“Yer a copyright infringement claim, Harry”
You know, the more I think about it, the more I wish that everything Harry Potter related just stopped after the seventh book came out. Sometimes I wish everything, all around, just stopped then. It’s the last time I remember what seemed like the entire world being really, really excited for something. Not just something, but a book, of all things. I attended a release party at a local bookstore, and I heard about similar parties all over the planet, with people getting dressed up, making fancy foods, and generally having an all-around good time. It was, in no uncertain terms, magical. Everything, it seems to me, has only gone downhill since then.
Take, for example, the awful slew of Harry Potter-related media that’s been magicked into existence since that time. First there was The Cursed Child, which reads like someone wrote a spec script for an alternative history movie that got Cronenberg’d with a Harry Potter fan fiction. Later came the Fantastic Beasts movies, which have their own entirely separate problems to contend with, other than their batshit storyline, and there was the horrible Harry Potter mobile game that was really just a cash grab with Harry Potter’s face stapled over it like a ski mask. Sure, the main-series movies are alright, but everything else has been bad.
Despite all this, I still have, and likely always will have, a soft spot for the wonderful wizard world and the boy who lived. However, what I no longer have a soft spot for is J.K. Rowling herself. I already mentioned before, in what I guess is part one to this article, that J.K. Rowling has gone off the edge a bit with adding nonsense to the Harry Potter universe via Twitter, Pottermore, and any opportunity she has to hold a spotlight. In the business, it’s called “Pulling a George Lucas.” This includes things like the great wizard shitstorm, but there’s more to it than that. I think this video, which I think I’ve already linked to, does a pretty solid job of explaining what I mean. And fine, I could live with that, if all she did was tweet about fake wizarding bands and other gibberish. It has no impact on anyone’s life whatsoever, and that’s fine.
And maybe I could live with her ret-conning Dumbledore into being gay, and then the movie industry ret-conning him into not being gay. Ok, that’s a little problematic, if she’s going to try and include an LGBTQ+ presence in her books, why not make it more explicit? Why kind of throw it in as an afterthought? That’s not progressive, that’s just horseshit and/or queerbaiting, but then again, what’s the difference? But whatever, fine, it’s something. Dumbledore’s gay. I don’t like it, but I could live with it. At one point in my life, I thought that J.K. Rowling was the coolest person alive and, much like my fascination with Stephen King, I wanted to be just like her. The Dumbledore stuff made me step back on that quite bit, but what really flipped the script for me, and what really makes it impossible for me to like J.K. Rowling anymore, is the fact that she’s a straight-up transphobe.
A lot of this has been coming to light recently, but it’s nothing new. Rowling’s made transphobic tweets for ages now, effectively disregarding a portion of the population as, to use words she endorses, “men in dresses.” Yikes. As a cisgender person myself, it isn’t exactly my place to get into the nitty gritty of why everything about that is terrible, but here’s a few key pointers; transgender people are not just women who transitioned from men. It’s a whole range of people living in different levels of openness and different types of identities, and every single one of them is a valid lifestyle. As one of the most historically oppressed minority groups, trans activism is incredibly important. Even among activist circles, trans folk sometimes tend to get shunned. That’s why there’s also a #BlackTransLivesMatter hashtag. And for J.K. Rowling, the creator of one of the most successful underdog stories of all time, to come along and shit all over it, is just unacceptable. I know she signed that letter against cancel culture, but maybe she shouldn’t repeatedly spew the same transphobic bullshit and then ask for understanding of other viewpoints. I feel as if attempting to dismantle an entire population of people as illegitimate and then making grand shows of “free speech” and “open debate” is a little ironic, hm?
So I don’t like J.K. Rowling. I think she’s not a very nice human, and I have little respect for her as a person. But I’m generally in the “Author is Dead” camp of literary theory, meaning that I tend to believe that a work of art should be separated from the artist as soon as the audience gets it, and any conclusions drawn from it should stand from the work itself, irregardless of what the author says. This means I get to, ostensibly, enjoy Harry Potter by just ignoring J.K. Rowling entirely. She’s a separate entity from Harry Potter and his friends, just like how everyone’s favorite racist uncle H.P. Lovecraft is separate from his cosmic horror. The author’s beliefs and intentions don’t matter; all that matters is the book itself. I can brush off those murky historical anachronisms and pretend that everything’s fine.
