Yeah, it’s Harry Potter. Social change is the enemy in the book. At no point does anyone try to improve anything in the book. They don’t even oppose evil that much. They just oppose it when the existing evil tries to go too far by the current standards of evil.
Hermione tries to raise awareness about elf mistreatment.
It’s implied that Dumbledore was trying to influence Fudge to improve things in their regular correspondence before the GoF/OotP story arc.
Then she gets to meet the slave race they keep in the basement and said slaves explain that their enslavement is a fundamental part of magic society and the only reason Dobby in particular had to be freed was because his owners were a bit too mean to him. The message becomes “slavery is fine as long as slaves are treated well.”. Then they drop that particular can of worms because addressing it would require societal change. It is one of few endeavours where the heroes of the story just fail to do what they want.
said slaves explain that their enslavement is a fundamental part of magic society and the only reason Dobby in particular had to be freed was because his owners were a bit too mean to him
Its crazy how a big part of subsequent novels is Dobby being unable to exist without slavishly devoting himself to another wizard. And his arc ends with him literally catching a bullet for Harry because he’s convinced his life is worth less than a wizard’s.
Just imagine reading “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and the whole way through its just Jim finding newer and more obsequies ways to serve at Huck’s whims.
Tries and fails. It never goes anywhere, and she’s mocked as a well-meaning fool for trying in the first place because “welp most elves just enjoy being slaves what can you do shrug emoji”. Jkr sets up something with Hermione and the elves and then doesn’t follow through with it in any meaningful way (and I don’t count commentary from her outside the books as following through) so it’s left to just sit there uncritically as “slavery is a thing in this universe and is seen as completely normal by most characters, and only one person ever tries to do anything about it and she’s depicted as a cringey radical in the process”. Jkr doesn’t even show the beginnings of societal change like more elves coming to Dobby’s side of things once they see it’s an option and that Dobby’s is happy that way, or other house elves being motivated to think differently about their situation and starting to unlearn their generations of indoctrination. We don’t even see a glimpse of Winky starting to recover instead the last we see of her is as a depressed alcoholic whose life was ruined by her being freed from slavery. Jkr depicts it as “yeah slavery is bad but you can’t change the way the world works so might as well not even try.” the house elves’ servitude is treated as something so fundamentally tied to their species that it seems to be biological and thus humans taking advantage of that is to some degree the natural way of things which, I shouldn’t have to explain what the problem with that sort of depiction is. Maybe that wasn’t what she intended, maybe she just added slavery because it’s a common world building trope, but if that’s the case she did so without considering the implications or how it would come across in the end product or the messages it would send.
Jkr sets up something with Hermione and the elves and then doesn’t follow through with it in any meaningful way
In fairness, this is a common theme across all of JKR’s writings after Goblet of Fire.
Hermione tries to raise awareness about elf mistreatment.
For maybe two dozen paragraphs in one book, and then she gives up because literally no other wizard will support her.
Its just so funny that there’s a scene in Book 5 where Voldemort blows up a statue dedicated to Wizard Supremacy and you’re honestly not sure who the bad guy is anymore.
Reminds me of this
Some comments complaining about the house elves status don’t see how well it spills into real life.
Society didn’t care in the books, society doesn’t care in real life. Change was slow in the books, change is slow in real life.
Rowling was accurate as fuck in this regard.This might be true, but Rowling also makes choices in regards to how she thinks we should perceive individuals who do want to change the world for the better. Hermione wants to free the house elves and is depicted as being a busybody and white knight more interested in her own sense of self-righteousness than actually improving the world. In art, just as in real life, the particular contains the universal, and we can make the logical conclusion that this is how Rowling broadly perceives people in the real world that advocate for social change.
Now you’re reminding me of those literary analysis classes. “The author used the colour blue to express their hidden and deep sadness over the loss of a burrito to a seagull…”
While we might be able to extract her point of view at the time of writing and we might assume its evolution based on her later public interactions, logic only suggests a probable conclusion based on those components, not a definite one.
Rowling also integrated parts of her own experiences into her stories. How do we know Hermione wasn’t a jab at herself or some other girl she knew? Must it absolutely be a broad perception of real life? Why can’t it be a particular and individual event to have given it inspiration to grow into something bigger?
Logic is only sound when it covers all the angles, not just the ones favorable to a set conclusion.
aurors aren’t cops
An Auror was a wizard or witch that worked as a highly trained law enforcement official for a wizarding governing body
Oi! Youse gotta license fer dat wand?
JK Rowling literally wrote a slave caste that loves being in servitude. Even putting aside the transphobia of her most recent past, the Harry Potter books are not leftist friendly.
Ok, I hate that you are putting me in a position where I have to defend her TERFy ass but this is not a valid criticism.
The House Elves(the eponymous slaves you were referring to) were not in any way framed as a good thing. She went out of her way to make it abundantly clear that to any modern sensibility such a class system is abhorrent. You can have unsavory elements in your work of fiction as a vehicle for your characters’ story arc and not be a piece of shit for it.
However, if you’re a fucking TERF shitstain on Twitter, that’s an entirely different kettle if fish and absolutely feel free to light her ass up on that. That and being coy about Dumbledore being gay. Should have been in the books and not implied only to be confirmed online. Absolute bullshit.
Ron literally makes fun of Hermione for wanting to free the slaves. But it’s all good cause the slaves like being slaves. Imagine writing this into your children’s book.
Because systemic slavery isn’t reinforced by societal norms at all. And it’s not like Ron came around and realized how wrong he was in thinking that way at the end in some crucial moment or anything. 😒
Harry was billed in early books as this “Anti-Voldemort”, who’d lead Wizardy to a gilded age and do great things… But JK Is a Status Quo loving Neo Liberal and can’t imagine a better world. In all of her works the system is corrupt, but it’s fine because the only thing that would make it go wrong is one bad faith actor (In this case Voldemort), who will stumble upon some obscure rule that undoes him. (In this case, killing Harry who was at that time the last horcrux)
Harry becomes a cop and doesn’t change the status quo because the world as it is is the best JK can imagine it.
It’s kind of like how no one did anything about Trump, they kept waiting for him to trip over some rule that sends the system crashing down on him, but it never happened.
It never happened because the system is powerless to punish anyone, because the system is just an idea, it is immaterial.
The Electoral College isn’t going to magically vote for Hillary because it recognizes Trump’s evil. People have to recognize his corruption and change the system to combat it…
The Democrats never learned they couldn’t just wait for the System to punish the Republicans after they accumulated enough good/bad boy points
JK Is a Liberal and can’t imagine a better world
Wtf do you people think “liberal” means? Some people think it means communist, some think it means socialist, some somehow think it means fascist. I’d love to what you actually mean when you use a word that has a specific meaning of “anti-authoritarian”.
The word “liberal” is associated with the right everywhere except the US.
The fuck? No
Liberalism is pro-Capitalism, therefore it’s right wing.
To be fair aurors seem to be doing the job of detectives/cops/militia/commanding officers/military police/federal agents/CIs/Deputies/Marshals/Troopers/ Dementor management/whatever
It’s not just a cop. Besides the guys seem to be paid decently enough and deal with the most nastiest of the nastiest shit in the magical world. It’s a miracle people decide to do it, given the mortality rates it seems to have and the kind of bullshit they need to deal with
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