r/EnoughJKRowling

This is just something that occurred to me reading u/Dina-M's breakdown of the different houses, because it made me think, don't the four houses of Hogwarts kind of align with the four nations of the British Isles? Because if so, the fact that Gryffindor is practically the only house worth anything while the others are either useless or evil, is well... very fucking yikes

Like I don't know if I'm reaching here, but

• England: Gryffindor. I mean the lion, gold and red is basically the English coat of arms.
• Scotland: Rowena Ravenclaw, a Scottish witch, house colours blue, the intelligent house. Possibly a connection to the history associated with the university of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment?
• Wales: Helga Hufflepuff was Welsh. ''Loyal'' and the least problematic house. Wales was pretty much subjugated under the English crown after the 15th century, compared to Ireland and Scotland who maintained independence and rebelled for many centuries after.
• Ireland: According to the Ilvermorny lore, Salazar Slytherin's descendants were based in Ireland. Colours green. One of Ireland's patron saints St. Patrick is also associated with snakes, although it has to do with banishing them.

I think what's reaaaally interesting here is that the only sovereign nation, Ireland, seems to be represented by the least integrated and most maligned and backward house, the one who is the threat to the entire establishment. If you consider the plot of the final books as a WW2 allegory, all of the Slytherins running away from battle could be similar to how people blame Ireland for their neutrality during WW2. (Voldemort's initial reign of terror in the 70s also has some parallels to the IRA bombings.)

We know how she feels about Scottish independence (the thought if it sends her into a frothing rage) and she purposely wrote the wizarding world as if Irish independence never happened, with the Irish Quidditch team being represented by the British prime minister.

We're also expected to believe that Hogwarts is the default school for the entire British Isles, except it isn't shown as a collaborative project between the different nations; the entire teaching staff is English. So I guess all the Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish etc. speaking kids were just expected to abandon their languages to assimilate into Anglo wizarding culture (and we'll just conveniently ignore the brutal methods that made this happen in real life).

Thoughts?

We all know the four houses and their meanings. Officially Gryffindor is for those who value bravery, Slytherin for those who value ambition, Ravenclaw for those who value wisdom, and Hufflepuff for those who value loyalty. On the surface this doesn’t seem too bad, but when you think about it (and how it’s implemented in the series) it really falls apart.

There’s a reason I said “officially,” because fundamentally the houses work like this: main characters are in Gryffindor, the main characters’ helpful friends are in Ravenclaw, the bad guys are in Slytherin, and everyone else is in Hufflepuff. The series tries hard to say that Slytherin is not inherently evil, but it does a lot more telling than showing on that subject.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that so much of engagement with the series involves the houses. I should know, I’ve been there. I’ve taken the official quizzes multiple times, and I’ve gotten different results. Luckily I’ve never gotten slytherin, but I feel bad for kids who did, as it essentially means that by the series’s logic they’re evil (despite its attempts to say otherwise).

Still, it can be fun to play pretend, and I have to admit that it’s a clever marketing gimmick, but I feel like the fanbase takes it a bit too seriously.

It really screams both colorblindness and major “Pick Me” vibes from people who like that from Harry Potter.

And also with what I said above, imagine wizards harassing an interracial couple trying to claim they’re not discriminating by race, that “it’s just a coincidence the non-white partner has no magic.”

I am always and forever trying to educate folks on this matter and it has been honestly years since I have gotten a convert, which is to say - a guy I work with is recently fully 100% on board with her being a TERF and anti-feminist to the point where he is now trying to educate skeptics in his friend group. We LOVE to see it. He asked me for some recommendation of articles, podcasts, YouTube videos and as I haven’t been engaging in this content directly for a while I don’t have anything recent or super robust outlining why she is actually so bad for women as a whole and not just trans women. It’s obvious to me but I’d love to be able to just hit send on a link where someone much more articulate and informed than I has already made the case.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

There's been a lot of talk about how the upcoming TV series will immediately enter a minefield as soon as it gets to Book 4 / Season 4 and has to address the SPEW storyline head-on. But there's something else in that same book that I think is going to land much differently in the post-Epstein-Files era (and no, I'm not talking about Krum's attempt to seduce Hermione back to Bulgaria, but it is impressive how much problematic stuff JKR could fit in one book).

The scene in question is the one in which Moaning Myrtle peeps on Harry in the bathtub while he tries to solve the dragon's egg clue to learn the next task. (Conveniently enough, it just so happens that the next task revolves around teenagers wearing swimsuits.... Rowling really wanted to make sure that we saw Harry half-dressed and undressed throughout this book, didn't she?) Not only does Myrtle come off as creepy and predatory in the scene, she also implies that she did the same thing to Cedric off-page "until the bubbles were almost gone".