The more I think about this perspective, though, the less sense it makes. Why do I, say, ignore J.K. Rowling but not Bill Cosby, a man whose works I never want to see again? Or I’ll gladly ignore the questionable ethics of Stanley Kubrick but not the similarly-questionable ethics of Michael Bay? Maybe this has to do with personal preference, history, quality of work, and the like, but overall, it just seems… inconsistent. I don’t think that I should, or that anyone should, experience a work of art without considering the history of the artist. Because, invariably, a work of art is really just an extension of the artist, and in one way or another, those problems in the artist creep into the art. As, I’m starting to think, they likely should. No one is perfect, but some people are definitely less close to perfect than others. This is where Kate Barrett’s POTTERGAME comes in.
I first read about this strange little indie project in an article from Rock Paper Shotgun’s exceptional Natalie Clayton, whose articles I keep getting coincidentally drawn to. POTTERGAME is, well, a sort of remix of the classic Harry Potter computer games, but taken in the context of J.K. Rowling’s twitter madness and transphobia, and with the added spin of having the quality of being a shitty Garry’s Mod gamemode. As someone who both played the Harry Potter video games and recently reviewed my memories of them, it seemed like something that I’d have to try out. And I’m quite glad that I did because the game is weird, funny, and, despite its ugly wrappings, a genuinely positive addition to the discourse around what it means to view both art and artist.
The first thing that struck me was that the game’s assets were literally ripped right out of the original game, the very same one I played only a few months previously. The shape of the castle was the same, the character models were the same, even some of the sound effects were the same. It’s like coming home after a long day at work and expecting to find your regular house, only to discover that your entire family is dressed in clown costumes, and that they can’t move their arms or legs and instead just float everywhere like plastic toys. It’s unnerving and hilarious at the same time.
It also plays up the gamey qualities of the original games; there is an incredibly heavy emphasis on collecting Bertie Bott’s beans in the original games, and in POTTERGAME, that goes through the roof. All that matters are the beans. Harry has to collect the beans. Neville guards the Bonus Bean Room. All that has ever mattered is getting those sweet, sweet beans. I can see that now. Even though the game has a pretty serious message, it never strays too far into taking itself seriously, and it seems to strike a nice balance of presenting some of the genuine troubles with J.K. Rowling’s world, such as house elf slavery and transphobia, while also presenting a shit-ton of beans. Like this:
To which Harry responds:
Absolutely beautiful.
And the game is full of these weird little moments like this, humorous quirks that showed up in the original games that now have a very different context in the world of the modern day. It makes a strong point for not throwing out the author when you experience art, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to playing the old Harry Potter games without knowing that Big Harry is watching me at all times.
The original Harry Potter games are still pretty solid games, as far as 3D action-platformers go. And the original Harry Potter books are still pretty solid books, too, as far as young adult fantasy novels go. But with the way things are now, it’s going to be hard for me to appreciate them the same way. And it’s going to be straight-up impossible for me love them the same way that I once did. Maybe that’s for the best; that’s how we grow and work out these sorts of things. But it is sad. I can’t even imagine what a transgender Harry Potter fan must be feeling. To have this incredibly detailed, lifelike, creative, safe world suddenly filled with the miasma of a transphobic writer-god. It’s a subtle poison, that, but one that isn’t cured by any sorts of Phoenix tears.
And as the Harry Potter universe continues to expand, with new movies and maybe even new video games, there might be some sort of reckoning one day. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. But it’s a weird world that we live in, and I suspect it’s only going to get weirder. Harry Potter’s still around, but it isn’t the Harry that I remember. It’s a different thing entirely, bigger and richer, but not necessarily better. Of course, J.K. Rowling’s transphobia has likely always been there, but it’s only now out for us to see. In a perfect world, transphobia wouldn’t exist. In a slightly more perfect world than this one, J.K. Rowling would have never been transphobic. But, in this world, at least she could have stayed quiet.
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