Honest question. I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole HP/JKR thing for a while. We have terrible people who have been great artists, and we as a whole separate that just fine. Beethoven drove his nephew to attempt suicide, Edgar Allen Poe married his underage cousin. Wagner wrote at length about why Jews were a detriment to society. I never had a problem saying “Yeah, they were a shitty person but they made good music.” But i do admit that’s harder with the whole JK thing. Narrative media is different than instrumental music, because it can convey much more concrete messages, but it’s not like Ayn Rand where the work is a thin veil for shitty beliefs. Just like Poe’s work isn’t a thin veil for pedophilia.
Is it age that makes it okay to most people? The fact that they’re not around to enjoy their fame? Should I feel bad for reading my downloaded ebook of Harry Potter or playing a pirated copy of Hogwarts Legacy? Will it be okay to like her work when she dies? 50 years after when copyrights have run out and her estate gets nothing?
These aren’t questions I expect to hear answers to, but what I honestly ask myself. Because I do believe bad people can be good artists, but I am also one of those people that refuses to give terrible people and corporations a dime if I can help it.
I guess what I’m asking is where do people draw the line between “Bad person who is skilled at a craft and produces enjoyable work” and “horrible monster I refuse to have a positive thought about” because, like you said, a lot of people seem to want both whenever it’s convenient.
I am thoroughly on the “not ok to enjoy her work” side, not because of the morality questions, her stories just kinda suck if you’re a teenager or older. Why bother struggling with your beliefs when you can read/play something good instead?
Edit: thinking about it it’s more helpful for me to provide specific example replacements:
Diana Wynne Jones - coming of age fantasies, often with a strong crossover into traditional british mythology
Ursula Le Guin - coming of age fantasies, usually with extremely leftist themes
Terry Pratchett (GNU) - Tiffany Aching series covers child entering fantastical world of adventure with a darker side.
Rick Riorden - summer camp instead of boarding school, traditional greek/roman/egyptian/norse mythology depending on series. Great ethnic, disability, and LGBT+ representation.
Gameswise, Canis Canem Edit (Bully in the US) is the premier representation of boarding school life, and one of the few GTA games I actually enjoyed enough to complete. Arx Fatalis has the potter-style casting if you really need it. Go play CCE.
I was one of those kids that grew up as the movies were coming out. I grew with the series and the characters. I honestly have no interest exploring similar media, it’s just a literature version of eating the same comfort food you got as a kid. It’s a familiar setting, and a world I was fascinated by when I was younger. The adult in me can see the less than ideal story writing and whatnot, but it can’t unsee the amount of sticks I picked up wishing they were wands. Or staying up on my 11th birthday with a fool’s hope to get a letter.
It’s not about quality, it’s losing an old familiar friend in literature. Not a perfect friend, and their mom is shitty, but a friend.
Ah, I grew up with the books, and the first one actually inspired me to learn to read, but that was just an entry to reading for me so by the time the 5th book came out I’d read a bunch of Brian Jacques, some Enid Blyton, Susan Cooper, Hardy Boys, Le Guin, Swallows and Amazons, all the stuff Jowling drew inspiration from and some stuff that drew inspiration from the same sources as she did, and it heavily overshadowed her work both in quality of writing and quality of the actual fantasy they presented. Before the last books were out I’d discovered Pratchett and Robert Rankin, and gotten into the weird and subversive side of fantasy, so in comparison the Potter books were just completely flat and predictable.
I do wonder if being British (and particularly going to a private high school) made it less fantastical to me. Apart from being a boarding school, Hogwarts itself didn’t feel hugely magical. The whole house system is completely normal, all our schools do that. Trecking around a massive old building via convoluted routes that constantly seem to change if you’ve not been there before is completly normal, a bunch of out schools do that. Having massive grounds with a forest and lake isn’t so common, but I was at a private school with grounds big enough for some woods and a pond, so it wasn’t that far fetched, and I’d later go to a university with a forest and lake. To me it was just a normal school plus magic, so nonmagical children exploring the irl lake district in a nonmagical sailboat actually presented more of a fantasy to me.
Same thing about the first book being the reason I learned how to read lol. I didn’t want to wait for other people to read it to me anymore. But the setting probably has a lot to do with it. As an American who went to small schools, even the idea of grounds was cool and exciting. Houses were new and, I thought for many years, not a thing in the real world. All that paired with magic and brooms and the idea of an entire unexplored world sitting under our noses hooked me hard as a kid. I don’t even really like low fantasy as a general rule, but this was one of the only exceptions to that. The other was the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, but that entire magic system was based on puns and only dipped into the real world rarely so I give it a pass.
It’s tough. I think if you avoid art by people who have done some bad things, you are going to end up really limiting yourself.
