death to capslock

I have nothing to say except I agree, I agree, I AGREE! So tired of Rowling's post publication preaching to instruct everyone on how we're supposed to interpret her work. Don't see it her way? "They should go back and re-read", as I recall. Pfeh.

Some of the longest running discussions/arguments I ever had in the fandom were those with pro-Jo disciples who just couldn't shake lose their "BECAUSE JO SAID SO" brainwashing. Incredible and very sad to witness.

We should raise what we think was the worst of Rowling's real-world disinformation. My choice is her instant knee-jerk SJW reaction upon the selection of Noma Dumezweni for the role of Hermione in the Cursed Child play; her tweet to please her leftist mates on Twitter, yes my series was so 'progressive' REALLY:

Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione.

So much untruth. Hermione's hair was never described as 'frizzy' (as was Dumezweni's hair at the time), only 'bushy', totally different. Her skin colour was described clearly as non-black more than 50 times. Quotes were pointed out to Rowling, who could only say that she had "a great deal of difficulty with" ... that's because you were flat out wrong, Rowling. But you didn't have the moral integrity to acknowledge same.

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Pfff this reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKxpwlKRQ2U

Honestly, the worst part about dealing with so called "Potterheads" (or however else they call themselves in your part of the internet) is being accused of racism/bigotry/etc. Facts are facts no matter how somebody feels about it and the only things that this kind of behaviour does is ending conversation and making words like "racism" meaningless.

As for author's need to correct how readers interpret their works? It shows to me that author in the question is insecure about their work. Not a good thing :(

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The video has it right - she's "changing [the characters] after the fact" so she "can be more inclusive and get good press".

As always I'm stunned at how many people let her get away with it. The emperor's new clothes never rang so true as it did with Rowling.

Honestly, the worst part about dealing with so called "Potterheads" (or however else they call themselves in your part of the internet) is being accused of racism/bigotry/etc. Facts are facts ...

Well, that's the classic problem today when engaging with Social Justice Warriors and the rest of the 'postmodern' crowd, isn't it? I realise now that my tussles with 'potterheads' were precursors of what we now see everyday with SJWs. Stands to reason, since many of the pro-Jo HP crowd we met in the fandom were kids who had grown up with the books and were just leaving university. Brainwashed by the same education system which we now see as the source of SJWs.

Anyway, yes, that's how it goes these days; 'postmodernism' means eschewing facts for feelings/popular tropes, I gather, and 'who are are' means more than what you say. So, therefore, the inversion of that becomes - if I don't like what you say ... I simply decry who you are. Facts simply don't matter to them.

It shows to me that author in the question is insecure about their work.

I've often wondered about Rowling's motivation. I don't think she's insecure. Many of the faults in HP just escaped her, she probably still doesn't care/know about them. Her incredible commercial success would offset most of any 'insecurity'.

With the 'black Hermione' thing I've always felt Rowling was simply driven to commit tweeted virtue signalling in order to ingratiate herself with the leftists friends she was finding on Twitter. Maybe to a lesser extent - having made her billions - she had actually become more daring since the time she was writing her books, persuaded to fit in with the current leftist identity politics fervour, and so honestly really regretted not writing a black Hermione. (I do think the posturing to impress was her #1 reason though.)

It was still a flat-out lie, though, and I can't believe she didn't know it. So, regardless of her motivation ... it resulted in her trying to deceive her readers.

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I agree with you that Hermione as described in the books was clearly intended to be white. It’s ridiculous for JKR to try to retcon her as having been black all along.

I have no problem with casting a black actress to play the role of (white) Hermione on stage. This sort of thing is done in live theatre all the time, especially musical theatre and opera. Live theatre is about the imagination. The audience is expected to be able to look at a black man and see a German, or at a Chinese man and see a Venetian gondolier, both of which I’ve seen on stage, and seen work.

But this is not what JKR is trying to claim. She is trying to inject political attitudes of the twenty-teens into a book written in the nineteen-nineties. That doesn’t work. She and her fans need to recognize that the books are the way she wrote them when she wrote them. The play can be more modern, if she and the producers want it to be, but she can’t project current ideas about diversity backward into an already-written and published text. A play is re-created every time it’s newly staged, and can be modernized and re-interpreted as the director desires. But a published text has to be re-written and re-published as a Revised Edition. Doing that is a lot more work than just spouting off notions in an interview, and to be worthwhile ought to involve more substantial improvements than adding a bit of extra melanin here and there.

If JKR wants suggestions for her Revised Editions of all seven books, I would direct her to numerous previous postings on Death To Capslock. Too bad marionros has removed all her posts.

