Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

How bad is the idea of a Harry Potter TV series?

The answer is “very bad” and very bad on multiple axes. For background https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/harry-potter-hbo-max-series-warner-bros-closing-deal-1235572610/

The first and most obvious problem is the author herself, whose march rightwards into pseudo-feminist bigotry continues. Now, people can still enjoy Harry Potter in various ways but funnelling more money towards somebody already incredibly rich who directs their fortune towards making the world a shittier place is an obvious issue. I’m not going to help J.K. Rowling get even richer and many other people will feel the same. However, sure, other people (even people who aren’t overtly transphobic) won’t feel as strongly about that but even before the show goes into production it has lost a small but significant audience.

If Rowling had spent the last few years enjoying her money in eccentric but harmless ways, Harry Potter would still have issues. I prefer the movies to the books in many ways but both have problems of various kinds. The goblins that draw on antisemitic tropes, the blaise attitude towards slavery, the weak attempts at ethnic diversity. Of course, these are all good reasons for a new adaptation. Revisiting works can be creatively interesting. However, “improvements” to beloved works are divisive. Any changes will piss-off two groups of people. The first is a section of die-hard fans of the films, who will hate the changes. The second is the section of the online right who like to turn any change into a culture war regardless.

Now again, these are still relatively small groups of people but the show is peeling away support in slices. In particular, people who consume popular culture who are more ammenable to beloved works changing (particularly in socially positive ways) overlap with the first group of people already deeply pissed off with J.K.Rowling.

OK but maybe if the series is getting flack from the left (because of Rowling’s obnoxious views) and flack from the right (who will call any changes “woke”) then maybe the greater middle of society will embrace the show as a paragon of moderation? Well stranger things have happened, certainly the shows proponents will likely dismiss criticism of the show as being motivated by ulterior factors. That’s not going to help the show though. If anything, it will make it harder for the people running the show to adapt to legitimate criticism because it will be too easy to dismiss as politically motivated.

On Twitter I also pointed to a deeper issue. This show will need a core cast of child actors. Given the potential toxicity of the reaction to the show, that would be difficult enough for a group of young teenagers. However, it will likely be made worse by the inevitable comparison of the new cast with the cast of the original film. The worst aspect will be from toxic stans of the key actors from the films but even general news media will fuel attention at them.

The aesthetic pointlessness of a series adaptation that mimics the films means the show is unlikely to get much support from critics. Again, that might not matter much if there is broader support from fans but the show is likely to be beleagured in both directions. If the show tries to make a break from the films then it loses some of the Gen-Z nostalgia audience it was aiming for. It’s a bit of lose-lose choice.

Hampus made a good suggestion on Twitter: make it an animated show. That deals with a bunch of issues. It protects the actors from the inevitable toxic comparisons and it means they can even use adult voice actors rather than kids. An animated show can square the circle of making a break from the films while still evoking the aesthetics of the films.

Yeah but while that is a better idea, I still wouldn’t want to funnel cash to JKR’s bank account. The announcement of a potential deal stated that Rowling wouldn’t be a showrunner but it’s not Rowling’s creative input that is the issue (or rather not the main issue) but that I don’t want her to get even richer. If all the cash she’d have earned from the show was going to some non-TERFy charity that would be better.

Mind you, in the end, I guess I’d just rather HBO made a big weird animated fantasy show out of something else.

camestrosfelapton

47 responses to “How bad is the idea of a Harry Potter TV series?”

    • …campains to prevent trans people from accessing medical care and to remove their right to exist in public. (Sorry, managed to hit post too soon while scrolling on my phone.)

      And really, attention is as important as money here. Rowling gets on the news because she’s a famous successful author – anything new happening with her books gives her another chance to encourage hate towards me and my friends

      Liked by 2 people

  3. Note that the Hogwarts Legacy video game is enormously successful, despite getting the same sort of opposition that you envision for the TV show. Ultimately, quality trumps everything else. If the show is good, people will watch it no matter how much the political sorts might wish otherwise.

    As for actors, children or otherwise, being unwilling to appear on the show because of politics? Do you have any idea how many people would kill (perhaps literally) for a chance in show business? Don’t worry. Actors will be lining up to appear in this.

    (Just to be clear, and as you may already know, I’m totally on team TERF.)

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    • Hogwarts Legacy is an original story in a different medium with different (but related) characters, so it has only ONE of the issues I listed.

      You also completely misunderstood my point about the child actors. I have no doubt they will be able to recruit some.

      Liked by 1 person

    • Hello Hyman. Trans woman here. Just thought you’d like to know I’m doing everything I can to make sure the next generation of trans kids grows up free, joyful, and with as many genders as they want

      Liked by 5 people

    • My understanding is that after the initial bump on release the size of the playerbase of Hogwarts Legacy has plummeted (even beyond that which you’d expect for a single-player rpg), and the completion rate is far below that of the much longer and harder Elden Ring.

