I used to be a Harry Potter kid. I have nostalgia for the series just as much as a hate it. Its honestly kinda a weird feeling but I digress. Obvs I dont support JKR and I dont support the series at all, no matter how important it was to me as a kid. The series is icky and I think I recotnized that even as a kid
I remember little ol me reading the books and feeling kinda bummed about Hagrid, cause while I was excited for the rep I didnt like that they made him the reckless bumbling idiot. I felt like he deserved better :( second book only really made that worse (side note, but I had other gripes not just with Hagrid. I always felt kinda icky reading about Crabbe and Goyle an Neville too cause they reminded me of me and some of my friends in my special ed class getting taken advantage by people pretending to be friends because they thought it was funny to fuck with us)
Then the fourth book came and I kinda didnt like the series as much anymore. Between Umbridge being described as ‘toadlike,’ Hagrid being a halfgiant (which could have been a cool exploration of culture, racism against mixed folks, as well as deformimisia but no…) and then they had Moody and I was excited because this was another disfigured person in a teaching role and I really liked Lupin and hoped this guy stuck around
And then they deliberately made him really scary and went through all the trouble to show just how creepy he was… and I know that they had the whole “hes really not that bad” moment with Neville but the whole “torturing and killing a spider” thing was still really gross and I know it wasn’t really Moody but it still hurt because thats how they portrayed him and continued to portray him what little times he showed up
I found the scenes and descriptions of Voldemort over all really disheartening cause he was painted as being inhuman… you could make the argument he was meant to be portrayed as more snakelike and yeah I can see it in some instances but a lot of other stuff is just inexcusable
As much as the series is nostalgic just cause I read it as a kid, it also feels really icky. It felt icky then I think I was just desensitized. It hurts seeing yourself in a book and on a screen being portrayed as a monster and I think it gave me some really bad internalized deformimisia and disfiguremisia :(
Yeah, Harry Potter is filled to the brim with problematic things, and ableism is definitely one. Literally every character who has disabled traits gets mocked, demonized, or infantilized for it.
I wish people would drop HP already. JKR is using her money to donate literally THOUSANDS of euros to anti-trans organizations, and her books are all ableist, antisemitic, gender essentialist, transphobic, exorsexist, and varsexist.