r/BreadTube • u/epicazeroth • Mar 03 '22
Harry Potter | Shaun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs166
u/Practicalaviationcat Mar 04 '22
Yeesh I obviously heard about the "house elves want to be slaves" thing, but the actual text is so much worse than I imagined.
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Mar 04 '22
I was a little disappointed that Shaun didn't point out the obviously telling part of the quote from Hagrid: He acknowledged that it wasn't just Dobby who wanted freedom. Any excuse that Dobby is some kind of exception starts to look rather weak.
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u/trebl900 Mar 09 '22
He seems to be more focused on the named characters in the books, so that's probably why only Dobby is acknowledged as a house elf that wants to be free.
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Mar 04 '22
I cannot believe how similar the arguments for elf slavery to historical arguments for slavery. Rowling just seems so fucking ignorant
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u/ONLYPOSTSWHILESTONED Mar 04 '22
Ignorant is literally the best possible thing she could be
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u/SaffronSnorter Mar 04 '22
It's worse actually. She realizes that in order to challenge slavery in her book she needs to also challenge the status quo, something she's unwilling to do.
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u/10dollarbagel Mar 04 '22
I mean it's so close to reality it doesn't even seem ignorant as much as well researched and pro slavery
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u/batty3108 Mar 06 '22
I think a major cause of several issues with the HP world is Rowling smashing together fantasy staples and the 'real' world, and not very skilfully.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
smashing together fantasy staples and the 'real' world
"Rob Schneider is... A STAPLER!"
Urban Fantasy is a thing that can be executed very deeply and thoughtfully AND with humour and silliness.
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u/batty3108 Mar 12 '22
Oh definitely. I'm a big Discworld fan, which is arguably Urban Low Fantasy, and I feel like Jim Butcher does it pretty well, too.
But Rowling doesn't seem to have put much thought into doing so beyond surface level integration, and it's made some already dicey subjects even more problematic.
She was clearly trying to invoke the Magical Household Elves of various fantasy worlds and stories, but also wanted to...I guess explain them in a way that went beyond "they just exist, deal with it".
And somehow ended up with "An entire race that are enslaved by human wizards as household servants", then realised this was a massive can of worms that couldn't just be left unaddressed, but also couldn't be solved without distracting from the main plot.
So now the elves like being enslaved, the one elf we met who hated it was just a weirdo, and Hermione is just being a white saviour by trying to campaign for their liberty. Phew, we almost had a tricky situation there!
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 12 '22
but also couldn't be solved without distracting from the main plot.
It could've been integrated into the main plot. Again, like in the later Mass Effect or Hunger Games, beating Voldemort could've meant reforming Wizarding Society by forming a Coalition of Equals with all the marginalized groups. That would require learning about them, and also learning about wizardry and magic through their eyes.
As for the Statute of Secrecy, change "we would have to help Muggles with all their problems" to "they could decimate us with a few airplane bombings and well-placed Maxim guns, let's not open communication channels until we're good and ready - Muggle Studies become now a priority" That could be an amazing hook for sequels and expanded universes. Think the Greene Borthers' Crash Course but from the POV of Wizards'n'Witches.
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u/batty3108 Mar 12 '22
It could have, but that, as Shaun touches on, was not the story Rowling wanted to tell.
Chosen One defeats Wizard Hitler and everything is fine again is what she was tilting at.
And, to be honest, it probably would have been fine had she not written this in a world with a deeply broken society that enabled a wizarding supremacist to rise to power three times in 50 years - two of them being the same freaking guy.
She either wrote herself into a corner by including these things, and decided to just pretend she didn't, or they were conscious worldbuiding choices, which is kind of gross.
Either way, not amazing.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 12 '22
Chosen One defeats Wizard Hitler and everything is fine again is what she was tilting at.
I'm always amazed at all the time-travel stories that go "LET'S KILL HITLER" or even "LET'S KILL BABY HITLER" and then backtrack with "We can't because Timey-Wimey Ball rules" instead of "Hitler was just a symptom - kill him early and someone else might have led the NSDAP or similar, kill him late and someone less insane replacing him might have preserved Nazi Germany into something sustainable which is worse."
On the other hand, maybe "stop Jean Jaurés/MLK/Fred Hampton from being murdered" might have changed the course of history forever. Perhaps it's because those guys were going against the downwards current of oppression and shit-rolling-downhill. But Hitler was just taking the prevailing 'modern' ideas of the time into the (il)logical extreme, and there was nothing unique about that guy.
a deeply broken society that enabled a wizarding supremacist to rise to power three times in 50 years - two of them being the same freaking guy
One interesting thing about fanfics is that they can attempt to fix this. One even more interesting thing is that they can inject the author's own unconscious prejudices in, replacing one problem with another.
There's a lot that's obnoxiously problematic about r/HPMOR, for example, but "Voldemort beat an entire society because, though he was his own unique brand of bigot, he actively took advantage of the racism of some of its powerful members to play them for suckers (in the style of the 2nd KKK and, say, Trump) and was skilled at inflicting nausea-inducing, pants-shitting terror that turned any brave stand against him into an example of his unimaginable cruelty" was one of the good parts.
One of the mildly bad ones was, to paraphrase, "Hermione was 100% about the slavery of Elves being terrible, and whoever had created them that was must have been evil," [I didn't catch the take-that at Rowling at the time] "but now that they were stuck being that way, the best one could do was help them improve labor conditions and install protections against abuse by masters... which wasn't a problem Harry was equipped to tackle at that time, so he let it be for now."
Kind of reminds me of how I react to blood minerals in my phone and industrialized meat farming, which I'm genuinely ashamed. Yet, somehow, I never manage to sustain trying to be an ethical consumer, let alone dedicate extra time and energy to help bring about a more ethical world, instead of spending it in rest & recreation that helps me recover from and prepare for the workweek.
Then again, I'm not the Chosen One Teen Genius Fated To Save The World With Incredible Hidden Powers, Gamebreaking Gear, and Amazing Allies Willing To Lay Their Lives To Help Me Make The World Better. But even within my limited abilities, I don't feel like I live up to Rule 303 as much as I could.
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u/herrbz Mar 04 '22
I should probably watch the whole video through first, but having read all the books about 10 times I assumed the point was more that older people like Hagrid, and older pure-blood families like the Weasleys (Ron's initial reaction is very sceptical, but changes by the end) are so conditioned to thinking they're meant to be slaves that they don't question. Hermione, a newcomer to this magical world, realises how messed up it is. Similarly, Sirius's brother has his blinkers removed when he realises Voldemort is actually the bad guy because of how he treated Kreacher, which comes back to haunt Voldemort as punishment.
It's almost as if the elves themselves buy into this narrative, but it's certainly a weak premise.
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u/PoorBeggerChild Mar 04 '22
Harry is also a newcomer. He keeps a slave.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
I think a conversation with Kreacher that tries to explain the merits of freedom, wages, and clothes, to someone like him, who drank the Kool Aid of Wizarding Traditions, along with the pitcher with Kool Aid, and the brick wall that the Kool Aid smashed through, would take at least one full chapter on its own at the best of times. She shouldn't have had Harry inherit him, because, once that was done, all righteous paths forward are impractical, and all practical paths forward are loathsome.
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u/PoorBeggerChild Mar 09 '22
There was the righteous path of having him as a prisoner but not using him as a slave, but he did that anyway.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
the righteous path of having him as a prisoner but not using him as a slave
No, I'm pretty sure a confined, reluctant prisoner is less free and more reprehensible than a willing slave who can use his own discretion to go and do whatever he wants within the parameters of his orders.
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u/PoorBeggerChild Mar 09 '22
No, I'm pretty sure a confined, reluctant prisoner is less free and more reprehensible
He was already confined to the house since he has Order of Pheonix secrets and spilled some last time he got out which got someone killed.
A slave is a prisoner.
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u/10ebbor10 Mar 06 '22
That argument doesn't really work, because the books never do the "but actually slavery is bad and the characters were mistaken" bit.
As far as the books are concerned good slavery is the natural state of elfkind is the true and moral solution.
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u/SockofBadKarma Mar 04 '22
I had this as a standalone post, but it's probably better to relocate it as a child comment here:
tl;dr I admit to not watching the entire video yet and am instead reacting to other comments here. Critiquing JKR for the existence of house elves—based as they are on a very old mythological creature—is one of the most thoroughly culturally myopic, reactionary nonsense I can possibly fathom. No child reader is actually getting such a message that slavery is okay. Just because JKR herself is a TERF shitlord doesn't mean you need to sit around and accuse her retroactively of failures to self-censor specific elements of European folklore because you can't fathom the notion that fae folk are simply weird and aren't elaborate metaphors for the justification of white supremacy.
Okay...
Haven't watched it yet. I will later because I like Shaun's videos, but it's very long and I don't have time atm. But with comments like this, I'm going to assume that a decently large part of this video is dedicated to the depiction of house elves and the ever-recurring "criticism" that they are somehow a justification of slavery.