      Liked by 1 person

    • If quality trumps everything else, Hogwarts Legacy would have flopped. Every single review that I have seen basically says that the gameplay is bad and the story is anti-Semitic trash.

      “Quality” is almost meaningless in determining how things like Hogwarts Legacy fare in the marketplace.

      Liked by 1 person

    • It WAS enormously successful. ISTR sales and hours of gameplay have plummeted massively. Because apparently it’s not a very good game, either as just a game, or as letting you be a wizard.

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    • Your last sentence would be a reason to get banned on a few places.
      I am happy to hear that Hogwarts Legacy sucked that much, because it made the ethical stand easier(I wouldn’t have bought it, but it would have hurt if it was good). Would also be difficult because my nice has recently watched the first Harry Potter(against the wish of my brother who taught it was to scary for her).
      But his ex-wife is still a huge HPFan, so there is that problem.
      I have to say I was a Harry Potter reader and fan before, I still have the books (nothing else by Rowling anymore), but I am over it, the same as my brother.

      There are 2 reasons for its success: 1. Nostalgie for Harry Potter, for many this is a dream come true. 2. right wing people who will buy anything no mather how bad to stick it to the progresives (anyother example of this is Vox Days whole publishing carrier). To be fair from what I heared this is better than most other example. Now I won’t buy Elden Ring either, because I know that this would be to hard for me, I am to bad for this kind of games.

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  5. “Mind you, in the end, I guess I’d just rather HBO made a big weird animated fantasy show out of something else.”

    I love Earthsea, and I love Studio Ghibli, but Tales From Earthsea isn’t one of their strongest films. I wouldn’t mind seeing another attempt at adapting something from Earthsea (maybe start at the beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea and see how it goes from there).

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    • How about actors the same color as Le Guin specified in the text? The Ged on the cover of my first copy (published by Penguin) was so blond as to be nearly albino.

      Liked by 1 person

    • Any adaptation would have to be better than the SyFy channel version of A Wizard of Earthsea, which was epically terrible as an adaptation, a fantasy story, a story of any kind, and as a piece of filmed media. It was just awful in every way possible.

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  7. However, sure, other people (even people who aren’t overtly transphobic) won’t feel as strongly about that but even before the show goes into production it has lost a small but significant audience.

    Do you really think so? I think that, thus far, the anti-Rowling efforts have had no measurable effect on her or her revenue. It’s the worst kind of failed boycott: it does considerable harm by creating the impression that no one really cares much about trans people.

    And she’s the worst kind of transphobe: She’s not merely opposed to modern “woke” ideas of gender (which I would agree are of debatable sobriety); she straight up denies trans people the right to exist. Trying to boycott her–when anyone with half a brain could have told you it wouldn’t work–just gives more strength to the people who believe as she does.

    This is my biggest complaint with “wokism”: it’s not focused on results. It’s a sham activism that pretends that all problems of injustice can be solved by bullying people into changing how they talk about injustice. When it encounters someone who won’t be bullied–no matter how odious that person is–it walks away with its tail between its legs. And it can’t be bothered to ever do anything but talk–not even to the extent of forgoing the latest Harry Potter books or shows. Never mind showing up for an in-person protest or even engaging in a good-faith debate.

    So the Harry Potter series will come out, lots of people will watch it, and while it’ll get complaints (whatever it does), those will mostly just generate more publicity for it. It will succeed or fail based on how good a job Warner Brothers does with it–and that’s all.

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    • If boycotts don’t work, do you have any suggestions for what would? (Serious question.)

      I think you’re right that boycotts against JKR have negligible effects. Some people know all about her bigotry, but the outside world knows very little, and a lot of them, the ones who are apathetic as long as the entertainment keeps coming, don’t care all that much.

      I am boycotting her, though. I like her mystery series enough to want to keep reading it, but I only read used copies or library books. I’m sure it makes no difference to her and her huge piles of money, but I’d feel sleazy giving her actual cash.

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    • Boycotting Rowling is not i any way, shape, or form “bullying” her. Your argument here structurally resembles a pragmatic argument about what is the most effective kind of activism, but dropping “bullying” into the middle of it makes it strikingly tendentious. Regardless of what your intention may have been, it comes across as if you already had a strong negative opinion of Rowling’s critics’ point of view that is unrelated to their effectiveness.

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      • Well, of course he does, @Eli. He’s too blinkered to realize the simple truth that trans women are women, and actual feminists don’t mind that. The women I know have always been honored by M2F risking so much to give up their male privilege and be themselves (shout out to @Sophie Jane — 👊 sister!).

