It IS what you're doing and I'm not defending something I like, see above. You aren't being a critic, you are applying your own bias into the work to somehow provide proof to other people that Rowling is an evil person for writing some dogshit magical fantasy. Basically you're digging into the fiction to prove your bias as to why JK deserves to be destroyed.
I think the whole ''The house elves love being enslaved and every attempt to free them is a complete joke!'' is kinda undercut by the fact that pretty much no one in the Harry Potterverse treats their house elves well. There are three main house elves: Dobby, Winky and Kreacher, all of who'm are stuck with abusive owners and clearly unhappy with their situation. Well...Winky mostly about being fired by her abusive owner, but she's fired because he's an abusive prick who treats her like garbage. Later in the story there's even a house elf presumably being sentenced for manslaughter because the ministry couldn't bother to actually investigate the house elf.
Also the ones who most often insists that house elves adore being enslaved are Hagrid and Ron, not two characters known as being very considerate and open minded on every subject. Hagrid's a very nice dude, but he's undeniably got bigoted sentiments and Ron's...well he's Ron.
I think the whole ''The house elves love being enslaved and every attempt to free them is a complete joke!'' is kinda undercut by the fact that pretty much no one in the Harry Potterverse treats their house elves well. There are three main house elves: Dobby, Winky and Kreacher, all of who'm are stuck with abusive owners and clearly unhappy with their situation. Well...Winky mostly about being fired by her abusive owner, but she's fired because he's an abusive prick who treats her like garbage. Later in the story there's even a house elf presumably being sentenced for manslaughter because the ministry couldn't bother to actually investigate the house elf.
Also the ones who most often insists that house elves adore being enslaved are Hagrid and Ron, not two characters known as being very considerate and open minded on every subject. Hagrid's a very nice dude, but he's undeniably got bigoted sentiments and Ron's...well he's Ron.
Is it one of those kid stories where all the adults are unreasonable and unrealistic bastards, and only the kids are good people despite having very little good influences around them?
Why does there NEED to be a solution? We argue about real world problems with no solution that everyone can agree on. Why is it wrong for Hermoine to see something as bad but try to fix it in a way that fails to do so and for the House Elves to genuinely be mistreated and need to be helped while also not WANTING to be helped? That's a complicated issue, but like most things that aren't the main plot, it doesn't get a full investment. That doesn't mean JK Rowling SUPPORTS SLAVERY! You CAN'T cover all the themes and stories that come up in a book. And if you clap back with "Well why bring it up at all?" Because it makes the world feel more real. It enriches the experience to be able to see moving parts in a clock tower doing their thing, even if you won't get a chance to understand what all of them do.
I suspect that it may well have been relegated to that kind of background issue with Wizard society if Hermione’s actions had been limited to observations but the instant Rowling wrote in the recurring subplot of Hermione getting on her soapbox about it, it stopped being background flavour and became a spotlight issue for people to latch on to.
And bless her but Hermione is never one to do things by halves so it’s the whole hog: attempting to organise rallies, handing out badges, petitions and even what I’d call sabotage by both trying to hold negotiations with the Elves about getting them wages AND leaving clothes for them to find in the specific way to free them.
So the lesson I’m taking from it is never introduce this kind of plot point unless you’re planning to tie it into the overall narrative to a resolution. Doesn’t need to be positive, but it should sort of go somewhere more than it actually did.
Color me genuinely surprised. Which makes your defense of the series all the more baffling.
It IS what you're doing and I'm not defending something I like, see above. You aren't being a critic, you are applying your own bias into the work to somehow provide proof to other people that Rowling is an evil person for writing some dogshit magical fantasy. Basically you're digging into the fiction to prove your bias as to why JK deserves to be destroyed.
No, I'm giving reasons for why she doesn't deserve all the support, money and acclaim that she gets. There is a vast gulf between that and, "I want them dead." Why does that piss you off so much?
A house-elf (sometimes also referred to as just elf) was a magical being which was immensely devoted and loyal to the one designated as their master.[3] House-elves served wizards and witches and were usually found under the employment of old wizarding families taking residence in elaborate...
harrypotter.fandom.com
Elves or similar creatures doing menial tasks around a home, and leaving when rewarded for their tasks with money or clothes, is a common motif in European folklore.
The most well-known example of this in the English-speaking world is the Brownie, a small fairy-like creature who helps around a home in exchange for daily food and drink (in the form of hot milk, honey and gruel) but will depart forever if it is paid in human money. In some of the legends, rather than departing, the Brownie would instead turn malicious and antagonise their owners, much like a Harry Potter Poltergeist; such a "wicked Brownie" would be called a Boggart, though that name, of course, refers to an entirely different creature in Harry Potter.