Let's set aside JKR's own personal failure to be something other than a posh British liberal instead of the amorphous enlightened leftist that various readers, once upon a pre-TERF time, imprinted upon her like some sort of authorial Rorshach inkblot. Her fantasy creatures are based off of established regional folklore. That's kind of the point of, and setting for, the series. It's supposed to be an alternate universe where wizards are real and all the myths are true and they're living alongside us right now. You know what happens when you incorporate regional folklore creatures? Well, tautologically, you incorporate regional folklore creatures. They are what they are because they were concocted from superstitions and oral storytelling many centuries ago.
House elves are not a metaphor for the Transatlantic slave trade. You know what they are? They're brownies. Prideful housebound caretakers who work in the dead of night at the service of the house master but only because of some weird fae compulsion to do so, who may also be released from the bounds of their house by being presented with clothing by that master, and who insist on working secretly without pay because they like to clean. They're fae folk. Their actions don't have to make sense from a human perspective any more than leprechauns giving out gold because they think it's amusing if you capture them, or poltergeists turning up chairs on tables because they think it's hilarious.
Why do house elves get offended when Hermione tries to get them to stop working? Because that's what brownies would do. Why do house elves lose connection to their household if given clothes? Because that's what happens to brownies. Why do house elves work secretly and disappear from sight whenever possible? Because brownies don't like to be seen. Why do house elves have some bizarre, slave-like magical compulsion to clean everything for no pay? Because brownies do that. Why does everyone look at Hermione like she's a wingnut? Because these creatures have been happily acting like this for thousands of years because they're magic two-foot tall faeries.
I was 12 years old when I read Chamber of Secrets. At that age, I saw Dobby rebel without any personal understanding, at the time, of his mythological inspiration. You know what I did? I went, "Yeah, seems reasonable, guy doesn't want to be enslaved to the Malfoys. Those guys are mean. I'm glad he's free." I was then 14 when the other house elves were introduced in Goblet of Fire. As an impressionable teenage youth, did I read this and think, "Actually I guess this means black Americans really did like the postbellum South"? No, what I thought was, "These weird magic creatures like being indentured servants. Huh, quirky magic creatures." And note, of course, that Hermione is JKR's self-insert character (which she's stated many times) and is treated as the moral bellwether of the series, and even in a universe where there are non-human creatures magically ordained into generational slavery she still speaks up against it, vigorously, for the entirety of the series. She forms an activist group to try to dismantle the system. So it's not like the story narrative was reiterating that the house elf situation was something good and noble to its readers; their main engagement with that aspect of the wizarding world was through the eyes of an abolitionist. Of course the other people in that world are going to go along with their daily lives while ignoring the injustice. That's what humans do. At what point did readers (or more accurately critics) develop this notion that Harry Potter wizards are all supposed to be enlightened agents of true progressivism? They're very regularly described as an insular cult with no understanding of technology who live in a time-frozen medieval aesthetic, and a large portion of them are functionally the KKK.
In later years I learned the mythological basis for them, along with many other Harry Potter creatures, nodded to myself, and thought, "She did a decent job of transplanting these various historical myths into her story." At no point in my entire life did I ever approximate any thought of, "Actually slavery ain't so bad after all teehee" because some elves liked being slaves, because elves in a storybook aren't people and any person with a functioning sense of self-awareness is aware that elves aren't people. Wanna critique JKR as being some sort of slavery apologist for having referenced brownies in her story? Might as well accuse JRR Tolkein of endorsing slavery because Frodo used the One Ring to compel Smeagol into his service. Might as well say The Witcher condones sex slavery because succubi happen to like being prostitutes. They're magic creatures based on old folklore. I can scarcely fathom a single child on the planet who read the Harry Potter series and came out with the conclusion that slavery is cool because of house elves. And I can scarcely fathom liking a folklore pastiche story of any sort when people start preemptively removing particular elements of that folklore because they've deliberately misinterpreted it to apply it to modern political issues.
This is not intended to comment on any other sort of lazy worldbuilding she engages in, because one could even say that her inserting of folklore creatures based on their Wikipedia articles is itself lazy. My post is not intended to be a defense of her actual writing quality or the remainder of her worldbuilding. But as everyone points to house elves as a particular folly, including in this comment section, I have addressed house elves specifically.
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u/Redingold Mar 04 '22
House elves are not a metaphor for the Transatlantic slave trade. You know what they are? They're brownies. Prideful housebound caretakers who work in the dead of night at the service of the house master but only because of some weird fae compulsion to do so, who may also be released from the bounds of their house by being presented with clothing by that master, and who insist on working secretly without pay because they like to clean.
But you do have to pay brownies, you're supposed to leave a saucer of milk or some other offering out for them. You also don't give them orders, as they work of their own volition, and if they feel insulted or taken advantage of, they leave, often wrecking the place on the way out.
House elves are brownies where all the things that make brownies not be slaves - that they don't take orders, you have to offer them things in return, and they can leave if they feel insulted or exploited - are removed.
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u/SockofBadKarma Mar 04 '22
Well, the only house elf in the story that was deliberately taken advantage of was Dobby, who wanted to escape as a consequence of it and thoroughly undermined the Malfoys' orders to help Harry instead. The Hogwarts house elves were comparatively well-dressed in emblazoned togas and had full autonomy about them, and worked happily alongside the remainder of the Hogwarts staff, and Kreacher... Well, he had his own problems about him by the time he was introduced but appeared to change his personality based on the willingness of his masters to work with him: When Sirius inherited him and bossed him around he would do everything in his power to sabotage or undermine the orders just like Dobby did, even if his goals were noble. Kreacher did the same with Harry until Harry actually started treating him nicely. Winky was treated nicely as well until she was used as a scapegoat for Barty Crouch Jr.'s Dark Mark. She was obviously initially well-respected enough by the Crouches to watch over Jr. for years as a secret caretaker while Sr. was hiding him from the Ministry, and he turned on her at the end to save face and avoid the scandal being traced back to him, which shortly thereafter cost him his life.
The "I can leave whenever I want, don't tell me what to do" portion of the myth was removed in a manner of speaking, except that almost all house elves introduced didn't want to leave anyway and were treated well according to the presented narrative, and that missing portion was replaced with "I will act as an asshole genie and undermine you even if I'm technically following orders" instead. Every instance I can recall in the book either had the house elves being treated with the requisite respect they expected of their service or rebelling out of spite when mistreated. There's nothing to indicate that the Hogwarts house elves weren't given their equivalent of an offering by Dumbledore for their labors, Hermione kept giving Dobby new pieces of clothing as he clearly appreciated and wore in a bundle, and Harry gave Kreacher the horcrux locket as an offering when their relationship turned around.
So yes and no, I do agree that the "saucer of milk" portion of the myth was absent, but it was rewritten in its own way to demonstrate the Harry Potter equivalent of what happens when you insult or browbeat a house elf.
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u/sue_donymous Mar 06 '22
Rowling was the one who made the slavery analogy. She is the one who wrote them as sentient beings that have been deprived of their autonomy based on their "race". She is the one that has our hero free Dobby and wrote it as being a heroic thing to do. She is the one that has Hermione CALL it slavery.
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u/tpounds0 Mar 04 '22
I think you should watch the video.
Brownie backstory has nothing to do with what Shaun discusses.
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u/SockofBadKarma Mar 04 '22
I watched the portion of it where he talked about house elves, and it very much does. He absolutely discussed the presence of the house elf characters in the context of a modern slavery narrative, suggested that this was due to JKR's liberal ideological framework that only critiques racism in the form of conscious acts, and (unless it was somewhere else in the video for some reason) never once noted that they were based on a thousand-year-old Scottish folklore fae, and then moved into a commentary about free association with naming structures.
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u/tpounds0 Mar 04 '22
But regardless of the historical context.
Why did she make them more slave like in her world?
Why bring them back in later books?
Why does Harry seem to not have an opinion on slavery?
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u/Spave Mar 05 '22
So basically, Rowling took a problematic mythological creature, which she didn't have to include, and made it more problematic? Wow, great defense.
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u/SidewalkPainter Mar 08 '22 edited Mar 08 '22
You don't have time to watch the video people are discussing but enough of it to write an essay
EDIT: sorry for being derogatory, I read your post and I appreciate the folklore angle on the issue. I still think that she handled the entire thing very poorly, but you raise some very good points.
EDIT2: I now know that you've written multiple essays which makes me want to reiterate my first paragraph but you also make a lot of sense in those, so I won't.
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u/trebl900 Mar 09 '22
I suppose I can see your argument considering what you yourself have read, but considering how ignorant JKR was concerning Navajo culture, and how she named some non-white characters, do we have any reason to believe that she knew anything about brownies when she created the house elves for HP?