Now imagine how much different this is going to look in the modern day, even for an audience who already knows this scene and isn't aware of all of Rowling's obsessions (bathrooms, genitals, men in women's spaces but who cares if women barge into men's spaces) or the fact that she ended up on Epstein's contact list (granted, we do still need some more context for that one before we go so far as to claim she was one of his clients).

The scene is so central to the overall story that it's almost impossible to remove, unless the writers find another way for Harry to immerse the egg in water and discover its secret. Myrtle could, in theory, be removed from the scene entirely and Harry could solve the egg clue on his own through a sudden hunch, but it may just end up looking even creepier for the camera to be lingering on a naked teen boy alone in the bath.

Side note to the mods: just a suggestion that, based on how much it's been discussed here lately, we may want to add a new "CW: PEDOPHILIA" flair to accompany the ones for homophobia and transphobia. Depending on what we find out in the future, it may come in extremely handy later....

https://preview.redd.it/358bzu95x62h1.png?width=765&format=png&auto=webp&s=eedb7442b465c2a2087e8e080478d981f7a84b7d

I'm tired of these ads, but this one is among the worst. I zoomed in, and the pins don't look that great. I went to the website that sells them, and it's full of really tacky HP merch. And I'm not just saying it's tacky because it's HP, a lot of it is gaudy.

HBO’s #HarryPotter series is recasting Ginny Weasley in Season 2 after child actor Gracie Cochrane exited the role due to “unforeseen circumstances”:

The second season is currently in production at Leavesden Studios outside London.

I’m sure you all heard the anecdote about the publishers advising Rowling to drop ‘Joanne’ and coin a pen name with her initials for the first ‘Harry Potter’ book – based on whatever data they had to suggest young male readers would be less inclined to pick up a book that was written by a female author. Apparently, it worked: Rowling’s very first fan letter was from a reader named Francesca Gray – and it was addressed to "Dear Sir"!

This move, of course, was just a ploy from the publishers to give the book an early traction: it wouldn’t make any difference if Joanne “came out” as a woman to the audience after the base was built. The dream was always to parade her face everywhere in signing events and press tours if the book indeed became a hit. And that happened as soon as Philosopher’s Stone began to do well in the UK, which led the US rights being sold by a large sum: the next day, Rowling was all over the press, and the narrative around her was that of a woman who was also a struggling single mother that put everything she had behind this one idea.

But then, after the Harry Potter series was finished and Rowling’s follow-up novel (“The Casual Vacancy”) was met with lukewarm reviews, Rowling once again reinvents herself under a new pan name – this time, not with ‘gender-neutral’ initials, but under an UNMISTAKENLY masculine name, Robert Galbraith, which came with the fake backstory of “a former military man and first-time novelist” that was pushed by the publishers. That was another ploy.

Rowling supposedly wanted to see how her work would be received without the burden of her celebrity, which is fair. But the publishers of course knew that was the work of the famous JK Rowling, just as they knew the cat would soon be out of the bag. Ironically, the effort to “build” Robert Galbraith also invalidates the ‘integrity’ of the initial reception: the team pushed this book to early reviewers because they knew who was behind it, and the reviewers who went in ‘blind’ were judging it as a debut and not as the product of a well-connected figure in the publishing industry and already skilled in the ‘best-seller’ formula.

Yet I wonder WHY would Rowling pick a male identity for a book that’s essentially a crime novel, a genre built by the likes of Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. Unlike her gender neutral ‘J.K. Rowling’ pen name, which seemed like a good strategy for an unknown children’s author (young boys might think ‘it’s for girls’, because that's how kids are sometimes), I doubt the adult target audience of her whodunit would not give the book a chance if the name on the cover was ‘Eliza Galbraith’ instead of ‘Robert Galbraith’.

That can only mean that the marketing team and Rowling herself decided that a male author – one that comes with the fake backstory – would work better for the initial press coverage: a more prestigious, intriguing reading, coming from someone who had a way more interesting military career than a 'woman could possibly have' in this context. Going with 'Robert Galbraith’ after she was set for life is the sort of stuff I can only picture Joanne doing if she fundamentally believes that presenting herself as a woman puts her in a disadvantage - until it works in her favor.

Let's recap: assuming that the 'J.K. Rowling' pen name got more kids to read the first book - and the first letter she ever got was addressed to 'Dear Sir' -, her existence as a woman only became an asset when her personal story was picked up by the media. And if the 'Robert Galbraith' alias drew attention to her other novel, it was once again her (now famous) public figure being paraded in the media that pushed the book to the best-seller list.

