I've already added a couple of "Thanksgiving" entries so I don't feel like I need to say anymore about the subject. But I also saw the new Harry Potter movie recently and had some Grenada-esque comments about the series.
I don't know if it has been written yet, but there is enough rich material in the Harry Potter books/movies for someone to write a serious work on the ways in which race and ethnicity (especially in the form of Orientalism) are represented in the Harry Potter series. From the alchemical references and turban-wearing villan of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to the multiple (superficial? objectifying?) inter-racial romantic pairings in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, identity politics abound.
The two main points one could cover are firstly the way the "Orient" is exoticized and objectified, and secondly the way that White European experience is central and made the norm. We can, and should describe the situation with more detail, complexity, subtlety and nuance. But the above gives the outline. And some of that detail is fleshed out over several articles and blog posts.
Arabworld Books: The Eastern Influence in Harry Potter
Hyphen: Harry Potter's Girlfriend
The Age: Potter Spell Broken
Model Minority: Harry Potter and the Asian American Image in Media
Sepia Mutiny: Hari Puttar - Attack of the Clones
Mahiram.com: Southasian flavor in Harry Potter film
Poynter Online: Harry Potter and the Imbalance of Race
Asia Times: Harry Potter and the Decline of the West
Washington Times: Harry Potter and the Guantanamo Detainees
Ed Strong: Harry Potter - Whitewashing Western Imperialism and Capitalism
Previous Planet Potter posts:
harry potter and the book-burning benedict
the magic of not reading
3 comments:
Thanks so much for the links. Very pertinent observations! I watched the fourth movie a few days ago, and had begun to think along similar lines...
Thanks for stopping by. I'm glad you liked my posts at Planet Grenada. I thought they would be timely.
I'm not saying you were implying any of this but I should probably clarify that I don't see myself as anti-Harry Potter, as if it were the most racist piece of literature everywhere and it needed to be protested. Or that somehow the story would be better if it didn't have any non-white characters/actors in it at all.
I would just say I'm critical of the series. I'm glad that they at least gave lip-service to diversity and showed different races in the movies but there is plenty of room for improvement in term of *how* those non-white characters appear in the story.
And Harry Potter is more worthwhile as a target, in part because there is so much material there, and also because between the movies and the books it is a big part of popular culture right now.
Sure, the "Orient" is objectified in Harry Potter, but it's not a fault specific to J.K. Rowling. Oriental objectification is so endemic in American popular culture (also British? I don't know) that Rowling probably didn't even think much about it. I think Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia are much more legitimate targets of a race study, since both of these epics make no bones about the triumph of Western/Christian people.
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