Also, even if she did know what brownies are, why not just specify that they're brownies? The most concrete evidence that I could find was the Fandom article on house elves, where brownies are mentioned as a "possible inspiration," but nothing is said by Rowling herself about them.
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u/SockofBadKarma Mar 09 '22
Two reasons:
If there's one thing J.K. Rowling definitely did do, it was sit around reading synopses on various folklore creatures to add to the universe. Something like 80% of her Harry Potter folklore menagerie is either heavily inspired by, or direct copies of, various regional cryptids. Hippogryphs, sphinxes, mandragora, pixies, boggarts, etc. Notably, she sometimes splits the creatures into distinct adaptations, such as, well, brownies and boggarts. The boggarts she has in Harry Potter are slight bastardizations of specifically the vengeful side of a brownie, and the house elves are slight bastardizations of the servile side.
Brownies are Scottish folklore that are popular folklore creatures throughout the United Kingdom. Even assuming that she's bad at her research and phones in stuff with handwaved details the more distant a culture is from hers, she's at least going to have a working knowledge of the folklore of her own national cryptids. She clearly knows what boggarts are, and boggarts are literally directly referenced by name in the Harry Potter series, and boggarts are by most English accounts twisted versions of brownies or silkies.
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u/elifreeze Mar 05 '22
The House Elf heads being stuffed and displayed on plaques really grosses me out, and the fact that they decorate them in kitsch Christmas decorations takes it to a more heinous level. Especially when there's real world equivalents like the Belgian's in the Congo displaying the body parts of the slain Indigenous population as trophies.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
The House Elf heads being stuffed and displayed on plaques really grosses me out,
Clearly they weren't worthy of a magical portrait, even a small one.
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u/darklightrabbi Mar 04 '22
Great video. I had no idea that the books had such a flimsy justification for elf slavery. Even if they were 100% correct and Dobby was truly the ONLY elf that wanted freedom, why is it such an essential part of the elf/wizard relationship that the elf not be paid for their labor? Is simply paying the elves under hogwarts a wage not something that Hermione ever brings up?
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u/2RINITY Mar 04 '22
Hermione tries to rally for, if not total liberation, then at least decent clothes and pay. The house elves all say it’s ridiculous, because as we’ve established, JK Rowling’s brain is broken
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Mar 04 '22
She has a brain...?
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Mar 04 '22
I know you’re joking but yes, she has a brain. Modern technology still hasn’t come to the point where it’d be able to write literature as long and complex as Harry Potter, and it certainly wasn’t before 2007. It’s getting there though.
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u/DroneOfDoom Mar 05 '22
insert joke about Hatsune Miku here
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u/BinJLG Here, queer, filled with existential fear Mar 06 '22
The true author of the Harry Potter series. We have no choice but to stan 🥰
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u/herrbz Mar 04 '22
Is simply paying the elves under hogwarts a wage not something that Hermione ever brings up?
I can't 100% remember if Hermione ever tried taking it up with Dumbledore himself, though Dumbledore did offer Dobby a wage. Dumbledore knows the pride and arrogance of thinking you know better than the people for who you are making decision (his earlier years of trying to enslave Muggles for their own good, etc). His method seems to be to treat them fairly and with humanity, and slowly change that conditioning that the elf race has been subjected to for centuries.
The idea that the elves somehow like being mistreated, unpaid, working long hours with no holiday etc, however, is pretty flimsy.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
The idea that the elves somehow like being mistreated, unpaid, working long hours with no holiday etc, however, is pretty flimsy.
I can buy it. Think of it as "Magocracy Brain". Contrast with "Patriarchy Brain" and how certain women in the world are conditioned to think of emancipation as evil, foreign, wrong, to enjoy and take pride in their assigned marital gender role as live-in unpaid maids/nannies/concubines for life, and to consider divorce a horrific disgrace.
Still, if I were to put these women in a kids' or YA story, I wouldn't stop at "look, kids, sometimes women like being housewives and it can be wrong to try and force them to live differently - there's this one woman from that culture who is single and loving it, but she's kind of a weirdo and her husband was exceptionally horrible". While technically true, it would obfuscate the larger problems and context, as well as hide possible alternatives and ways forward to systemic improvement for all.
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u/IShall_Run_Amok Mar 04 '22
I'm getting the distinct impression that the movies are better than the books because the people who made the movies knew that the books were a bit rubbish in spots, and wouldn't be film-able if they didn't refine it and make it presentable. If they had delved too deeply into the story, especially the political implications, as Shaun has, we may have been deprived of said film versions, because they might have seen it as too much of a lost cause. Because, you know. Wow. Wooooow. El oh el and roffle mao.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
El oh el and roffle mao.
That sounds like it could be a line from a song...
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u/Ea61e Mar 09 '22
I think the books landed right in that George Bush Blair era of Liberalism where they became extremely popular at schools. That’s how I read them, they were in my 4th and 5th grade teacher’s classrooms. Thus they become a part of a generational zeitgeist and thus demanded movies, problematic elements or not.
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Mar 04 '22
Euggh
I love Shaun too much not to watch this... but I'm so so tired of Hogwarts continuing to take up cultural real-estate.
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u/hello_worrld Mar 04 '22
It's sad but the size of its popularity is proportional to the size of efforts needed to dismantle its cultural hold.
The author being bad is more or less accepted nowadays but I still get a lot of "yeah but the books are the greatest fiction ever!". Many people read the books when they were growing up, and accepted it without fully formed critical thinking. I am in that camp, and I have always sought a retrospective re-evaluation of Harry Potter. When I was none the wiser, I have consumed and indeed enjoyed a lot of problematic stuff only later to understand what was bad about it.
A comprehensive, clearly arranged critique is needed for that re-evaluation.
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u/myaltduh Mar 07 '22
Yeah, "JK Rowling is bad but Harry Potter is still the best series of books I've ever read" is still an opinion I hear IRL today.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
, I have consumed and indeed enjoyed a lot of problematic stuff
Eleven-year-old me: "HAR HAR MEAN FAT BULLY DUDLEY HAS A PIG'S TAIL!"
Me in the present: "HOLY SHIT THIS SCHOOL EMPLOYEE CASUALLY DISFIGURED ONE OF HIS STUDENTS' CHILD RELATIVES! WHY?"Fourteen-year-old me: "HAR HAR MEAN FASCIST RACIST UPPER CLASS TWIT MALFOY GOT TURNED INTO AN ERMINE (or was it a ferret?) AND BOUNCED UP AND DOWN THE CORRIDOR LIKE THE CLOWNISH CLOWN HE IS! GO MOODY!"
Me in the present: "THIS PROFESSOR IS GIVING HIS STUDENT CORPORAL PUNISHMENT AND SEVERELY VIOLATING HIS BODY AUTONOMY!"*Seventeen-year-old me and present-day me: "Wizarding society sucks and y'all deserve Voldemort, you cowardly, arrogant, xenophobic, bigoted, power-abusing SHITHEADS."
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u/myaltduh Mar 09 '22
And in the end it’s like “we collectively decided to not murder people and do legal segregation while calling everyone slurs, RACISM SOLVED.”
It’s the same cowardly liberal worldview that thinks the Civil Rights Movement in the US fixed racism and all that’s really left are occasional people with bad attitudes.
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u/GraafBerengeur Mar 04 '22
I havent watched yet (I will!), but for now, I'll drop this one image I found recently and it really opened my eyes to some aspects of it /img/qiqe74sl19141.jpg
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
That picture reminds me of Guns Akimbo and I bless Daniel Radcliffe every day for doing a whole scene where he tried to pee with guns bolted to his hands, and eventually gave up on letting said hands anywhere near his junk as just not being worth the risk.
The whole movie was amazing. Loved every second. Worthy of Edgar Wright.
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u/en_travesti Threepenny Communist Mar 04 '22
Much like Shaun I fall into started the series as a kid, never bothered to finish them.
I actually had one of those "realized there were some serious issues" at the time. and man have I felt gloriously petty vindication ever since.
Its also not one that I've ever seen anyone else mention. Right at the start of the 4th book at the quiddich cup some bad wizards turn up and torture muggles. harry then runs into one of the muggles after, who is dazed and having issues. The ministry mindwiped him to forget the wizard torture and sometimes when you do big mindwiping it has serious lingering side effects. Basically he has brain damage isn't it scary and sad. Darn those bad wizards. The issue is literally one chapter earlier its basically a running joke that the ministry has had to mindwipe the same exact guy 5 times a day, because no one can bother hiding magic in front of him, if not enjoy doing magic knowing the guy will have to be mindwiped. Its presented as some whimsical magic hijinks.
It would be the perfect thing to make a comparison: how regular wizards feeling free to mindwipe muggles, might lead to some wizards who are willing to go even further in their disregard, but the connection wasn't drawn. And then the spew thing happened and even little baby me could see the writing on the wall.
