Was Harry Potter Ever Good? | A Harry Potter Video Essay

in a 2004 interview with the newspaper the Scotsman JK Rowling reflects on the Harry Potter books up until that point now by 2004 the fifth book in the series The Order of the Phoenix had just been published and Rowling had a revelation about her work her concept of wizard Purity was remarkably similar to the beliefs held by the SS officers who enacted the Holocaust she had believed she had created the concept of a bigoted party that infiltrates a government and enacts their policy of bloodline superiority all on her own when in actuality she had drawn from real life something that anyone who had any passing knowledge of World War II would know now look I can't even finish that sentence with a straight face it's absolutely staggering to me that Rowling had no clue that the Death Eaters sounded like real life bigots I mean listen it's no secret to most who grew up with these books that the author is not the god queen that we all thought she was when we were like 12 but increasingly someone who uses their platform to spread Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories regarding the trans Community this is a sad reality we all have to face but this video is not really about JK Rowling herself what I actually want to ask here isn't so much the morality of JK Rowling but with all this considered was Harry Potter even ever good in the first place this isn't just a question for this video this is something I genuinely ask myself full disclosure I'm someone who read these books religiously as a kid I read them book after book every time they they a new one came out I would be first in line at the midnight release to pick it up I'm someone who went to a presentation and this is true in New York City between JK Rowling Stephen King and John Irving they did a joint reading I haven't even read Cider House Rules yet and I was going to this thing cuz JK Rowling was there and because I had just finished pet cemetery and in hindsight that was the better of the of the books I was reading there and as a kid I remember thinking watching this presentation going wow John Irving's so good Stephen King's so good and JK ring just lacked a certain something there were a lot of questions about the craft and writing and all that there and while Stephen King and John Irving seemed to answer these questions brilliantly JK Rowling always seemed to miss something I mean there's even a few surpris guest at this this particular hearing uh there was uh salmon rushy came in with either his son or grandkid and asked the question Salon Rush of course being the controversial author of The Satanic Verses you can see the writers when they came in their they knew their craft inside and out JK rolling know was always something absent something missing she was upstaged at her own shows yes yes there is something I want to ask you all right how the do you write so many books so fast the Harry Potter books played a huge part in my childhood but even looking back as someone who studied literature for now decades I don't think these books hold up as well as we think they do they are not literary masterpieces they are just books and books have flaws all books do but it's time we evaluate what flaws Harry Potter as a work has and why this is very interesting from the perspective of of someone who grew up with it do these flaws ruin the texts and is it impossible to reconcile the modern-day JK Rowling with the books we grew up with you may be shocked to hear this but I don't think there's much of a difference between what we're seeing now and what we saw back then the only difference is it's less subtle in order to be as unbiased as possible here I'm going to avoid bringing up Rowling's current Antics as much as possible I really want to focus on the works themselves rather than the author that created them there are many videos about JK rolling I could recommend here uh I will link them in the description but for right now let's focus on the books now it's important to place Harry Potter in the era in which it was released on an all new Buffy somebody's been digging up the bodies of dead her grandmother's a witch totally and she lives in halloweent town where it's Halloween all the in the late 9s young adult fiction as a genre really didn't have much of a foothold you had like VC Andrews Goosebumps Fear Street you had a lot of uh romantic tea novels but that was about it you didn't see much fa teen fantasy at the time online fan groups tended to congregate over work such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Wars obscure anime or Niche video games but the literary world didn't really have a big community at the time outside of arguably an McCaffrey's Dragon Riders a PE series even Fantasy Classics such as uh A Song of Ice and Fire And The Wheel of Time even sword of truth didn't really have an online presence outside of Niche book communities for adults the fourth installment of JK rin's Harry Potter stories has arrived it is the single largest phenomenon in publishing history with 3.8 million books printed in the United States stes and 3 million more on the way there has never been a bigger first printing of a book ever so Harry Potter came at a time when writing for younger audiences just wasn't really a thing but Rowling's books changed that overnight they changed it and by changing it immediately the revolution that brought overworked the work itself and we're talking about children's books the series is so successful that the New York Times will create a separate best sell a list for children's fiction to accommodate Harry Potter Harry Potter was less important than what Harry Potter represented to publishing as an industry there's something unusual going on at Barnes & Noble book sellers at Irving Mall it's almost midnight and people are still going into the store now it's no secret that Harry