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I have no problem with casting a black actress to play the role of (white) Hermione on stage. This sort of thing is done in live theatre all the time, especially musical theatre and opera. ... The play can be more modern, if she and the producers want it to be ...

There was a long discussion about this on Fiction Alley when the play's casting was announced and Rowling did her instantaneous grand standing virtue signalling (a mix of true 'virtue signalling' - trying to impress her new friends, I reckon - and also attempting to make out that she'd been so 'clever' in keeping Hermione's ethnicity undefined in the books, which was just rubbish - and insulting). I don't know much about plays, and was interested in opinions which mirrored yours, stating that theatre is 'different' and can be adapted, etc.

I appreciate that position but I frankly still feel that the casting of Dumezweni was done for 'real world' reasons - DIVERSITY!, wanting to be seen as politically correct, and so forth. Within the HP universe Hermione is white. If the producers had placed 'canon consistency' as their #1 priority then they would have picked an Anglo actress. But they had different priorities, and so went with Dumezweni. Their call. If practised theatregoers know the appearance of the actor is of minor importance then fine. But to try and tell the world that the character in the books was black ... gah.

But a published text has to be re-written and re-published as a Revised Edition.

Yep. That's the way to produce new undisputable canon. Rather than just telling everyone what she *would* write if she bothered to sit down and actually do it.

If JKR wants suggestions for her Revised Editions of all seven books, I would direct her to numerous previous postings on Death To Capslock.

Hee. :-)

I wonder if Rowling reads the negative stuff. Probably not. Probably difficult to find, really; HP *is* the world's most popular literary work I suppose, so we'd be swamped out by the kids.

And given her response when she did meet up with criticism, or folk who weren't falling into line with what she wanted her readers to think - "they should go back and re-read" - I don't think she's the sort to accept the criticism gracefully.

Too bad marionros has removed all her posts.

Really? I wonder why?

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I don’t know why marionros removed her posts, but it might be a privacy issue. I remember that many of her posts were quite personal, and I suspect her user name was closely based on her real name.

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sharaz-jek.livejournal.com

ahahahaahahaaha the idea that Rowling is in any way leftist or concerned with social justice. Although while "virtue signalling" is generally bullshit, applying it to Rowling is probably not far off, so congratulations on finding a decent use for it!

(Also, that's not what postmodernism means at all; but hey.)

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Thank you! Based on her writing and public statements, JKR strikes me very much as someone who wants to think of herself as liberal, but in the same way Dumbledore wants to think of himself as a wise and kindly old man. There isn't deep thought about justice or the vastly different life experiences people can have evident in her work, but there are bits that sound like NO I AM A GOOD PERSON BECAUSE I DON'T FEEL LIKE A BAD PERSON SO I CANNOT EVER HAVE SAID ANYTHING WRONG EVEN ACCIDENTALLY SO YOU ARE WRONG AND ALSO MEAN. Which is an understandable knee-jerk response, but it's rarely helpful to put those in print.

Like, the books would probably be better if Rowling were a committed Social Justice Warrior.^TM Maybe then the series wouldn't have ended with Harry having a happy magical slave, Ron messing with an innocent Muggle's mind to cheat on his driving test, and the Hogwarts house with values most aligned to social-climbing merchants still being vilified. Would someone genuinely committed to justice and equity who thought deeply about those things have left a plot about an entire slave race unresolved? Really? As Elkins once said, "it can sometimes become a bit difficult to avoid the suspicion that in some indefinable way, the spirit of Aunt Marge is pushing the hand that holds the pen."

Rowling didn't write liberal SJW books. She wrote middling-conservative books with a light liberal gloss so she wouldn't feel bad about herself, but also wouldn't have to actually think about the issues too hard because that could be difficult and painful and might even affect her plot and characters.

And whenever she's faced with how she failed or didn't think of something or chickened out, like imagining Dumbledore as gay and in love with Grindelwald but not actually writing it even though it would have mattered to the plot and characterization, her statements don't admit failure. She just pretends she totally included that all along. Re: Hermione's race, she could have said, "I imagined Hermione as white, but I didn't really think about it and there's no reason she had to be, so why shouldn't someone else write an alternate version where she's black? For that matter, some people genuinely read her as a fair-skinned black girl. Even if I didn't intend that, if that's what they got from the books, it's a valid reading." Instead she talks about how she totally left Hermione's race unspecified so stop pretending she ever mentally defaulted to a white main character.

Denial about one's sloppiness and over-reliance on stereotypes as a writer =/= social justice.

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Based on her writing and public statements, JKR strikes me very much as someone who wants to think of herself as liberal ... Like, the books would probably be better if Rowling were a committed Social Justice Warrior. ... Rowling didn't write liberal SJW books.

