← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · damian
Thread ID: 7455 | Posts: 16 | Started: 2003-06-18
2003-06-18 15:28 | User Profile
The truth about 'Harry': Race permeates novels
By PHIL KLOER Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
An orphan who discovers that he has magical powers and must save the world repeatedly from ultimate evil, all the while zipping around on a souped-up flying broomstick and casting spells -- no wonder the "Harry Potter" franchise resonates with young readers, making it the biggest-selling book series ever.
But there are undercurrents flowing through the J.K. Rowling novels, some of them disturbing, that no amount of wand-waving can dispel. Some of the characters advocate a wizard-world equivalent of the Nazi philosophy of racial purity (which Rowling obviously condemns), while the series' treatment of willingly oppressed domestic servants known as house-elves seems uncomfortably close to myths once used to defend slavery in the United States.
It's the Potter Perplex: Just how mixed are the social and political messages embedded in Rowling's novels?
When the long-awaited fifth book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," goes on sale this week, hordes of young fans will be scrambling to find out how the plot moves forward in Harry's long-running battle against the evil Lord Voldemort. But some adult critics will be looking at the subtexts about prejudice and class structure that have grown increasingly important as the series has progressed.
"I think we're headed for some sort of ultimate confrontation that includes the theme of racial purity," says Lana A. Whited, a professor of English at Ferrum College in Virginia and editor of "The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter," a collection of essays.
Multiculturalism is a given at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where young black, white, Chinese and Indian wizards mingle and occasionally date with no mention of their skin tones. But in this universe, it isn't ethnicity that matters.
Wizards live in the same world as, but largely apart from, regular humans, whom they call Muggles, a term that is frequently condescending. ("Muggles" has already made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, not only in Rowling's strict sense of a person with no magical powers, but in the broader sense of someone who is "regarded as inferior in some way.") Some wizards are pure-blooded (both parents were wizards) while some are mixed-blood (from a wizard and a Muggle), and the worst insult is "Mudblood," to describe a wizard of mixed parentage.
At first, "Mudblood" was just a schoolboy taunt in the mouths of nasty characters, particularly Harry's nemesis, Draco Malfoy. But by the fourth book, the schism between wizards of different heritages had grown to overarching importance in the series mythology, going back to the founding of Hogwarts.
"Rowling clearly sets herself against this kind of thinking," says Francis Bridger, author of "A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Potterworld." Rowling's condemnation of this sort of racism is clear, Bridger adds, "at times so clear as to be almost propagandistic."
"The discussion of Mudbloods in the books mirrors our real-world issues of white supremacy, miscegenation and Nazi-esque ideas of racial purity," says Craig Svonkin, associate professor of English at the University of California at Riverside, who presented a paper on political aspects of the Potter novels at April's Popular Culture Association Conference in New Orleans. But it's obvious, Svonkin says, that Rowling is issuing "a liberal humanist call for understanding."
It's not obvious at all, however, what the author is up to with the house-elves, creatures she introduced in the second book of the series ("Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets") and who played a larger role in the fourth, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." The house-elves are obsequious servants who seem to exist only to serve their wizard masters and are (with one exception) miserable at the thought of being free.
The house-elves "reveal a very troubling stereotype, that of the willing slave, and the fact that Rowling would include such a stereotype is very difficult to ignore or explain away," says Svonkin.
It's even stranger, Whited points out, that Rowling worked for Amnesty International for two years after college and "has always been a real champion of the underdog." Rowling, who has given few interviews since her series became so popular, appears not to have addressed the controversy over house-elves publicly.
While some readers acknowledge that some resolution of the house-elf problem may be part of Rowling's master plan, which spans a projected seven novels, the house-elves so far have not generally been perceived as the comic relief they seem to be intended as.
When Winky, a house-elf, is freed from servitude in "Goblet of Fire," she becomes depressed, unstable and disheveled. In addition, the house-elves speak a fractured English that some have interpreted as a crude takeoff on the speech of American slaves.
Farah Mendelsohn, editor of "Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction," likens the house-elves to what she calls the "happy darky" stereotype of the antebellum South. "No one who has seen 'Birth of a Nation' or 'Gone With the Wind' could fail to recognize the resemblance between the relationship of Scarlett O'Hara and Mammy and of Master Barry and Winky," Mendelsohn writes.
Rowling has closely guarded where she is eventually headed with the series. Whited argues that, as issues such as racial purity and the status of house-elves have moved to the foreground, Rowling will have to resolve both in a satisfactory way to bring the Potter series to a meaningful conclusion.
"They appear," says Whited, "to be at the very heart of where Harry is headed."
[url=http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/books/0603/15potter.html]http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/b...3/15potter.html[/url]
2003-06-18 16:08 | User Profile
"Rowling clearly sets herself against this kind of thinking," says Francis Bridger, author of "A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Potterworld." Rowling's condemnation of this sort of racism is clear, Bridger adds, "at times so clear as to be almost propagandistic."
A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Potterworld? It's good to see some people are concerned with the really important issues facing mankind. :rolleyes:
Rowling has closely guarded where she is eventually headed with the series. Whited argues that, as issues such as racial purity and the status of house-elves have moved to the foreground, Rowling will have to resolve both in a satisfactory way to bring the Potter series to a meaningful conclusion.
Please, just end the damn thing already. Haven't you made enough money off this :dung: ? SIZE=1[/SIZE]
*"The discussion of Mudbloods in the books mirrors our real-world issues of white supremacy, miscegenation and Nazi-esque ideas of racial purity,"* says Craig Svonkin, associate professor of English at the University of California at Riverside, who presented a paper on political aspects of the Potter novels at April's Popular Culture Association Conference in New Orleans. But it's obvious, Svonkin says, that Rowling is issuing "a liberal humanist call for understanding."
