It’s kinda hard to be a Harry Potter fan right now. Not only do the Fantastic Beasts movies kinda suck. But more recently the creator of the series, Jo Rowling, has taken a strong transphobic position through a series of tweets and an essay posted on her personal website.1
Like many others who grew up in Generation Hex, Harry Potter has been hugely influential to my formation as an adult. So controversies like this have left many in my position wondering, is it possible to still love Harry Potter? And if so, how?
Rowling’s Controversies
Let’s begin by stating this is certainly not the first time the opinions and post-Harry Potter writings of Rowling have troubled, annoyed, offended or even hurt fans of her series. The very catalyst of Harry Potter‘s fame in the United States began with so-called “Harry Haters” back in the late 1990s who organized book burnings, because they felt the series promoted witchcraft and Satanism.2 Rowling seems to have been able to laugh her way to the bank during this controversy.
But Rowling didn’t really become a controversial figure in the eyes of her fans until she first announced “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay” back in 2007.3 Some fans got upset that she made a character homosexual. Some fans got upset that she never made the character explicitly gay within the text. And some fans simply got upset that she had anything at all to add to the now completed series.
And over the next decade, Rowling continued to make needling little comments, additions and changes about the series through Twitter and Pottermore.com. Whether it was “Black Hermione”4 or Sirius’s gayness5, pretty much anything she said seemed to bother somebody. In 2016, Rowling wrote about the “History of Magic in North America”6, in which, as Harry Potter scholar Dr Amy Sturgis describes it, she basically “shoved some stereotypes into European-shaped boxes and declared it a job well done.” 7
Under such circumstances, some fans choose to abandon Harry Potter to go find something less ‘problematic’ to enjoy. Some fans take a critical approach and choose to argue back with the author and the text. And some fans choose to simply ignore it all, usually by stating something vague about “Death of the Author” and all that.
What Does “Death of the Author” Mean?
Like the Bible and the US Constitution, it seems like the amount of people who have actually read “The Death of the Author” is inversely proportional to the amount of people who parrot the phrase “death of the author”. Still though, Roland Barthes’s 1967 essay, “La mort de l’auteur” is relevant to this discussion.
In “The Death of the Author”—which, funnily enough, begins with an anecdote directly related to the fluidity of gender—Barthes describes the relatively modern concept of ‘the author’. He says:
“The author is a modern figure, a product of our society insofar as, emerging from the Middle Ages with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation, it discovered the prestige of the individual, of, as it is more nobly put, the ‘human person’.” 8
Humanism, American Individualism and capitalism all contributed to the idea of the author. While many years ago, it was the work that people cared about, much more than the author of the work. For example, who wrote the Oddyssey? It wasn’t Homer; he just transcribed it.
We continue to see this idea in academia today. Talk to anyone who has taught internationally, and they’ll tell you students and academics from communist countries have very different ideas about concepts like plagiarism. Because they’re more interested in the merit of the idea itself.
“Death of the Author” Has More to Do with Literary Criticism Than Fandom
In literary criticism, Barthes finds that:
“The image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centred on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions, while criticism still consists for the most part in saying that Baudelaire’s work is the failure of Baudelaire the man, Van Gogh’s his madness, Tchaikovsky’s his vice. The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it.”
Barthes is not really discussing whether we should consider the personal life or opinions of the author when choosing whether to support their creations. He’s not talking about fandom and ‘problematic’ creators. Barthes is more concerned with how discussions around art and literature are shaped and whether the biographies of the creators need to be a part of that discussion.
“a text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.”
Barthes is simply saying we don’t need to do a full psych eval of Ernest Hemingway to find out what the sea in The Old Man and the Sea represents. Who cares? Just read the damn book, and decide for yourself.
Can You Separate Art from the Artist?
In 1966, cultural anthropologist Laura Bohannan sought to prove exactly this point with the Tiv tribe in West Africa. After an argument with her English colleague about whether an American can truly understand Shakespeare, Bohannan sought to prove the universality of literature by reading Hamlet to her friends in the isolated African tribe of the Tiv.9
But through a series of humorous misunderstandings, Bohannan quickly discovered that, no, Shakespeare is not universal. You need extensive cultural context just to comprehend the plot. But Bohannan also learned that, while Shakespeare may not be universal, in a way, ‘literature’ is. Because anyone can talk about anything. In How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, Pierre Bayard argues:
“Even if they’ve never read a line of Hamlet, the Tiv are thus able to gain a number of specific ideas about the play, and so, like my students who haven’t read the text I’m lecturing on, they find themselves perfectly capable of discussing it and offering their opinions.”10
The Tiv argue back with Bohannan (the storyteller) and the text (Hamlet), re-contextualizing it into their own cultural traditions and, in the end, exclaiming:
“That was a very good story…you must tell us some more stories of your country. We, who are elders, will instruct you in their true meaning, so that when you return to your own land your elders will see that you have not been sitting in the bush, but among those who know things and who have taught you wisdom.”