Potter fandom was also rabid during this time but I think we canuse our experience with the fandom for the merits of the books and again f was big this really showed that you can create a community of fans who will Market your work for you for free um well it's it it I think it comes in two parts I mean the first part is the hard part which is that it is hard to understand why a book you know has this kind of following um the books offered a sense of community for many isolated kids who constantly wanted to be something more than the mundane or bullied they wanted to be wizards they wanted their Hogwarts letters they wanted to be sorted into communities that understood and accepted them and they wanted to you know shoot fire from wands what have you or ride broomsticks that's cool too this is why so many people imagined existing in the W of Harry Potter or projected their own personal sensibilities and insecurities into said world there's a reason why slash fanfiction really took off in the Harry Potter fan Community young queer fans wanted to project themselves onto the World of Harry Potter this is why my immortal became such a beloved meme it wasn't so much because it was ridiculous even though it was it was because it was taking this idea of projecting yourself into a fan workor and taking it to the 9th degree taking it to theth degree to the point where the entire work was reshaped but a lot of fan work kind of did that for Harry Potter consistently and that's kind of where I think the Intriguing element comes in why did fans feel the need to bring so much of themselves to this world was it potentially to fill an emptiness that they spotted in the world that they were loving the the second half of the phenomenon is that it is just at this point a phenomenon like Pokemon or something that that generates its own kind of interest it's like the kid down the street has it my sister has it I want it it has that but it it seems to have extended itself Beyond a season yes in a lot of ways I compare the early Harry Potter fandom to the early Pokemon fandom fervent and intense Sensational made huge in the media but also because kids and teens could get lost in these worlds rather than any inherent quality to the games and books themselves they better RPGs out there but Pokemon just hit the market at the right time opinion parents should not let their kids watch Pokemon play Pokemon bu Pokemon cards have anything whatsoever to do with Pokémon however unlike Pokémon where fans have this very healthy relationship with the games they trash talk but they play them they love them but they also hate them it goes back and forth Harry Potter was treated as this unassailable great work of literature and it got kids to read it contained these great Rich ideas why wouldn't they love them why how could you ever criticize this but they were critics many of them actually one cannot be happy about the 35 million copies of Harry Potter I had a piece in today's Wall Street saw the editorial yes that piece yes I we can't be happy about that no I think I think that's not reading uh because there's nothing there to be read they're just an endless string of cliches I cannot think that that does anyone any good I mean people tell me well at least the child is reading to which my answer is no the child isn't reading but uh that's not the Wind in the Willows that's not through the Looking Glass that's not Charlotte's Web by EB white or James thus The 13 Clocks that's not really children's literature it's really just slop one of the more famous ones was literary critic Harold Bloom who hated Harry Potter but Harold Bloom's criticisms were easy to dismiss at the time because Bloom himself was not a figure of spotless reputation and he compared Harry Potter to The Works he was focusing on shakespear choser Dante of course Harry Potter won't compare to the greats it's fantasy literature for teenagers it's not going to be you know the greatest piece of literature ever made and fans dismissed him and many others like him but I think a few things happened in the immediate aftermath of Harry Potter that really forced us to re-evaluate the works now for one the big thing is the young adult Market exploded in popularity one of the authors that really were catapulted into the mainstream was Rick Ryan a middle-grade writer who created the series Percy Jackson well if if kids find my stories interesting I hope it's because I was a teacher for a long time and I kind of know what kids like I always imagine myself telling these stories to my own classroom sort of fifth period after lunch when it's really hard to get their attention I also have a built an advantage because I I talk about mythology and I think mythology is something that that kids really can relate to I know that when I was a kid I loved it my own Sons just ate it up and whenever I taught it for the schools it was always the kids' favorite thing just a mythology has everything you would want for a good story it's got romance action mystery murder villains Heroes monsters what more could you want and per Jackson I think is a great foil to Harry Potter one I'd argue is really what Harry Potter could have been if written by a stronger writer who cared more about their readers ryen wrote Percy Jackson to give his son who struggled with dyslexia a hero he could relate to on an intimate level I decided to make Percy Jackson ADHD and dyslexic because my own son is ADHD dyslexic and he was having a lot of trouble when he was young I decided that Percy should be like him an ADHD dyslexic kid uh having his own trouble but I made it a a sign of Honor if you had those conditions there was a good chance you were a Dem God and my my son had no trouble believing that and that motivation impacted the series from book to book whenever Ryan realized a demographic of child had begun to identify with his stories he added representation