What Does Harry Potter Mean Now? [54:57-60:00]

And for whatever reason, chose not to. You could have done it. You would have had to fight your senses and all that, but you could have done it and you should have done it. I also can't help noticing when she talks about this. She often words it like, I always thought of Dumbledore as gay, but I always saw Dumbledore as going. As if her interpretation is just one of many. For an author who is normally quite word of god about her books, it's interesting she's less committed about this. I like leaving it open. But while I think that's pretty cowardly, and especially cowardly to keep doing it in the Fantastic Beasts films, the legitimate criticism here is that she didn't do as much for gay representation as she could have, not that she only did it for the attention. It doesn't benefit us to vilify Joanne as more monstrous than she actually is. For one, it makes our arguments less credible, but for two, bigotry is not monstrous. It's mundane. Joanne is in an exceptional position, but she's not an exceptional person. She's ordinary. Ordinary people do bigotry every day. When we view bigotry as the behavior of inhuman villains, it makes it harder to recognize bigotry in our ordinary lives. Nevertheless, I understand the impulse to assume the worst of Joanne. She does keep on disappointing us. Maybe tomorrow she'll tweet something unquestionably homophobic or antisemitic, and I'll regret giving her the benefit of the doubt here. But even then, what's in the text? Is what's in the text? Potter was completed more than a decade before Joanne's polyjuice potion wore off. The thing which prompted the reinterpretation is entirely external to the books. If Joanne had done the sensible thing and kept her opinions to herself, would we still be having this conversation? In Rory's blog post, he describes how a decade ago, his interpretation of Potter was regarded as dismissive or shallow, whereas now he's accused of being a Potter apologist, even though his interpretation hasn't changed. He says it's a mistake to interpret Potter as a sophisticated social commentary. Sure, it's a moral parable and it deals with some heavy ideas, but Rory argues it's also deeply unserious. A sport played on broomsticks, textbooks that bite, staircases which like to move, platform nine and three quarters, the wizarding world is whimsical. The dursleys are not just opposed to magic, they're opposed to fun and nonsense, whereas Dumbledore, the voice of wisdom in this story, delights in nonsense. Silliness is a virtue in Potter, so there's a level of irony there which Rory argues both the reinterpretation and hardcore fans overlook. I also just think Potter suffers sometimes for being a political fantasy. Like I've seen people sincerely criticise the wizard's judicial system as if Joanne is genuinely advocating for magic alcatraz guarded by depression monsters. Just because flawed systems are depicted doesn't necessarily mean they are endorsed. Yes, Potter's irony is often used thoughtlessly, satirising things in a way which is reductive or harmful, like the fat phobia, the stereotypical names and the clumsy allegories. And that should be criticised. But Rory argues it's an illegitimate criticism to dismiss Potter out of hand as immoral trash because it's not meant to be taken quite so seriously as it often is. I'd say Rory may be giving the books a bit too much credit. For instance, he describes how cells as a plotline about liberating and enslaved populace, which, no it isn't, they literally weren't liberated. Though he aptly criticises overlooking the actual text to demonise Joanne, it's just as possible to overlook the text in order to preserve an overly generous interpretation that you prefer. Nevertheless, I do think Rory is correct that the reinterpretation is overlooking something. By analysing Potter through the lens of Joanne, we're kind of working from the conclusion backwards. If we didn't know about Joanne, would we still come to the same conclusion? It is true that there are many contradictions in Potter's messaging which probably should have gotten more notice at the time. But my honest answer to the question should we have known is we kind of did know. Okay, we didn't make the connection to bigotry. Obviously, we didn't know about Joanne. But the criticisms the reinterpretation makes have been knocking around for a while. Matt Zatelin wrote about the Goblins and Anti-Semitism in 2007. Simon Walters lambasted the fat phobia in 2006. And plot twist, a lot of the essays I quoted about