5 Problems I Have With The Wizarding Schools & This “History of Magic in North America” Shit on Pottermore
the Magical School in Brazil, is supposedly as old as Hogwarts but has a Portuguese name. Hogwarts was founded around 990 A.D, well before anyone was invading, pillaging, and colonizing South America.
Now obviously we don’t have the article yet, but this Reddit thread speculates that it could come from IL-Vert-Morne...so French. And yet magic from Native American Wix is supposedly very important to the teachings and/or founding of the school. So I’m really curious about this one. Why the French name.
3. The Number and Location of schools
Europe has 3 Wizarding schools, But the entirety of Asia only has 2, Africa has 1, and South America and North America each only have 1. Like COME ON. Y’all expect me to believe that these communities have been in contact with each other since the middle ages, but while France and Britain each have their own school, much bigger areas only have 1.
Furthermore, where is the Arabic Influence? The spread of Arabic (and Islam) was really integral to the development of math and science and culture in general between the 7th and 13th centuries. is there no school founded off of that anywhere in the middle east or in any of the countries Arabic was spread to?
The Entire Subcontinent of India and the Entirety of Australia (and nearby south pacific islands) have no magic schools. CHINA doesn’t have a wizarding school. I don’t believe this map for a second.
All the other schools are buildings (Castles) and Uagadou is represented as just a mountain on the map.
Now granted, it is a floating mountain. But I feel like by representing the other schools with Castles, you evoke this sense of Grandeur from the viewer of the map. My first association when I look at a mountain is “cave” And considering this may be the only “canon” impression we get of other wizarding schools, I feel like the school’s getting shafted. It’s all well and good if it really is a mountain but tell me more about its “Stunning Edifices” or its interior or what the dorms are like. Do not just say if floats, do better by it.
5. The Specialities of the Other Schools
Castelbruxo - Herbology and Magizoology
Uagadou - Aside from a cool note about how they can do magic with hand gestures, the school specializes in Alchemy, Astronomy, and Self-Transfiguration (specifically the article talks about Animagi).
and now “History of North America” claims that Native American magical traditions were very good at potions and the first article also spends a lot of time on the Animagus, suggesting again that this type of transfiguration is a much more common ability than it is in Britain.
So the trend here is: with the notable exception of Uagadou’s brand of wandless magic, everyone appears to be good at magical skills that do not require any spell casting.
I do not buy that one bit. Especially after reading the note on the “History of North America” article that said: “As the Native American Animagi and potion-makers demonstrated, wandless magic can attain great complexity, but Charms and Transfiguration are very difficult without one.”
So the only people who get to be good at charms (and by association probably hexes, jinxes and so on) are the Europeans.
It makes me uncomfortable. It implies that magical communities where wandless magic is the norm produce lesser forms of magic and seems to isolate the Animagus transformation as some sort of exta-ordinary fluke. Which makes it now seem like an exotic ability, rather than part of a complex non-western practice of magic.
I recognize that I’m hardly qualified to say whether these things are actually problematic. But as someone who spent a lot of her undergrad talking about respectful representation in writing and media, these makes me uncomfortable. I am particularly worried about the continuation of the Magic in North America Series. I dislike that they are beginning it with the arrival of the Europeans rather than going back and doing any detailed build up of the magical traditions pre-dating them. More to the point, I fear that respectful representation of Native American Nations and traditions might get overlooked by JKR and her team in favor of coming up with cool, cheap advertising gimmicks for the Fantastic Beasts movie.
And again, I am hardly qualified to say whether these things are cultural appropriation or problematic in other ways. But I do know from a writing perspective that when you write about cultures that aren’t yours, you do your best to do as much research as possible and get feedback from people within the culture you’re writing about if possible and I just don’t think they’re bothering to do that....