so they felt included directly this included racial diversity neurode divergency uh lgbtq sexualities gender identity religious background it's all there across Ryan's sprawling Universe now I'm not going to say that Rick ryin is a Flawless person either far from it he's made mistakes and made some statements that are less than wonderful but he did do a lot over the course of his work to help kids identify with his world there's a reason why Percy Jackson despite an unsuccessful adaptation in the late 2000s uh has remained beloved it's remained in discussion purely as a work of literature even as gen even now what like 15 20 years later this is why those inspired by Harry Potter differ from those inspired by say The Hunger Games a lot of Hunger Games knockoffs were dystopians yes and they captured the style of the original work but they lack that thoughtful World building I I don't want to call out specific books but I am thinking of Divergent here A Book Like Divergent just doesn't have the same Strong World building as The Hunger Games whereas The Hunger Games feels real Divergent is clearly a fantasy and you can tell the moment you start evaluating how these worlds function and they divided us into five groups factions to keep the peace compare any Millennial fantasy writers writing with Harry Potter a good example is Lugo uh with the gisha verse to Rolling Potter verse and you a world that's very much informed by reality and heavily structured as such a reader or a listener when they're entering your world are going to need two things to orient themselves sense of power sense of place so when we think about the way that power operates in uh a fictional World our mind instantly goes to the big picture stuff right rules of a magic system the government that's in control but the truth is the power exists in macrocosm and in microcosm and you need to think about which elements of Power are impact ing your character the most as they move through the day through their family through their friend group maybe through their professional space that's power it the World building is meticulous in bodo's universe but in turn it's also harder to project yourself into that world the gerse isn't a place you want to live in like you want to live in Hogwarts there's a very different vibe in fact you're kind of Greatful you're not living in bardugo's universe so the question that inspired Shadow and bone was what if Dr Ness was a place what if the monsters you imagined there were real what if you had to fight them on their own territory and that's the Brilliance of Harry Potter you could project yourself into that world and it's also why so many fans now are rejecting the series this place that invited them in turns out to be not so inviting after all but the question becomes was Harry Potter ever actually inviting to begin with I would say no it's no secret among former fans that Roland continuously retconed her work to include entire demographics she just never thought to include previously Dumbledore being gay is an example of this but they're also the examples of Jewish Wizards that they were hindsight for Rolling the Patel twins are the only real people of color Harry Potter Encounters in most of the books until the introduction of Kingsley shacklebolt and uh I don't know about you but naming the only character who's clearly black in your work after shackles seems a bit toned deaf uh Joanne you may not like him Minister but you can't deny DBL do got style when you look at Harry Potter with a critical eye you see an incredibly traditional world right one where the systems of Power are always upheld even when the ministry of magic is overtaken by the death theaters in Umbridge even when Hogwarts is overtaken by death theaters as well and Voldemort the system is good in the World of Harry Potter the system does not need to change there's no flaws in the system it's just we got to pluck out the bad eggs and everything will write itself in the end you see a world where heteronormativity is the norm and deviation from it is criticized Rowling outright stated that the ly anthropy in Harry Potter werewolfism uh is in her world of reference or at least inspired in part by the AIDS epidemic and it seems odd to me that the community through which this infliction permeates the werewolves led by fenri greyback Praise on children and infects them with their illness much like how roling now thinks that the queer Community uh praise and grooms children it's not surprising that this theme is present in the works themselves she's always believed some version of it we just don't see this until we look back at The Works in hindsight see these tropes see these trends for what they actually are and then there's the beauty thing a lot of Works use Beauty as shorthand for goodness this is a common Trope but what often comes also is that bad people are described as ugly and nowhere is this more evident than in Harry Potter I must be the one to kill Harry Potter I mean obviously Voldemort is a weird snake person but a big shorthand in the books for evilness is body mass fatness how many pages upon pages of this book is spent describing how fat Dudley is Dudley is described as having a fat head fat wrists fat arms and fat legs we are also treated to multiple mentions of deadly having a big fat butt because that's certainly an appropriate way for an adult to describe a f child now Mrs Weasley is called plump a couple times but Dudley is relentlessly mocked by the narration and other characters for his weight in the universe at large in fact it's only when he loses weight that he starts to become a better person morally his weight loss is tied with a turn in his character Arc which is very unpleasant and has implications that are very awful and the W of Harry Potter the only characters who are described as fat are bad guys we also get other characters who have fat thumbs