I agree. I think Rowling - who is 53 years old, born in the sixties - sat down and started writing HP in the nineties with little thought as to 'social justice' and the like. She was a product of her era who was certainly fair minded - Dean was black, there was a balance of men and women in power - but still had her 'defaults' set to the values to which she was accustomed - the Trio were all white, the one supposed homosexual was in the closet. And that was all fine back then!

Time moved on. These days it's my impression - maybe I'm wrong, looking at the wrong review sites - that a lot of Young Adult fiction is *really* pushing the 'progressive social justice' envelope. A novel must have one of every. possible. minority. featured and so forth.

And Rowling has, post Potter, been scrabbling to catch up, try and fit in and impress the friends she's been making that her work was 'progressive' so there! It's her 'pretending' this - in the face of the actual text on the page which belies that pretence - which is maddening. Well, that and how many people accept it.

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Oh, should comment: I really don't think it's that YA is suddenly trying to "tick off boxes." A lot of the authors actually belong to the groups they feature in their books, and grew up never seeing themselves in books. They're literally "writing what they know" by including characters which share some experiences or characteristics with them. Even a lot of the majority-group authors writing about diverse characters are genuinely looking around and going, "Huh, the actual world I live in is way more diverse than YA and children's books in aggregate would have you believe. That's wrong for a lot of reasons. Maybe let's try to fix that?"

The Children's Cooperative Book Center has been collecting statistics on characters of color in children's books for many years, and they've consistently found those characters to be significantly underrepresented compared to the real-world population. Same for the authors. This is true even for recent years. So part of the "diversity is everywhere!" feeling is actually optical illusion: the books are slightly more diverse than before, and since that is higher than what seems "normal," it looks like "lots." Sort of like those studies where it turns out at people perceive a group of exactly 50% women and 50% men to be dominated by women. There are more than are "normally" there, so they're taking over! Nope. Human brains are not calculators and don't objectively evaluate large numbers well.

Which is a long way of saying that I don't think "times were different then" is even true for the most part. JKR's environment then and now was not actually that different, and she isn't that different either.

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The Children's Cooperative Book Center has been collecting statistics on characters of color ... So part of the "diversity is everywhere!" feeling is actually optical illusion ...

That's not the case in my limited experience. I haven't personally read much YA since HP though; I've kept up with the latest 'Young Wizards' by Diane Duane (who is ticking the boxes enthusiastically) and ... that might be it?

I also come across various reviews here and there and can't help but notice the egregious 'tick the boxes' in many of those cases, but also for the minorities across the other dimensions other than that of race - i.e. sexual orientation, religion and so forth.

JKR's environment then and now was not actually that different -

No, I don't buy that. The 'LGBTQ+XYZABC' acronym didn't exist twenty years ago. The phrase 'non binary' didn't make sense twenty years ago. Homosexual marriage was illegal and homosexuality was largely seen in a negative light twenty years ago. At least in mainstream media. That is most definitely not the case these days. And while there were groups pushing those issues in the 90's when HP was written the DIVERSTIY! push was nothing like the mainstream effort it is today.

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in my limited experience

Well, that's kind of the point of doing a broader survey, isn't it? Everyone's personal experiences are necessarily limited, and human brains are frankly terrible at drawing accurate statistical conclusions based on our impressions.

I'm not saying it's exactly the same, but there's a lot more lack of diversity and a lot less general support for diversity than Tumblr and Twitter would have you believe, is what I mean. The people JKR hangs out with on a day to day basis are probably her own age, and haven't changed in sweeping, massively transformative ways.

Not to mention, there was a lot more diversity in old stories than we give People Back Then credit for. Loki was arguably gender-fluid (he once gave birth to a horse while in mare form, e.g.). The Round Table included the Saracen brothers Sir Palamedes, Sir Safir, and Sir Segwarides; the black Sir Morien; and Parzival's older half-brother Feirefiz, who was mixed-race and had black-and-white patched skin (which sounds wild, but is kind of possible with vitilogo or chimerism). I really doubt medieval folks were ticking off 21st-century boxes. No one was going, "Guys, we have to add gender identity to Norse myths and make the Round Table more diverse so people centuries in the future will approve of it!" They had their own reasons for telling those stories. It's modern readers' faults if we edit diversity out of older stories in our imaginations.

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Just wanted to add, since, like you, I'm a fan of the Young Wizards:

Those books were always diverse, from the word go. From the very first book, they included a working-class (and very possibly mixed race, though definitely Irish American) girl, a Latino boy, and a gay couple. From the first book! In the 1980s!