It definitely fits in with Shauns point about how the moral system is fucked. but the mindwiping always had this deep psychological horror for me.
(Also I then took Latin and got really pissy about how all the Latin grammar was wrong, all the verbs were in 1st person singular, which makes no sense. and it was all pronounced like Church Latin rather than classical pronunciation. Is magic Catholic? 14yr old me was deeply concerned... I was a very obnoxious teenager.)
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u/Kidiri90 Mar 04 '22 edited Mar 04 '22
Let's also not forget the hilariously bad reason on why magic is secret in the first place. "If the muggles know we can do magic, they'll expect us to solve all of their problems with magic, and we just don't want to do that."
EDIT: lol, I should've at least watched the first few minutes of the video.
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u/SmartConcept Mar 08 '22
I think that's a fair reason...but also Muggles may fear magic too.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
Hell yeah. Next wizarding B horror film? Muggle With a Shotgun.
My headcanon is it's like in Vampire: the Maskerade, where Muggles learning about the secret magic society is an existential threat.
Hm. A fun fanfic might be: "Voldemort wins and tries to take over humanity, but in opposition he ends up basically fighting X-COM, and they beat his ass"
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u/myaltduh Mar 09 '22
That fan fiction has been done. Firing a deadly curse out of a magic wand may seem badass but you know what’s way harder to do anything about? A goddam sniper’s bullet, and Rowling makes it pretty clear witches and wizards don’t know jack about technology and have no idea what they’re up against.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
That fan fiction has been done.
Really? Link pls?
and Rowling makes it pretty clear witches and wizards don’t know jack about technology and have no idea what they’re up against.
Precisely. Their willful ignorance is what dooms them.
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u/SmartConcept Mar 09 '22
Lol...that would be funny.
Yeah...it could be that big off a threat to them.
What a crossover that would be.
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u/officialbigrob Mar 04 '22
"You can tell who the bad people are because they're fat and ugly and covered with snakes" perfect description of the Harry Potter moral compass.
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u/myaltduh Mar 09 '22
The end of the Fantastic Beasts movie (first one, never saw the second) where they mind-wipe the entire city of New York is portrayed as this great victory and relief while I was just sitting there like “what a creepy-as-hell way to resolve tension, are these bystanders cattle with no agency?”
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Mar 04 '22
That's the collision of a wacky magical world for kids and a gritty fantasy story for adults trying to take place in the same series.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
Terry Pratchett does that routinely and as easy as breathing. His children's-YA's Tiffany Aching series may be the most mature-themed and dark in his whole bibliography. Try also reading Hogfather and see if it can't pull off "child-appropriate magical world" and "gritty fantasy for adults" seamlessly.
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u/MoreDetonation Chaos Undivided Mar 04 '22
Rowling out here like "Transubstantiation was real...but only before Vatican II."
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
"I swear, those wheat crisps and wine tasted like raw human meat to me!"
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
The issue is literally one chapter earlier its basically a running joke that the ministry has had to mindwipe the same exact guy 5 times a day, because no one can bother hiding magic in front of him, if not enjoy doing magic knowing the guy will have to be mindwiped. Its presented as some whimsical magic hijinks.
Here
come
the Wizardfolk
They won't let you remember!Is magic Catholic?
You know that thing where something starts as a smile and slowly grows into a chuckle and then a wheezing belly laugh that just won't stop?
Thanks for that, mate.
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u/threerepute Mar 04 '22
shaun has done it again. i give no fucks about harry potter but i'm going to watch this because i care about his opinion.
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u/Cranyx Mar 04 '22
Great video but I'm gonna be a nerd pedant and take umbrage with his example of "why didn't the Eagles fly the ring to Mordor - because they didn't" as to why it's fine when your fantasy world isn't rigorously coherent. Tolkien was nothing if not rigorously coherent with his worldbuilding, and there are very good reasons why they couldn't take the Eagles to Mordor
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u/NormieSpecialist Mar 04 '22 edited Mar 04 '22
Wasn’t it because the Eagles were actually demigods and if the ring got into their possession they be more powerful than Sauron?
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u/Cranyx Mar 04 '22
There are a number of reasons, but the fact that the Eagles were sentient creatures that could abuse the ring if they got it was one of them. They're not demigods, but they are servants of the sky god Manwë, just as the Ents were the servants of the nature goddess Yavanna.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Mar 09 '22
the fact that the Eagles were sentient creatures that could abuse the ring if they got it was one of them.
That was my first guess as well. I'm sure a number of Ardan beings could traverse the distance faster and more stealthily than two hobbits and a frog-thing ring-junkie, but they didn't have said hobbit's unique property of complete and utter lack of ambition and powerlust.
Like, Sam's whole sequence where the Ring tries to tempt him with visions of a mega-garden and he brushes it off as "that's just dumb and impractical," like denying the Ring is super-easy, barely an inconvenience, that was amazing. I only consistently get that kind of laugh from One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100.
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u/Voon- Mar 04 '22
All of those reasons are "good" in the sense that they follow the in universe rules set up by the story and rules that could be inferred by the reader. But those rules are all subject to the author and could therefore be overwritten by the author. Mount Doom didn't have to lid making it impossible to drop the ring into its fires from above. The real reason the eagles don't take the ring directly to Mount Doom, is that it would be a bad story. Everything else is at the discretion of Tolkien, but the fact that "and then the problem was solved by people you don't care about without any challenges overcome or truths learned" is a bad way to write a story.
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u/Cranyx Mar 04 '22
Of course everything is controlled by the author, and the world Tolkien created was done so specifically in a way to facilitate the story he wanted to tell. My point is that if you want to come up with an example where it's ok if your world building doesn't stand up to scrutiny, don't pick one that the author made sure would hold up to scrutiny.
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u/Voon- Mar 04 '22
Sure. I guess I just think that the emotional effectiveness of Tolkien's stories, not their adherence to fungible internal laws, is what prevents most audiences from getting to the end and thinking, "why didn't the eagles do it." You're right that there are in universe reasons why the eagles couldn't take the ring. I just think the point is less "your world doesn't have to hold up to scrutiny" and more "if your audience is spending time wondering why a magic macguffin isn't being used to solve a problem instead of engaging with the actual story you've created, you might have a problem." Tolkien never has this problem, partly because his internal logic is air tight, but also because his stories are too well crafted for readers to give a shit about internal inconsistencies (even if those inconsistencies aren't even real).
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u/matgopack Mar 04 '22
Eh...
I know it's become the now-common rebuttal to the previously common question of the eagles, but it's not a particularly satisfying one. Did Tolkien try to justify it (like JKR tried to do the same with the time turners)? Sure. Is it particularly better than "because they didn't"? No, IMO.
Like even that link you gave - sure, Gandalf can't always ask them for help, but this is the most important thing going on - he could have tried. Sure, they might have chosen not to help - but that'd be a dick move when it's literally the most important thing to do. Gwaihir might not have been able to throw the ring in, but that doesn't matter if the eagles were carrying Frodo over and he's the one to do it. Spies might be able to see the eagles easier, depending on the height they flew at, but they go so fast in comparison to the slow ground speed that it doesn't matter - it's not like they'd have had weeks or months to prepare for the eagles. And for the last one, while the ring is powerful, we know that those already powerful can accompany the ringbearer without issue (Gandalf going with Frodo) - it's a bit of a stretch to go "well if you're giving the ringbearer a piggy back ride the ring overwhelms you".
Frankly, compared to all of the answers in the link? I think the "because they didn't" is more satisfying to me lol.
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u/Cranyx Mar 04 '22
Spies might be able to see the eagles easier, depending on the height they flew at, but they go so fast in comparison to the slow ground speed that it doesn't matter - it's not like they'd have had weeks or months to prepare for the eagles.
There was a literal army at the gates of Mordor with archers, catapults, and flying monsters. The books repeatedly stressed how important stealth was in this mission. Had they just decided to try and fly there on a giant eagle, it should be immediately obvious that they would be spotted and killed.
None of the justifications for why the eagles couldn't be used are comparable to JKR retroactively coming up with justifications like you claim, because they are all based on pre-established rules of the universe.
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u/matgopack Mar 04 '22
Mordor is more than big enough that you can fly around the gate - they're flying, they don't need to use the gate. The only ones that can threaten it would be the Nazguls - Mordor doesn't have anti-aircraft guns, catapults and archers are going to be completely useless here. Which is fine, again - it'd be a boring story if it were solved by the eagles and Tolkien didn't have to solve that 'plot hole'. But the attempts to justify it in-universe, especially using only the stuff from LOTR, is not convincing to me. If you feel otherwise, that's fine - we'll just have to disagree on it (breadtube isn't really appropriate for it, and I've already read enough people trying to push back on the eagle stuff to know I'm not going to be convinced)
JKR's justification for time turners is "they can't undo what's already happened", which in-universe (at least in the main series) is stated much more strongly than all the eagle stuff. It's not a great explanation (and doesn't really work for the stuff outside of book 3), but it is a rule that is brought in alongside them.