fat fingers fat cheeks Lord let this be on their faces or as an immensely fat melting iced cake for a work that apparently invited audiences into their world this deliberate bullying serves only to show that certain people aren't welcome in this world it tells people that if you're not thin you are not welcomed you will be bullied and dehumanized fat people never just do things in the Harry Potter books fat people don't walk anywhere they walk bottle or Lumber or have a heavy tread fat people fat their way down the street fatly while fatting around and if you think I'm kidding there's a description of Dolores Umbridge where she literally turns squatly and when it comes to Asian characters why don't we ask Joanne what country Cho Chang comes from is that a that Korean surname chinese vietnamese what what country is that from Joanne the first sentence of that book is there one was a Chinese boy named Ticky Ticky Tempo no saw Remo Cherry Berry RI pit Berry Pembo no there wasn't Hogwarts is a world where the status quo even when tested Is God When the ministry of magic and Hogwarts itself are compromised by the villainous death heaters the resolution is to restore these systems to the way they were before regardless of how corrupt they were before we see corrupt politicians in the World of Harry Potter very overtly and Rowling says they're all right go back to that system this is even considering that Hogwarts itself is built in with evil built into its foundation the evil House of Slytherin the Chamber of Secrets buried under its intestines under the very piping and plumbing of the school you all know of course that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago by the four greatest witches in wizards of the age now three of the founders coexisted quite harmoniously one did not there is no Nuance with Slytherin by the way there is a lot of fans added Nuance trying to find good Slytherin the cursed child tries to build some new on to it but in Harry Potter the work until the very end of the series if you're in Slytherin you're evil and why are you in Slytherin ambition vanity lein wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts he believed magical learning should be kept within all magic families in other words pure Bloods there's not which wizard he went bad he wasn't in Slytherin so right now I'm going to talk about a couple different characters who I think would qualify for Slytherin house and if uh roling had written them they'd be considered evil or something and one character who would qualify for sther in house and probably be deemed as Evil by Rolling freaking Yuri katsky from y on nice yeah I bet you didn't expect a Ann Yuri and Ice uh reference in this video but ice adolescence was just cancelled as I'm recording this and I'm still pissed about that mappa sell the rights to Yuri and iceu Sons of Yuri's main trait is ambition he is trying to be number one but his insecurities are his also his biggest issues so while he's ambitious he's also very uh anxious he's very self-defeating both his strength and his weakness comes from his drive to be the best and to make Victor notice him so you know that would put him in sther house that would put him in a house where every single person is deemed basically another death theater waiting to happen and let's not even get started on how Yuri defies gender norms all the time he dresses in a feminine fashion he wants to he falls in love with both men and women so roling would probably hate him and that's not even getting into Yuri's struggles with weight I I have a feeling that rolling would be even more fat phobic to this character than mappa was which itself is one of the bigger criticisms of an otherwise very Charming BL anime that deserves more and mappa if you're just going to sit on those rights sell them to someone who could actually do something with it that's me for that matter I also wanted to go back to the gisha verse for a second and talk about one particular character from the book six of crows so the question that inspired Shadow and bone was what if Darkness was a place what if the monsters you imagined there were real what if you had to fight them on their own territory now I'd say about five of the six crows would probably count for silen house for one reason or another but in particular I want to highlight Nina Nina's a radical thinks Gan should get to choose if they serve the ground she despises involuntary service more than she does feans I won't go into Super depth with her character because she is incredibly fascinating and I think under goes a lot of very interesting changes over the course of these books but we have a character who if she existed in Harry Potter would be framed as evil from the get-go she's a Child Soldier a sex worker plump flaw into sexuality and is also very bisexual there's a pub downstairs that serves hot meals maybe they have waffle what our waffles I can't wait to introduce you to my truest love and that's I've getting into a complicated relationship with someone who grew up in a fascist ethnos state or all the horrible nonsense she goes through in the second book uh crooked Kingdom thanks to uh well if you've read the end of six of crows you know what I'm referring to and I won't spoil that here but again to my point Nina and Yuri if in Harry Potter would absolutely be in Slytherin and absolutely be someone rolling demonized but because both nah and Yuri were written by authors who liked the characters who liked writing flawed characters um we see that they have Dimension they're not all good or all evil I wouldn't even to call anything Yuri does particularly bad either they're both flawed characters with personal problems you have to overcome and that's it they're like anyone else because they were written by talented writers but when you look at Harry Potter poter and his friends they go through the ringer and ultimately