JK Rowling and 'Death of the Author'

Across the wider Potterhead community there are many alleged authors of Harry Potter. They veer from the fandom-relevant (Daniel Radcliffe, Dobby the House-Elf) to the comedic (Hatsune Miku, Taylor Swift), to the acutely insane (Rita Skeeter who snuck over into the muggle world and ghostwrote the HP series to tell us about how Wizardry is actually secretly real). Nearly none of these stand-ins feature JK Rowling herself in any capacity.

The existence of a proxy-author within the fanbase renders Harry Potter once again as a safe media. If JK Rowling didn’t write Harry Potter, then it’s not problematic! Right…?

In actuality, ‘death of the author’ not only contributes to the rise of anti-intellectualism across book-based fandoms, but erases the harmful ideologies within Harry Potter, and in turn diminishes the effect these ideologies have had in influencing the characters and tropes in the books.

...

For many in the Harry Potter fandom, JK Rowling’s rampant transphobia on Twitter came as a surprise. But for some, this was the natural destination of a path that started with such classics as Parvati and Padma Patil, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Seamus Finnegan, and the ever-infamous Cho Chang. And to talk about erasing JK’s bigotry, we first have to talk about the bigotry itself. 

part a: racism and harry potter

Harry Potter is a world built almost entirely on hierarchy. Between pure-bloods and half-bloods, elves and goblins, rich and poor—and above all, between Muggles and Wizards. The way that these hierarchies are treated varies from case to case. Of course, the pure-blood supremacists are Big Evils, who gather in Evil robes and hats in Evil circles to discuss their Evil plans. The house elves, on the other hand, are willing and dedicated slaves to the wizarding race, who, without slavery to keep them in line, would turn to alcoholism and laziness. You know.

At the end of the day, all of the hierarchies within the series, frowned upon or not, are treated as inherently true to some degree. Andrew Blake describes the wizarding world that Rowling has written as one “whose inhabitants are inherently superior to humans”. Despite ‘blood purity’ seemingly not affecting magic skill—Harry, Snape, Hermione and Voldemort all being notably not of pure blood—wizards as a whole are still depicted as better than muggles. And despite real-world concepts of race being brushed aside—with the leader of the Ministry being black—white characters are still centred above those of colour, and pervasive stereotypes of minorities are rampant.

Creating a fictional parallel to an issue as complicated, lengthy, and multi-faceted as racism or slavery is hard, and even the more successful ones fall just a little short. Because to describe discrimination to kids, it needs to be justified, and the justification for racism is nothing short of ‘capitalist greed’—which isn’t simple or marketable. So texts create other reasons: in Zootopia, the predators are discriminated against because they are literally dangerous to prey; Tolkien’s elves and dwarves possess distinct biological differences that separate each other in their lifestyles and societies. In real life, racial differences are falsehoods made up by the dominating power—nothing as neat and easily explained as ‘different magic types’.

Harry Potter is no different. In order to demonstrate the evil of racism Rowling first had to create a place for it within her fantasy England, and in order to create that place she had to give it a valid backing—which in turn validated the evils themselves. 

This concept is apparent not only in the depiction of wizards and muggles, but in every other imagined divide between characters in Harry Potter’s mythical society. Hermione fights nobly against slavery to prove its horrors—for a group of passive slaves unwilling to be freed. Hogwarts is hailed as a school for all—only, wizards are divided into houses that, in at least the case of Slytherin, directly align with one’s political and racial identity. Werewolves are ostracised for a condition they choose—yet many actively and intentionally harm as many innocents as possible. 

Worst of all, Lord Voldemort, who is in all ways a stand-in for both Hitler and a literal ‘Grand Wizard’, is made to show very clearly that prejudice based on race is bad and villainous. However, in her attempt to ‘humanise’ him, or at least explain his actions, Rowling writes a disgusting and ridiculous explanation for systemic hatred. Voldemort, via his mother’s love potion, is a child of rape. Clearly (??) this then means he cannot feel love. His father, the victim and a muggle, abandons both mother and child when he realises that they are magical. Both are treated as villains for their parts, however unwitting, in this narrative.

Maybe this is a controversial take, but not all villains need to have tragic backstories, especially ones that represent groups as evil as the Ku Klux Klan. And especially when those backstories boil down to ‘children of rape cannot feel love’. Justifying a villain, specifically a villain that parallels real-world issues, is—at least in some respects—justifying the issues themselves. 

This is all in a broader context of the story’s central themes and plot. Up close, HP is littered with far more specific, needling cases of microaggressions and stereotypes that, even way back in the 90s, hinted at her neoliberal conservative nature in the present.