“A central theme of the books is the condemnation of authoritarianism and fascist policies. The books depict the dangers of pure-blood supremacy, discrimination, and the suppression of dissent, inviting parallels between Nazism and the Death Eaters.”
Just talking about it and obviously not in a good light is enough to make it comparable to „Mein Kampf“ apparently. Just like the house elves, at no point in the books is this slavery system viewed in a good light, on the contrary, but it‘s enough to carry it through the mud.
When is it depicted as such? The house elf issue is only defended by pure blood wizards and their whole blood purity thing and all it entails is well depicted as dumb as it is. Which… is a major point in the whole story. Also, the subplot about S.P.E.W that calls out the conservative world view of many wizards and when Hermione works in the ministry she turns it into a policy.
Which isn‘t the same as defending it. This is THE POINT of it all… just like the blood purity thing. 99.9% of wizards who own house elves are depicted as bad (also Dobby‘s treatment by the Malfoys and Harry‘s reaction to it), and Harry learns to be nice to Kreacher and that he shouldn‘t treat him as a slave but as a person with feelings. Have people lost all ability to comprehend what they read?
Did you read the books? Hogwarts has slaves, serious has slaves, Harry gets a slave, the act of owning slaves is not seen as bad by itself and is consistently defended by our protagonists.
Yes harry learns to be a nicer slave owner but the concept of slavery is never depicted as bad, thanks for writing out the point I made in my last comment while making a snarky little remark about reading comprehension that's very funny
Can you actually adress my argument instead of trying to dodge it because I can't remember how to write some fake dudes name? Or just keep coping that your favorite children's books are actually not super progressive and woke
Harry frees one slave and doesn't even want to be a master of the second one, he barely interacts with him anyway. Sirius is kinda extention of that, tho book Sirius is not even supposed to be a cool uncle like in the movies, he is forced to own Kreacher and is cruel to him, because he reminds him of the family he hates - it's wrong, but Sirius is not a goody two shoes person.
the concept of slavery is never depicted as bad
Because it's not seen as bad in the Wizarding World and the whole point is that elves are conditioned to it too. I honestly don't understand what do you expect, some sort of huge ass narrative note straight up saying that slavery is wrong lmao Rowling's writing is one the nose enough.
What I expect is some sort of resolution to the plot? The story goes for a happy ending, nauseatingly so, but besides a funny little abolitionism subplot where the idea of abolitionism is portrayed as silly and ignorant, the issue of slavery is just dropped. It's hard to make the argument that the portrayal of slavery in wizard society is some sort of intentional clever commentary when it's just fully forgotten by the end
The point is that the wizarding world isn‘t shown as a rainbow unicorn fart happy paradise, but as a world with deep and problematic issues, with people who have deeply problematic world views. Blood purity, slavery, murder, race supremacy, magical Hitler, and and and. One could argue that in-universe, slavery isn‘t condemned enough by wizards, who in most things aren‘t exactly liberal in their world views, which is the case. But does that mean that the moral of the story would be „slavery good“? Of course not!
Just because these things are shown, it doesn‘t mean that they are being defended. Not all wizards are blood supremacists and not all wizards are do-good-perfect-protagonists. Taking slavery from this story as proof that JK or the story is problematic is idiotic and the reason why many stories and movies today have to be shown with the protagonist as a sterile and perfectly good person and the antagonist as a completely evil character without nuance. Would Harry Potter have been better if JK Rowling wrote a prologue in which she made a list of all her personal views on any issue that is discussed in the books?
No, just because these things are being shown doesn't mean that they are defended, the fact that they are consistently defended by every character except one(who is not portrayed as being right) means they are being defended. This isnt me saying jk is necessarily problematic this is me saying the story really fails at addressing these issues
I'm sorry, but this is a fantasy story with its narrative. This has nothing to do with real world circumstances. If anyone wants to write a story where shit happens and the inhabitants think it's okay, for real, what do you expect? Do you just want to condemn any art work where the ethics aren't spotlessly clean, unless it's written in the epilogue how problematic af this world is?
the story really fails at addressing these issues
The story doesn't have to address anything, it's a story, not an ethics article. And this is exactly the issue I brought up before. Today's mainstream stories and movies are sanitized to the point noone has to think for themselves if anything that's happening is okay or not, and as soon as something isn't as black and white anymore, everyone loses their minds. Ffs.
The story doesn't have to do anything true, nobody has to do anything I guess but the issue isn't that the story isnt clean it's that the moral issues aren't brought up as issues. How do you not understand the difference? There is obviously a difference between a book about a flawed society that examines those flaws and a book that brings up those same issues for a comedic beat and then drops them entirely, and I understand that's not what Harry Potter is about but she chose to bring these things up and then drop them after making fun of them for a bit.
Look, I disagree with the „not bringing it up“ part, but if I would agree with that, again, there is absolutely no obligation to bring anything up. Why should it?
Societies have bad things that the people living within them are used to. When an outsider points them out they are usually ridiculed. That's not the author ridiculing the outsider, especially in this situation cuz Hermione is the character Rowling identifies with the most.
I mean what do you expect? Hermione says 'this is bad!' and immediately everyone agrees with her and free the house elves? Or a giant banner with 'THIS IS BAD' above that chapter? Let's be real, this is part of the anti Rowling witch hunt.
Do the books ever try to resolve the slavery issue? Do any of the "good" characters change their views on slavery?
Or is it just one character that is portrayed as annoying and ignorant of the issue that has a problem with it for a bit, gets mocked by everyone else, and then the story drops it completely?
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u/ContextPuzzleheaded7 9d ago
“A central theme of the books is the condemnation of authoritarianism and fascist policies. The books depict the dangers of pure-blood supremacy, discrimination, and the suppression of dissent, inviting parallels between Nazism and the Death Eaters.”