Finally, one last possible source of inspiration for J. K. Rowling's House-Elves is French folklore's "farfadet". Originating in the southern areas, one specific legend about farfadets is that they were "wrinkled, brown-skinned midgets who went around either naked or wearing dirty rags", a description that is almost identical to Rowling's elves. The Farfadets would help around a farming home, completing tasks not done in the day by the human servants. They would leave forever if the master of the house gave them new clothes to replace their shabby old ones; once again, the parallels are obvious, though in this case, the reasoning is that Farfadets are proud creatures who are offended by the implication that their clothes needed replacing.
To have the creatures specifically called 'elves' may be an allusion to the fairy tale of The Elves and the Shoemaker, where a group of elves worked for a shoemaker until his wife, in a fit of generosity, sewed them little clothes and gave them to the elves.
Really, you can throw in Santa's Workshop as well if you feel like it. I mean, the joke that Santa's using slave labour to create presents is an old one, most people know not to take it seriously.
Dig an inch further. So the story presents Hermione's efforts to change the system as unworkable, for exactly those reasons, OK. And what does it present as the desirable alternative? Uhrm... changing nothing.
Okay, I stopped commenting ages back when it was clear that any presented evidence could be waved off as non-canon regardless as to how many citations I used, but since I'm already here, I'll say this - I don't think the house elves are representing what you say they're representing.
I'll throw certain users I won't name a bone and won't cite anything outside the main books. Let's assume for the sake of argument that nothing changes are book 7 (that's factually incorrect, but let's go with that assumption). Let's look at the specific context of book 4 and look at why Hermione's elf plot exists. Really, to me, it's simple:
1: Hermione has been well-established by this point as being highly intelligent, but also highly arrogant. She's often been convinced that she knows best, regardless of anything else to the contrary (e.g. Divination, which she's hopeless at, in part because it doesn't fit how she sees education).
2: Book 4 gets to have fun with the house elves because we have an example of Hermione being utterly, spectacuarly wrong. Regardless of any evidence presented to her, she's utterly convinced that she's in the right, and everyone else, including the house elves (who just want her to stop bothering them) are wrong.
3: Since it's bound to come up, Book 5 does complicate things a bit with Kreacher and the Ministry statue, but the house elves aren't the crux of it, they're part of a wider point - from the dementors to the giants, the Wizarding World has let injustice linger for too long, now it's paying the price. The difference, of course, is that the house elves aren't these beings.
4: Since systemic change is the buzzword, I'll again point out that Dumbledore flat out tells Fudge in Book 4 what he needs to do to avoid disaster (remove the dementors from Azkaban, send envoys to the giants), Fudge refuses, and that bites everyone in the buttocks later.
And what is the system itself? Well, it's absolute subservience on the basis of species. In a story chock full of social and political commentary, what parallels or analogies in our own world are closest to that?
There's already parallels to the house elves from folklore. That's where the inspiration lies. It's a stretch to imagine that the house elves are meant to be a stand-in for real world slavery, because a) house elves aren't human, they can operate on their own terms, b) their own terms have real-world folkloric antecedents, and c) we know how humans operate, and it sure as hell isn't like house elves.
Are there parallels in HP to the real world? Absolutely. Are the house elves meant to reflect the real world? Not really. There's nothing inside the text or "Word of God" to suggest that (as opposed to lycanthropy, which Rowling claimed was meant to represent AIDS, but even if that's true, that's a hell of a stretch.)
Why are you so invested in claiming that it's present?
I mean, for instance, if we accept the argument that house elves are slaves, I'm going to assume that you're similarly opposed to any depiction of Santa and his elves?
Because there are too many people that do and take it far worse than, what @Buyetyen is doing. There are people out there that can, have, or will use fantasy to justify their racism, sexism, or slavery. There's nothing new and let's not pretend otherwise.
The fantasy people tended to use to justify those things were religious texts and pseudo-science. I've never seen anyone, anywhere, hold up a work of fiction and use it as justification.
Rowling I wouldn't exactly call "innocent" in this. She's doing it subconsciously. It's a matter of whether she realized at some point or not. She knew what she was doing at some point.
I think the whole ''The house elves love being enslaved and every attempt to free them is a complete joke!'' is kinda undercut by the fact that pretty much no one in the Harry Potterverse treats their house elves well. There are three main house elves: Dobby, Winky and Kreacher, all of who'm are stuck with abusive owners and clearly unhappy with their situation. Well...Winky mostly about being fired by her abusive owner, but she's fired because he's an abusive prick who treats her like garbage. Later in the story there's even a house elf presumably being sentenced for manslaughter because the ministry couldn't bother to actually investigate the house elf.
Also the ones who most often insists that house elves adore being enslaved are Hagrid and Ron, not two characters known as being very considerate and open minded on every subject. Hagrid's a very nice dude, but he's undeniably got bigoted sentiments and Ron's...well he's Ron.
All of those are fair points, except that the house elves themselves, which interact with the trio directly, clearly don't want to be helped. Hermione goes the whole hog (as Gordon puts it), and the house elves detest her for it.