So can you separate art from the artist? Well, no. Because the art loses meaning the further it gets from the cultural context in which it was created. But also, yes, of course!
The Tiv had no idea who Shakespeare was, nor did they care. They didn’t know “his life, his tastes, his passions”. They had no idea what controversial opinions he may have possessed. To the Tiv, the author was dead, and the artist was separated. And yet they were still able to engage with the text and even enjoy it in their own way.
You Can Challenge the Author
For many casual Harry Potter readers, whatever makes it into the news will guide their fandom. And that’s totally fair. There’s nothing wrong with taking personal offense to offensive comments made about your person.
But for others, Harry Potter is a community that has grown much larger than the woman who initially created it. It’s “a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.” For many, it is entirely possible to condemn Jo Rowling’s comments and still participate in Harry Potter fandom.
The Harry Potter community at large—fandom, academia, cosplayers, wizard rockers and many others—is largely progressive and inclusive of all people. Statements have been released by Harry Potter fan sites like MuggleNet11 and The Leaky Cauldron12 expressing their disapproval of Rowling’s comments about gender. No one is more disappointed by Rowling’s ramblings than the people who have loved Harry Potter for decades. Many of which include those in the queer community.
But fans have the ability to talk back to the author and disagree with her opinions while still enjoying the text. Dan Radcliffe—the actor who played Harry Potter in the Warner Bros. movie series—has released statements (among many others) in support of trans people 13. And YouTuber Nathaniel Wayne had this to say:
“There are things we can do to reclaim—whether it is finding a way to reframe your experience of the work…whether it is creating fan art, fan fiction, that takes the characters and puts them into the perspective that you connect with best—that can help…There is no right what to process this, and there is no right conclusion to come to. But I do think it is important that you process this in one way or another.” 14
Already, readers are finding ways to take the Harry Potter text, and transform it. Melissa Anelli from The-Leaky-Cauldron.org stated, “we find the use of her influence and privilege to target marginalized people to be out of step with the message of acceptance and empowerment we find in her books and celebrated by the Harry Potter community.”
Personally, I find art to be sort of like the Mirror of Erised. You see in it exactly what you’re looking for. So if you look for good, you will find it. I like Harry Potter. And I disagree with Rowling’s opinions on sex and gender. Those are both true statements. So I choose to look into the text to find solutions.
- Rowling, Joanne | “J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues” | JKRowling.com | 10 Jun 2020
- “‘Satanic’ Harry Potter books burnt” | BBC News | 31 Dec 2001
- Smith, David | “Dumbledore was gay, JK tells amazed fans” | The Guardian | 21 Oct 2007
- @jk_rowling | Status: 678888094339366914 | Twitter | 21 Dec 2015
- Ermac, Raffy | “Did JK Rowling Just Deny Sirius Black Is Gay?” | Pride.com | 7 Sept 2016
- Rowling, JK | “Fourteenth Century – Seventeenth Century” | Pottermore.com | 8 Mar 2016
- Sturgis, Amy H | “Hogwarts in America” | Reason Magazine | Dec 2016
- Barthes, Roland | “The Death of the Author” | Image-Music-Text | 1977
- Bohannan, Laura | “Shakespeare in the Bush” | Natural History Magazine | Aug-Sept 1966
- Bayard, Pierre | Chapter VI: “Encounters with Professors” | How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read | 2009
- “Our Commitment” | MuggleNet.com | 1 Jul 2020
- Anelli, Melissa | “Addressing J.K. Rowling’s Recent Statements” | The-Leaky-Cauldron.org | 1 Jul 2020
- Radcliffe, Daniel | “Daniel Radcliffe Responds to J.K. Rowling’s Tweets on Gender Identity” | The Trevor Project | 8 Jun 2020
- Wayne, Nathaniel | “Enjoying the Works of Problematic Creators” | Council of Geeks | 13 Jun 2020