For me personally, I try to acknowledge (really just to myself, but I’ll bring it up when the artist or their work comes up) what that person did or who they were, but then still enjoy the art. Yes, this person was shit, their art is good though. Here are some practical examples of what that looks like:
The Lord of the Rings is among my very favorite works of fiction. I love it, not just for the story but for the personal meaning those books have in my life. I don’t think Tolkien personally was all that questionable (he was completely consumed by his work so I don’t think he had much there to be critical of). However, the LotR books absolutely have some sus aspects to them (racism, classism, et al). So right now, I’m working on an effort post for here where I break down all the problematic aspects of the books from a Marxist perspective. I think it’s important that we understand these aspects of the books and where they came from (Tolkien was a bougie English white guy who lived in the first half of the 20th century, so it’s not strange that he picked up plenty of brain worms just from the society he lived in). At the same time, in my mind I acknowledge all these problematic aspects but I still enjoy the art.
The book Towards a New Socialism was the one book that helped me understand Marx’s concept of value and abstract labor better than any other book I’ve read, including the first volume of Capital. However, one of the authors (Paul Cockshott) is a massive, unrepentant TERF. He doesn’t even beat around the bush like JKR does. He just spews vile transphobic shit all the time. But I can’t deny his book can be incredibly useful in understanding what is admittedly a really difficult concept to grasp. So whenever I discuss that book, I’m always clear that he is a horrific transphobe and at least don’t buy his work, just pirate it or something. I’m also constantly on the lookout for any authors who are able to explain abstract labor as good or better that I can recommend instead.
Norman Finkelstein is providing some critical insights into the current situation and historical background for what is going on Gaza right now. We need his voice out there, because he’s among the very best. But when he’s not talking about Palestine, I understand he apparently has some chuddy “anti-woke” social views. For him, I just keep that in mind and tune out anything that isn’t about Palestine (which for him, isn’t hard because he really does seem to stay on message).
Hope this helps. Not saying any of this is “right”, it’s just my own approach.
Them being dead and not actively profiting from their works while they spew hate is a good start. Yes, HP Lovecraft was a piece of shit, but he’s dead, so enjoying a work derivative of his is easy to do. Rowling says every bit of money she makes from her work makes her right, so I can’t abide by that at all.
Edit- To answer one of your questions, I don’t expect you to feel bad for enjoying Harry Potter. My approach is more that people, despite claiming to be staunch allies, can’t fathom NOT giving JKR all of their money because they can’t let go. These people don’t pirate the media, they go to Harry Potter Land or whatever, and pretend that it isn’t directly funding JKR’s ego.
Sorry, I keep editing as I’m able to put my thoughts into words. Personally, there is no real line to cross for dropping a thing I enjoy because of what the creator did. It depends on a lot of factors, like how bad the thing they did was, their response to being called out for it, and how they operate afterwords. I have no problem giving someone the benefit of the doubt if they seem truly sorry for what they did, but they have to prove that with their actions too. JKR isn’t sorry and continues to double down.
I’ve wanted to get Legacy since it was announced, and I’ve window shopped on steam many times, but every time I do I see her smug smile and remember that whole “my money means I’m right” shit. It also doesn’t help that I can’t find a good copy on the high seas. Like i said in another comment, I just wish there was work in that universe that she is entirely uninvolved in. I would consider giving money to that, if only to prove that making her irrelevant is not only right but profitable. Imagine if the most successful work in that franchise was the only work that she never touched or profited from. I can only imagine that would steam her beans.
And that’s what I hope for her, as quick as this society will allow. The one thing egotists dread more than anything else: true irrelevance. When she goes, I’d like it to be a footnote. I want people to read the headline and say, “Who?”
It won’t happen, but a guy can dream. And if I do see an opportunity to help it along, I’ll take it
We have terrible people who have been great artists, and we as a whole separate that just fine
i think this is a good place to start. placing Beethoven, Poe, Wagner, and Rowling in the same category of “great artist” seems like a stretch. i get that people think the wizarding world is fun, i think star wars is fun even though the plot is full of holes and the writing and lore are OK at best. i grew up in the HP era, and i feel that i just grew out of them. what really baffles me is that people consider HP to be a great work. like i’ve read a lot of YA fiction and HP doesn’t really stand out to me. Rowling is clearly a commercial success, which is a fine thing to be, but i think that’s different than being a great artist. buying her media contributes to that success and increases the size and scope of her platform, which does have political consequences that can’t really be removed from the transaction. i guess piracy is probably a fine way to gain access without being part of the commercial success, but i still wonder why you’d want to do that in the first place. like, i don’t agree with Rowlings politics (obviously), but i don’t even need to go there to decide that i don’t want to consume HP content.