        And that in fact *she’s* the one doing the bullying, what with her billions and her massive media presence making it easy for her to make life difficult for average folks she’s never met.

        JKR’s a total FART. TERF is too good a term for her.

        Her “other” name writes completely anti-trans stuff (even the pen name is!) and Hogwarts has always been a (badly-written; camping, anyone?) masterclass in How To Miss The Point about:

        – LGBTQ+ issues
        – actual feminism (so the girls grow up to be appendages to the boys, when everyone — knows Hermione should be running the whole damn world)
        – racism (how many PoC are in the books? there’s a couple girls whose entire characterization is “hey they’re not White! look at their stereotypical names!”)
        – anti-Semitism
        – no research about North American native cultures (or anything outside Western Europe), etc. etc.

        She is a garbage person.

        If you care about children, you *should* be worried about the treatment the kids in the series will be getting from online. I agree with Cam that simply not being Harry et al, will let them in for all kinds of abuse from toxic fanboys/girls. And online is way more vicious now that it was for the original kids, who seem to be doing quite well.

        Also, have the children you know read Diane Duane’s YOUNG WIZARDS series, which predates it (but has been rewritten to keep up to date), is MUCH better written, the money goes to support her kitties, there are also aliens and outer space, the co-heroes are average kids in regular schools (one Hispanic and decidedly working-class), and everyone’s sexuality or lack thereof is fine.

        Your smol persons will thank you. You’ll like them too. I reread the whole set periodically. SO GOOD.

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        • Yup.
          And thanks for the tip about the Duanes books. I’ve liked her other work, so will probably like these, too.

          Liked by 1 person

        • Sorry, I was mostly talking about Hyman’s comment, not Greg’s, there. Greg’s not so blinkered, and also I’m sure not getting a lot of sleep lately, because baby!

          Except to reiterate that nobody’s bullying JKR.

          Also that Diane Duane’s books are much better. They should have been the best-selling, epic movie franchise, spin-offs, merchandise, and world(s).

          @Stefan: I don’t know if Duane’s books are available in German, but if they are and if/when your niece is old enough to read, Uncle Stefan should give her those. Much more realistic, mind-expanding, and regular kids who go to regular schools and sometimes to other dimensions and outer space.

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              • Right at the moment, he’s deep into Percy Jackson. He just finished the original 5-book series, and I was hoping to direct him to another author, but a girl he likes is pressing him to read one of the related series so she can talk to him about it. I’m discovering that that pressure is much stronger than anything I’ve been able to apply. 🙂

                All I’ve read of Diane Duane was her “Door into . . .” series, which were her earliest work, I believe. Any suggestions on what would be good to introduce Travis to her? His friend is always looking for suggestions for new authors as well, so maybe it’d make sense to suggest a Duane series to her first. 🙂

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            • Sorry to post and then disappear. Travis and I are on a cruise to celebrate his 13th birthday (and upcoming adoption), but Eric had to stay behind since Walter is too young to be allowed on a cruise. That involved doing a lot of last-minute stuff, so this was really the first moment I had both the time and the energy to look at this again. (Warning: the Irish Coffee I just drank may make this less coherent that it might have been.) 🙂

              Without reading everything, it does look like I expressed myself poorly if I left the impression I was trying to say that Rowling was being bullied! Quite the contrary: I’d love to hit her pocketbook hard enough to make her think twice, but I think she’s just too difficult a target. From my own activist experience, I think it’s a mistake to waste effort on fights you can’t win–especially when losing them may give encouragement to other enemies.

              I can remember when we asked new activists, “Do you want to make a difference or just make a noise?” I don’t think we’re asking that question often enough these days, and it frustrates me to no end.

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              • Noise makes a difference. If you’re not speaking up, then they win because they can pretend that their view that systematic bigotry is the correct and only view is true and approved by most of the society. That’s what Rowling has been doing the whole time — claiming most women and gay people agree with her about trans rights and trans people, that the objections to her views is bullying, a crime, a threat, oppression, etc. The first thing autocracy attempts to do is assert that critical speech towards their claims and claimed authority is unreasonable, illegitimate and threatening, to shut it down.

                To change the culture, people have to constantly make noise to pressure change. And the noise forces people to make conscious choices rather than just claim they don’t know what’s going on — they can’t hide in “normal” bigotry — which does tell you who you can and can’t really trust. That’s why active bigots so often complain that people just need to stop talking about civil rights constantly, why can’t they just enjoy things without thinking about politics and systematic oppression in the culture — because they know talking about it confronts people about long held discrimination and forces them to make a decision to uphold it or start changing. The noise insists, over and over, that the marginalized group is human, is being hurt and needs to have their rights protected and their opportunities increased against discrimination.

