Hufflepuff doesn't really have weirdos, and if they did, they certainly don't have a monopoly on them - Luna's a Ravenclaw for instance.
That's assuming that Hagrid's meant to be considered an unbiased source of information in regards to the topic. Even when I first read it, I didn't take that line literally. Hagrid's already shown himself to be generally distrustful of Muggles by this point, has already declared Hogwarts to be the best in the business, and doesn't defend Hufflepuff, only saying that Hufflepuff would be a better house for Harry to be in than Slytherin.
Slytherin has turned out more dark wizards than the other houses, but "more" isn't the same as "only."
There's a chicken and egg scenario there however, since the houses are organized in a way that students spend most of their time in their own house. When setting up the first book, that would be possible, from later books, it's much harder.
Da fuq?
Oh, wait, after the hadozee "controversy," why am I not surprised?
First, the goblins aren't evil ipso facto. There's certainly individual goblins who you could call evil (like humans), but not as a species.
Second, the whole "goblins are Jews" nonsense might actually have a leg to stand on if they WERE evil, but they're explicitly not. You haven't read the books, but what's so baffling about this is that the series does have its own equivalent of anti-semitism, namely blood purity, and especially in the seventh book, where Nazi-esque propeganda towards "mudbloods" is laid on thick. I'd say it was evident, but I've also seen people say there should be a Jewish character to comment on the similarities, because subtlety is for twats I guess (not that the similarities are subtle to begin with).
Yes.
I had to type and retype this response as I decided how deep into the rabbit hole I wanted to go, but I'll try and answer those questions and those alone:
-The whole "HP is anti-semitic" thing came up some point after the series had ended (maybe there were rumblings of it before, that's when it came into vogue) alongside a whole slew of other accusations. I've given my thoughts on these things over the years, but on the whole "goblin question," I've given my stance on it above.
-The idea of HP being "anti-trans" is something that seems to stem entirely from the Rowling controversy, because I can't think of anything in the books that suggests this. The only exception to this is that there's a dearth of LGBT characters, so this argument follows the line of "absence of x is because of animosity to x" (to cite a personal example, I've been accused of genocide because a oneshot I wrote didn't have any LGBT character in it). But apart from that, either in text or subtext, HP has nothing to say on the subject.
It actually occurred to me while writing this, and I'm going to postulate the following that how you feel about HP really depends on how much you feel about authoratorial intent. For instance, if you believe in analyzing a text in the context of the author's intention, then claiming that HP promotes anti-semitism relies on the idea that despite the books having Nazi/Jewish stand-ins and reviling the former, it is, in fact, secretly pro-anti-semitic because of the goblins, which requires various leaps of logic to make the claim work.
If, on the other hand, authoratorial intent is meaningless, then any meaning can be imparted from HP. It doesn't matter what the books are saying about prejudice, the user can impart their own meaning from it. It doesn't matter that the books don't broach sexuality or religion at all, the absence of these things can be seen as antagonistic. It's why people can claim that the series is Islamophobic given the lack of Muslim characters, despite the fact that religion, real or otherwise, has never been addressed in the books, period. So when you have people claiming that "HP belongs to the fans," while this is an absurd statement in isolation, when you consider the approach to authorship it stems from, it's easier to understand the sentiment.
I fully agree with this.
That's highly debatable.
HP certainly has wish fulfillment aspects, and I agree that's part of its popularity. However, the wish fulfillment aspects are definitely less prevalent by book 4. Harry's maturing, the audience is maturing, the tone's getting darker, the stakes are higher, etc.
As for the debate of it being a functioning world, again, I don't really agree. Even in the first book itself, we get a good sense of the rules of the setting.
As someone who works in libraries, I can assure you that HP is still popular across the age spectrum.
I can't say I fully agree, but it's not really for the reasons you might think.
"Death of the author" works fine as an intellectual exercise, and there's certainly been cases where I've interpreted the themes of a work in one way, only to learn later that the author meant something different (chances are that's true for all of us). When it comes to analyzing texts, I don't think one should do so without reference to the author, at least if they've gone on record saying what they intended. For instance:
Author: I wrote this to say X.
Reader: I interpreted this as saying Y.
Is the author or reader correct? Can they be correct? Are the interpretations equally valid? You can make a good argument that a work is free to be interpreted as the reader wishes, regardless of the author's intentions, but I don't think we should always, ipso facto, try and pretend that authorship isn't a real process. Even if you feel the text said Y when the author intended for it to say X, the view of the author should at least be encouraged.
Things are even more extreme in HP because there's a swelling idea of the series "belonging to the fans." I really dislike this argument, regardless of the IP. Fans don't own IPs. I've written for FFN, I've administered wikis, I've done various things, including in HP itself, none of this stuff grants me ownership. To the letter and spirit of the law, I firmly believe that ownership lies with the creator(s). This applies to Rowling, this applies to Disney.
I'd say the political opinions of the author are valid when they're reflected in the work. If they're not found in the work, they're generally irrelevant to the work in question.
I say generally, because one can sometimes draw a link between an author's beliefs/actions/history, and see how they might be reflected in the work itself, even if it's not directly a theme, but that isn't the case here.
This is a bizzare take.
First, ask anyone who's read HP what they liked most about the series. I've never seen anyone cite the asortment of candy, or anything along those lines. I'm sure people remember the existence of Bertie Bots Every Flavour Beans and Buterbeer, but "the enduring images?" What?
Second, if we're looking at this from an in-universe perspective, anyone familiar with magic is going to see magic as mundane. This is a circular argument. To Harry, everything is wondrous at first, but to people who've grown up with magic? That would be just normal.
Third, and I've seen this argument pop up from time to time (usually from the left), it displays a general contempt for abundence. Wizards have access to consumer products? How terrible. Absolutely terrible. How dare wizards be able to buy themselves neat stuff and not use their magic for subsistance purposes only. Those cretins!
What?
I'm sorry, but this makes no sense - a core theme of HP is the opposite of what you've just said.
Again, the books aren't even subtle about it. To quote Dumbledore in book 5 (paraphrased), "The fountain told a lie. We wizards have treated other magical creatures poorly for too long, and now we're paying the price of it." The guide to the Cursed Child stage play even spells out what's obvious for any reader, that if Tom Riddle had grown up with people who loved him, his life could have turned out very differently (the cycle of sorrow being repeated through Delphi).
It absolutely is a controversial take, or at least, a nonsensical one.
To claim that the house system is producing "fascists" (I assume you mean Death Eaters), you'd have to demonstrate that the ratio of students to Death Eaters is high. Except that isn't the case. The house system has operated for over 1000 years in-universe, how many "fascists" has it produced, and what's the proportion of them to the total no. of students. Even confining this to the timeframe of the books, count every DE character and compare them to every non-DE character, and one has much, MUCH more than the other.
I think one can reasonably critique the house system in of itself, to the idea of sorting children based on personality traits rather than mixing and matching for instance, but that's hardly a "fascist machine."