And I think Duane was writing what she saw. One of the gay men was based on someone she knew, I believe, and she set the books in modern-day Long Island, a fairly diverse area.

I do think that new writers (like me) make a conscious effort to show diversity in their stories these days. This is not a bad thing! And sunnyskywalker is right; children's lit is still overwhelmingly white in spite of the new voices.

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I agree with both of you one hundred percent. Based not only on her writings but on statements she's made on politics, Rowling is not a leftist. She is a Blairite, a neoliberal, and fairly thoughtless with it, IMHO. She'd like to think of herself as liberal and tolerant--wouldn't we all? I can sympathize with her here. But her natural bent is fairly conservative.

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ahahahaahahaaha the idea that Rowling is in any way leftist or concerned with social justice.

Are you familiar with her twitter activity? If you score her public announcements on Twitter against the usual political metrics - race, immigration, Brexit and so forth - I think you'll find that Rowling is most definitely on the left side of politics, with some of her tweets being firmly in SJW territory I think (although she's not as stupid as the classic SJW kids just coming out of university). So I'll stand by my statement. It was amusing to see Rowling - she's fifty-three years old - learning twitter and gradually making friends, establishing her position on public issues, with thousands hanging on her every tweet. Twitter certainly is a valid means of establishing her bias/leanings. And they're Left.

Although while "virtue signalling" is generally bullshit -

Nah, it's been valid since the pharisees. Check out the Wikipedia page on the subject, there's multiple examples there.

(Also, that's not what postmodernism means at all; but hey.)

Yeah, I'll have to accept that I haven't nailed it down exactly, since I don't fully comprehend the Wikipedia entry on 'postmodernism'; too many referents I've never studied.

Still, when I said that "'postmodernism' means eschewing facts for feelings/popular tropes, I gather", I think I got it more than half right. Looking at Wikipedia again we see that PM 'targets ... universalist notions of objective reality'. I.e. it's against 'truth independent of individual subjectivity'. That's the first half of my statement re 'eschewing facts'.

I don't score 100% with the second half, where I describe that which the postmodernists use to replace those facts. My 'feelings/popular tropes' is in general alignment with the Wiki definition's "self-referentiality" and "moral relativism". 'Feelings' are indeed relative to the person and feelings held en masse are my 'popular tropes'. I think I score 50% on the second part. :-)

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sharaz-jek.livejournal.com

Nope, she's a centrist with pretensions of leftism and nasty unexamined racism, homophobia, and transphobia. I'm actually a leftist; don't question my circular firing squad skills XD

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Around here, we don’t go by what JKR says in interviews and tweets, but by what’s written in the books, and the books are illiberal and contain little social justice. I’m a leftist liberal who is in favor of social justice, and her books show that JKR isn’t. She just plays one on Twitter.

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It's a trivial but unfair exercise to measure Rowling's work of two decades in the past with today's drastically evolved standards of liberalism, don't you think?

When you say 'books' ... have you read any of her more recent efforts? 'The Casual Vacancy' or the four 'Strike' novels? I haven't ("fool me once", after all). I wonder if she's now ticking the boxes of today's politically correct scorecard with her more recent efforts? Can you tell me how her newer books are 'illiberal'?

Because I don't think the Potter books were all that bad when measured against the 'social justice' standards of her time and intended readership.

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I think your leftism is biasing your perception of Rowling's political position. The Wikipedia entry for Rowling says that she's known for her 'centre-left' views, where they define 'centre-left' as on the left, but not extreme. I.e. not centrist, but leftist. Just not as left as you probably are. (I don't understand the circular firing squad joke.)

Your 'pretension' accusation doesn't hold water - she's donated a million pounds to the Labour party, publically endorsed Labour politicians - Labour being their party of the Left - campaigned against Brexit and so forth. Pretty solid actions that belie any semblance of 'pretence' I reckon.

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sharaz-jek.livejournal.com

I am British, and Labour has, until Corbyn took over, not been terribly leftist (remember Tony Blair and you'll get the idea). Centrist with a hint of left at best (and Rowling's opinion of Corbyn is not the highest). But this is arguably getting off-topic, so probably better to just yell at the shitty books again.

(Circular firing squad is a common criticism and self-criticism of the left; our standard failure mode is attacking each other - see the People's Front of Judea for an example.)

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I’m on Twitter; I’ve seen some of her tweets. She is not a leftist. She’d fit right in with the (slightly right of center) corporate democrats. What she is, IMHO, is shallow.

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Well, I and the Wiki public disagree with you. :-) I found a Wiki page devoted to just this subject - Politics of J. K. Rowling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_J._K._Rowling). Lots of folk seem to think she's Left.