become dogs of the military enforcing the status quo without ever implementing any real changes I don't think I need to go into detail of the strange subplot regarding the house elves and Hermione where Hermione sees an injustice in society tries to change it and she's laughed at and when she's laughed at none of the main characters ever actually question the status quo in any meaningful direct fashion ever again sure they fight the death theaters they fight the bad actors but they never confront the systems of authority that govern their world they just go along with it even Harry when presented with the fact that he has to die to stop Voldemort he goes along with it he doesn't question it because that's how it needs to be but beyond the morality of the the Potter verse this universe just doesn't make any sense if you think about it for a few minutes again time Turners these things could destroy an entire world in a sense you can go back and just stop venwood from ever hurting Harry's parents you can stop him from being conceived if you really wanted to but rather than grapple with these implications and how the world could change dramatically rolling when she realizes they a plot hole just removes them from the plot out of convenience in fact it's this particular plot hole that leads to the events of the cursed child I can't say that play was good but at least it's grappled with the obvious implications of time Turners another thing how does magic function in Harry Potter I don't think we need a Brandon Sanderson level magic system here but something to explain the limits of magic would be deeply appreciated despite taking place at a magic school we never understand the limits of magic we are told certain witches and wizards are powerful yes but how are they powerful what does that even mean when there's a spell that anyone can learn that just stops someone's heart I'm of the opinion that the more limitations you put on Magic the more compelling it becomes Full Metal Alchemist avatar Last Airbender very simple magic systems with very simple rules that were concrete and enforced and that makes things incredibly interesting and both were contemporaries of Harry Potter You' think a story that spends so much time at Magic School would take the time to explain how magic works but apparently if you just say the spell right and flick your wand a certain way you could just do any spell apparently and yes we do see wizards training for certain magic but we don't understand why these spells are harder than others it's just never elaborated on Beyond this spell is hard to do what does that mean how do you quantify hard to do what's remarkable though is that there is another far older fantasy series where magic is based in language one that explores the limits of magic more effectively and takes place partially at a magical school and is all just the better for it I had written a couple of short stories that took place on these islands where there were Wizards and Dragons Ursula K lewin's Earth sea Saga started in the mid-60s after Lewin noticed there was a distinct lack of people of color in fantasy she sought to fix that with a profound story as a boy our hero was called sparrow hawk cuz the Wild Hawks would come when he called them but his true secret name is g g also known as sparrow hawk is a boy who trains to become a wizard learns the impact of unchecked power and spends his life going on adventures to Wren the balance of existence itself this was not at that time a well-known concept idea of a wizard School magic and Earth SE is interesting uh because it is a language if you speak the true name of something you can command it but while in paper it seems pretty straightforward you just read the word you figure out how to say it and that's it there's a catch to every spell you are in command of that element and if you do not know how to properly handle it things in nature will go out of control Power is not an issue control is the issue the strength of a wizard is based on their knowledge yes but knowledge brings with it an extra consequence if you know what your spell can do you know then what the spell can also do and so you're more likely to do less even as you become more powerful very specifically illusion is focused on in the books as the sort of common magic that g gets frustrated with at first because you know he's not making anything he making illusions of of something but when he deals with the real and tangible when he conjures a spirit it results in death someone dies and it follows him for the whole first book The the consequences of his actions are the antagonist of the book and other witches who conjure magic without thinking end up being penalized for their carelessness usually in ways that hurt themselves and others he might say he who would be seam Master must know the true name of every every drop of water in the sea it's a very very self-conscious very reflective system of magic that I think is brilliant and I think is done not often enough in terms of my own writing I've reflected on Earth se's Magic system a ton that magic itself can be all powerful but if you lose control if you lose focus even once that can be it for you in particular when Earth sea deals with death I want to compare for a moment moment Voldemort the main antagonist of Harry Potter to Cobb one of the main antagonists in the earth Sea series specifically the third book uh this is the for Miaki fans this is the one that was in the jibli film Voldemort obviously wants to conquer death seeing how his horcruxes are a means to mean Immortal forever but his pursuit of immortality only impacts him it only deforms him it is an extension of his true villainy yes but he's not a villain because he wants to live forever Nicholas Fel wants to live forever he's a villain because he wants to hurt others he is a bigot he is a fascist his monstrous transformation is