better not ask J.K.Rowling how many ex-Schutzstaffels were given high ranked positions in Hogwarts and in the Deutsches Ministerium für Magie late 1945.
All the Jewish characters in the Potter universe are named Goldstein because they all come from the same family
... and the name of the only chinese character is "Cho Chang". i honestly dont give a shit about anything rowling ever said or didnt said about trans stuff, but calling harry potter "good writing" or "not racist" ... idk if i should laugh or cry.
But Cho Chang was super smart and a ravenclaw and focused on her studies! Just like a good model minority! You've also got the totally not problematic Seamus Finnigan who constantly explodes things... The banking... goblins... The totally happy slave elves... Uhm... You know... and some other stuff...
I've been listening to the shrieking shack podcast, which is a leftist reread of Harry Potter, and holy shit the amount of awful stuff that goes under the radar. Like the centaurs are a sentient tribe leg by a dark skinned, dark hair centaur, and they're basically barbarians, and in book five they "carry Umbridge off into the woods" (invoking SA imagery). The only centaur who likes humans is the blonde white one.
Giants are also sentient, and Hagrid basically kidnaps the one that is his half-brother and forces it to learn English in a very "civilising the savages" kinda way.
There's an unintentional sexist undertone to everything, where pretty girls are vapid and stupid and ugly girls are also stupid, and the only good girls are the plain ones like Hermione.
There's a race of harpy people who are supposed to be really sexy, and in one scene Fleur (who is part harpy) implies that her 11 year old cousin might seduce the 17 year old Harry, and that would just be okay?
The books also really hate fat people and ugly people, saying someone is fat and ugly and short in the Harry Potter books is the main indicator that they're evil.
Also Dumbledore owned slaves and Harry owns a slave and slavery abolition is treated as a joke.
JK Rowling is like one of the worst people who could have possibly seen her level of success.
Yeah they're a pretty great podcast. I'm listening to their backlog on Harry Potter stuff so it's not super recent but god it's nice to listen to a couple of sensible Marxists talk about culture instead of liberals
The absolute scene of a black character being ridiculed by her friends and everyone else for trying to end literal chattel slavery
But you see, she's british black so she shouldn't care for all that imported American woke nonsense.
I've heard very similar takes from Europeans
Britain, famous for never having had black slaves ever lol
The terf monster probably wanted to name her ch*** ch*** if she really wanted to.
JKKK Rowling gets completely Rostad
It's not theory if Gringotts has a large Star of David on the floor...
Show
That has more to do with the bank they filmed at than anything. Still a hilariously unfortunate coincidence.
Yeah but it goes to show that nobody cared enough that there was a Star of David in the Goblin bank. They CGI'd an entire school for that film, but couldn't digitally replace a star on the floor in editing? Sus.
TBH the movies were busy cutting out all of the times Harry and co were bullies to other characters, so they might have missed how bad this looked.
According to Rowling there is exactly one Jewish student
Named Anthony Goldstein
Yup, distant relative of two of the supporting characters from Fantastic Beasts. So despite one living in the UK and two living in the US, same family.
I really wish this to be true, getting divorced over Harry Potter is the most millennial shit I've ever heard.
Given the practice of Jewish mysticism and tales of golems and the like, it wouldn't be hard for a good writer to incorporate Jewish magic schools and students into such a setting. Barbara Hambly did an interesting take on the subject, but she never finished that series. FYI: if you read the Suncross books, some language and tropes have not aged well. Still, it was made with love.
The Sun-Cross series is the one where a wizard has to escape the Nazis who reverse-isekaied him into our world, right? Was there jewish mysticism in the book? Haven't read it myself but I literally just read a critic describing it as an interesting experiment with/subversion of the portal-quest fantasy subgenre (instead of being directly told about the true nature of the world by reliable wise sage figures (eg. Gandalf, Aslan), the protagonist has to actively question and interpret the world around him to find out the truth (ie. the holocaust)).
That is the book, yes. There's a Jewish wizard in the second book. He's honestly delightful, even if he's at points a bit of a trope.
