I had not intended to do a series on atheism, yet here we are. This time, an example of “everything is political” AKA “I saw you having unauthorized fun there!”
There is no good way to introduce ‘Harry Potter’ to the next generation
h ttps://www.insider.com/should-harry-potter-still-be-popular-for-the-next-generation-2021-11
By Pam Segall for Business Insider, aka the voice of Bobby Hill on King Of the Hill show, 14 November 2021
The original headline suggested by the URL… “SHOULD Harry Potter still be popular for the next generation?”… is intriguing. When I post an article and then change the title, it doesn’t change the URL. I assume that’s how it works for insider.com, too. The truth must have hit too close to the Commissariat.
While the Harry Potter series is reasonably panned by literary critics, Rowling accomplished what nobody else had in a century of Prog-ress: she made kids want to read again. God only knows when the general public will return to loving books enough to trample old ladies at a midnight release party. Good times.
Anyway.
“Harry Potter” needs no introduction. It was a once-in-a-generation phenomenon.
As the millennial Potterheads grew up, the books provided an idealist escape to the less complicated world of childhood. The Wizarding World became a safe place where magic was real and bravery, brains, and friendship always won.
…against child-abusing tyrannical government freakjobs that made psychopathic undead murderers look like good neighbors. Oh, what WAS Rowling’s secret for popularity with kids forced to attend public schools?
For early and late adopters alike, it seemed like a given that such a treasured series would be passed lovingly along to the next generation. But as often happens as we age, the real world began to seep in.
In 2020…
Nineteen years after the first movie was released…
…in a now-infamous series of tweets and a subsequent essay, the controversial “Harry Potter” author issued a spate of contentious statements about biological sex and gender. Rowling’s opinions led many to label her a trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
A TERF is generally characterized as a person who says they’re a feminist while espousing trans-exclusionary views. Common examples include saying that trans women aren’t women, barring trans women from women’s spaces, and conflating sex with gender.
These comments weren’t her first foray into transphobia. In addition to liking a couple of offensive tweets in 2018, she also tweeted in 2019 in support of a British woman who was fired over making transphobic comments.
Future generations of kids will not be able to enjoy the Harry Potter series because JK Rowling once tweeted support for a transphobe? Welcome to Cancel Culture.
Your work quality doesn’t matter.
Your integrity doesn’t matter.
Your rights to life and liberty don’t matter.
Even if you’re Atlas holding the entire world on your shoulders and taking you out would doom all humanity… doesn’t matter.
History must not remember that Narrative Violator JK Rowling ever made anything good or fun! Harry Potter was a BLM activist and single mother! The transhumanist who founded the Hogwarts Truth And Reconciliation Committee! Who outed Dumbledore as a heterosexual!
Then, amid the backlash of her 2020 tweets and essay, the author published a poorly received book under her pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, that follows a male serial killer who lures his victims by dressing as a woman.
I can’t imagine why Rowling began to use a pseudonym after being targeted by the queer community that she thought was her friend. Or why her next choice of villain was a… transphile, if that’s the right word.
Her actions disenchanted scores of fans, who have struggled to figure out what to do with their love for the series given the controversy around its creator.
As fans reexamine the books and amplify long-quieted critiques in the wake of this backlash, it’s become increasingly clear that Rowling’s personal views and biases made their way into the subtext of the series.
An author wrote what she wanted to write instead of repeating Approved Muscovite Content? Oh Noes!
“That was a fun book!”
“The author was outed as transphobic fifteen years after writing it.”
“I HATED THIS BOOK!!!”
Like so much of the media of yesteryear, the books are rightfully subjected to critiques and criticisms. Everything from the naming of Cho Chang, to the injustice that was the Patil twins’ Yule Ball look, to the absence of prominent Black and queer characters dulls the series’ luster.
That wasn’t even the Narrative back when the books were written. The word ‘Narrative’ was not even in common use. I think the Obama years were when I first noticed it cropping up.
Rowling’s attempts to revise history by sharing postcanonical details about characters and the Wizarding World at large . such as Dumbledore being gay and a minor, unknown character being Jewish . did little to quell these claims.
Learn this lesson and never forget it: APPEASEMENT NEVER WORKS. NEVER PAY DANEGELD.
In a series that spans thousands of pages and often provides minute details, the thought that Rowling couldn’t spare a few words to mention a character’s race or sexuality already seems preposterous. But to imply that these facts were always present and that fans merely missed or failed to imagine them feels mildly insulting.
Rowling could not have made such mentions. That Narrative did not exist to be obeyed. But that Narrative exists now and everything that does not fit this moment’s Narrative must be burned Fahrenheit 451-style.
What miserable lives these people live. All their future and past reduced to a content-free Now that offers no handholds for the soul to resist the endless deluge of lies and thefts. No points of reference, neither family nor friends, nothing but your sackcloth-covered body sitting in the middle of a well-lit cage because everything you believe is a crime.
A graveyard for Truth and Joy.
Rowling, like any person, is only human. Although some of the series’ flaws exist as overt bigotry, other coded messages may have been the result of unconscious biases or internalized stereotypes. But intentional or not, the implications of these problematic portrayals left a stain on the series that even the most ardent Potterphiles can no longer ignore.
With each offensive comment Rowling shares, the Wizarding World becomes less of an escape.
Yo, you loveless author of this Harry-hating screed… YOU are who Rowling’s readers are trying to escape. They want to read stories about child-abusing teachers getting what they deserve. They want to hear about how they can develop enough power and authority to made a difference in the world without first promising their souls to Darkness. They want to imagine there’s a more functional and interesting world waiting for them outside the cultivated normality of Privet Drive. And they want to hear stories about how, even if they never met him, they can make their father proud.
Rowling being a feminist, may have come across that formula accidentally. The flops of her later works indicate thus. And yet, even a blind monkey sometimes finds a banana… and modern schools being the horror factories they are, methinks the next generation of kids to discover Harry Potter will also find tales of hope and family and Good triumphing over Evil.
So now scores of people who previously enjoyed her books are now finding her problematic? Gosh, that only leaves her with hundreds of millions of fans left.
Yeah, her recent is crap, but that happens to lots of creative people who just can’t stop even though they no longer have story to tell.
I don’t recommend these books because Rowling is a feminist, and the books teach reliance on magic and sorcery, which is the path of the occultists and ritualists running the current horrorshow.
‘And they want to hear stories about how, even if they never met him, they can make their father proud.’
That’s what it’s all about. And always will be. But I don’t want any feminist explaining it to me or anybody else. She don’t know squat. If she actually had wisdom she’d shut up and listen.
RPL wrote “CRT has been brewing in academia for 40 to 60 years. I laughed at it then. So did my fellow conservative students. I thought, this crazy stuff will never affect the real world of corporations, the military, churches, etc.”
That long, huh? I never heard of it, despite earning 4 degrees. Probably because all 4 were in physics or engineering.
Human beings were created to worship God. We have an innate need for some kind of religion or spirituality. If we are rightly ordered, then that need is filled by the true triune God of Christianity. But if we are disordered, then the need for religion is filled with Marxism. These people who have taken over all of our institutions are true believers in this evil.
I never thought I’d watch in real time Western Civilization going from Christian to pagan in my lifetime. Won’t be long until the persecution of Christians gets seriously violent.