Debatable. She made money off a story that millions of kids fucking love. As a result it made her a lot of money, but I would doubt that she's ever gotten a lot of acclaim the books aren't exactly literary powerhouses.
It's the same argument that Walt Disney shouldn't be support because he was a real anti-semite. But the bottom line is he made a cluster of shit that will appeal to children for the rest of time, and as a result money and success are going to follow that.
Did you know that women are the biggest consumers? Which is why most marketing tries to appeal to them even when advertising a men's product. The second biggest driver of consumerism is children because parents buy whatever bullshit kids like, they go on vacations to places like Disneyworld and Lego Land or whatever the hell, solely to make the kids happy.
Power RAngers, Pokemon, and Harry Potter are the biggest fads for children I can remember throughout my life thusfar.
Is it one of those kid stories where all the adults are unreasonable and unrealistic bastards, and only the kids are good people despite having very little good influences around them?
Depends on the adult; Hagrid is a good guy and a great gamekeeper but he can be incredibly naive and short sighted about how dangerous the creatures he looks after and eventually teaches about can be.
Professor McGonnagal is the closest you get to an adult who is both even handed and competent at their job as both teacher and administrator. She’s not without her flaws and biases but you could count on her to back the truth.
Severus Snape is…..well, imagine one of the actual Nazi scientists picked up in Operation Paperclip teaching high school science and bullying one student because his dad was as an asshole to him - and James Potter WAS an asshole.
Most of the other teachers don’t get as much focus but Flitwick and Hooch always seemed like they were chill. I’d also bet ten bucks Pomona Sprout grows the dankest of kush.
Beyond that most of the other adults are more annoying than ineffectual - I appreciate you gotta work with what you got but I rank the Order of the Phoenix as an effective counter insurgency group in the same way most sensible people rank McDonalds as food - and the slightly cool ones like Tonks, Mad Eye and Lupin all get crap stories and then unceremoniously Worf’d for cheap drama.
Read all the books, including the supplemental material, was way into it up until the 6th book where I decided not to wait for the Swedish translation to come out and try my hand at reading it in English. (not knowing words such as "snogging" meant I did not enjoy the novels as well as I otherwise might have.)
Though it should be mentioned that there are probably plenty of fans that have only watched the films or played the games. It's not as if the books are the only way to interact with the franchise, as the (supposed) subject of this thread can attest.
The series can exist. But lazily hand-waving criticism away does nobody any good.
It's the same argument that Walt Disney shouldn't be support because he was a real anti-semite. But the bottom line is he made a cluster of shit that will appeal to children for the rest of time, and as a result money and success are going to follow that.
Did you know that women are the biggest consumers? Which is why most marketing tries to appeal to them even when advertising a men's product. The second biggest driver of consumerism is children because parents buy whatever bullshit kids like, they go on vacations to places like Disneyworld and Lego Land or whatever the hell, solely to make the kids happy.
Power RAngers, Pokemon, and Harry Potter are the biggest fads for children I can remember throughout my life thusfar.
Sure pick your battles, but let me ask you this. Would you be picking the books apart like this if JK hadn't become a Twitter Troll?
IF the answer is no, then you're projecting into her works to find more reasons why she sucks and not because you actually give a shit about a children's book series.
Well, Walt Disney the man is long dead and while he was an anti-Semitic son of a *****, that didn’t make him stand out very much in the era in which he lived and grew. See also, Henry Ford.
Also it’s not exactly something that the Walt Disney company or Walt’s own family have ever denied. Downplayed certainly, ignored in favour of bigging up his better qualities? Every single day.
Sure pick your battles, but let me ask you this. Would you be picking the books apart like this if JK hadn't become a Twitter Troll?
IF the answer is no, then you're projecting into her works to find more reasons why she sucks and not because you actually give a shit about a children's book series.
You don't look hard enough. Look up MLP: FiM. There are "fans" who tried to use this children's cartoon to justify their racism. I'll let you find out the rest.
You don't look hard enough. Look up MLP: FiM. There are "fans" try to use this children's cartoon it just by the racism. I'll let you find out the rest.
You don't look hard enough. Look up MLP: FiM. There are "fans" try to use this children's cartoon it just by the racism. I'll let you find out the rest.
Okay, I've watched every episode of FiM, plus seen the four Equestria Girls films, plus read a no. of the comics, plus seen the Gen 5 film, plus read a number of novels. I have no idea how any of that could be used as justification for racism. If anything, any approximation of racism in the IP is regarded as a bad thing.
Figure it out. The answer was already given by other users.
Okay, I've watched every episode of FiM, plus seen the four Equestria Girls films, plus read a no. of the comics, plus seen the Gen 5 film, plus read a number of novels. I have no idea how any of that could be used as justification for racism. If anything, any approximation of racism in the IP is regarded as a bad thing.
The thing you have to remember about bigots is that they think everyone secretly agrees with them. False pattern recognition is a thing, and if you go looking for a justification for some horrible belief, there's countless media you can miss the point of in order to feel validated.
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