Diversity and Continuity, or Lack Thereof, in J. K. Rowling’s Work

TW: ableism, antisemitism, racism, fatmisia, LGBTmisia, abuse

Note: I’ve compiled and added to a lot of my Tweets about J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter/the Wizarding World. When JKR says that trans women aren’t women or are a threat to cis women, this is false and extremely harmful. There’s even a world of difference between true acceptance and condescending statements like these:

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033

Calling someone by their correct gender, pronouns, and name is basic human decency. It’s not an especially nice or conditional deed for allies to do for LGBTQIA people. Like I said, it’s the bare minimum of respect and equality for anyone. The implication in statements like JKR’s is that you may call yourself a woman, even if you’re not. This is wrong. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary.

Also, either in ignorance or disingenuousness, JKR keeps conflating social constructs with things that are “not real.” I Tweeted: https://twitter.com/glapointewriter/status/1269404971579199494

If you’d like to read someone who imagines coherent magic systems and who says that unless we consciously try to write all the -isms OUT of our work, we unconsciously write them IN, read N. K. Jemisin!! This is true. We’re humans, subject to ideology.

That’s why I also use the example of JKR uncritically imitating much older authors, like Charles Dickens and Roald Dahl. Both were very anti-Semitic and drew on anti-Semitic stereotypes and caricatures, as well as fatmisia, ableism, etc. while creating characters. You can’t just uncritically imitate another author from decades or a century earlier without interrogating the stereotypes inherent in the work and get away with it. Is that really the hill you want to die on? Stereotypes predate us, and when we learn what they look like, we can avoid recreating and perpetuating them, even unintentionally. Derivative works are not only unoriginal but also often rife with antiquated stereotypes.

Like Dickens and Dahl before her, Rowling uses fat characters as comic relief and as symbolism or shorthand for evil. There’s arguably some intellectual ableism and classism here too, as they usually seem much more ignorant or less intelligent than Harry. The Dursleys are one-dimensional, prejudiced, abusive, and cruel. Their fatness is conflated with greed, gluttony, repulsiveness, and lack of self-control. I wouldn’t have articulated this as a child, but it’s definitely an implicit, harmful, hateful stereotype.

Accio Stereotypes and Ableism

Even as a little kid, I noticed that the characters of color in HP were marginal, token, and barely names on a page. I remember reading it and saying to my mom, “Wow, Britain’s not very diverse, huh?”

And she said, “I think it’s more diverse than THAT!”

Then I went on vacation to London in 2002 (age 13). Most people I met and saw there were of South Asian or African descent. So even if we’re not the target of racist writing, and we know fantasy books aren’t “realistic,” I think it affects us on a subconscious level. HP is a textbook example of a cis, abled, white woman trying and failing to “write diversity.”

If Hogwarts is less diverse than Britain in general, that says something about JKR’s world-building that I didn’t want to admit. Witches and wizards are born, not made or the result of privilege. So, this ironically undermines her vaunted stance against white supremacy/antisemitism.

In 2015, when mainstream publishing had started finally acknowledging disability as an aspect of diversity, Rowling wrote this. “I pondered the issue of illness and disability very early in the creation of Harry’s world.” Oh, did you? I doubt it. You chose to make an ableist, eugenicist world, not an oversight? JKR tries to have everything both ways, but if she considered disability and chose not to include it, that’s worse, not better!

She seems to be evading or misunderstanding a clear question that we disabled fans repeatedly asked her. I identified with HP and wondered whether I’d be disabled or have magical powers in the Wizarding World. We disabled fans wondered whether we’d have the accommodations we needed, something never even thought of in HP.

Instead, her description is vague but literally the “magical cure” trope. It implies that wizards can cure all Muggle illnesses, disabilities, and injuries. There’s no mention of disability as identity, of ableism, or accessibility/accommodations at Hogwarts.

Note also that she spends more time describing magical disabilities (that she calls “afflictions”) and her metaphors for them than considering her own question of whether witches and wizards have real-world disabilities. The last line, “a man who was very much more than his significant disabilities,” is classic ableism. It suggests that we overcome, or succeed in spite of, our disabilities, which are inferior and diminish us somehow. In fact, we succeed in spite of ableism. Because we’re disabled, we often have to innovate.

In 2018, I wrote on BR that our invisibility in ’90s kid lit spoke volumes. Here’s a truly horrific example of ’90s kid lit ableism that I read when I was nine. My analysis is continued here.