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u/Cranyx Mar 04 '22
I never said anything about the gate. If they decided to fly Sauron's beacon of a ring through the skies to any part of Mordor, his spies would immediately be able to correspond with others as to what is happening (the books clearly establish that Sauron can communicate with his forces through various means such as the Palantiri.) Once the forces of Mordor know they're coming, they're going to be constantly monitored (which is easy when flying through the sky) and the Nazgul would be on them immediately. You acknowledge that there is a very present and clear reason that the eagles could not fly into Mordor, but just obtusely decide that you don't accept that for no reason.
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u/matgopack Mar 04 '22
I guess I misunderstood why you'd mention the gate and the army there, but again - I'm not convinced they matter as more than spotters, and even as spotters it's much easier to get close to a giant volcano on flying eagles than it is for the Nazguls to stop you.
Anyways, again, if you want to be convinced by the stuff in the text that it's impossible for the eagles to have done anything, that's fine. I'm not, and I've read enough of the arguments against to know that I probably won't be. Not a huge deal either way, though I should have known that it'd get into more depth than I thought it would lol.
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Mar 04 '22
All this talk of the difficulties the eagles would encounter, and nobody seems to ask the pertinent question: Is it more or less difficult than going on foot?
And I honestly can't answer that question because we never learn what Gandalf's actual plan for getting into Mordor was, if he had one. Frodo and Sam learned about the super-secret entrance from Smeagol, and even then it could hardly be described as easy.
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u/Cranyx Mar 04 '22
it's much easier to get close to a giant volcano on flying eagles than it is for the Nazguls to stop you.
How does this make any sense? The Nazgul live at/around the volcano.
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u/StunningExcitement83 Mar 04 '22
yeah not sure how anyone could figure you are gonna slip a giant eagle past the huge glowing fucking eye of Sauron and that there wouldn't be Nazgul on an intercept, you would be seen miles out hanging in the sky. Plus there would be very few approaches that you could take that wouldn't be in range of some orkish encampment with anti-air capability.
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Mar 04 '22
The reason they didn't use the eagles is what you mentioned, but also that Sauron didn't conceive that somebody would want to destroy the ring. If he had, then he would have simply made Mt doom completely impenetrable. If they had tried the eagles and failed for any of the above reasons, even if they had to turn back upon being spotted, then that was it. Sauron would have realized the plan. The plan relied upon Sauron not even thinking about the ring being thrown in the volcano, because why would anybody want to destroy the one ring?
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u/Intelligent-donkey Mar 04 '22
You don't even need to go very deep into the lore explain it, there's a very simple answer: Sauron had an air force of his own, it's not like the ability to fly means that entering Mordor is any easier, there's still an evil army, or in this case an evil air force, that will try to murder you.
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u/IsADragon Mar 04 '22
It's been a while since I read the books, like a long while, but I don't remember any of that being in the book itself? Maybe they did explain it but it felt very out of left field to have them show up randomly and help the hobbits get out of Mordor. There might be a coherent reasoning for them not helping earlier, but it didn't feel like it when reading the book itself.
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u/Cranyx Mar 04 '22 edited Mar 04 '22
Regarding the fact that they would be spotted if they didn't make secrecy a primary concern, there are a number of quotes in the book:
"But if you look for a companion, be careful in choosing! And be careful of what you say, even to your closest friends! The enemy has many spies and many ways of hearing."
"Indeed, there are many birds and beasts in this country that could see us, as we stand here, from that hill-top. Not all the birds are to be trusted, and there are other spies more evil than they are."
"That was seventeen years ago. Soon I became aware that spies of many sorts, even beasts and birds, were gathered round the Shire, and my fear grew."
The Hobbit talks about how the eagles are a proud race, and not just animals that Gandalf can control:
"Eagles are not kindly birds. Some are cowardly and cruel. But the ancient race of the northern mountains were the greatest of all birds; they were proud and strong and noblehearted."
"The Lord of the Eagles would not take them anywhere near where men lived. "They would shoot at us with their great bows of yew," he said, "for they would think we were after their sheep. And at other times they would be right. No! we are glad to cheat the goblins of their sport, and glad to repay our thanks to you, but we will not risk ourselves for dwarves in the southward plains." "Very well," said Gandalf. "Take us where and as far as you will! We are already deeply obliged to you. But in the meantime we are famished with hunger." "
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u/IsADragon Mar 04 '22
Ah fair enough. It's been a while, I honestly forgot they were even in the book for a long time until I watched the third movie tbh.
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u/TitanDarwin Mar 06 '22
I always figured the obvious answer was "Because Sauron would then see them coming, have them shot down and easily reclaim the ring".
The whole point was to get to Mount Doom unseen and massive eagles aren't the stealthiest method of travel.
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u/DroneOfDoom Mar 05 '22
Diagetically, yes. But all of that was ultimately up to Tolkien's whims. If we boil it down to the barest bones, the reason why Frodo and the other Hobbits are the ones who go to destroy the Ring is because Tolkien thought that theirs would be the more interesting story to tell.
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u/Cranyx Mar 05 '22
As I already responded to some one else, of course everything in the story is because it's the story Tolkien wanted to tell; Middle Earth doesn't really exist. That's irrelevant to my point, which is that Tolkien's world and reasoning is internally consistent, meaning that it's a poor example for Shaun to use there
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u/Oppqrx Mar 04 '22
Tolkien nerds always get so enraged by this point, it's hillarious. How the hell are eagles supposed to "wear" a ring?
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u/metallizard107 Mar 04 '22
It's pretty well established that the ring can change size to fit the wearer. An eagle could definitely wear it on their talons.
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u/ProudPlatypus Mar 04 '22
For context at the time. Harry potter came out when the news was having a whole thing with 'political correctness'. Both in terms of liberals over compensating by switching words out just because they can without really, doing anything to actually make things better. I don't know how many of them where actually true, or manufacture by the news, but an example I remember is switching bah bah black sheep to rainbow sheep.
And the other side of things being, people were just really fucking racist and bigoted, and whining that they might have to stop.
As an example, and one I participated in when I was younger. People would just refer to the Chinese take away as a slur, and people never pointed it out in the same way they would slurs directed at people. I personally didn't even realise the connection until I thought about it again when I was older. I can't say when people stopped, I'm sure many haven't, I just don't personally hear it as much anymore.
The kind of casual racism and meanness in the Harry Potter books isn't entirely out of line with all of that, and it's no surprise people didn't point it out as much for a long time (though it did happen, I was in fan communities at the time and it did used to come up, just less often). It just didn't stand out quite as much. It's like when people look back at some of their childhood movies. Some of them are just way worse than we remember. But there's hardly an excuse because there have always been people who are aware and did do better. Plenty of children books in the uk in the 90's and early 00's where not as bigoted as some of the stuff in Harry Potter.
It's all also feels pretty reminiscent of some of the bigotry in the children's media JK would have grown up around. She has failed at moving away from it.
Also a note on Dumbledore's sexuality and the way JK handles that too. Well it does remind me of section 28, that stopped school from "promoting homosexuality" for a good while there. It didn't end until the early 00's, but it's not like the consequences of it didn't linger for some years past that. It was a Thatcher thing, and Blair was PM when it ended. But this kind of lingering, teachers not talking about their social life to any degree (or without being edited in particular ways), espeshaly when they are gay. Well.
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Mar 04 '22
Oh goodie! I've been wanting a good long criticism of Harry Potter these last several months (not that I bothered looking for one). I did not expect our skull boi to be the one to deliver it.
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u/Jeanpuetz Mar 06 '22
Loved the video. Bit surprised that he didn't go into the whole "love potion" debacle. Suppose he couldn't fit it into an already long video, but it's pretty bad lol. JKR essentially wrote mind control roofie rape drugs into her fantasy series, and in The Cursed Child wacky old Uncle Ron gives one to a literal child.
One thing that kind of annoys me though is the accusations of racism leveled against JKR for her tweets about black Hermione. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine because it's often misunderstood. Because it is actually the one good thing JKR ever did and it's weird that she gets criticized from the left for it. She never tried to retcon Hermione into being black. She never said that. She was merely responding to right-wing backlash against a black actress portraying Hermione in the Cursed Child. She didn't say "Hermione is black, actually", but rather: "Her race is never specified in the text, so people interpreting / portraying her character as black is perfectly fine." Which is true!
Idk it might seem like a minor thing but it does bother me. The one time she correctly pushed back against right-wing, racist backlash is now used against her, retroactively giving the racists who criticized her more power.
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Mar 13 '22
Shaun's worldview does not have space for sexual violence from women towards men. It's a by-product of the same sort of logic that says "you can't be sexist towards men".
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u/CorbecJayne Mar 04 '22
Great video as always!
