With the release and massive popularity of Hogwarts Legacy on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, the Harry Potter brand is once again at the forefront of mass audience interest and pop culture. Along with this fact, there are also opinions that try, sometimes by force, to find something in this series that can be criticized, criticized and outraged. Because it cannot be otherwise in 2023.
Harry Potter and the Outraged Feminist.
Access to social media and democratic access to sharing one’s thoughts in the public space sometimes generates interesting opinions. Personally, I think in most cases it’s a positive turn of events – it allows us to step out of our comfort zone, to look at a given thing/problem from afar and through other people’s eyes and, if we disagree with a given opinion, it enables us to mentally exercise the art of discussing and confronting the contrary opinion. It’s now because Dr Charlotte Proudman, a Cambridge feminist and lawyer, made a sudden decision “attacking” the Harry Potter series. According to her, the main character of JK Rowling’s books is “a little patriarch living in a male and white fairy tale”. Before proceeding to discuss this opinion, I must express my disappointment at the attitude of people expressing similar objections. Because often themselves lie, in this case, Ms. Proudman confessed at the start of her reflections that she hadn’t even finished reading Rowling’s first book. Which, of course, in 2023 gives him the right to voice his opinion on the entire series. His full entry reads:
I never liked Harry Potter. I haven’t even finished the first book. Potter is an English student genius who lives in a predominantly male white fairyland that resembles Oxbridge (to the elite). He is a petty patriarch who uses magic and violence to rule.
It’s not quite clear why Dr Proudman, who used to comment mainly on legal subjects (she is a lawyer by profession), turned to Potter, but I guess the expression Harry Potter is again fashionable due to the hype around the game “Hogwarts Legacy” and is considering its adaptation as a series version for HBO. The game itself was also criticized and boycotted, but not because of its quality, but because of the opinions expressed by JK Rowling on social media. Clearly, the brand loved by everyone since the second half of the 1990s until recently has suddenly become enemy number one.
Of course, reviews and boycotts of the Harry Potter series and Hogwarts Legacy games do little – dedicated fans of the books and movies are still in the majority, and the game is garnering excellent reviews and selling in impressive quantities (it has already earned a billion dollars, and this is not a month after its release.
Read also: Review of Hogwarts Legacy. Harry Potter fans have been waiting for this game.
Harry Potter – whipping boy?
Dr. Proudman’s arguments, however, are quite easy to refute. First of all, even though the Harry Potter series was written by a man, one could go so far as to say that it has masculine-patriarchal tendencies. On the other hand, the author of Potter is a biological woman with leftist views, so I doubt the view of patriarchy is particularly close to her. Of course, you can have such an opinion, we live in a more or less free world. Another argument against Ms. Proudman and anyone who shares her view is that Harry Potter is essentially the story of an abused orphan who lives in a closet under the stairs and is neglected and abused by his guardians. On top of that, there’s a crazed killer waiting for his life, whose name can’t be said, who (spoiler alert) murdered his parents.
Harry Potter then sides with his oppressed friends and refuses to use the most powerful magical artifact. So where is the privileged life, patriarchy, and white male fantasy? Anyway, when it comes to the latter, what’s wrong with a white man fantasy? White men are not entitled to their myths and fairy tales? Should every work of pop culture reflect the cultural cauldron that operates in Los Angeles and New York? No matter how badly we want it, most of the world isn’t as racially diverse as the biggest cities in the United States or some in Europe. I invite you to India, Africa or Asia, where there is not a great diversity of races. This is the reality of the Hollywood bubble. I’m not saying that diversity and representativeness are bad, quite the contrary, but I don’t quite understand the insistent criticism of what isn’t. Especially when the phrase “white man” is used almost with such an attitude, as if written about the Nazis or other oppressors.
And best of all, for over 20 years, during which the Harry Potter series has taken pop culture by storm and won the adoration of tens of millions of fans around the world, until recently, no one had to complain about this brand. More than a generation of kids grew up in both the books and the movies, and no one saw anything toxic in this story. Millions of fans grew up inspired by the characters invented by JK Rowling. In this, aside from the male characters, we also have an expressive Hermione, so it’s not like Harry Potter is just a ‘party sausage’. Personally, I know more girls/women fans of Harry Potter than boys. This may be a skewed datum of my perception of my own bubble, but I feel like they reflect reality and all those women/girls didn’t care that Harry Potter wasn’t a woman . Rowling herself preferred to create a male character rather than a female one. She probably had many reasons for this, including sociological ones, but if she had wanted to, she probably would have opted for a witch girl.
In pop culture, we have a whole host of works that show characters rising from the lowlands to social and physical heights to inspire. The story/myth of Jesus Christ is basically based on a similar pattern. We have a boy who was born into a humble family and ends up becoming a god at the very end. Is this also an elitist parable? Like Cinderella” ? “The beauty and the Beast”? All of these stories operate in the realm of metaphor, parable, and I see that in current discourse many commentators lack imagination and take everything literally. These are actually sad times when adults have lost their inner child and are unable to look at pop culture without paying close attention to current trends in political correctness. Maybe one day it will pass, but the fact is that the next generation will watch in great surprise what is happening now. Well, unless it gets even worse.