Maybe in the last book, Rowling can have Harry join forces with Tom Rennick, to battle Franco and his gang of evil Neo-Nazis. :lol:
[SIZE=1]I'm waiting for the WN Harry Potter fans :nerd: out there to defend their hero: "No, this article is wrong! Harry represents the White Race, and the Muggles are...uh...the Jews...um I mean...sorry, but I gotta go...uh...dentist appointment."[/SIZE]
2003-06-18 18:11 | User Profile
*Originally posted by damian@Jun 18 2003, 15:28 * **
"I think we're headed for some sort of ultimate confrontation that includes the theme of racial purity," says Lana A. Whited, a professor of English at Ferrum College in Virginia and editor of "The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter," a collection of essays.
**
OH MY GAWD!!!! Racial PURITY?? What would the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King think??
Love your name, Miss Whited ;) .
2003-06-18 18:23 | User Profile
Silly goyim, racial purity is for Y(id)s.
[SIZE=1]still not sure why the board censors the "Y" word[/SIZE]
2003-06-18 18:37 | User Profile
It doesn't zhid ;)
2003-06-19 19:59 | User Profile
Kloer. Svotkin. Mendelsohn.
'Nuff said.
:dung:
2003-06-20 14:30 | User Profile
This cleverly-veiled advertisement has convinced me to watch the movies and perhaps read the books. gg :D Wizard Power!
2003-06-21 02:32 | User Profile
The books are great (not anywhere NEAR as wonderful as Tolkien... but what is? :wub: ) and the movies are okay too. I'm afraid my naivte is showing, but I did NOT catch the 'racist' undertones till I read about them later... But then, I'm not bothered by the term mudbloods for mixed 'race' people, and I don't mind that the 'bad seed' kid was a blondie...
2003-06-23 08:54 | User Profile
My oldest daughter devoured these books - what? - about three years ago when she was in junior high. All the girls in her class were thunderstruck by this series. So, all I can say is that Rowling found the magic formula for selling books to kids, and getting them to READ.
Now, I know that both the Christian right and the PeeCee left have their reservations, but as a parent I can only rejoice that my daughter discovered the joy of books as an 11-year-old through Harry Potter. She'd read some stuff before that, but it was slow going with her. We were always struggling with her to spend less time with the television and the internet and her rollerblades and more time reading. Harry Potter really did the trick for her. She then read all of C.S. Lewis' children's stuff, all 50-plus volumes of the Nancy Drew Mystery Series (at the urging of my mother, who read them when they first came out in the 1930's, she even read a bunch of the original volumes before they got dumbed-down and PeeCee's in the 1960's). Anyway, it made her an avid reader.
She's soon to turn 15, and she's reading stuff that I'm somewhat concerned about. Stephen King novels - some of that stuff is very sick. But, hey, I say if she's smart enough to be reading above her grade level, then she's probably smart enough to handle it. She's also graduated from Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie.
Whatever other reservations about Rowling (the spirit of a murdered child living in a toilet is grotesque), she did a great service by getting my kid and others back into books.
Walter
2003-06-23 13:18 | User Profile
Walter,
Have you sicced her on Tolkien?
2003-06-23 14:45 | User Profile
To my mind, Rowling has tapped into the rich vein of British public school literature. The Harry Potter books are structurally similar to the Billy Bunter books and stories, written by Charles H. St. J. Hamilton (pseudonym Frank Richards).
I suppose it is all new again to modern PC Britain. It is interesting that Victorian/Edwardian England, as manifested in the idea of the public school, still casts its spell. Of course, Rowling had to add all the PC touches, including reverse class snobbery. I note, however, that one of Billy's friends in the Billy Bunter stories was named Ramh Singh.
2003-06-24 06:23 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Avalanche@Jun 23 2003, 13:18 * ** Walter,
Have you sicced her on Tolkien? **
I tried, but she didn't like it.
She said that "it's for boys, yuch."
What can I do?
Walter
2003-06-24 13:18 | User Profile
Give her a few years, and try again....
Oh MAN, Tolkien is heaven!!! I even taught myself to write in Elvish! (In fact, I still have a H.S. notebook, which I kept 'cause the cover was covered in Elvish... I would spend my classtime practicing (school was quite boring... I even got my teachers in Advanced Placement History/English -- an experimental, conjoined class -- to let me embroider through class... It drove them nuts, but they could hardly say I wasn't paying attention and learning the stuff :D )
{sigh} Can't get NeoNietzsche to even try it -- he doesn't read fiction...
2003-06-25 18:48 | User Profile
Originally posted by Avalanche@Jun 24 2003, 07:18 * {sigh} Can't get NeoNietzsche to even try it -- he doesn't read fiction...*
What a weirdo. I don't like to read and especially don't like to read fiction, and I've still read the Lord of the Rings trilogy several times.
I even taught myself to write in Elvish!
Do you mean write English using the Tengwar letters, or actually learn Quenya? I'm taking up both projects presently. B)
I watched the first Harry Potter movie as per my above post. I didn't see any racist undertones, but it was still an enjoyable movie. Perhaps it's only in the books. Or perhaps it's not there at all and certain elements in society are just exploiting a popular book series for publicity and agitation.
2003-06-25 18:58 | User Profile
Maybe we should make Elvish the WN language? There's something to be said for having our own language. Even writing english in Tengwar would be a good step.
If the Potter books are anything like the movies, then I think the consumeristic obsession with gadgetry has a lot to do with the less obvious elements of the series' appeal to children.
2003-06-26 03:40 | User Profile
English in Tengwar... (I DID have to actually PASS my classes in school, even if I DID spend a lot of time daydreaming (and embroidering, and practicing writing elvish)