Hogwarts is so inaccessible that it has a magic staircase that moves from one doorway to another. My nightmare! Stella Young said that smiling at stairs never turned them into ramps. How easy that would literally be in fantasy, yet most writers choose not to do this. Amanda Leduc writes in her book Disfigured that a lot of fantasy could easily create accommodations and equity via magic but chooses to “fix” disabled individuals instead.

Another thing that could easily be a disability accommodation, but isn’t, is the Time Turner. EXTRA TIME! Instead they give it to only one student (Hermione, who’s definitely the best student anyway), and she doesn’t need it. Unfair advantages are how ableists think accommodations work.

Expecto Deus Ex Machina

This is totally beside the point, but the world-building in Harry Potter is incoherent and riddled with self-contradictions. People would get angry when I pointed this out, but I analyze and write a lot of complex work myself. People just retcon that hell out of it and pretend it makes sense…

For example, take the Obscurus that Credence has in the first Grindelwald movie. Extremely powerful wizards create them, especially if they’re abused, forced to repress their magic, or not taught to control it as children. OK, so why didn’t Harry or Tom Riddle have one?

This is a rhetorical question because obviously this is an incoherent magical system that JKR made up as she went along. We didn’t hear about this before the prequels because she just made it up for them.

Even if most Obscurials die as young children, no one ever mentioned to Harry that he fits the exact profile of Obscurials (wizards who can form an Obscurus). Why? Because she made it up during the prequels! It’s like experts like Dumbledore don’t know their OWN system.

Dumbledore is like 150 years old, but McGonagall is not. The timeline doesn’t work. This is a perfect example of fans noticing a clear plot hole and tying themselves into knots to explain it: Use Occam’s razor. It seems illogical and like a plot hole because it is.

Also consider the rules banning underage wizards from using magic during the summers, added well into the series. Hermione has practiced spells at home and on the first train to Hogwarts. The last line of the first book is Harry joking about using spells on Dudley over the summer. Even the fact that Hogwarts has seven grades was unclear until the second book.

The Room of Requirement appearing when it’s needed is a classic deus ex machina: a highly contrived plot device. If you need it, it suddenly, conveniently appears. Voila! Once you understand deus ex machina, it’s apparent that Rowling uses them constantly in the previous and following examples of plot holes.

(Edit added10/11/21): Another classic example of deus ex machina is the Mirror of Erised. JKR moves the goalposts on us constantly. Erised is literally “desire,” backwards. Viewers see — but do NOT actually get — what they most want. As I Tweeted in June 2020: The mirror shows you what you most desire, even if it’s impossible. Harry keeps seeing himself at his current age with the parents who died when he was a baby.

Dumbledore: Only someone who wanted to get the stone, but not USE it, could get it through the mirror!

Why?! This only functions as a contrived plot device. This fantasy world has no internal logic.

People thought I was wrong about the plot holes and continuity errors I observed in the Grindlewald movies. I consider deux ex machina a specific type of plot hole. The movies are confusing, especially without a book as source material to explain them, and I probably missed some details. However, if you need lots of external sources like Pottermore to explicate them, 1) that’s still your interpretation, not the only one and 2) it’s still a plot hole.

Magic systems need rules, and logically speaking, contradictory or unnecessarily complex rules are inconsistencies and contrivances. Erasing memories is unforgivable and irreversible in HP, unless we need it to be neither of those things and invent or imply another method at the last second. This is yet another example of deus ex machina (Latin for God from the machines): “an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel” (Oxford). If you’re familiar with deus ex machina (shoddily filled plot holes, at least) you’ll see that JKR relies on them constantly.

Fans give JKR a level of reverence (speculating on or honoring her intent, retconning, benefit of the doubt, making sense of incoherent ideology) that more marginalized authors NEVER get. As I said in that 2019 BR article, JKR tends to try to play both sides of the coin. You can’t pat yourself on the back for (implied) Jewish characters (the Goldsteins), then have Queenie Goldstein join a Grindelwald rally. Especially because JKR always extra-textually compares pureblood supremacists to Nazis.

In 2017, I Tweeted:

My take: if authors make claims about their own fictional characters after the fact, they’re not canonical unless supported by the text. Example: JKR’s claim that Dumbledore is gay? A fan theory about her own characters. Agree with it or not, but it’s not the only interpretation. “Revelations” like these suggest that the fictional world is objective and actually exists outside the text, when of course it doesn’t. Even the author’s interpretation, outside the text, is not definitive. We as readers just don’t have enough information to determine things not explained or even implied or alluded to in a text.

Another example I always use is Benjy from Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury (the “idiot” implied in the title). In general, academia considers Faulkner a genius for “creating” Benjy but leaves behind or ignores real disabled people, especially with intellectual and developmental disabilities.