It's not surprising that her view on gender identity is that of a fictional facade for one to hide behind - usually because they are after attention, personal gain, or 'an easier path in life' (can you even???) until they reconnect with their "true selves". In fact, she is just coming from her own experience, because that's what she has done in her own career.

Just seen that the latest episode of family guy beheaded jk rowling, for the reason "you know why", dont k ow the full context and dont care, that was funny snd makes me want to watch thr episode

This aspect is one of many that people have been reevaluating about the Harry Potter series, but I wonder just how far it extends to her worldview in real life. Do you think she would actually want to own slaves if she was allowed to? Or is the house elf plot more of just a bad thought out subplot without realizing its implications, or do you think she genuinely believes that some races are predisposed towards slavery?

We moved recently, and as I was reorganising my books, I came across my old HP copies. Curiously, I looked into them and was appaled: Even though I had written in my PhD Thesis about HP (and its neoliberal content), I had forgotten how bad it was written (translated, German is my First language).

So, I tried to remember why I liked the series in the first place - because as a kid in the early 2000s,I pretty much was a Potterhead. And what should I say, I have no Idea. It was not for lack of taste - I read a lot and many German authors for young readers (perhaps unknown to English speakers) who are known for their style, I read the classics from Lovecraft to Tolkien, from Verne to Herbert...but nonetheless this uninspired scam of a book series caught me. I still Wonder why and thought asking here for your experiences might refresh my memory...

If you don’t know vlogbrothers is a YouTube channel run by Hank and John Green (the latter of which is the author of books like Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars) they started their channel back in 2007 and really embraced nerd culture. They were big into Harry Potter in its heyday and had a lot of videos about it (Hank in particular had a few songs about it, with a lot of comments saying that they haven’t aged well) so I’m curious if either of them have said anything about the person JK Rowling has revealed herself to be in recent years.

A while back, I had made a post on this subreddit in regards to Rowling and her support to Johnny Depp. For one comment I came across, while it was a general (and rightful) calling out of Depp, the comment brought up about Tim Burton and his racism. It had reminded me of critique of him I had heard and even had myself of (especially) his later filmography, but when looking back at it all, and how it relates to "outsiders/outcasts" and pseudo-progressiveness, it made me think about how it ties to Rowling and her whole fake persona of being progressive.

And when looking at the subtle stuff of HP with reinforcing the status quo and bigotry, it made me realize that Burton definitely would've been a good fit to adapt HP into film, not in terms of something good, but reinforcing all that is bad. Okay hear me out for a moment:

With ESPECIALLY the remakes/adaptations by Tim Burton (in particular Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), I notice this repeated pattern where he will mostly just follow storybeats almost 1:1, mostly ignoring any deeper context just for his own shallow aesthetics (though in the latter, he removes any character of Charlie and forces a whole thing about Wonka on us). With Harry Potter, I could definitely see him following ALL the storybeats, or as much as possible, while blindly ignoring all the implications. We'd get stuff like SPEW in his films. Or hell, look at his adaptation of Ms. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, where he erases all the symbolism and themes in regards to WW2 and the Holocaust.

And with all that in mind, with Harry Potter and the Wizarding World a major thing I notice is the whole allegorical stuff of bigotry or (fake) progressive stuff, which would really blend with Burton. Aside from his infamous "black people don't fit my aesthetic" rant, in a lot of his films we really also see with how he likes the idea of an outsider, but it's usually not someone actually marginalized (nonwhite people, queerfolk, etc.). With how HP pretends to be progressive, and the whole aspect with an outsider having power but using it to reinforce the status quo, it would definitely suit Tim Burton. And also with all the racist implications and later with changing race of characters for personal agendas, it would also go quite well with Burton's colorblindness.

And for some two last things to bring up: You know how recently there's this weird aggressive defending of Burton's Chocolate Factory adaptation, and particularly Depp's depiction of Wonka? Well imagine that chaos with the insanity of HP fans because "it follows the book really close". Or, imagine all the open misogyny and apologia we'd get from audiences and fans from a Snape played by Johnny Depp...

I remember as a kid I thought that her actually writing it as a book was a cool idea, and since it’s so short it makes sense that it’s discussed as much as the main series, but there’s a few things I want to say about it.

The Warlock's Hairy Heart is probably the most problematic story in the book, as it seems to imply that the titular character became evil because he chose not to fall in love with anyone.

The second problematic bit is a much smaller passage, and that’s when Dumbledore says in the commentary that only men have sought the elder wand, and to make of that fact what you will.

Do you have anything else to say about this book or any of the supplemental material?