JK Rowling

I never read the books, but I know there's been more than one Marxist interpretations of Star Wars (I even think Simon Pegg--of all people--completed his dissertation on the topic). Perhaps you could do the same for Harry Potter.

Have your ever read any interviews of Rowling on any political interpretations of her work?

EDIT: I'm pretty sure that link is a blog post of Snowball of L&S fame.

Also, this:

TBF her statement in favour isn't the worst thing I've ever heard, an example of misguided pragmatism.

She seems like lots of people were at that time when she made that donation - hoping New Labour were a party with a working class bias. She may feel different now, but I wouldn't hold your breath if you hope to see her kicking off on the 20th.

I read the Harry Potter books to my kid a couple of years ago. I didn't really have much expectations for the politics of it, but I was actually sort of surprised at its relative amount of complexity.

First, there is a distinctive current around minority/oppressed identities that seems to be deployed in somewhat typical fashion for sci-fi/fantasy, that is, various non-human, but human-like, entities who are struggling under the existing order. Despite whatever intentions, this can be a pretty fucked up and often racist way of depicting various struggles and identities (for e.g. in HP, goblins are ostensibly Jewish bankers).

As the series gets toward the end, various themes of corruption, policing, incarceration are dealt with. [SPOILERS] There is a somewhat interesting current that I picked up on, maybe others read differently, that appears like a liberal/progressive left united front against fascism mentality, in where the arch villains take over the otherwise legitimate 'magical community' government, to enforce an apparent racial superiority doctrine. HP and co. lead an underground resistance that has informants, and has to strike back against those who take over and those who collaborate.

This narrative is of course wanting for several reasons, not least of which is the implicit notion that the 'democratic and original' government was inherently good, but became corrupted and then taken over by coup.

I have the sense that in the UK the series and its characters are a lot more well known, and I assume discussed to no end, but I have to confess that I was impressed with Rowling's authoring of the series, especially as it goes on.

[edited]

The best thing about the Harry Potter books is that they are imaginative and carry that sense of wonder and creativity everyone experiences as a child and has drummed out of them when they go to work. The strange names, surreal houses, the fairy castle, the adventure and possibility of life outside of the dreary middle of the road and pusillanimous suburban life of people like the Dursleys. However, this is all a MASSIVE rip off of the much better The Books of Magic comic series, which also has a boy, Timothy Hunter, who discovers his father was a wizard and that he is a wizard, he also looks exactly like harry potter (glasses and everything), a secret magical world next to this one, then he goes on a real Bildungsroman adventure. These books are much more interesting and far darker. Making comments about how contemporary society rips the magic / imagination out of the world, dealing with subjects like bereavement, child labour, alcholism, homelessness, runaway children, sexual discovery, etc. (plus Barney the Dinosaur is the form taken by an evil demon from Hell - there is some zeitgeist genius in that)

The actual Leftism of Rowley, moreover, is, as Leftism, incredibly conservative. It's just like Dickens. Re-establishing the family as the bedrock of social order, the comfort of ancient hierarchical institutions like Hogwarts and, as someone commented above, the "democratic" institutions corrupted and overtaken by racists as if these institutions weren't inherently abstract and alienating in the first place. There is nothing in the least bit challenging or radical about these books. They simply reinforce the social forms of capitalism.

Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading them. I like my imagination to run wild and the good thing about fantasy books is that you are doing a lot of the work for the writer. Harry Potter lets you do that. But I find her moralising Leftism (especially from what I've read about this new book of hers) to be incredibly patronising. Having said that she does support single mums, but that can still be done in a conservative framework, and since when has it been radical to be on the side of philanthropy? It would have been a very different story if the muggles and wizards had got together to seize the means of (magical) production.

J.K. Rowling is a "classless" liberal (which can be right, center, and left) with a vision of everyone (boss and worker; white and black; citizen and immigrant) holding hands and getting along on Christmas Eve, sharing pots of "magic" soup, singing some old folk songs, and calls that "progress". Putting her multiculturalism aside, she promotes the whole "great men (or boy)" vision of history. Her whole story is centered on one character and how that character will lead the fight between "good and evil". Another tale in which the strings are pulled by a small minority. But you can't forget about his other two companions which completes the "vanguard" party.

And what kind of analysis does she offer: one that targets only the awful "state bureaucracies" and how that once inefficient "state bureaucracy" was taken over by evil (fascist) forces, and became an evil "state bureaucracy". Meanwhile, competition is celebrated in Hogwarts through games and tournaments. Nothing is said about how the economy of the "wizarding world" works, but it seems as though mostly everyone is middle-class, with some exceptions. It seems weird that the house elf, whose practically a slave, becomes happy to serve Harry Potter (although it wasn't really a master-slave relationship). All was needed was a decent, honest owner, and everything would be okay.

Some people say her books (and the movies) encourages people to question authority and higher power. Yet, as someone previously wrote in their post, she maintains faith in institutions organized around authority and hierarchy, like the boarding school of Hogwarts. She doesn't suggest at all that these institutions need any tampering.

If anything, it would be far more accurate to say she's a conservative, perhaps, with a blend of liberal multiculturalism. Or, at least in my take, she's a confused writer who absorbed the most appealing aspects of mainstream ideology, and try to pen the most general tale of fantasy, with a bit of everything here and there. Overall, one gets something that is coherently non-radical and friendly for all the school children to get their nose into.

As I said, I never read the books or saw the movies. My inclination is that they probably don't fundamentally challenge the institutions of capitalist society. However, I did want to say that in relation to this

I don't think competitive sports will disappear after the revolution and nor would I want them to. I think it'd be entirely feasible to write a libertarian novel that includes competition in the form of games and tournaments.

I also don't think competitive sports will disappear after the revolution and I wouldn't want them to either. But in the case of Harry Potter, they weren't just "games". Students at Hogwarts were divided into four houses that's practically everything to them. The houses compete amongst each other trying rack up the most points. Their whole education system is oriented towards that purpose. Students learn how to throw magic water at each other. Is that the kind of education system we want? What's also weird is that these houses come with predetermined impressions on their own members, Slytherin ("bad") and Gryffindor ("good"). What's up with that?

And how in the world are wizards and witches chosen to be who they are? In a world of seven billion ordinary people, there are randomly picked "special" people among us with great powers (who all just so happens to be middle-class also).

Someone made a J. K Rowling thread in 2012, and NO ONE mentions she has a new book out? Hint, the protagonists name is Barry I think. It's going to win all the pulitzers, clearly

I don't know what else could be added to the topic of this thread. Harry Potter is as mainstream as many other works of science fiction and fantasy. I would love to see something that's far more radical, perhaps written consciously by the radicals themselves. Something that drops the whole "great men" ("the chosen one" etc) view of storytelling, and delves into the experiences of characters who part of something larger than themselves. Maybe we could get one that takes place in an alternative universe undergoing revolutionary upheaval, but a revolution that embodies different values than the kinds mainstream cinema goers would expect. Perhaps, it could re-create the political economy of the societies on our own planet, and the conflicts within and between them. Such a work could serve as an allusion to our own societal situation, but can work as an awesome critique. But this is just me dreaming of something that's never going to happen. A wish that will never come true. After all, the means of communications are controlled by the bourgeoisie, and they wouldn't allow such artistic and critical projects. Such kinds of stuff don't even come out of comic-con, which is pretty disappointing. But we did get 'Trashman' in the 1970s, about an anarcho-Marxist, through the underground comics industry. I never read it though.

That's a common thing at schools with the house system. At mine, the house considered the best was full of private schoolboys from across the road, go figure.