an externalization of his inner evil but his pursuit of immortality is a is only affects him personally cob though he's different Cobb wants to stop death from happening period and he puts a stop to death very effectively but in doing so he throws off the natural order we see disarray in discords Surge throughout all of Earth SE things go wrong everywhere we only see Cobb at the end of the third book uh at uh and even then he's shown more as the center of this magical storm than an actual figure of malice in fact he's more tragic than anything else he's sad he's dominated by his fear of the inevitable and tries to change nature to avoid it but his Pursuit for Life ultimately causes widespread disaster and he doesn't care and so he needs to be stopped repairing reality is what costs G more than anything else Cobb is almost a secondary concern to the ramification of Cobb's actions now for Harry Potter he just tracks down the hor cruxes beats Voldemort and that fixes everything there's no lingering damage stopping one bad guy fixes the world no personal long-term cost to Harry Beyond others losing their lives even Edward elick loses more when stopping father the cast of six of crows in the gishe loses everything multiple times over G of course sacrifices so much Frodo Beyond losing a finger is ostracized self ostracized really because the trauma he experienced can't allow him to reintegrate with Society but Harry doesn't lose anything short he's killed but he gets better very quickly it's a temporary setback even Beyond Harry in Harry Potter characters die and the world just moves on so long as the status quo is fixed no one seems to mourn all that much bad Deeds can be overlooked because someone did one good thing in death it's a disturbing world of moral extremes either everyone is all good or they're all evil and I think ultimately that's my big issue with Harry Potter short I could argue that Harry Potter ripped off Earth sea incorporating the its magic school or language-based magic system into the world but that would give Rowling too much credit I don't think she read earthy and again this is obvious the Harry Potter books are a reference to the boarding school stories that roling read as a kid with magic sprinkled into it and because she doesn't understand how Fantasy World building works all that well that's where the flaws come in I don't think Harry Potter could have existed without Earth SE having existed that was the original the finest and the best and it's of books of magic ripoff either as Neil Gaiman has pointed out uh even though the worlds and character are very similar in books of magic but rolling just drew from imagery that was around her life she Drew from the Imperial British iconography that she grew up with and Harry Potter is indeed a very British story but that's ultimately its problem it is a British story and in being so British IT incorporates a lot of the British imperialistic mindset into its work the proom Archy Pro Thatcher ideas of the 8S you see that all over please believe us I do miss grer but I'm sorry to say the word of three 13-year-old Wizards will convince few others but there's got to be good to this work right there has to be something that works right why do people like these books at all you know why my thoughts it's only because the world existed in in a way where a kid could imagine themselves living in it it's not that the world is Well written it's that the world is beautiful and kids needed that at the time we had no other Outlet we had Pokemon sure we had some cartoons but we didn't have a book that was so immersive like this that seemed to be about something that grew with its audience it did a lot of things right but in the ways it failed I think that failed its audience even more I'm really excited cuz I I read the three books in like 2 days and I'm I really am getting looking forward to reading the fourth one I was waiting and waiting for it to come out so I'm really really excited as I get older and read more fantasy the Harry Potter books become less remarkable to me even ignoring the real life implications of these works the the world just feels stale the characters feel stale they're o they never change nothing grows even ignoring the map of school which by the way Joanne uh why did you draw the school districts like this why why is Pakistan and India going to the same school district why is Africa going to one school what colonialist nonsense is this and even ignoring Rings Recons like Joanne why did you say that Wizards can just poop on the floor and the magic just gets rid of the poop like their toilets in Hogwarts the Chamber of Secrets was built into a toilet and even then do you think that's what people in medieval Europe Europe did or Rome or any region outside of Europe do you think they just dropped their pants and just is that what you think people you we we have history books on this no one ever wanted to walk around in feal matter what are you talking about looks like I picked the wrong week quit sniffing blue and that's the other issue the potterverse is so incredibly British it fails to understand that a world exists outside of Britain when you really think about it Voldemort what does he really threaten he threatens the island of Britain right he's not a threat outside of that but because they frame The Wizarding World as the UK the ministry of magic prime minister meets with the UK prime minister and no other world leaders I mean that's Canon so where is the world's extension he's a threat to Britain but in America were we threatened by Voldemort do we have stronger Wizards here it's never really elaborated on until Fantastic Beasts and what's strange is that we exist in a magic school we should be learning the boundaries of the magical world and yet we're not it's simply illogical to assume that every culture sees magic and Wizardry the same way right down to