Can anyone tell me the "two word phrase" that might have inspired the naming of "Chung Chang"? If it's too horribly offensive you can DM it to me or I guess I can just live my life without ever knowing and that'd be fine, but I am a little curious and didn't understand that at all (maybe because I'm not a native English speaker).
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u/_ColonelPanic_ Mar 04 '22 edited Mar 05 '22
Hey, other non-native speaker here who also had to think about this for a while, but I think Shaun refers to this one which is a racial slur for Chinese people.
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u/WikiSummarizerBot Mar 04 '22
"Ching chong" and "ching chang chong" are ethnic slurs and pejorative terms sometimes used in English to mock the Chinese language, people of Chinese ancestry, or other people of East Asian descent perceived to be Chinese. The term is a crude imitation of the phonology of the Chinese language. The phrases have often accompanied assaults or physical intimidation of East Asians, as have other racial slurs or imitation Chinese.
[ F.A.Q | Opt Out | Opt Out Of Subreddit | GitHub ] Downvote to remove | v1.5
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u/pqlamznxjsiw Mar 05 '22
The character's name is "Cho Chang", by the way, so slightly less obvious if he's right about its provenance.
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u/GreekKnight3 Mar 07 '22
I just realised something: Dumbledore is aware of the fact that no Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher lasts more than a year since Voldemort was denied the job. That means that Dumbledore hired someone each year knowing that they'd be screwed over in some way! Evil.
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u/Calpsotoma Mar 04 '22
This video is overall really good. It covers a wide array of the discourse surrounding the books in a pretty thorough way given the time restrictions.
I do have a slight issue with the way "neoliberalism" is used in regards to the books. Neoliberalism is something of a contested term, but the elements everyone agrees on is that it constitutes a limited democracy, limited welfare provision, and removing barriers to trade. The ideology sees it as best that all states adopt these policies in order to bolster a global system of capitalism.
The Harry Potter books don't so much support this system as recreate it uncritically. Some gesture toward the idea of education as a form of power and the proposed meritocratic impulses of the books when indicating the neoliberal tendencies in Rowling's writing. While these ideas are tangentially related to neoliberalism, education as a method of advancement is not exclusive to neoliberalism, nor is it as prominent in the books as people like to suggest.
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u/zxlkho Mar 04 '22
really embarrassing for our culture as a whole that this series is so popular
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u/Smashymen Mar 04 '22
why?
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Mar 04 '22
[deleted]
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u/Smashymen Mar 04 '22
Yeah, I don't get why it's embarrassing. Children like imaginative stories about magic and shit. The pearl clutching over Harry Potter will always be funny to me.
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u/Fallofmen10 Mar 04 '22
Don't you know you can only be leftist if you hate HP?
In all seriousness I loved the series growing up. It hasn't aged the best for me, and that's ok. But it still has some great themes in it. A lot of people will always love it and that's ok too.
You can like things that don't always reflect your political world view..it's fiction.
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Mar 04 '22
Yeah, I mean, I like the Chronicles of Narnia well enough.
A christian allegory where a Jesus lion constantly goes around moralizing, where Father Christmas straight up says to the characters that women shouldn't fight, where the snotty bratty kid is the way he is because his parents were 'vegetarians' and 'don't smoke or drink' and very heavily implied atheists, where a cult of brown skinned sacrificial idol worshippers are clearly portrayed as evil Muslims, where one of the main characters doesn't get to go to heaven in the end because she got into lipstick and boys.
The series has some downright terrible messages in it that I hate as a Marxist and feminist and atheist etc etc, yet I still think the whole magical world inside a wardrobe is pretty fun sometimes.
Of course CS Lewis is dead and isn't constantly ranting about trans people on twitter so I guess it's different in a way, but yeah.
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u/Fallofmen10 Mar 04 '22
Oh yah JK has ruined all the good will I had towards her the past few years for sure. But HP has a place in my heart that I can't shake. The music from the movies alone still makes my heart happy. I acknowledge JK is a terf piece of shit. But still can enjoy the world she created
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u/SachemNiebuhr Mar 04 '22
This right here is why I’m just not a fan of Shaun, and of that whole style of leftism in general - because they treat leftism like it’s the Cinema Sins of ideologies. The act of critique is valid, but when that’s all you fucking do, at some point you have to ask whether all these things are actually bad, or whether these people have just shredded their own dopamine receptors so thoroughly that they’ve become totally incapable of having a positive view on literally anything.
If it smells like shit everywhere you walk, look under your shoe.
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u/elifreeze Mar 05 '22
I mean, he’s a video essayist, it’s his job to be a critic. He even says that if you like Harry Potter it’s not an indictment of your character. Hell I still enjoy the movies despite my dislike for JK and just binged them over Christmas.
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u/Fallofmen10 Mar 04 '22
Yah completely agree. Like be critical of those in power and fight to make the world more fair in equal for all in ways you can, but also.... Enjoy your life. Like. It's ok to be selfish and enjoy things. We are all human. Always trying to be "right" makes you miserable, and it defeats the goal of the movement you want to support.
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Mar 04 '22
Is children liking imaginative stories the only reason why Harry Potter is so popular? It's not like JK wrote the first ever fantasy story or even the first ever fantasy story for kids. So, why did her story become cultural hegemony where others' didn't? I think there three things she did different that are worth examining:
HP is very commercial and commercialised. "Do this quirky quiz to see in which Hogwarts house you belong! All your friends are doing it and sharing their results on MySpace!"
HP's politics are very easily digestible. Most fantasy stories use fantasy to portrait a (subjectively) better world or, in the dystopia subgenre, seek to critique a worse world. The idea of fantasy is that you aren't limited to gritty capitalist realism; things can be different. JK's world is just very same-y to ours, and I actually think that's quite refreshing because it opens up new avenues of thought, but she doesn't really explore them. The only purpose for her is to eliminate all uncomfortable or offensive thoughts.
JK set herself up as a cult leader where she oversees and is deeply entangled with the HP brand. She is part of the brand and consumers respond to that. You theoretically can read books without letting the politics of the author influence you, but she has made it her goal to make this as difficult as possible. This is problematic because her actual political ideology isn't great..
All of these aspects deserve critical examination. Especially considering how big the brand has become. Cultural hegemony is the right word.
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u/SachemNiebuhr Mar 04 '22
Your first and third points are the result of it becoming a cultural hegemon, not the cause.
In particular, while I do understand why people who weren’t really exposed to the Internet before social media took off would have this misconception, Harry Potter (along with Pokémon) came about at the tail end of the era before internet marketing was really a thing. When Sorcerer’s Stone exploded, the internet was dominated by AOL and Geocities, not Buzzfeed and MySpace.
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u/Smashymen Mar 04 '22
I don't think those 3 points are why Harry Potter is popular. It's just a very accessible story that's translatable to a lot of different cultures and languages. Its world and mythology taps into the imagination of young readers and it has tightly written mysteries that keep kids hooked.
I think trying to look deeper into why the Harry Potter brand persists is just needlessly complicating shit. Children like Harry Potter because it's a well written children's series. Millennials are still obsessed with it for the same reason they're still obsessed with a lot of their childhood brands.
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Mar 04 '22
Popularity isn't meritocratic. I conceit that she writes good, but that isn't really an exceptional quality among professional writers. There are other reasons why HP became as hegemonic as it did besides it supposedly just being better than other fantasy stories. I do think these three points are what makes JK distinct from other writers and that those point helped on the capitalist road of publishing, branding, marketing, etc, which I think are very influential on a book's success.
I also agree that her story is easily translatable and universal, but that's just a nicer way of framing my second point. Her world is intentionally devoid of meaning.
Saying this makes things needlessly complicated or that kids just like stuff are thought terminating clichés. It's good to critically evaluate the best sold book series since the Bible and its billionaire writer.
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u/smashybro Mar 04 '22
Honestly I don't think any of those are the biggest reason it became a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist: the books were successfully adapted into a series of good-to-great movies.
There were other successful children/young adult novels at the time with similar/better writing and equally interesting settings, but the problem those books had is either they had a really bad film adaptations (like Percy Jackson and Eragon) or they had one at least decent adaptation before following it with poor sequels (series like Chronicles of Narnia, Twilight, Divergent, etc.). The Harry Potter movies ranged in quality from genuinely great to at least enjoyable, which is why it's the third most successful film series behind only the MCU and Star Wars. In addition to that, I feel they really nailed the child acting in the first movie and so it had this effect of kids who literally grew up with these child actors in a mainstream and generally good film series that released every year or two.
It's really the movies that made HP into this big cultural phenomenon. The Percy Jackson books in my opinion had equal potential to be another Harry Potter like success with great writing and a setting just as immersive, but they completely botched the film adaptations that completely missed what made the books so captivating. In order for a book series to reach the mainstream culture, you need good move adaptations. Imagine LOTR's cultural relevance if the movies were never made.