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Nope, she's a Blairite. Labour, certainly, but that does not make her leftist. I'm a leftist, and I agree with sharez jek and jana ch. Examples:
She opposes Corbyn.
She opposes BDS and refuses to speak out for the Palestinians.
Though she worked for Amnesty as a younger woman, she wrote a scene in DH that justifies torture.
As I remember, she was entirely in favor of libraries paying authors, which, as an American, strikes me as just plain strange.

And so on.

Of course, the whole world has swung so far to the right that someone slightly right of center, like Rowling, might well seem a leftist to most!

In any case, we're not really discussing her politics, are we? We're discussing her books. Her books are deeply, thoughtlessly conservative with a veneer of political correctness. I haven't read any of her recent work; I refuse to, but I think those who have find she hasn't changed much in this.

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Nope, she's a Blairite.

Which still makes her of the Left; just not as (far) Left as Labour had been previously.

I don't know much about British politics; Wiki says of Blair:

Critics of Blair denounced him for bringing the Labour Party towards the perceived centre ground of British politics ..

Left-of-centre is still Left.

Labour, certainly ...

Yes. She's of the left.

I'm a leftist, and I agree with sharez jek and jana ch.

I think you are (much) more Left than Rowling, and thus see her to your right - which is quite correct - but fail to see that she is still left of centre.

She opposes Corbyn.

She opposes the current leader of the Left-wing party but still supports the Left-wing party. One million pounds sterling worth of support in fact.

She opposes BDS and refuses to speak out for the Palestinians.

I'll let Rowling explain how she's still holding a Left position on Palestine, from here (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/27/jk-rowling-explains-refusal-to-join-cultural-boycott-of-israel):

"Believing in Palestinian rights & deploring occupation, I fear cultural boycott targets those most critical of govt inside Israel & those views should be heard."

You and Rowling are both people on the Left disagreeing about how exactly Israel should be pressured to bow to Palestinian rights and cease occupation. You both believe in Palestinian rights and want the occupation to stop. You're both the same colour on the left/right litmus test. :-)

Of course, the whole world has swung so far to the right that someone slightly right of center, like Rowling, might well seem a leftist to most!

I think in saying that you're agreeing with what I said above; you and sharez jek and jana ch are simply more to the left than what the centre is (these days).

In any case, we're not really discussing her politics, are we? We're discussing her books.

The post was about Rowling's penchant for telling people in the real world how to peruse her books. I said that her post-Potter foray into the world of social media has given her motivation to virtue signal to ingratiate herself with her leftist mates. An objection as to her being of the left was then lodged. :-)

Edited Date: 2019-01-19 01:47 am (UTC)

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Look, Madderbrad. I don't care what Wikipedia says. Blair is not left-wing. Neither is Obama, who was rather to the right of Richard Nixon. In terms of left and right, parties don't matter. Policies do. And, in both Britain and America, the so-called left-wing parties have drifted far to the right in my lifetime. Right now, as I write, a young socialist congresswoman is being castigated for suggesting policies like those of Dwight Eisenhower (republican!).

It's a good thing that we finally have some people speaking from the left. In America, there has been no meaningful left wing for decades. I think the same is true of Britain.

As to Rowling, anyone reading her books would assume she was deeply conservative, with a veneer of political correctness. That's what comes through to me.

BTW, true left-wingers are not "Social Justice Warriors". They speak for the human rights of all people. It's the center democrats, in the U.S., who focus on identity politics. They castigated Bernie Sanders because he was not a social justice warrior.

All I've got to say on this subject! Let's get back to the books, such as they are.
(And I did love the first five. I really did. More astute readers--and watchers--than I spotted their flaws by the third book, if not before. I was--hopeful. Oh, well.)

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Look, Madderbrad. I don't care what Wikipedia says.

Ah. Personally, when I don't have immediate/direct evidence on a topic - or I don't consider myself an expert on same - I tend to try and find out more information. Wikipedia is a good source. Inconvenient if it doesn't agree with one, though, I concede.

Blair is not left-wing. Neither is Obama -

I suspect both of them would, if given a litmus test, be classified as being on the Left.

I know you don't care about Wikipedia says but 'Political positions of Barak Obama' was useful to me to confirm my position. Apparently he was 'more liberal' than 77% of the Senate, how about that. Anyway, you don't care about Wikipedia, so I won't go on.

I know very little about Blair. Looked him up just now. Found quite a few pages focused on his politics.

We disagree. At least, I think the two gentlemen were generally of the left; not sure if your 'left wing' means '*extreme* left'?

