• birdcat@lemmy.ml
    ·
    8 months ago

    ... 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.

    • nabana [they/them]
      ·
      8 months ago

      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...

      • Moss [they/them]
        ·
        8 months ago

        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.

          • Moss [they/them]
            ·
            8 months ago

            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

            • Florn [they/them]
              ·
              8 months ago

              I started a few days ago, currently on episode 15