I’ve received an answer to a post and I’ve hesitated whether I should answer to it so I decided to make it a post.
First things first, I love Harry Potter. I love the world JKR has given us, I love many of the characters. I think Harry Potter is a tremendously imaginative and extraordinary work. Every time I say Snape is hilarious or that he’s a tremendously well-crafted character this is a very direct compliment to Rowling’s abilities as a writer. I am and will forever be grateful to Rowling for having created this world and these characters. It was a very important series in my formative years and it definitely shaped me as a reader.
I think, additionally, that Harry Potter has tremendously worthwhile messages about love, bravery, and standing up for what’s right. It’s got very strong anti-prejudice and anti-bigotry messages. If ever I have a child I would gladly give them Harry Potter to read, not just because it is very fun but because there are very important values to be learnt from it.
However, I conceive text as an interpretative exercise and part of the reason I enjoy fiction is because I can interpret it and interact with text. This involves criticism. I love Harry Potter and I think it is extraordinary, but it also has flaws, and Rowling, as a writer, is not perfect and has plenty of shortcomings. Pointing them out is not a personal attack on JK. Rowling. Discussing what I think are the problems with the narrative or the characters, criticizing parts of the world-building or discussing what I believe are questionable creative choices (such as some aspects of Pottermore or how Rowling interacts with fandom i.e some of the things she says about her books in interviews and twitter) is my prerogative as a reader and as a fan.
I will never make personal attacks on Rowling. I don’t think Rowling is a racist or a homophobe. I think she holds problematic views on certain issues, but I am wary of turning them into a judgment of character. Rowling’s appalling views on trans issues do not erase the message of tolerance in Harry Potter. The opposite, however, is also true. Rowling choosing to support the Remain campaign commends her greatly to me, but it doesn’t erase the problematic fact that Snape was humiliated in the books by being made to dress as a woman. Rowling’s extraordinary charity work doesn’t erase the transphobia in her essay.
Overall, as I mentioned before, I am interested in Rowling as a writer and not in Rowling as a celebrity who has a twitter account. I don’t do stan culture. I don’t know JK. Rowling, and I never will. I don’t think the world is divided into good people and bad people. I’m sure that like everyone else Rowling is a person with qualities and flaws. But above all I don’t think a person is a perfect cinnamon roll just because they produce something we really like. As a rule of thumb, I would say be respectful, be considerate – and above all, understand that maybe it is not entirely healthy to deposit your mental wellbeing into “stanning” someone you don’t know.
As for Rowling as a writer: I understand how hard it is must be to deal with a phenomenon so large as Harry Potter, how hard it must be to be constantly assailed with questions about Potter even when you’re off trying to do something else. But part of my work as a reader is to criticize text. To say that Rowling has shortcomings as a writer is not a judgment of her character; it’s a judgment of her work. To say that I wished Rowling had a slightly different attitude towards fandom, that I would like her to leave the world as it is, and to have a more “this is for you to interpret attitude” is not a judgment of her character, it is an assessment of her creative choices and how that can impact fandom and the reception of her books.
In this sense, when I explore the idea that perhaps the issues of abuse and trauma weren’t properly addressed in the books, this isn’t a judgment of Rowling as a person – I don’t know Rowling and I am very wary of making the jump to “what this says about her”. In fact, I would argue that psycho analyzing the writer is a fruitless, largely useless task. It’s a judgment of Rowling as a writer and of how some parts of her characterization are not as subtle or as nuanced as I would like them to be, and how that can skew or twist the message.