As to Rowling, anyone reading her books would assume she was deeply conservative -

Would a 'deeply conservative' person write a book where - half? - the authority figures were women? Back then all the current furore over LGBT+ABCXYZ and religion and all the other 'intersectional' dimensions of today's identity politics was invisible to the UK general public. I think Rowling expressed her left-orientated political stance that she had quite nicely with the major issue pertinent then - women's rights. With the books aimed squarely against discrimination against muggles/race.

And the books were being written twenty years ago. We're discussing Rowling as she is now, not back then.

And I did love the first five.

I'm not sure I 'loved' the first five books - I was an adult - but I enjoyed them. HBP was rubbish though IMO, and DH a catastrophe. We agree on this, I think.

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Hey, Brad! You failed to respond to any of my actual points. For example:

In the 1950s, our president, Dwight Eisenhower, was a Republican and considered centrist to slightly right of center. Basically centrist.
1. He spoke strongly and clearly against the Military-Industrial complex.
2. His actual policy as to taxation included a marginal tax rate on the (then) extremely wealthy that went as high as 90 percent.

Proof of this: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/15/bernie-s/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/

Now, two young women in the Democratic party and the Socialist Democrats of America are suggesting:
1. That we limit the power of the Military-industrial complex and stop wars of regime change and wars of choice (Tulsi Gabbard)
2. That we re-institute a marginal tax of 70 percent on the extremely wealthy (Alexandra Ocasio Cortez).

And they are getting called far left. That is how far right the politicians (including the corporate Democrats like the Clintons and Obama and the neoliberals like Tony Blair) have drifted! It is, sadly, true that Obama WAS (when he started his presidency) to the left of most of congress. That does not make him left-wing. His policies were basically in line with Nixon's. (Nixon, you remember, signed the Environmental Protection Act). The modern-day Democrats are basically 1960's Republicans, and the Republicans are basically Fascists. It was Clinton, in particular, who drove the Democrats to the right, while Thatcher and Reagan, between them, drove the Republicans and the Tories toward Fascism. I'm not saying those two were actually Fascists in the mold of Trump. But they pushed rightward and wanted to destroy the social welfare state.

I think I'm a good bit older than you, and I can actually remember some of this. I saw it. I've seen my country drift rightward. It was more than fifteen years ago when I said, in a professional meeting "This country has no meaningful left wing." The president of the library association responded later, "who is that brilliant woman?" Well, we have a left wing now, thank heavens! But the corporate Dems and corporate labour are not part of it.

As to Rowling's politics AS SHOWN IN HER BOOKS, they are conservative. They are actually 19th-century--for reasons. I went on and on about that in my old essay, "J.K. Rowling and the Mores of the 19th Century"

I think we are going to have to agree to differ, as far as politics go. I WILL drop the subject now. Really!

I also agree with you that Rowling would consider herself left-wing. I just really, really, don't think she is. She's a Blairite.

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While I'm familiar with postmodernism, I must admit that I have very little hands-on experience with rainbow-headed, tumblr-crazy crowd. Around these parts you are more likely to meet religious fanatics or neo-Nazis :P

Generally speaking I don't like ascribing ill intent to living breathing humans whom I never met, unless I have a very good reason to think so. So my go-to reasoning when it comes to author who try to dictate how readers should interpret their works is that their are insecure and/or have some kind of control issues. After all both fans and critics can be very vicious.

I suppose there is a strong possibility that she does it either to boost her sales by looking more trendy or to make herself look more progressive.

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While I'm familiar with postmodernism ...

Maybe you can tell me how close I got to what it means. sharaz_jek says that I didn't hit the mark 'at all', but I think I was in the rough ballpark.

I must admit that I have very little hands-on experience with rainbow-headed, tumblr-crazy crowd.

'Rainbow-headed', heh. I see you've met them. :-)

I've never cottoned on to Tumblr. I can't see how multiple folk can have a communal discussion like we're doing here. I know LJ is dead but still ... I just don't grok Tumblr.

Generally speaking I don't like ascribing ill intent to living breathing humans whom I never met -

Having spent a few years watching Rowling use Twitter I guess I have 'met' her to some extent. I've read her opinions on some political issues. That's why I'm comfortable in saying she's of the Left.

(I never called her a SJW; that's the category into which I feel some of your 'Potterheads' can be placed.)

I suppose there is a strong possibility that she does it either to boost her sales by looking more trendy or to make herself look more progressive.

The latter, definitely, in my opinion. She's found her crowd on Twitter and wants them to think nicely of her, she wants to impress them. So she's trying to retroactively make her books more progressive and herself seem more 'clever' in what she did. But when she flat-out *lies* to do so .... arrrgh.

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I've never cottoned on to Tumblr. I can't see how multiple folk can have a communal discussion like we're doing here. I know LJ is dead but still ... I just don't grok Tumblr.

