A few weeks ago I wrote an article detailing my gripes about Harry Potter.
I’ve had time to reflect and add more.
Once again, this list is neither meant to be comprehensive nor an indictment of the franchise entire.
1. It has....unfortunate implications regarding class.
It's not just that the house elves are slaves. They're slaves with limited vocabularies and intellects, as if Rowling is making a statement about the lower class. Yeah, we're supposed to feel sympathy for Dobby (though I personally found him annoying as hell). But he's still written as a one-note sub-character, not given the insight or agency of a proper person. There are other humanoid but clearly-supposed-to-be-inferior groups. The goblins are like humans/wizards, but ugly and servile! They're just like us! BUT UGLY! LOL! And the tragedy of the squib is barely explored. Or Petunia, who wants to be a witch, but isn't, so ha ha ha she marries a gross, exaggerated dick of a stupid and unattractive man. Then she becomes a monster herself and has a generally mediocre life, which serves her right for not being Special, Special Lily! Further proof that Rowling believes some people are inherently inferior abounds.
Hufflepuff kids are "unafraid of toil?" Um...That sounds to me like some Divine Right of Kings/Downton Abbey/caste system rhetoric. The servants live to serve! They're happy to serve! Of course they are! They don't have dreams outside of servitude and labor! Yeah yeah, there's more to being a Hufflepuff than that: They're supposedly the people who value loyalty above all else. But it seems that half of Hufflepuff's ethos is "I don't mind being a pawn, doing the grunt work, or TOILING!" Not everyone gets to live a life of glamor, OK. Someone has to do the (relatively in the case of wizards) dirty jobs. The point is that they have to; it doesn't mean that their soul flourishes under such a condition. It doesn't mean that that's "who they are" on a fundamental, unchanging level. Again, that reveals some unfortunate implications and bias on Rowling's part. The idea that an eleven-year-old is "unafraid of toil" is condescending in the extreme. Once again, it's a contemptuous concept of the lower classes, the idea that they're happy in their place and exactly where they SHOULD be. You wouldn't go up to a janitor and say "This is exactly what the universe has in store for you, you are precisely where you're supposed to be, and you must be so happy!" There's nothing wrong with being a janitor. Plenty of janitors must enjoy their jobs, or certain aspects of it. But no janitor literally adores cleaning up garbage and rat shit. The idea that the majority of servants have no ambition or dreams besides serving you is some creepy Calvinist bull shit.
Hagrid is working class and therefore childlike. While not depicted as stupid, he has an innocent naïveté and literal-mindedness in contrast to the more subtle, sophisticated characters. His linguistic patterns won’t let you forget his humble origin. It's all very adorable and vomit-inducing, the narrative condescension toward the "gentle giant." He's friendly, pure and lovable. And not a real person. Plus his giant-brother's mental handicap is treated with the subtlety and delicacy of a giant's footstep.
This is one of many examples of when....
2. The narrative is cruel to certain characters for no real reason.
OMG Lavender Brown is such a loser!!! Like how dare she not be a member of the core group, but be attracted to someone who is? She's not Hermione so therefore she sucks. Yet another incident that proves the world revolves around Harry and his immediate circle. Everyone else is just a plot prop.
Speaking of narrative unimportance…
3. The Lackluster Depiction of Ethnicity, Nationality and Race
There’s this incredibly condescending attitude toward the French. No French woman would pronounce Dumbledore "Dumblydore" unless she had a speech impediment. And Viktor is Hermione’s Eastern European Sex Idiot. (Well, Make-Out Idiot, at least).
There are non-white characters. Technically. And they have distinct characteristics besides "not white" or maybe "somewhat cool." Sure they do, yup, that's the ticket. Dean Thomas is totally given as much narrative importance as the white characters. Sure he is. Cho Chang shouldn't be called Cloying Character, or Cardboard Cutout. Of course not, she has plenty of depth!
Speaking of blandness…
4. God Ginny is boring.
Oh no she’s not, she's FEISTY. She's PLUCKY. She's SPUNKY. She'sZZZZZZZ. I just fell asleep describing her. She and Harry have even less chemistry than her brother has with Hermione. Now, I'm not a Hermione-Harry shipper; I thought one of the series' strongest most un-cliched elements was how it avoided that triangle. But that alone doesn’t make Ginny interesting, or get me to care about her relationship with Harry.
Also…
5. No Hogwarts house exalts art.
In my other article I wrote about how weird it is that a fourth of the students are TEH EVIL. And Hufflepuffs are the hard-working suckers. Ravenclaws are basically the "almost as good as Gryffindor because at least they're smart or whatever" house. Fine, fine. WHERE. ARE. THE ARTISTS? How is art encouraged in this supposedly great school? As I said, Muggle art seems to be irrelevant to the wizarding world. Then they should at least be constantly making their own! Where's the artist archetype? Is it just fulfilled by Luna?
But worst of all…
6. The Wizarding World, on a good day, has many horrific elements that are seen as acceptable.
There's so much built into their polite society that's just fucked up. Screamers are public bullying and shaming and should by all rights be outlawed. The forgetting "spell" is morally disgusting. The fact that mind erasure exists at all, for any reason is non-consensual and has some seriously upsetting parallels to sexual violence and abuse. Not to mention the existence, and use, of Dementors. We're OK with torture—literal soul torture—but only if the person is, like, really bad! Teehee! Cruel and unusual punishment, what's that? There are other sadistic spells/potions as well, too many to list. There should be a wizard equivalent of a human rights watch monitoring what forms of magic violate basic decency.
But of course, that would be government doing its job, which almost never seems to happen. So many wizards work for the incredibly corrupt and inefficient ministry, which seems to alternate between a fascist and a communist dystopia, with plenty of bureaucracy at the expense of justice. They're freaking WIZARDS; they can't figure out Harry didn't break the rules? No, they just expel him until Dumbledore intervenes on his behalf. Um, lame. Considering the world's lack of privacy would make Orwell barf, the one time you'd want them to be all up in your business, they're what, having wizard tea? IS IT ANY WONDER THAT VOLDEMORT IS ABLE TO RISE TO POWER IN THIS SHITTY WORLD? I mean, really.
Also, the 19th century was the best! Yes, owls are definitely more effective than text messages. Screw technology.
