The #HarryPotter and #JKRowling issue has been absolutely fascinating to watch over my life.
I was raised in a conservative Evangelical-ish community and reading the books was an act of subversion. There were people that legitimately believed that the books were cultist, and they weren't all that wrong if they used the academic definition of a cult -a small community religious practice. What made Harry Potter subversive, where as other fantasy stories like Star Wars weren't, was that the whole youth culture was happening outside of adult view on the Internet. This was before Facebook or Reddit and before just adults really had a presence online. Teens would spend hours and hours in their online community that their parents weren't a part of. And this worldwide online community operated like a cultist religion. They were creating their own language, mythologies, mores, taboos, and rituals in real time. And it had it's priest, who often personally participated in the online communities (in fact she created them). And she borrowed from and contributed to the myth creation. It provided a form of spiritually that many of the teens involved were lacking in their lives.
Fast forward a generation. Today the stories are complete. A young adult picking up the books for the first time today isn't involved in the subversive online cult of the 1990's and 2000's. There are no more speculation or fan theories being created. That's now relegated to nostalgia. Today, a young adult can read the complete stories and judge them not for what they were, but for what they are now. And they are finding many problematic errors. Racism, antisemitism, ableism, slavery, plot holes, etc. The stories are complete and are now being critically read as complete stories.
And the priest, who was lauded as supportive and wise while the cult was growing, is being judged by a new generation that wasn't involved in the myth creation. She is being judged for what she is now, not was she was back then.
What we are seeing in real time, and this is fascinating, was the creation and deconstruction of a new religion in a post-Christian America. It's also not just Harry Potter, but also techno-utopianism, and other sub-cultures. I suspect that this generational rise and fall of new cultish religions will accelerate as the tearing down of other people's beliefs and communities becomes a more popular pastime.
Other growing cultist religions that are replacing Christianity, that I suspect will likely have a deconstruction phase by the next generation:
Disney as religion
Trumpism
Leftism
Political Protest as Religion
Techno-utopianism (already being deconstructed)
Work/Productivity as religion
And they are finding many problematic errors. Racism, antisemitism..
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Tell me more about these #mudbloods and #jews , because these stories are #antisemitic in..well, you tell me.
#blackkklansman is not unrelated.
Sorry, I'm not really sure what question you are asking.
@1dalm the conscious and explicit theme is a heavy handed criticism of #antisemitism vis a vis #mudbloods and #purebloods , which #jkrawling has literally explained in interviews.
...And the trolls at Gringotts?
You really don't have to defend the stories to me. I get it.
@1dalm defend the stories???
Have a good day.
"What a lot of things you do use Good [day] for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.”
@nicholas_saunders @1dalm Nope, I'm right there with you. Every decent story will have some truly abhorrent characters and many will have characters with questionable moral values. It seems that there are some people who will project their own ideas of who is being targeted by the alleged allegory, and they are rarely ever as right as they feel.
Since I seem to be into quoting famous fiction this evening (PST) "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR" - Mark Twain
@antares @1dalm it's all highly defensive after having thrown around accusations of antisemitism.
I dunno, mebbe.
But I thought that it was well known that #mudbloods were #jews just as #dwarves are #jews .
Was #tolkien a hater? Cause I always took his meaning that small kindnesses are significant.