some degree the natural way of things which, I shouldn’t have to explain what the problem with that sort of depiction is. Maybe that wasn’t what she intended, maybe she just added slavery because it’s a common world building trope, but if that’s the case she did so without considering the implications or how it would come across in the end product or the messages it would send.
Holy shit. The more I read the less I like that woman. Biologically coded slavery? Sounds like some debunked phrenology bullshit.
If you reread the description of the Goblins at Gringots, you’ll find typical antisemitic stereotypes too.
Not even just in the writing.
Literally on the floor in the Goblin Bank in the movie.
There’s so many fucking racist tropes in the book that once you start glancing around you can’t stop seeing them.
Jkr sets up something with Hermione and the elves and then doesn’t follow through with it in any meaningful way
In fairness, this is a common theme across all of JKR’s writings after Goblet of Fire.
Hermione tries to raise awareness about elf mistreatment.
For maybe two dozen paragraphs in one book, and then she gives up because literally no other wizard will support her.
Its just so funny that there’s a scene in Book 5 where Voldemort blows up a statue dedicated to Wizard Supremacy and you’re honestly not sure who the bad guy is anymore.
They don’t even question systemic problems within the magic world, let alone challenging them. Everyone is extremely content with the social stratification - something emblematic of the British society. In the books everyone is perfectly content with the oppression, just as long as THEY get to be the oppressors.
I was never a fan of the series - noticed these issues right from the first book. Every subsequent book or movie I couldn’t help but noticing how cruel everyone was - even the protagonists.
But can I ask why that would put you off the series? The books are essentially a product of the society the author wrote them in, so it’s not as if they present an unbelievable social narrative, as it’s emblematic of British society as you said. Is it that you want/expect more of an engaged society from the magical world, or is it just boring to read of social attitudes that are so close to our own. Genuinely curious, as I’m not a massive fan of the series myself, but for other reasons :) I’ve never considered your point of view so it’d be good to understand
It is the potrayal of these conditions as acceptable/good. Many children of that generation loved the books and dreamed to be in Hogwarts and this magical world overall. It is given to an uncritical audience in an uncritical way.
They also have time travel, so they could undo all that shit.
Wrong. In the books Neville knocks over the shelf with all the time travel gadgets and they are all destroyed. I am not joking.
aurors aren’t cops
An Auror was a wizard or witch that worked as a highly trained law enforcement official for a wizarding governing body
Oi! Youse gotta license fer dat wand?
Harry was billed in early books as this “Anti-Voldemort”, who’d lead Wizardy to a gilded age and do great things… But JK Is a Status Quo loving Neo Liberal and can’t imagine a better world. In all of her works the system is corrupt, but it’s fine because the only thing that would make it go wrong is one bad faith actor (In this case Voldemort), who will stumble upon some obscure rule that undoes him. (In this case, killing Harry who was at that time the last horcrux)
Harry becomes a cop and doesn’t change the status quo because the world as it is is the best JK can imagine it.
It’s kind of like how no one did anything about Trump, they kept waiting for him to trip over some rule that sends the system crashing down on him, but it never happened.
It never happened because the system is powerless to punish anyone, because the system is just an idea, it is immaterial.
The Electoral College isn’t going to magically vote for Hillary because it recognizes Trump’s evil. People have to recognize his corruption and change the system to combat it…
The Democrats never learned they couldn’t just wait for the System to punish the Republicans after they accumulated enough good/bad boy points
JK Is a Liberal and can’t imagine a better world
Wtf do you people think “liberal” means? Some people think it means communist, some think it means socialist, some somehow think it means fascist. I’d love to what you actually mean when you use a word that has a specific meaning of “anti-authoritarian”.
In political party terms, a liberal is someone who supports the economic system of capitalism but wants to give concessions to the general population (free healthcare, cheap public transportation, etc) to placate the people from changing the system. The idea is if people are making a somewhat decent living then they will be less disgusted with the ludicrous amount of money the actual wealthy make and won’t revolt. Messaging from conservative parties has purposely conflated liberals with leftist (socialism/communism) ideology in order to tie it to the Red Scare and convince lower income people that the idea is meant to take more from working class people.
Social Welfare is neither historically nor currently a liberal value.
Generally the idea seems to be social liberalism, e.g. people should laregely do what they want, and since a few decades bastardized with neoliberal economics, which are the opposite of freedom. E.g. ideas like reinstating slavery, selling children, murdering people with impunity all based on an arbitrary freedom of contracts.
American liberals are far right conservative/reactionaries sprinkled with some gay rights by most countries standards.
The word “liberal” is associated with the right everywhere except the US.
The fuck? No
Liberalism is pro-Capitalism, therefore it’s right wing.
I only watched the first three movies and didn’t read the books. Why do people say harry was a cop? I didn’t get that impression from the movies I watched.
He is not a cop, he becomes a cop after he graduates, despite a heavily recurring theme of the books being how corrupt, incompetent, and unjust the Wizarding government and judicial system is.
Rowling never really seems to connect the dots and think, “Hmm, maybe the Aurors are part of the problem,” very much a “cops good no notes” mindset for some reason.
If you want to give her the benefit of the doubt you can assume she thinks Harry will be a reformer, but, also, in the books she never really seems to think anything but the status quo is good so probably not.
TBF I read the books too long ago to remember well what was the state of the depicted society except for an obvious negligence for student safety. In part it’s because I wasn’t old enough to notice that.
I think it did feel “govt bad cops good” at that point and I didn’t think about the government and cops being parts of the same system 😅
I mean the cops are also doing the bidding of the obviously corrupt minister, with the exception of Kingsley Shaklebolt, who is an undercover agent of Dumbledore.
The entire concept of “fighting dark magicians hurr durr” is never put in the context of how subverted or openly on the side of dark magicians the ministry of magic is. Sometimes it is hinted at, like how Arthur Weasley is dissapointed that the department for the missuse of muggle artifacts is chronically underfunded and wizards that like to play harsh pranks and torture muggles aren’t punished properly.
JK Rowling literally wrote a slave caste that loves being in servitude. Even putting aside the transphobia of her most recent past, the Harry Potter books are not leftist friendly.
Ok, I hate that you are putting me in a position where I have to defend her TERFy ass but this is not a valid criticism.
The House Elves(the eponymous slaves you were referring to) were not in any way framed as a good thing. She went out of her way to make it abundantly clear that to any modern sensibility such a class system is abhorrent. You can have unsavory elements in your work of fiction as a vehicle for your characters’ story arc and not be a piece of shit for it.
However, if you’re a fucking TERF shitstain on Twitter, that’s an entirely different kettle if fish and absolutely feel free to light her ass up on that. That and being coy about Dumbledore being gay. Should have been in the books and not implied only to be confirmed online. Absolute bullshit.
Ron literally makes fun of Hermione for wanting to free the slaves. But it’s all good cause the slaves like being slaves. Imagine writing this into your children’s book.
To be fair aurors seem to be doing the job of detectives/cops/militia/commanding officers/military police/federal agents/CIs/Deputies/Marshals/Troopers/ Dementor management/whatever
It’s not just a cop. Besides the guys seem to be paid decently enough and deal with the most nastiest of the nastiest shit in the magical world. It’s a miracle people decide to do it, given the mortality rates it seems to have and the kind of bullshit they need to deal with
Are we really going to sit here, having this discussion as if Harry Potter is a real man?
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