                Most people cannot be long term activists. Many people can’t risk doing the bigger protests, the time and travel involved, with threat of injury and jail. They can’t do lawsuits lasting for years. But they can still speak out, which is why there are millions of bots/trolls trying to counter what they are saying online. Even that is dangerous for people to do, but collectively it has influence. So a boycott can be effective without succeeding in financial harm, if enough people do it and talk about why they are doing it to others. Because it forces those targeted to talk about the issue, about the boycotters, and it forces friends and family to deal with the issue, to make the conscious decision about it.

                Often they make the decision to uphold the bigotry or the active bigot, but they’re not comfortable in doing it — they’re defensive. Cumulative defensiveness starts to break because it gets harder and harder to find acceptance for upholding status quo discrimination, for supporting active bigots. Rowling doesn’t go down from repeated boycotts of her stuff, but support for transphobia lessens and her influence beyond what she’s financially funding in the U.K. lessens. Because otherwise, if there’s no protest, her view remains in control of the society without impediment and it becomes/remains the justification for every kind of bigoted discrimination. She’s destroying women’s rights, gay rights, TNBI rights, disability rights, etc., with her activism — if she’s perceived to have majority support. Noise disrupts that perception.

                So noise is the least we can do, and utterly essential to support stronger civil rights campaigns some people can do. We object, we refuse, we’re not going along with the lies and abuse. And people then have to deal with that instead of pretending it’s not an issue and no one is talking about it. And companies and non-right wing politicians do the math based on that noise. We sneer at companies and politicians doing token efforts and half-baked promises — and we should, as that’s part of making the noise — but they are doing it because they researched prevailing attitudes in the public, they researched the noise. If the noise isn’t there, they don’t change anything and institutionalized bigotry stays strong or gets worse without a whimper.

                So Rowling is right now too big to fail — big companies have too much money and hardware invested in her stuff. But any project they do with that stuff going forward, they have to deal with the noise. They can’t pretend easily. They can’t claim ignorance. They have to make defensive tokens. Because lots of people refused to say it’s okay, go along with it and noisily claim why they are boycotting it. It’s slow change, but sometimes noise is the only thing we have because others won’t act without it. Noise is the least of what’s asked of people and the first thing you have to have for change. Which is why they’re always trying to get us to shut up.

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                • I’ll agree that even unfocused noise does make a small difference. But when that noise changes its target every few days–as soon as something new comes up–it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. Where it can make a difference is where the people you’re protesting are mostly on your side in the first place. Then it can get them to reflect and maybe change something.

                  When I was with GLAAD in San Francisco, we planned a small protest at the San Jose Mercury News over their policy of not posting gay wedding announcements. (This would have been about 1992.) We didn’t really have a lot of support for this in the first place–it was a long time before most people in the gay community thought marriage was anything but a lost cause–but Robert, the young guy organizing it, was so enthusiastic, I felt we had to let him do it if we didn’t want to lose him. Also, I’d tried simply talking to the editor in charge of that page, and she’d politely but firmly told me there was no way they’d even consider changing their policy.

                  The day of the protest, it rained so hard that the rain itself became the #1 news item. Robert got maybe three other people to show up, and those didn’t stay very long, so he was there by himself in the pouring rain for a couple of hours. Employees at the Mercury News felt sorry for him and actually brought him hot coffee. Needless to say, the only press that showed up was from the Mercury News itself, and even they had him come inside to do the interview. (And then they never printed anything about it.) He did say that a lot of the staff were curious and came out to chat with him–they’d been unaware of the issue entirely.

                  Rober was really discouraged, but he stuck around anyway, and went on to do other projects.

                  Then, about six months later, out of the blue, the Mercury News announced it would start running gay marriage announcements.

                  The same lady who’d told me they’d never change their policy did an interview on a local news radio station to explain why. “After GLAAD picketed our office, a number of people inside the newspaper started pushing the issue, and we eventually came around to seeing the justice of it.” Naturally I made sure Robert knew that his effort had actually paid off in spades. Almost never do you get such strong confirmation that your activism actually worked!

                  So, in this case, a single burst of noise was enough to start the ball rolling, and we ended up getting everything we wanted. But it only worked because the Mercury News was a fairly liberal paper in the first place, and they really only needed a push.

                  I think it’s pretty clear that this point that Rowling and everyone who works with her is already fully informed. A gentle push isn’t going to do it, and I don’t think the energy is there to do anything beyond that.

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                  • But again, Greg, the point of the boycotts around Rowling’s stuff isn’t to get Rowling or her CPAC funded activist buddies to change their minds. It’s to make the people who are pretending her views are not a problem they want to deal with have to deal with the problem, just as Robert made the staff at the Mercury News have to face and deal with the problem. The Mercury News staff weren’t liberals, they were bigots. And they were pretending they weren’t, justifying it, saying they were helpless to deal with it. But they weren’t helpless; they just could stay the “good liberal” people while discriminating — keep their cultural rep — because no one was making them face that they weren’t doing something good, they were harming people with discrimination. Because it was safer to go along with the systematic bigotry in the society at the time, to help it, because they didn’t have to hear the voices against it and could pretend it was normal to discriminate. It was a form of autocracy that they were used to, which privileged them and so they accepted it.

