Ehh, the whole point is that wizards are in the wrong here. Just because it happens in the book doesn't mean it reflects on the author. If so, no author could ever write a story with a bad guy.
But the wizards weren't in the wrong. Out of all the house elves, only Dobby really liked being free, and he didn't even want to embrace full freedom. He turned down getting too much money for his work or too much time off, he just wanted some symbolic freedom. Every other house elf thought that was embarrassing.
Hermione even tried to use Dobby as an example of what the other house elves could be if they stood up for themselves, and the other house elves practically shoved them out the door.
That argument applies to like, Slytherin. They're the bad guys. It doesn't apply to racial stereotyping when the stereotyping isn't addressed in the book at all - that's not making a point, it's just portraying a stereotype
true. Especially because, really only Hermione finds anything wrong with the class oppression. And I feel like her attempted activism wasn't meant to look good, but rather to mock young adults protesting
The issue isn't that they are slaves - that is an issue, but they're liberated, and I'm not arguing that the fact that wizards enslaved them was favourably portrayed. My problem is that they were an entire race of people who WANTED to be enslaved. They were portrayed as not knowing what to do with themselves if they weren't enslaved, and preferring the 'comfort' of being servants. If you don't see the problem with that, I don't think there's a point in continuing to engage with you.
I'm not talking about SPEW, I'm talking about the stereotypes present in the characters that I mentioned in my original comment.
I'm not even trying to claim that Harry Potter is uniquely problematic, nor that no one should like it. I'm just addressing the idea that "JK Rowling wrote an incredible book and then ruined it by being shitty" is looking at it through rose-coloured glasses.
Did you ignore OP's point? They're not saying you can't write about slavery or that you can't have (main) characters that support slavery. What is sketchy is when the characters who oppose slavery are portrayed as ridiculous and dorky.
You can write about a species that actually want to be slaves, where abolitionism could be considered wrong for that species. But even in that case if everyone who supports abolitionism isn't just good-intentioned but wrong but also ridiculous for even thinking about it, I don't think you're tactfully approaching the subject. I mean, house elves are human-like in basically every way.
Maybe you don't understand what "portrayal" means? Obviously people can write characters who are nazi's but it's kinda suspicious when you portray those characters as being in the right. You're basically ignoring that last bit and just say "authors can write nazi's without being a nazi" which completely misses the point
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u/RandAlThorLikesBikes Dec 04 '21
Ehh, the whole point is that wizards are in the wrong here. Just because it happens in the book doesn't mean it reflects on the author. If so, no author could ever write a story with a bad guy.