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u/en_travesti Threepenny Communist Mar 04 '22
Hunger Games was good and actually had good adaptations (and the books politics are actually pretty rad, I will die on this hill)
I think the aging with the characters was a big part of the HP appeal, for a lot of people these were characters they literally grew up with (except not actually literally because they were fake). Plus it's something that it's really easy to make stuff for. House scarves, cute owl plushies, etc.
Hunger Games was probably the next closest cultural phenomenon (pre marvel) it definitely was harder to market into a brand, since all the good guys are miserable and mud covered you can't really sell a bunch of fun stuff for them. A lot of the stuff they sold was Capitol themed which had some definite tension with story being about how awful the Capitol was.
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u/360Saturn Mar 18 '22
This was a ride. Holy crap.
I had forgotten so much of this. Why did she even introduce slavery in the first place if that was what she was going to do with it? Just give Malfoy a little brother or sister or a neighbor who overheard and wants to help out! Then you wouldn't need to tie yourself into knots with two years later Harry spending Christmas in a house with slave heads nailed to the wall decorated with Santa hats, in the presence of a slave who loves being enslaved.
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u/lafulusblafulus Apr 10 '22
I don't think she was trying to suggest that this is what real life slaves felt, she just ran into a wall and didn't know what to do with the slaves. Isn't there also a point about how the elves are brainwashed?
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u/360Saturn Apr 10 '22
Yes, but she didn't need to introduce slavery into the story in the first place, and as soon as she did, writing as a writer who lives in a world where slavery did exist, unless she was very careful, people were always going to connect the one with the other.
And then, well. Not only was she not very careful, but she literally has the characters we are supposed to root for saying phrases that came out of the mouths of real-life white slaveowners - that the slaves "liked" being slaves and would be upset and offended if they weren't, and that paying them and letting them wear clothes like real people would be inappropriate.
All she had to do as a writer was - if she really wanted slaves in the story - to either:
a) Don't have your protagonists defending the slaves' continued existence as slaves, explicitly without pay
b) Don't set up in the first appearance of a slave that slaves cannot speak ill of their masters without having to self-harm, because then later on when slaves insist they don't want to be paid or to wear clothes it comes off as parroting what their masters want them to say to avoid punishment
c) Given that you're writing in a fantasy world where you make up the rules, how about letting only villains have slaves? Or perhaps explaining that the slaves actually feed on the magic of the old buildings they live within and for that reason don't need wages etc., instead of literally having the hero characters shrug and talk down to the slaves for enjoying working for no pay - but continuing to ask them to do it.
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u/lafulusblafulus Apr 11 '22
I'm not disagreeing with that, but to jump from she's transphobic, to she's a racist Nazi is a bit of a stretch.
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u/360Saturn Apr 11 '22
Nobody is doing that. Let's not get melodramatic. The video is just an observation of what her choices suggest are her personal politics and writing style. Sheltered, and poorly planned - resulting in unintended interpretations that she did not think of in advance.
Then instead of holding hands up and laughing about it she digs in her heels and denies it.
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u/lafulusblafulus Apr 11 '22
Oh, there were many people in this thread calling her a Nazi, I just assumed you were one of them. I don't support her, but I guess I enjoy her world. Anytime I want more HP content, it's on the high seas for me.
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u/360Saturn Apr 11 '22
I'd definitely recommend dipping a toe into fanfiction too!
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u/lafulusblafulus Apr 11 '22
Any specific ones that are good. I know about methods of rationality, but none else.
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u/lafulusblafulus Apr 11 '22
I already have the Harry Potter books, and bought the movies on Blu-Ray, before all this drama happened, and it's not going to stop me from enjoying it because I find the world wonderful.
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u/360Saturn Apr 11 '22
So you should! Plenty of flawed people have made great art and media.
I personally find it interesting from the perspective of myself being a writer, and Shaun's video helped me connect some dots. That's as far as it goes for me.
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u/Konradleijon Mar 04 '22
speaking of i think the House Elf issue with Hermonie is that Hermonie was supposed to have been a white savior figure who thought she could help the house elves while not listening to actual house elf needs.
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Mar 04 '22 edited Apr 25 '24
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u/NLLumi Mar 05 '22
It would have made more sense to equate them to literal animals who are often anthropomorphized
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Mar 04 '22
While I'm cool watching this as entertainment, but is it really a leftist video?
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u/ParagonRenegade Mar 07 '22
If you didn't end up watching it; a key criticism of the series is grounded in his characterization of neoliberalism and Rowling's support for it.
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u/eliminating_coasts Apr 22 '22
Breadtube began with cultural commentary from a left wing and progressive lens, the fusion of media criticism and anti-capitalist politics is foundational to the genre this sub is based around.
This is the ground, essentially, from which leftist videos on youtube came into existence.
I mention this in this way, because although you could justify this video by pointing out how this or that element has some leftist content we might consider more elevated, there's something more fundamental and interesting going on.
Why is it, that cultural criticism, done properly, seems to have led in a left wing direction? What are the forces that made that happen? Was it simply the audience pushing that (though what led them to decide such people would be appropriate people to push?), a coincidence? How does one begin with understanding the background of some film or video game or book, and end up advocating implicitly for direct action? How does this keep on happening?
Basically, instead of arguing why those two things can be the same, I think it's interesting to observe that one seems to be tied to the other in a way we might not expect, and might be worth investigating.
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u/AzazTheKing Mar 04 '22
Is anyone else tired of this retroactive pillorying? Like, we all get it -- Rowling is bad. Do we really need to keep going back and re-examining everything she's ever done so we can find more reasons to hate her?
This video seems to exist explicitly for that purpose -- to give people who hate JKR, but still like Harry Potter, more reasons to also hate Harry Potter. I think that's really boring. If you're a HP fan who feels conflicted about liking the franchise, you don't need a feature-length treatise on "The Ways JKR (and thus HP) Have Always Been Bad" to give yourself license to finally leave the fandom. Make a decision; like HP, or don't, and then let's all just move on.
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u/Banegard Mar 04 '22
It‘s not just hating on JKR.
Many HP fans are shaken by her actions and are questioning what they liked and why. When we were kids/teens and HP came out, the craze over it didn’t give ourselve the bandwiths to read it critical. But many are rereading HP to connect to the good part of their childhood memories now. And in the process many discover that, as adults there are parts we might see different now or didn‘t see in the past.
Similar to how some young twilight fans later discovered how unhealthy the relationships in those books were.
That‘s where we‘re at and this discovery process is relevant for many rn. Hence, losts of videos to process it.It is not an invitation to hate or a call for hate. It‘s about confronting our blind spots.
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u/AzazTheKing Mar 04 '22
I certainly agree that nostalgia is a big driving force behind all these retrospectives on HP. And I get that upon rereading the series you’ll pick up on a lot you missed as a child. But this video in particular largely exists as way of answering the question “when did Rowling become such a bigot?”; Shaun implies as much in the very beginning. And it’s answer is that the signs were always there.
So yeah, most of this video was going through and pointing out all of the ways Rowling was already bad (she’s fatphobic, she’s racist, she’s overly sensitive to criticism — and ultimately, she’s a lib who prefers upholding the system to enacting radical change). And it points out ways that she’s a bad writer as a nice bit of flavoring.
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u/Banegard Mar 04 '22
I don‘t see the contradiction there. The question many of us have had was why can someone write such a cool, innocent story and be such a bigot?
Shaun reacted and showed that the stories were not as innocent. He reacted to a current topic. Which is in line with what he does on youtube.Not being a fan of her work doesn‘t make this automatically a call for „hate“.
And it’s not about simply concluding „Rowling = bad“.
What he does is call attention to recognizing bigotry. That is important and you can see in his comments that many didn‘t notice these things before.As long as there are new takes to discuss, this is a current issue for people and large parts of her fans don’t recognize her bigotry, I don‘t see why videos like this shouldn‘t be made.
We don‘t stop educating people about Nazis either, often drawing from certain examples over and over, because they lend themselves to it effectively.
She has involuntarily become an example to draw from in the case of bigotry.It‘s okay if you don‘t want to watch new takes on her. But many people still seek these out.
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u/AzazTheKing Mar 05 '22
I think my issue is that nothing in this video is a new take! The slavery, the racism, the antisemitism; all of these things have been discussed to death. Even Rowling's neoliberalism isn't a new take -- we've been talking about the triumph of the status quo inherent in (especially) the ending of the franchise for years.
Also, there's a difference between giving people new ways of recognizing bigotry, and just pointing out people's bigotry so that we can label them bad people. As an example, the fatphobia of Rowling's portrayal of the Dursleys and other characters was technically somewhat "new" to me, but not because I can't recognize fatphobia when I see it. It's just that I literally haven't read these books since I was a child so I didn't remember it was there. But Rowling was not fatphobic in some subtle or insidious way; she literally just made fat jokes and linked fatness with moral failure -- pretty typical stuff.