                    But Robert made them face it, making some staff uncomfortable and defensive because they couldn’t pretend. And they started talking about that pretence and how they refused to keep following it, which forced the rest of the staff to be defensive and have to make a choice — continue bigotry and pretence and have to do so openly and deliberately (violently) or change. And that’s what the boycotts of Rowling’s properties are about as well.

                    For instance, they took the boycott to Twitch and other gaming platforms over the new Hogwarts game and that caused quite a bit of uproar. A lot of gamers, including allies, gay gamers, etc. wanted to play the game, felt they needed to play the game to keep their audience, wanted to keep up the pretence that the views of the creator of the game world were okay, normal or could be sequestered off from her creations (and that the game itself wasn’t anti-Semitic as well.) They were defensive, they declared the boycotters unreasonable and threatening, they whined about cancel culture and purity tests and why oh why were they being forced to face systemic bigotry and deal with this problem when they just wanted to play the game, etc.

                    And many of them defiantly, defensively played and streamed the game, just as the Mercury News defiantly refused to change their policy and decided not to print the interview with Robert (silence dissent.) But they were forced to face that they had deliberately, openly made that choice, and that doesn’t sit right with a lot of them or a lot of their fans because it doesn’t fit their cultural rep, the identity they have of themselves in the world the way it did when they could earlier pretend that the discrimination is okay or not their problem.

                    The game play was a success but then dropped off very rapidly. More rapidly than is usual for a game of that type? Maybe, maybe not, but the earworms are up there in their brains. And the next game, they have to make the conscious choice again and some of them won’t make it, will avoid future HP games for one reason or another. Some of them will listen more, they’ll start, slowly, changing their stance about trans rights needing to be placed aside, about accepting discrimination against TNBI people as normal or disconnected from them, backtracking their defensiveness, etc. Because the boycotters refuse to go along with the pretense and more and more people are joining them. Because they are then forced to face that they’re supporting harm and that the society is changing to not accept it. And the people who make the games, things start to change with them too in response, a little here and a little there.

                    It’s not fast enough and it’s not going to stop Rowling having a fortune, but the boycott is hitting its target, which is everybody else besides anti-trans people like Rowling. And all those refusals to go along with things, the different shoutings that seem so divisive or aimless, that seem to be in lots of different directions, they’re like rivulets of water that dribble across each other, turning into bigger streams that erode the dirt. Robert’s protest didn’t seem very effective, it probably wasn’t the only thing that caused the Mercury News staff to change their minds. But it eroded the pretence, it forced them to face what they didn’t want to talk about and to make choices. Multiply it by thousands and even if it doesn’t overcome basic commerce right away, it has an effect. Chik fil A is not only still around but has expanded mightily. Doesn’t mean the boycott of them over gay rights hasn’t had an effect on many people.

                    Ursula had on her Twitter account mention that a middle school student told her their school had a mural of famous women in a hallway that included Rowling. And the students kept kicking her portrait and caused a dent in the wall. So the school painted over Rowling’s portrait in the mural and replaced it. At Wellesley College, someone long ago painted 9 3/4 on a hallway and the college left it because it was a source of affection for the college students who grew up with the books and they took pictures of it. But last year, activists painted the trans flag over it. Others put the 9 3/4 back up. The activists repainted the trans flag over it. So the college power-washed it all off and declared all the paintings vandalism. So the 9 3/4 symbolism is gone because the college was forced to deal with the issue and make a choice. It was a half-assed choice that still tried to keep up some pretence, but they were forced to face the problem. So yes, the objections in favor of trans rights are having an effect. The majority of people in democracies support trans rights.

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                    • There are probably still people who don’t know about Rowlings horrible views.
                      Just an anecdote, my mother is a member of a political party. One of the groups of that party decieded to boycote a movie (Mission Imposible) because of Scientology. I was a teen or young adult at the time. My mother asked me not to see that movie for that reason in the cinema. Lastly the boycot failed but it prevented me from seeing the movie in the cinema (I have seen it in TV a few years later, was my only MIMovie).
                      So in small steps it can work.
                      (A totally different story was when I was younger, my parents forbid me from watching another movie, because a cousin got so afraid from it, I could have handeled Jurasic Park)

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              • I see some positives, the last movie tanked pretty badly.
                I see the point in picking the fight. I think that attacking everyone who bought the game or is talking (not negativly) about is, is not a good idea. On the other hand you give money to a person who is mostly fighting a war to hurt people and for a game that is at best medicore (wasn’t that Wales?).
                What is I think necessary is to get the news out. People should know about Rowlings horrible views(and the gamesgater involved, this is something that seems to be mostly a non isue)
                Sorry my nice is calling.

