Thoughts on Harry Potter and JKR
Dec. 22nd, 2018 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuranaI’ve been re-listening to the Harry Potter audio books. For one they always feel christmassy to me and they are also one of my happy places I go to when real life sucks. And the thing is, I still really like Harry Potter. I know it has flaws. It’s far from perfect as far as things like representation are concerned, it suffers from all the biases you expect from a work written by a middle class English woman. But they (especially the early books) are also really well written children’s fantasy novels. They are imaginative, funny, exciting, sometimes scary, sweet books.
But with recent discourse around JKR that seems to get lost. It seems that a lot of people have decided that since Rowing has turned out to have some very problematic opinions, that means Harry Potter was never good in the first place. These books have become so popular that they have to be either absolutely perfect or are complete garbage, probably responsible for the miserable state of society these days.
I get that Rowling has been a disappointment with her constant meaningless gestures toward progressivism and the new movies are just bad. But on a human level I kind of understand JKR. I mean, it’s unlikely that she will ever do anything that is as important or popular as the Harry Potter books. I can understand that she can’t let go of that. That she might want to keep going and continue exciting fans with constant new information. Basically what I’m saying is, I imagine that writing Harry Potter is a hard high to come down from.
That doesn’t mean anyone has to like the new movies or JKR twitter (I’m personally avoiding both), just that I wish people were a little more forgiving sometimes. Just to make clear, this is not me feeling bad for JKR. She is one of the richest writers on the planet. She going to be fine no matter what people say about her. It’s more about a general tone of discussion that makes people feel bad for liking a thing and that I have grown tired of lately. I could go on into a whole rant about the obsession with certain parts of progressivism on the internet to condemn everything that does not adhere to their standard of purity as terrible, but that’s a topic for another time.
tl;dr: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
But with recent discourse around JKR that seems to get lost. It seems that a lot of people have decided that since Rowing has turned out to have some very problematic opinions, that means Harry Potter was never good in the first place. These books have become so popular that they have to be either absolutely perfect or are complete garbage, probably responsible for the miserable state of society these days.
I get that Rowling has been a disappointment with her constant meaningless gestures toward progressivism and the new movies are just bad. But on a human level I kind of understand JKR. I mean, it’s unlikely that she will ever do anything that is as important or popular as the Harry Potter books. I can understand that she can’t let go of that. That she might want to keep going and continue exciting fans with constant new information. Basically what I’m saying is, I imagine that writing Harry Potter is a hard high to come down from.
That doesn’t mean anyone has to like the new movies or JKR twitter (I’m personally avoiding both), just that I wish people were a little more forgiving sometimes. Just to make clear, this is not me feeling bad for JKR. She is one of the richest writers on the planet. She going to be fine no matter what people say about her. It’s more about a general tone of discussion that makes people feel bad for liking a thing and that I have grown tired of lately. I could go on into a whole rant about the obsession with certain parts of progressivism on the internet to condemn everything that does not adhere to their standard of purity as terrible, but that’s a topic for another time.
tl;dr: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
no subject
Date: 2018-12-23 04:13 pm (UTC)Harry Potter was never perfect, movies or books, which doesn't make it trash. It wasn't perfect from modern standards of inclusion, nor is it perfect from a literary standpoint.
And the fact that her new work might be... low level (I really don't want to sound mean), shouldn't affect the quality, value of her previous work, IMO.
I also agree, from a human point of view, seeing why she's so desperate to stay relevant (and at this point so far from "normal" people that she comes off as someone we can't relate to) is very easy and understandable.
On a more positive note, her new and more outrageous "revelations" are a great topic to discuss with people, so, at least they are not boring...