I would advice against visiting it. Before Tumblr banned raunchy content, majority of the site could be split between 18+ fanwork and "I identify as attack helicopter" style SJWs.
Nowadays I have no idea what happens and I'm not curious enough to test waters :P

I'm always hesitant to use social media as measuring stick, since a lot of celebrities and companies employ someone to manage social media.
But then again with JKR we have Dumbledore-is-gay interviews . Eh...

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I like that! I second the motto.

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snapes-witch.livejournal.com

Wow! JKR says we should re-read the books? She who has admitted never re-reading them!!

BTW thanks so much for making this American 'libtard' welcome to the discussion with all the SJW and left bashing.

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When madderbrad is having a rant, one just has to ignore his name-calling (I had to look up SJW on Acronym Finder) and address the root issue, which sunnyskywalker does better than I did. Brad makes a valid point, and it would be just as valid if he were writing about a conservative author (shall we say a ‘wing-nut’?) who produced a book full of liberal values, which the author later tried to disavow.

And I love the video chataldormand linked to. That says it all!

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Rant? I do not think that word means what you think it means ... :-)

Since you didn't know anything about SJWs I guess the relevance of the association I was drawing escaped you. Other readers who know of SJWs would have hopefully immediately grasped my meaning.

Brad makes a valid point, and it would be just as valid if he were writing about a conservative author (shall we say a ‘wing-nut’?) who produced a book full of liberal values, which the author later tried to disavow.

Yes, thanks. Except I wouldn't be able to apply the term 'Social Justice Warrior' in that case, since that is a label which applies only to the (extreme?) Left.

Since Rowling is of the Left, since Rowling's post-publication propaganda has been attempts by her to introduce leftist 'social justice' adjustments to her books - Dumbledore is a homosexual! There were jews at Hogwarts! Hermione wasn't necessarily white! - and since the chantaldormand's 'Potterheads' are of the left, the term 'Social Justice Warrior' was quite appropriate.

It wasn't a case of 'name calling' (i.e. pejorative labelling with no substance behind the accusation to derail or vent). It was a case of classification!

It's become quite clear to me - amusingly so! - that my frustrations in the early years of my HP experience, with young people who seemed to ignore facts, chantaldormand's Potterheads, who would tell me that "it's my opinion that Harry and Ginny are soulmates and opinions can't be wrong" and so forth, were probably the same folk who graduated university and became SJWs. I had a sneak preview of what the rest of the world saw a few years later, when the kids finished reading Harry Potter and started looking at real world 'social justice'.

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Please, don't call these people mine. I'm in no way associated with them and usually I try to avoid them. This is simply a term that had catch on in the part of internet that I frequent.

Honestly I think this is more problem of how parents treat their kids than what kind BS celebrities or teachers spout. If you leave your kids with internet and television instead of talking to them, then their are going to absorb whatever crap they will see there.

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Please, don't call these people mine.

Oh. I wasn't trying to be clever. I meant they were 'yours' in that you were the one who coined that term. They're 'my' pro-Jo disciples, they're 'your' Potterheads.

You didn't have a smilie so I have to take you seriously, but I wasn't associating them with in belief or mindset with you at all. Just the label you used to classify/group them.

Honestly I think this is more problem of how parents treat their kids than what kind BS celebrities or teachers spout.

Hmmmm ... I disagree. I don't have any first hand experience with today's educational system but I've read/watched multiple articles discussing how socialist extreme-left thinking has 'taken over' the humanities at the universities of the west, how it's encouraging the great divisions - well, one of them - in society via identity politics and so forth. I won't discuss that any further here, you may agree or disagree, but there is a definite body of thought ascribing 'Potterhead' thinking to what is being taught in universities, a lot of evidence I think.

Sadly, as you say, there's also often a lack of parental guidance to mitigate this.

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I suspected as much, but it's better to make sure than be sorry. Especially when we are talking about SJWs :P

I'm under 30, and while my experiences might be bit different than those in western Europe or USA I don't think they are that much off. I studied at social sciences Dep. and it was interesting time. Among many experiences I was invited to black mass headed by Neo-nazis, argued with a few SJW I met there, but mostly I butted heads with religious fanatics and right wing nuts.
IMHO what we see in newspapers is "loud minority". Sure there is always that one academic teacher who is in middle of getting their Phd who will spout political nonsense or a group of SJW/MGTOW/whatever other fringe group you pick, who will protest something. But those people will either go get job and temper their opinions or crash and burn ending on couches of their parents and/or friends.
Heck if I had to evaluate my education then I would say that up until Uni, I had no contact with anything resembling postmodernism.
That is why I say that parents should be blamed for this situation; if your child at age 18-19 have problems with telling difference between reality and fantasy (*cough*AnitaSarkeesian*cough*) or objectively analysing text then perhaps you should reconsider your actions.

