[stavros]

Oh I forgot about Kreacher, I thought they meant Dobby. The whole thing is bizarre, Harry is so intent on freeing Dobby but then he's fine with every other house elf being a slave. They didn't even care about Hermione's initiative.

[inigyou]

JK Rowling was trying to make the point that slaves should be slaves and enjoy being slaves, and the ones who want to be free are a rare exception, and anyone who wants to free all slaves is silly and cringe.

[stavros]

Seriously? That's such a weird point to make!

[soraminazuki]

The parent's take is a bit too literal, but at least it's her view on human rights activism. That view has demonstrably gotten more extreme post-pandemic.

But even if you don't take JKR's views as pro-slavery, it's still pretty ironic that the rhetoric of happy slaves is taken from literal slavers from history.

[inigyou]

The Harry Potter series tried and mostly failed to push a bunch of weird political stuff. Slavery is the most noticeable but there was also racism mixed in. The black token character is called Kingsley Shacklebolt. The Chinese token character is called Cho Chang. The war is overtly world war 2, and Voldemort is Hitler - he wants to kill everyone who has impure blood. The Minister for Magic mirrors the British and American leaders who stuck their head in the sand about the war. The banks are run by goblins with big noses.

You might also be interested to know that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was made as a Christian propaganda story. Aslan is Jesus.

[ChadNauseam]

> The banks are run by goblins with big noses.

I can believe that the origins of this trope are antisemetic, but I don't see very much reason to think that any antisemitic mindset was in JK Rowling's head when she wrote it.

[soraminazuki]

That's a real stretch. She copied a modern day trope, not some ancient myth with unclear origin. Even if we bend over backwards to believe that she wasn't aware that the trope targeted a specific demographic, there's zero chance that her publisher failed to catch it too. And also the entire movie staff that chose floors with seven pointed stars for the bank. Also also consider that this trope is far from an isolated case in the whole series.

[ChadNauseam]

It just doesn't make that much sense to me. "And also the entire movie staff that chose floors with seven pointed stars for the bank" - so the entire movie staff is antisemitic? And what is the connection between a seven pointed star and Judaism / antisemitism anyway?

[littlekey]

And just wait til you hear about the goblins!

[BoxOfRain]

It's not the only example of extreme immorality that's presented pretty causally in the series.

I loved the books as much as anyone, but Azkaban struck me as utter barbarism even then. You're telling me that prisoners, regardless of what they were actually sentenced for, get psychologically tortured through the magical induction of deep despair until they develop a form of dementia? And this happens whether you're a murderous dark wizard or you do a bit of magical petty theft or fraud? The Ministry using Dementors for law enforcement would morally justify rebellion against it in my view, not only are they slavers they're also torturers on a scale that would make many dictatorships blush.

It's obvious that the Ministry a wicked institution, but it's also an incompetent one since the Dementors aren't even really loyal to them; they jump ship to the Death Eaters as soon as they get the chance to.

[soraminazuki]

To be fair, dementors are consistently depicted as pure evil that has no place in society. The funnier thing for me is how the Ministry is a militarized law enforcement body that functions as the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the magical society.

But there are things you can't unsee once you revisit the series as an adult, like all the harmful tropes that's casually littered throughout the series. From unpleasant people almost always being portrayed as fat and ugly to house elves who have a frightened reaction to the idea of being freed from enslavement, and cunning, greedy creatures with long, hooked noses that run the wizarding bank. If that weren't too on the nose, that bank even had a seven pointed star on the floor in the movies. Oh, and Kingsley Shacklebolt is quite an interesting name to give a fictional black person. And that's barely scratching the surface.

[BoxOfRain]

Yeah Winky the house elf definitely rubbed me up the wrong way for how pitiful she made the condition of freedom seem.

> Oh, and Kingsley Shacklebolt is quite an interesting name to give a fictional black person.

I'll be honest this one sailed over my head when I was a kid, I always assumed because he's a magical policeman the Shacklebolt referred to handcuffs. There's a lot of things named along those lines.

[soraminazuki]

It's hard to catch some of these questionable things as a kid reading a fantasy book, who'd think fictional settings exist in a vacuum. And if it's like one or two isolated cases, the whole thing can be brushed off as pure coincidence. But with the Harry Potter series, there are dozens of these disturbing tropes with real world parallels. It's safe to say it's a pattern.

[ChadNauseam]

> and cunning, greedy creatures with long, hooked noses that run the wizarding bank

I don't think they're portrayed as greedy? Although I'm willing to be proven wrong if anyone has textual evidence otherwise. They are also mistreated by wizards in the books, which I think portrayed them sympathetically. I remember scenes where Harry notices their mistreatment and thinks it's wrong

[soraminazuki]

The portrayal was anything but sympathetic when Griphook was slaughtered by Voldemort right after betraying Harry and taking the sword of Gryffindor in his possession.

Also, notice how real world tropes are just portrayed as facts in the Harry Potter world.

[stavros]

Azkaban was basically Abu Ghraib on steroids, and for any petty crime, as you say. I remember thinking "what kind of bleak dystopia are they living in, and why have they accepted it so wholly"?

Not to mention the whole "muggles are basically subhuman" thing.