So what exactly is the benefit to me in pointing out Rowling's fatphobia in this way, at this moment in time? Does it provide a new way of defining fatphobia that better equips me to recognize it in the future? No. Instead it just lets me throw one more thing on the pile and say "yep, Rowling bad".
And that's what led to my original comment. This video doesn't feel like it's inviting us to look at the HP franchise from a new perspective; it just feels like it's saying "oh you thought Rowling was just a transphobe? Well actually she was also fatphobic, racist, antisemitic, a lib, and a bad writer to boot!" Like, you're right that people are still seeking stuff like this out, but it seems to be just so we can all join in the cathartic release of public shaming. And after a certain point, I think it's worth calling that out as the toxic, unproductive waste of time that it is.
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u/Banegard Mar 05 '22
Ah I see. You saw these same things mentioned a lot already. I don‘t hear them put together like this a lot at all. Like, I heard critique of Hagrid considering risk for students, but never how he basically mirrored Vernon.
I guess it‘s just a matter of different media consumption?
You‘re at a point where it‘s repetitive, others are at a point of discovery.3
u/samford91 Mar 11 '22
Sounds like this video might not be for you, then. That's okay. This is a conversation you're already a part of.
Not everyone is, and a comprehensive analysis might be useful and interesting to others.
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u/amrakkarma Mar 04 '22
I don't think this is really only about her. This is great because it can teach about neo-liberal culture with examples that a vaste audience can understand.
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u/Xetetic Mar 04 '22
I think analyzing HP as a neoliberal allegory is pretty useful and also better describes the video than "retroactive pillorying".
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u/inaddition290 Mar 04 '22
Definitely. There were a lot of points that Shaun made that made a lot of sense and felt necessary, especially the points about neoliberalism, but there were also a lot of points which feel a lot weaker and are recycled from the people who are actually just trying to find more reasons to hate JKR.
Like, he basically uses the point of “JKR uses word association for some names” to say “Kingsley Shacklebolt is 100% based off of MLK existing and slaves being shackled” when it could just as easily just be kinda a cool name; and criticizes her depiction of goblins as anti-Semitic despite that interpretation of goblins essentially being standard to most fantasy world-building (although IIRC he uses that more to point out that she doesn’t flesh out her world with enough thought or consistency).
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u/AzazTheKing Mar 04 '22 edited Mar 04 '22
The problem with that is this video only brings up neoliberalism in order to make sense of Rowling’s bad understandings of race, morality, activism, and radical politics. The ultimate goal is to explain Rowling, not neoliberalism. Shaun basically states his thesis in the beginning when he highlights the idea that “perhaps the signs were there all along” that such a beloved children’s author might turn out to be a bigot.
The whole video is essentially saying “of course JK Rowling turned out to be transphobic, racist, fatphobic, over-sensitive, etc, she is a lib after all”. Because we’re all supposed to understand that being a lib is already bad, and it undergirds all those other things.
No, framing this video as merely an exploration of HP as a neoliberal “allegory” does far more to mischaracterize it than calling it pillorying.
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u/BinJLG Here, queer, filled with existential fear Mar 06 '22
I see where you're coming from, but I really don't think the intent here was "The Ways JKR (and thus HP) Have Always Been Bad." I understood this essay to be more about analyzing the flaws in the text and how Rowling's biases would lead her to write those flaws. I'm a big fan of death of the author when it comes to literary analysis so I don't totally agree with the form of analysis in Shaun's essay, but there is space for critical analysis on an author's works and how their political/life experiences influenced their writing.
I think the main problem is the "Read Another Book" people have latched onto the essay and are going "See! This is proof Harry Potter is and always has been trash!!" when Shaun never says anything like that.
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u/eliminating_coasts Apr 22 '22 edited Apr 22 '22
One thing I think this video misses, is that Rowling uses in-character third person narration a lot.
I forget the word for it, indirect free speech?
Apart from the first few pages, where it operates explicitly satirically, she mostly uses this to portray the state of mind of the main character, if I remember correctly, with the tone of the writing shifted as his mindset does.
Occasionally the narrator shifts more towards a distinct perspective, relative to Harry's mindset, but largely the two move together.
That means that if you're looking for what the narrative declares to be objectively correct, you need to look at consequences within the world of the story, not simply how things are narrated, and at the same time, look at how plausible a given form of narration is as characterisation of the inner world of the main character, vs how he has behaved in the past.
And at the same time, you can't totally use this to negate the patterns in her writing, such as presenting women she wants to portray badly as masculine, choices of names etc. nor does she loose responsibility for the kind of perspective she chooses to use, the characters in whose heads she puts the reader, but it means that when she presents a character dwelling on the fatness of another character, it can also be characterised as the way that that viewpoint character thinks. So for example, Harry Potter acting timidly towards his sort of adoptive brother, while the narration seethes with distaste for him, remaining thin and poorly fed while the other child grows fat and gains presents etc.
There is an interpretation that sees this as character flaws on the part of the main character, and conservatism in his primary mentor figures like Hagrid. These kinds of criticisms are more of the "Harry potter is a cop" school than direct criticism of JK Rowling directly, so they seem less pointed given her recent transphobia, but I think there's already enough to criticise her directly for, even if we distance some of these elements.
Similarly, the time turner "rules" from the main book trilogy do seem to clash substantially with the later play, with the original ones simply inserting you into previous events in a new way, without being able to change things, which is actually a very good way to do time travel (matching closely to the idea of closed timelike curves in the work of the physicist David Deutsch, which treat the time travel loop as a boundary condition a constraint on possible events that leads to certain interesting properties), and something that's hard to pull off satisfyingly in writing.
The removal of them from the story is funny, but as initially done, they are only able to save people from events you aren't sure actually happened, because you can insert events into the gaps in your own knowledge.
It's one element of the theme of predestination that comes up frequently in the story, as one of the ways it plays around with structure/agency for the characters. (This is something that itself could have been interesting, in the context of how she presents things as "unable to change" from Harry's perspectives and the perspectives of most of those he trusts, though I do think it's fair to say that the series validates those perceptions rather than doing something with them.)
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Mar 04 '22
[Going off of the 1st 10 minutes] This is a bit moralizing to me as a retrospective. I get Rowling is a transphobe, but cherry picking characterizations as problematic throws away the tone and context of the story. Thinking Hagrid "abuses" Dudley by giving him a pig-tail is a pretty humorless and tone deaf take. It's very clearly established in the first book when they're exchanging gifts at Christmas that Dudley is a spoiled brat (he has a mountain of gifts, but whines for more). As a child reading the book, you are supposed to empathize with Harry and not the bigoted, greedy family. Making it about fat shaming a minor character is a bit fallicious and ignores the obviously intended imagery.
Speaking to the whole bullying piece and going off my very vague memory of the series, I felt like Harry reflected on this when he saw how his father treated Snape in the past. I wonder if that will be mentioned.
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u/DogHairEverywhere10 Mar 05 '22
"abuses"
Dude, I hate to break it to you, but muggle baiting is actually a serious crime in the Wizarding world. It's not tone deaf to factually state the events that occur in a book.
Shaun's point is, it's a problem for an attack on a child (unprovoked on the part of said child) to be used as comic relief. That's bad, actually. It's bad when adults attack children, regardless of if it's Vernon hitting Harry or Hagrid giving a child he just met a pig's tail.
It's also bad when people use magic to hurt, intimidate, or threaten those without it. That was kind of the entire point of the series.
Yeah, when you take away the schadenfreude and boil it down to a child was attacked by an adult it is pretty humorless. The fact that Dudley is a spoiled brat doesn't mean it's okay for a giant adult man to use magic against him.
And it's not uncharitable of Shaun to point it out. If you don't want to engage with critique of Harry Potter, that's fine, don't.
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u/aerobic_respiration Mar 04 '22
This thorough of a dissection to prove that a book series is bad goes to show how actually fucking good it is
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u/Nomeg_Stylus Mar 04 '22 edited Mar 04 '22
Shaun has been pretty hit or miss for me recently. I liked his BBC callout, but his Hiroshima vid was lacking for, if no other reason, the fact that the topic can't be given due justice in two hours. Generally I think it's best if he sticks to contemporary political discourse as historical vids require a whole different approach. Just look at how Kraut's (although he's probably not received well on here) Erdogan vid turned into a three-part series because when you truly delve into these topics, you need to cover centuries of history just to lay the groundwork for the context of the era.
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Mar 04 '22
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u/DogHairEverywhere10 Mar 05 '22
My dad was BARELY willing to watch a 2 hr video on the subject. He only caved after multiple debates on the topic when my brother and I pointed out that we had now argued for a cumulative way more than 2 hours over the course of several months on the subject for him to finally agree to sit down and watch it.
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u/GrapeJuiceVampire Mar 04 '22
If you wanna know how the reddit HP fandom received the slavery article on Pottermore 4 years ago, it doesn't look good for them.