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I think maybe your experiences *are* a bit different from those in western Europe or the USA because the nutcase balance you describe doesn't exist there from what I've read and heard.

(*cough*AnitaSarkeesian*cough*)

Nasty cough you have there! :-)

Edited Date: 2019-01-08 11:27 am (UTC)

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Ah yes, sorry about that. I'm not sure that even Chloraseptic would be effective against it :P

Balance-wise? Yes. But when it comes to % of nutjobs/activists? Not really.
A good chunk of my time at Uni was spent helping out with ERASMUS. From what I learned from my contacts in the program and my pupils it seems that % those people among students is always in 5%-10% range. Balance of those minorities tend to depend on political climate in the country we are speaking about. For example at Greek Uni you are more likely to met straight up communist than your garden variety of SJW. In UK on the other hand you are more likely to meet SJW than religious nutjob.
When we look at social media or 24/7 news channels those politically motivated groups are so visible not because they are really popular, but because they are loud and make good news.
And if news channels showcase those nutjobs? Well then it's much easier for them to force the majority to bend knee.

You know what is the real difference between my experience and American students'? My Uni is funded from taxes so if I transferred to another Uni or heck even if half of my year transferred, it wouldn't hurt that much the University.
American students on the other hand hold much more power over their universities. The moment University notices that revenue stream is disrupted by some insane employees spouting political nonsense instead of teaching, they can very easily put halt to these practices :)

Edited Date: 2019-01-08 02:43 pm (UTC)

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Balance-wise your experience/locale might be different from the USA and western Europe - I know nothing about Greece and happily accept your evaluation of its universities - but I think also the spread of the SJW indoctrination. From what I've seen SJW/Left-style socialist thought and, most certainly, identity politics has quite taken over the humanities departments in western universities - North America at least.

But I have no personal experience of this. I've just been watching youtube videos and reading news articles. It's quite a big deal these days.

(Well, my personal experience was in encountering 'Potterhead' behaviour in young HP fans and then realising that same behaviour manifested in the silliness of SJWs a few years later.)

You know what is the real difference between my experience and American students'? My Uni is funded from taxes ...

American students on the other hand hold much more power over their universities.

That's very interesting and what I've heard is certainly consistent with that. There have been some extreme cases of US universities being 'bailed up' by students and many others where right-wing speakers have been refused entry because a small cadre of students have agitated against them.

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Okay, I have to laugh at the idea that identity politics have "taken over." Even if you're just talking about US politics, they have always taken identity as one of the major issues. You don't even have to go back as far as the 19th century to see it. Lots of 20th-century politicians made no bones about representing white men, valuing that group especially, and making preserving segregation a major point of their campaigns and administrations. The anti-suffragists were adamant that only men should vote, which is hardly an identity-neutral position.

Academics weren't shy in praising the superiority of white people, or in nodding sagely about how women are just different and not cut out for business and politics and rational thinking like men are. They were totally up front about thinking that other groups mostly didn't do anything worth writing about, because their white male identity was superior. The US performed tens of thousands of forced eugenic sterilizations based on how mostly-white often-men evaluated different identities (short version: poor people, people of color, and people with disabilities were sterilized far, far more often than middle-class white people with no obvious disabilities). I could go on.

American politics has always been identity politics. This is true of a lot of other countries, too. Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" is a poem about how identity should influence world politics. Just to take one tiny example. It's not that people were neutral and unconcerned with identity and then suddenly those darn universities started brainwashing kids to care about race and sexual orientation. It's that one identity isn't the unquestioned boss of the conversation anymore, so the people who share that identity and so didn't have to think about now do.

Also, incidentally, my experience of college was the opposite of brainwashing. My textbooks in lower levels of schooling usually had very simple narratives that left out a lot, and in college, we got a bunch more information--often by authors who disagreed with each other--and had to learn to sort it out ourselves. So don't go assuming that all colleges or college students who end up liberal are alike ;-)

Edited Date: 2019-01-19 06:48 am (UTC)

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Amen to all of this! Also, as to Kipling, "The White Man's Burden" was a justification/praise song about the U.S. attack on the Philippines.

I think when Brad talks about "Identity Politics", he specifically means those people who speak up for marginalized groups. But it's absolutely true that the right wing have always used identity politics to energize their base. I also think its true that the actual left has always spoken for our common humanity, as our so-called extreme left wingers (Bernie, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Greens) are doing today.

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