                Liked by 1 person

                • The British TV adaptations of the Robert Galbraith books also seem to have stopped, especially since the next one up would be the really transphobic one.

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          • Thanks for the tipp, unfortunatly the books that are available from her in German are her Star Trekbooks, not quite your recomendation. At the moment reading is a bit of a problem for her, so books at that level are not a present at the moment.
            Of course the books are avaible in English, but this is even more in the future. At the moment her fandom is My little pony (chanced from PJMask), but we will see.

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            • Tanith Lee wrote some good fantasy books for children, and I see some of her work was translated to German. Prince on a White Horse would be fun for a 9-12 y/o, also The Black Unicorn.

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              • Generally no disagreement, but she is 7 and ad the moment the father is a bit careful about stuff that can be a bit intense. So whe are waiting with Star Trek at the moment. She should at first whatch the show before reading the books and well at the moment I am afraid even Trek is to much. Scary like Doctor Who is a big no at the moment. As a former Trekki it is possible that her mother indruduces the show to her someday (zero chance whit Star Wars or Lord of the Rings because that is something she hates), so we will see when Star Trek will be intruduced.

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          • Here’s the first bit of SOYWTBAW.

            https://www.youngwizards.com/So-You-Want-To-Be-A-Wizard-Chapter-One/

            Assure Travis that the boy lead comes along right after that. Also, no kissing or love triangles!

            I’ve only read a couple of the Percy Jackson books, but they do have a very similar feel. The grown-ups in the Young Wizards series find out about the whole deal soon, and they’re all kind and level-headed, which as a parent, you should appreciate.

            I’m thinking his crush girl would like them too — a teen girl doing cool stuff, saving the universe with her buddy! (Literally, they have to save the planet in the first book, traveling to a creepy alternate Manhattan)

            Duane also sells her e-books directly to readers, in any format you want. No middleman to siphon off profits, though you can buy them from the usual suspects too.

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    • Greg: Just for my budgetary planning, how much cash should I send to Rowling (monthly? weekly?) to avoid bullying? I’m not interested in getting HBO, so I figure I’ll just send a check directly. Hope I won’t have to reduce the checks I send to Card and ChikFila to avoid bullying them.

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    • This quite long text misses an important point: the moral imperative. A couple of decades ago, I did a lot of anti-war marching. The war happened, with all the negative effects we predicted. While I was marching, writing letters, etc. somebody asked me, “Why bother? They won’t listen.”
      I answered that listening was “their” responsibility. My duty was to speak.

      And disagreeing with Rowling’s transphobia is not bullying her. Her behavior, including the doubling down, is her responsibility.
      And changing the acceptable language in society is important, for good or ill, as the most cursory look at social evolution shows.

      Liked by 5 people

  8. J.K. Rowling’s new projects and things that she is setting up herself will and are not getting a lot of reception. Her behavior (and script-writing) and Johnny Depp’s behavior were not alone in sinking the Fantastic Beasts movies, but they did contribute to it. But Warner’s has a lot of money sunk into the Harry Potter world and if they want to keep the rights to the IP, they may very well have to keep making products from it, including specifically with Harry Potter and his buddies in some of the works. We don’t know how the contracts are set up, but there are probably requirements in what Warner has to do when. And Warner and Rowling additionally licensed rights to Harry Potter to Universal’s theme parks and Universal is owned by Comcast/NBC. Having a bunch of expensive, very physically there theme park attractions again requires new, related products in the IP that are then exploited in the theme parks and merchandising.

    So a t.v. show reboot of the series lets them mine material from the books that had to be cut from the films, is cheaper than doing a new set of films, and like different versions of X-Men comics and animation, simply gives different sets of Harry Potter universes for multiple exploitation. Children’s books remain in print for quite a long time. While it would have been a savvier choice for Warner to do a non-reboot series, something that is a prequel or a sequel with the Potter children, less directly associated with the troublesome creator, they can still do that later. The reboot series will bring another wave of attention and sales for the main property and reinforce the ground for all the side projects. And the head of Warner is now a sexist jerk, so he doesn’t care.

    So no, in the long term, people boycotting Rowling’s work does not have a significant financial impact on her or Warner. But that wasn’t the point of the boycott. The point of the boycott is to attract attention to the suppression of trans and NBI rights, to defy that suppression and force people to face that it is happening and whether they’re going to keep going along with it. Many people still have no idea of Rowling’s views and political efforts to harm trans people in the U.K. A boycott brings it further out in the open. Almost every time there is publicity for say the Harry Potter reboot series, the question of Rowling’s bigoted beliefs and actions against trans people, and people being upset and refusing to accept that bigotry, is going to come up and be talked about.