how the they want to keep the secret of Wizardry from Muggles well does every culture really want to do that again going back to Earth sea the world is divided into several islands each island has its own culture and its own relationship with magic and what one Island sees as a god there to an outsider like G this God's an eldrich Abomination that feeds on human misery but you can't question the world in Harry Potter no don't ask why house elves have to uh serve don't ask why goblins or centur are treated as second class citizens don't ask why rolling thought okay so I won't say the name of this particular um entity in uh Native American folklore but out of respect for the native people because they believe that if you say the name of this thing it will conjure it and I want to be respectful of their culture even if I don't believe that that's the case respectfulness but rest assured this entity is a witch who breaks the laws of nature for selfish intent by physically transforming themselves into an animal it's a creature so feared again saying its name is meant to conjure them and rolling took that this very sacred very disturbing very taboo idea and commodified it in her world they're just witches who just being persecuted by those silly Native Americans that the British persecuted for centuries can't respect their beliefs no it has to be framed within the British Empire's perspective it's that everyone else is wrong but Britain is right and this is why the boundaries of the schools in in Harry Potter is so strange outside of Hogwarts you have like five or six in Europe and then you have big swatches of every other continent billions of people under one school roof what does that say so of course her World building is ethnocentric it's imperialism it's British imperialism it's British Superior ority without any questioning of that system now I know I have friends from England I studied in England I know English viewers and I know you aren't like this but she is that's the difference when I say I'm talking about the prom monarchy Pro thatcheresque beliefs that rolling clearly embodies and if if every this is the kind of mindset that led to brexit in you know while the youths were revolting the adults careless pass laws and put their youths in a very dangerous position it's that mentality all the way through I'm right you're wrong I know it's best for everyone else and if you're and if you disagree with me you're foolish that is the mindset JK Rowling embodies in her work and in her real life and that's why Harry Potter fails as a work when you scrutinize it because she clearly doesn't know everything that she's trying to talk about and there are gaps in her viewpoint and there are gaps in her understanding of the world that when you poke at it become transparent and when they become transparent she patches them up quickly time Turners can cause problems oh time Turners are gone what's Hogwarts what's the Wizarding World like outside Britain big map that is an over simplification of things it's only told from my perspective why are there no gay Wizards well Dumbledore is gay you never saw it because I didn't think of it at the time give you more money now Universal deal new HBO Max miniseries adaptation but there has to be something good right the characters maybe that's people fell in love with in the first place like tonx she defies the laws of nature she's a person with blue hair and pronouns who can shape shift her face who gradually settles down and stops changing her appearance constantly when she meets the right man a man who's an allegory for gay men struggling with AIDS hang on that doesn't sound right that's not correct a Dumbledore there we go uh a guy who had a gay fascist phase when he was younger who was just always right despite endangering the lives of countless children and grooms multiple children to be his personal Pawns in a greater scheme against an evil wizard one he helped train and raise in the first place wait no hang on that that that's not right either I'm sorry um who who else is there um my name Harry Harry Potter the main character of these books right he's the the central figure so when he learned he he was bullied for years by his family and he learned he was secretly rich and powerful and the chosen one and he becomes a cop enforcing the very system that enforced fascist beliefs okay no wait hang on I'm mistaken this this can't be how it is but it is unlike aione Harry never returned to Hogwarts to finish his nudes but he did Dive Right into his career as an aura at the ministry of magic as it turns out Harry was able to achieve the honor of horaa at the ripe age of 26 the ending of Harry Potter honestly ruins the entire series because nothing changes nothing has changed the world isn't Changed by all this tragedy no one really grows you end up in a variant of where you started off every character Harry Potter starts the series with Wonder and respect for magic and a love of The Wizarding World and he ends that way hermion he starts as a brilliant know-it-all who's the top in her class and she ends it that way all the side characters they barely change at all except again for Draco Malfoy and that's why he's a fan favorite but even then most of his change happens at the very end and becomes more like the protagonist who he once bullied but despite all the ups and downs along the way when you compare Point start to point end almost everyone is in a very similar position as to when they start the first book except for volw who's dead but again that's kind of the starting point for him too and the flaws that developed over the course of the story like Ron's jealousy over Harry or R's bigotry they rise they they come into play and then they fall away a bit they kind of go away they are conveniently forgotten about after they resolved there's no lasting ramifications it just ends aside from how these characters