Harry Plotter?
By Callimachus | Related entries in The WorldProfessor Bainbridge writes, “I can’t help wondering whether J. K. Rowling is as anti-American as the evidence seems to suggest.”
But the evidence is pretty thin. A sentence in “Half-Blood Prince” which refers to “a President of an unnamed ‘far off country’ whom the Prime Minister regards as a ‘wretched man.’ ” Could be America. Could be Russia, too. Exhibit B is Rowling’s statements regarding various Americans who have been involved in the film versions of the books. But that could have as much to do with Hollywood as with America, and as we know, they’re two different cultures.
Exhibit C is Rowling’s reluctance to change “Philosopher’s Stone” to “Sorcerer’s Stone.” As an author, I’d fight that one, too. Hell, I’d fight it as an American. It’s humiliating to get the dumbed-down version of everything. We’re not actually that stupid. She might just as well have been standing up for our smarts at that point.
But the primary evidence Professor B. offers is negative: “In Harry Potter’s world, there are no Americans. Uncle Vernon doesn’t have business deals with Americans. The United States doesn’t seem to compete in Quidditch world competitions. There are no American exchange students at Hogwarts. And so on.”
Look, I have no doubt that Rowling shares the European literary class’s contempt for G.W.B., its abhorrence at American “aggression” and “unilateralism” and the fact that Jackie Collins sells far more books than Barbara Pym. In Rowling’s case, she’s also got the personal motivation of seeing her works denounced by certain home-grown religious boobs over here as “Satanic.”
I’ll just give her props for not making it transparent in her books. It’s probably a case of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” And that’s fine with me.
Sure, she’d have potential financial motives for not alienating the world’s biggest market for her (unpirated) books and videos. But she didn’t have that when she wrote the first book and never expected to hit it this big. And frankly she’s made enough money by now that if she really wanted to get on her high centaur and slap us around, she could take the resulting drop in sales.
Professor Bainbridge isn’t a book-burner. He concedes he doesn’t much care about this one one way or the other, and adds, correctly, “After all, if I’m going to write off all anti-American writers, I’d have to boycott virtually all modern European writers, most Victorian English writers, my old copies of Punch, not to mention the output of most of the Hollywood left.”
Yup. And one of my favorite kids’ movies in recent years was “The Iron Giant,” British, with an American bad guy, and the whole thing a Ted Hughes Leftist Cold War fable about how essentially good and decent was the old Soviet Union.
Oh, and I also managed to read the “Narnia” books as a young teen without acquiring the slightest inclination to become a monotheist.
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July 19th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
I find it anti-americanism a pretty strained reading of Rowling. The books are obviously British and don’t refence America at all, which is a far cry from denouncing the great satan.
Actually, if we’re to deduce anything about J.K.’s political views from the books, she seems to have an anti-government streak that would warm the hearts of American libertarians. Politicians and the wizard government are uniformly depicted as incompetent, corrupt and fradulent. She also seems to clearly support the right of individual wizards to “bear wands” and use them in self-defense, rather than trusting to the dubious protections of law enforcement.
July 19th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Yeah, this is pretty silly. However, if you believe that the media types have more influence than the politicians, I’d say that some will definitely pick up this Harry Potter meme and run with it.
All I know is that the few people who have read this book so far so it’s incredibly sad, but wonderful nontheless.
I can’t wait to read it.
July 19th, 2005 at 12:29 pm
My son, now 14, stayed up half the night reading it last night. When he gets up this afternoon, I’ll ask him how it is. But he probably won’t tell me because he’ll insist I read it, too. I heard a few laughs from him as he sat with the book on the couch. He also caught an editing gaffe — bless his junior copy editor heart — “site” where it should have read “sight.”
July 19th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Well if J.K.Rowling is referring to our president as a “wretched man” then good for her. He is. But I highly doubt she wrote that phrase just to take a hit at the American government. If she really felt that way I’m sure she would just say it like so many people do. Also I believe she does not mention Americans in her novels because she is trying to create a whole new world with her writings and its supposed to be an uncommon and different world, and you can’t have that kind of sensation when you have familiar things in a story. Its hard for American children to imagine Europe if they’ve never been there so J.K. Rowling draws the image for them, a country of foreigners to young American children, a magical place like they have never dreamed. And as for there not being an American quidditch team that too makes sense. In basically every other country in the world soccer is the predominant sport besides maybe baseball. In America we have football as a priority. Yes we have a soccer team but soccer is not as important as football in America. Quidditch is like the wizard version of soccer. European people play soccer, European wizards play quidditch. It only makes sense. And besides if you’re an American writer how often do you write about things that happen in a different country or continent that you don’t know everything about? Not often. Basic rule of thumb, stick with what you know.
July 19th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Also there was another typo in the very beginning of the book. The editor left the word fog misspelled it was “fug” instead of “fog”. Fug is a word but it was definately in the wrong context.
July 19th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Erika…a wretched man? Hardly. Osama Bin Laden is a wretched man. Saddam Hussein is a wretched man. Kim Jon-Il is a wrteched man.
However, is Bush a divisive man who can’t admit mistakes and has pushed his party way too far to the right? IMHO, yes.
July 19th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
My half-arsed take on Rowling: she really isn’t that heavily involved in politics. Not everyone has to be, y’know.
July 19th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
Anti-americanism, spanti-americaism. What a bunch of hooey! I haven’t cracked my copy of the new book yet (you know what they say about anticipation) but i’ve not seen that in any of the rest of them.
Of course so may of us Americans are so self centered, feeling the world revolves should revolve around us, that we may be taking the LACK of Americans in the book as a negative.
From my point of view, it’s refreshing.
July 19th, 2005 at 10:16 pm
Does it really matter if she is or is not anti-american? Her books will be just as good either way. Or do people read books for the author’s political opinions? It’s nice to know that there are other people who catch errors in books (by the way, there are also some errors in quotation use…). Anyway, I finished reading the sixth Harry Potter 2 days ago, and I liked it.
July 20th, 2005 at 6:48 am
My understanding is that the book is an allegory for 1930’s Europe, placing Dumbledore in the role of Churchill, the minister of Magic in the role of Chamberlain, Voldemort as Hitler, mudbloods as jews/slavs/gypsys … (disclaimer: I haven’t read the book)
July 25th, 2005 at 10:26 am
In this case “wretched” can mean many things. It could mean despicable OR it could also mean of poor or mean character, in a deplorable state of distress, or of very inferior quality. Take your pick, but next time consider looking in a dictionary before you assume which meaning it means. Also you chose what meaning it was, not me.
July 25th, 2005 at 11:20 am
Come on Erika…you actually want to get into semantics on this one? In either case I still disagree and the assumption is completely apt, regardless of meaning.
And forgive me if I don’t look in the dictionary to see what “wretched” means when you call Bush names.
Jeez…
July 25th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
This is more than a little reminiscent of the alleged Bush-bashing by George Lucas in the dialogue of “Star Wars Episode III”. It, too, was overblown – or, at the very least, was overcome by so many mixed messages as to thoroughly obscure whatever message Lucas was trying to convey about Bush. (For example, Obi-Wan’s much-maligned line “Only the Sith deal in absolutes” is itself an absolute statement. And likening Bush to a Sith lord isn’t much of a condemnation in light of the Jedi’s own conduct in that movie, particularly Mace Windu attempting to murder Palpatine in cold blood.)
The moral of both these stories, I guess, is that it’s usually best to avoid reading too much of real-world politics into tales of fantasy worlds like Rowling’s Hogwarts and Lucas’s galaxy far, far away.
July 25th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
The other moral of the story is that George Lucas is a terrible dialogue writer.