    No one boycott, protest, lawsuit, etc. causes societies to shift towards more equal civil rights. It’s a cumulative and growing effect where the narrative that discriminatory bigot hierarchies are acceptable and should keep running our societies is continually challenged and refused, personally and publicly, rather than assumed and unquestioned. And those challenges are denounced by those in power as unreasonable, illegitimate and threatening. No matter how polite and coddling the marginalized and their allies are about civil rights issues towards those in power in these systemic hierarchies, they will still be called terrorists, radicals, fools, thieves, etc. MLK was called an arsonist and riot leader and thrown in jail, where he wrote a letter denouncing the “moderates” who scolded him that he needed to be nicer, more accepting, less demanding and wait till white people got around to giving up their massive political and economic power from suppressing black Americans. They did not get around to it — the civil rights movement forced them to face the harm they were doing and demanded equality and change.

    The anti-trans campaigns of the last ten years or so are largely astroturfed in multiple countries and kicked off right after marriage equality passed in countries. It is a wedge issue against one of the most vulnerable and smallest marginalized groups, used not only to harm trans, trans non-binary and intersex people, but to then go after gay rights, disabled rights, neuro divergent people’s rights, those with mental illnesses, women’s rights, black Americans’ rights, etc. It’s the same recycled arguments and rhetoric — the claim that trans people are unworthy and dangerous and so shouldn’t have equal civil rights, that the patriarchal binary myth is sacrosanct and/or “natural”. And it is backed by violent suppression.

    But the cultural shift towards equal civil rights for all including TNBI+ people is happening slowly because the narrative that some groups don’t get equal rights, the bigot myths — the idea that you have to prove worthiness of your entire group to get any civil rights — is continually being challenged and defied, even when suppressive laws are passed and there is violence against the marginalized group. Civil rights movements are inconvenient, disruptive, divisive and loud because they upset the pretence of societal hierarchy as normal rather than engineered and unjust. They are always framed as oppression conducted by the powerless to justify further marginalization. That’s because attitudes in society change when people are forced to face that the myth that suppression and inequality are good, normal and no big deal isn’t true.

    So a boycott is not going to beggar Rowling nor stop her from using her wealth to fund political oppression that she pretends “protects” people. Nor is it going to stop Warner from making a Harry Potter reboot t.v. series. But it does remind/confront people that what Rowling is doing is not okay and harming vulnerable people and their rights, that her and others’ bigotry isn’t noble, virtuous, accepted. It makes people face that a just and equal society doesn’t demonize or disenfranchise trans people. Trans people are refusing to go away, suck up abuse, hide who they are and be denied their rights. They are refusing to accept the complaints of cis people that they are rude, scary, awkward, incompetent, destructive and whatever other standard outrages people in dominant groups always claim as justification for status quo bigotry. They are refusing the idea that they are inferiors who shouldn’t, who can’t be speaking and objecting — and can be killed or jailed by that refusal.

    It’s very unsettling for people who went along thinking things were fine and pretended that oppression wasn’t happening or was somehow justified. And that’s the start of change towards equal civil rights — refusing to keep pretending, over and over. You can’t make Rowling poor, but you can make her not the only voice speaking up. And people can, whether it’s “effective” or not, make their own personal choice not to give Rowling’s work more money and to be vocal about why they made that choice.

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    • Brilliantly said – thankyou! And just to add a minor note – there may be a generational difference here; certainly when I taught, for most of my students and esp the women, ‘accepting’ trans folk was simply not an issue. So there may be hope.

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      • Younger people can grow up in a society with slightly less bigotry than the previous generations because of past civil rights movements. And they have not yet all cemented their sense of identity to the cultural rep and status, the advantages they get when they are in dominant groups in society. They have not yet been bowed down without hope when they are marginalized.

        So most of them don’t see why things can’t keep changing towards equality and justice and change quickly. They don’t buy old bigot myths or that they should submit to authority pushing those myths and be quiet. They are less likely to see people in marginalized groups getting more equal treatment and recognized rights as threatening and somehow “erasing” them, by which opponents mean erasing the status they get from discriminatory bigoted hierarchies in society. They are also more willing to get fired, go to jail, risk being beaten and killed, etc., in protest than older counterparts, to speak out. And because communicative technology has continued to develop, their speaking out and organizing has much wider reach.