get married and get older how do they change how's Hagrid change does Snape really grow in any way throughout these books or is he just a bully at the start a bully at the end who did a couple of nice things things in between those two points because he had a crush on a girl he met when he was a kid who he harbored a crush for into his later adulthood like no one changes it's the same motivation when you're a newborn kid to when you're an adult no variation nothing unless you die in which case you're removed from the story case in point tons and luin when other fantasy Works end it's sometimes painful L of the Rings shows that even after war ends you can never go back to the way things were that trauma sticks with you nnia ends with the ultimate release from Life G spends a lifetime doing everything he can until he can no longer do anything else I compared Harry Potter to Pokemon at the start of this video but even each Pokemon game ends with you undertaking this journey and accomplishing something through hard work strategy and travel and the world does change you are the champion the hierarchy is upset but this once one bad guy is beaten life goes back to the way it was trauma has no lingering effect there's no changes made to the system that was compromised by evil things just go on it's so shallow and stagnant no one actually learns anything except that the bad guy was bad which we knew from the start it's so poorly thought out and it's so disappointing and knowing that there's nothing to it that this was no allegory for some greater idea shows that it's not even like a reflection of real life this was just all she could think of and and that's kind of sad honestly because there's nothing there to be read they're just an endless string of cliches I cannot think that that does anyone any good I mean people tell me well at least the child is reading to which my answer is no the child isn't reading I think we brought so much of ourselves into these books that we didn't realize there's nothing here for us especially when we go out of them and even then at the time the books ended a lot of people hated that last chapter it was widely criticized entire Fanfictions were written to ignore that last chapter they absolutely despised it but they convinced themselves that the books other than that last bit were still good they were still charm to them and I say you were wrong that ending completely ruins everything that came before it the charm wears off the moment you take off your your Nostalgia glasses and you're left with something kind of miserable knowing what the works have become today how Bad actors use Nostalgia to manipulate others in deciding with bigoted causes the works have solely done a level not unlike Ender's Game for me it's hard to justify contributing to that machine without also knowing what causes is your financing with with your purchases it just [ __ ] sucks man it feels like a divorce in some ways from something that mental lotous as kids but you also know you need to get rid of for your own sake it's painful but necessary to reflect that these stories just aren't all that good and yes a boycott isn't going to solve anything I there's always going to be people who buy this product it you're your contributions won't have a big impact on the greater hole but it's more your personal needs you need art that makes you feel and experience life as it should be not stagnation not cycling through what ultimately is a wish fulfillment fantasy that isn't all that much of a fantasy and while we may slip a few quotes from these Works into a Daily Language perhaps without even realizing it it's time we really consider our relationship to this text especially given what roling says and does with her money nowadays now I do want to mention Hogwarts Legacy a little bit the game was highly controversial for numerous reasons but one thing that strikes me a year later is just how no one talks about this game it's so boring they talk about the controversy sure but who talks about the game itself you have a few spells barely a fraction of what the first Final Fantasy game for the NES provided and even less of a fraction than what game of the year bald's Gate 3 had the world feels EMP empty you can walk around Hogwarts ride on your broomstick but you can finish the game in 10 hours less even and there's very little drive to complete the rest of the game because there's very little reward for it once you beat it that's kind of it it it's just window dressing of a magical world without anything else to see and I feel it's emblematic of Harry Potter as a whole it's a visual and audio aesthetic that's powerful but once you dig deeper all you find is emptiness and you leave feeling profoundly unfulfilled I guess what I'm saying is just read another book read Percy Jackson read six of crows read the books of magic read Earth SE read The Golden Compass read Narnia Lord the Rings Dune uh Song of Ice and Fire read um NK gemes read the Dragon Riders of per read uh Silence of the Lambs read Stephen King John Irving uh John Grisham read Clive Barker read um read the The Wheel of Time read uh what's another book I can think of off top my head look in the shelves here Shakespeare po Dante aligui uh John Milton read uh Sherlock Holmes read Jane Austin read Elizabeth read read the the the Bronte sisters read the shadow Hunter books okay actually don't read those those those aren't that good uh but you don't have to read Harry Potter anymore there's just nothing there for you in these in these books the magic happened and the magic is gone and and once you step outside of Hogwarts you realize how empty that world is my name's Harry Potter Jr I just moved into this building

Channel: Anthony Gramuglia

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Id: 1qSBIFEqPo0

Length: 51min 29sec (3089 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024