erika_nightingale

Okay, so a lot of things have happened while I was away from the internet, which always seems to happen, so I'm like three days behind. I just found out that JKR is releasing/has released (I'm no longer on Pottermore so I don't really know) a history on witches/wizards in America. This, of course, included a pretty historically inaccurate summary of Native American witches and wizards and you can tell from the snippet that I read that either she hadn't really done that much research or she did and chose to do what she wanted to do. My main issue isn't that she cherry picked, although that definitely can come with it's own problems if you aren't careful, but I think it's more insidious because JKR is acting like what she wrote is actual history but with HP wizards and witches in it. It obviously isn't.

I don't know, I think JKR's attempts at inclusion have been clumsy. I also think her attempts have gotten progressively worse.

1) Dumbledore being gay- There were some hints of this within Book 7 that were a bit too subtle then they should have been. Enough that a lot of people didn't think it was Dumbledore who was gay. Now the argument is not whether Dumbledore is gay or not but whether he can count for positive representation of the LGBT community when the text barely mentions his sexuality. Personally, in this case I think JKR wanted to portray a gay character without him being defined by his sexuality. Unfortunately in the process I think in Dumbledore's sexuality was erased either by her or her publishers.

2) Black Hermione- I don't have a problem with black Hermione in general. I can see why people see her that way. However, JKR never intended for Hermione to be anything other than white and I think JKR hasn't explained her thought process with Hermione well (duh this is all on twitter). JKR never mentions Hermione's skin color once in text, but she allowed for the interpretation of Hermione to be exclusively white until the play. She could have said something to the artist if Hermione was always meant to be white or to her publishers. If she wanted Hermione to be black she would have made a stink about it long ago. I can't fathom why she wouldn't, she's very particular about her canon. So in my mind no one can say black Hermione is canon, you can only say its your interpretation of the character which is only marginally better than making white Hermione canon (which is now no longer canon for the books which is fine). I don't think she gave the black community anything but a bone here and I think she did it because she didn't want to be seen as racist.

3) Native Americans in the history- Skipping the part where JKR clearly did no research on American (specifically the US history). JKR's portrayal of Native Americans is downright insensitive and plainly wrong. You can tell by reading it that she has little grasp of American history and clearly only knows one Native American tribe and used that to describe all of them. No wonder Native American fans are pissed. She has little grasp of the history of these people and therefore her own twists and interpretations fall extremely flat and can been seen as offensive.

My main issue with JKR right now is that she keeps talking about her canon on twitter and Pottermore. I think Harry Potter is slowly losing it's magic. At first I was excited about more Harry Potter, but now I'm extremely worried. Fantastic Beasts is going to incorporate JKR's interpretation of US/American history which is full of errors. Cursed Child the book is coming out but I'm not sure if I even want to read it. I mean it's a sequel. I'm really only interested in her writing books on the Founding Fathers of Hogwarts (be in Helga's POV please), McGonagall, Merlin or some other witch or wizard in the past not connected with Harry at all, or Lily Evans (Potter) POV. I just wish she'd write books instead of making vague twitter posts and snippets on Pottermore. This is why I think creators need to step away from social media (coughtwittercough) and focus on telling their stories. But at the end of the day it's her work and she can run it into the ground George Lucas style if she wants.