        And older people get their noses out of joint at that because their elevated status, their cultural rep as good, fair, meritorious, normal and wise people in the bigot hierarchy is being challenged and not respected any more. They deny that discrimination and repression is happening in the society while also insisting that it has to continue or all is lost. They claim they cannot exist or exist comfortably in a country, a world that is more equal, where others forced to be silent can then challenge them and speak. But they can and they have. Their dramatics are a lie to hold on to status and leverage given to them so fully that they’ll exhaust you insisting that it isn’t there — but that you have to respect it anyway.

        But if people refuse to do that, if they continually push for equal rights, then how do you keep that reputation of being the good person, the righteous chosen, that you are used to from the hierarchy? You either violently oppress the protesters to scare them and others into acceptance and submission or you change and give up a bit of autocracy. Unfortunately the first reaction always comes before the second for most people in dominant groups, in power, until the protests grow, and that causes beatings, firings, imprisonment, and killings of the protesters. It would be nice not to have to go through that stage but autocracy is based on rule of force. And rule of force seems normal to most people until you have enough folks pointing out that it’s not, despite any name, criticism or blackmail threat thrown at them.

        Normal is changing because it should, because what’s “normal” is a lie, unjust, unequal and violently harming people for economic and political exploitation. They are refusing the claims that this is and should be normal. They are pointing out that it is a rigged supremacy system with cross-intersectional discrimination. Whether Rowling rises or falls in her fortunes along with the other rich bigots, the key thing is standing up for equal rights for trans, non-binary and intersex people, over and over, whether it works at the time or not.

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    • The anti-trans movement is definitely astroturfed, because until fairly recently, no one cared what bathroom trans people used or was terrified of trans women in women’s saunas or dressing rooms, because it never occurred to them to be bothered by this. I mean, how often does the average person go into a single sex sauna and how big are the chances that there will be a trans person there on that day? It’s a non-issue that’s being blown up to distract people from more important things.

      As for Warner Bros, more than 30 years ago, around the time the first Michael Keaton Batman came out and Warner Bros merged with Time to become the biggest media corporation in the world, I chanced to watch an alarmist report about the merger (and the fact that the entire world was seemingly plastered with Batman ads) on TV, which claimed that Time Warner could soon control all media and suppress everything they want. This reports was totally overblown or maybe I misunderstood it (it’s not possible to find the original TV clip anywhere), so all I have are my memories and a panicked diary entry.

      At any rate, I decided to stage a one-person boycot of Warner Bros. I eventually recruited a friend, so there were two of us now. I kept it up for several years, too, until I eventually broke my own boycot to buy a charm bracelet with Looney Tunes characters at the Warner store in London. Besides, it had been several years at that point and Time Warner was obviously not controlling all media nor were they suppressing anything, so I might just as well buy that damned bracelet.

      Ironically, after its merger with Discovery, Warner Bros is actually doing what I feared they would thirty years ago, namely cancelling shows and movies and yanking them off streaming services. I even tweeted at the TV program that had aired that alarmist report back in the day whether they wanted to cover the merger now Warner was actually doing what they had predicted 30 years ago. No response, because I guess everybody involved with that report is retired or dead by now and no one except me seems to remember that report so vividly or at all (it aired as part of a cultural news program that has four or five reports every week).

      Boycotting Warner isn’t that difficult this time around, because they’ve pulled or cancelled anything I actually might have watched. And I’m not watching a Harry Potter reboot.

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  9. Just a footnote that Variety, among others, interviewed the guy putting out the HP reboot show and confronted him about the anger towards Rowling’s transphobia. The guy admitted she’s an executive producer and will be involved. Deflected on the issue of her transphobic remarks (and much bigger issue, her funding of political persecution efforts in the UK), claiming it’s a complicated “online only” discussion, and swore that the show will focus on what’s on the page of the books and it’s (not transphobic) mostly inclusive message, so pretty please, stop talking to him about it (not literal paraphrasing, but that was certainly the gist.)

    So that’s what’s going to be happening every step of this show’s development. They’ve invested too much money into Harry Potter to drop it, are stuck with Rowling as the creator who has good contracts, and they will have to deal with the issue of her transphobia and people’s boycotting of her projects in nearly every media interview they do about the series. And it will be a continual bleating of “death of the author” please let’s separate whatever Rowling is doing and her bigotry from the Harry Potter story, etc. But they are forced to deal with the issue due to the boycotts and protests, and this creates unease and from unease, you get defensiveness (the people working on the show particularly,) and also listening to the tides of change.

    It makes fissures in the wall of systemic bigotry, even as they try to shore up those walls and make them higher and wider. It sickens me that the younger generations are forced, once again, to make those fissures and the violence and harm they face for it. But it is also my great hope because where we have any kind of equal civil rights in societies, that’s how we got them. So the boycott is working, even if Rowling still gets money to pursue hate and repression because she’s so far too big to fail. It breaks my heart, it does, as we were a Harry Potter fan family, but no more. We go around her towards better days, if they can be managed.

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