Honestly for me, it’s mainly tied to nostalgia and just having been invested in the world the series created for so long. I was around 10 when the first movies started coming out, and I read them at release from 4 on, and the series is largely what brought me into fantasy and sci-fi in general. In a lot of ways, it was the basis for a lot of things that I’ve come to love throughout life, and letting it go is hard. I just wish the whole IP wasn’t wrapped up in so many contracts its more like papier mache. That way other creators could contribute more positively. But as it is, Universal is probably going to snap it up the moment JKR croaks and monetize the fuck out of it even more.
Idk, to me JK Rowling was just a name on the cover of books I liked. I didn’t care who that was or what they were like, it was just a couple of words I was vaguely aware of because I saw them a lot. I just want that level of not giving a fuck back. I can’t, because she’s a terrible person and that isn’t going to change. She just keeps doubling down. But I still like to look at every pirated copy of media as a dollar out of her pocket.
Honest question. I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole HP/JKR thing for a while. We have terrible people who have been great artists, and we as a whole separate that just fine. Beethoven drove his nephew to attempt suicide, Edgar Allen Poe married his underage cousin. Wagner wrote at length about why Jews were a detriment to society. I never had a problem saying “Yeah, they were a shitty person but they made good music.” But i do admit that’s harder with the whole JK thing. Narrative media is different than instrumental music, because it can convey much more concrete messages, but it’s not like Ayn Rand where the work is a thin veil for shitty beliefs. Just like Poe’s work isn’t a thin veil for pedophilia.
Is it age that makes it okay to most people? The fact that they’re not around to enjoy their fame? Should I feel bad for reading my downloaded ebook of Harry Potter or playing a pirated copy of Hogwarts Legacy? Will it be okay to like her work when she dies? 50 years after when copyrights have run out and her estate gets nothing?
These aren’t questions I expect to hear answers to, but what I honestly ask myself. Because I do believe bad people can be good artists, but I am also one of those people that refuses to give terrible people and corporations a dime if I can help it.
I guess what I’m asking is where do people draw the line between “Bad person who is skilled at a craft and produces enjoyable work” and “horrible monster I refuse to have a positive thought about” because, like you said, a lot of people seem to want both whenever it’s convenient.
I am thoroughly on the “not ok to enjoy her work” side, not because of the morality questions, her stories just kinda suck if you’re a teenager or older. Why bother struggling with your beliefs when you can read/play something good instead?
Edit: thinking about it it’s more helpful for me to provide specific example replacements:
Diana Wynne Jones - coming of age fantasies, often with a strong crossover into traditional british mythology
Ursula Le Guin - coming of age fantasies, usually with extremely leftist themes
Terry Pratchett (GNU) - Tiffany Aching series covers child entering fantastical world of adventure with a darker side.
Rick Riorden - summer camp instead of boarding school, traditional greek/roman/egyptian/norse mythology depending on series. Great ethnic, disability, and LGBT+ representation.
Gameswise, Canis Canem Edit (Bully in the US) is the premier representation of boarding school life, and one of the few GTA games I actually enjoyed enough to complete. Arx Fatalis has the potter-style casting if you really need it. Go play CCE.
I was one of those kids that grew up as the movies were coming out. I grew with the series and the characters. I honestly have no interest exploring similar media, it’s just a literature version of eating the same comfort food you got as a kid. It’s a familiar setting, and a world I was fascinated by when I was younger. The adult in me can see the less than ideal story writing and whatnot, but it can’t unsee the amount of sticks I picked up wishing they were wands. Or staying up on my 11th birthday with a fool’s hope to get a letter.
It’s not about quality, it’s losing an old familiar friend in literature. Not a perfect friend, and their mom is shitty, but a friend.
Ah, I grew up with the books, and the first one actually inspired me to learn to read, but that was just an entry to reading for me so by the time the 5th book came out I’d read a bunch of Brian Jacques, some Enid Blyton, Susan Cooper, Hardy Boys, Le Guin, Swallows and Amazons, all the stuff Jowling drew inspiration from and some stuff that drew inspiration from the same sources as she did, and it heavily overshadowed her work both in quality of writing and quality of the actual fantasy they presented. Before the last books were out I’d discovered Pratchett and Robert Rankin, and gotten into the weird and subversive side of fantasy, so in comparison the Potter books were just completely flat and predictable.
I do wonder if being British (and particularly going to a private high school) made it less fantastical to me. Apart from being a boarding school, Hogwarts itself didn’t feel hugely magical. The whole house system is completely normal, all our schools do that. Trecking around a massive old building via convoluted routes that constantly seem to change if you’ve not been there before is completly normal, a bunch of out schools do that. Having massive grounds with a forest and lake isn’t so common, but I was at a private school with grounds big enough for some woods and a pond, so it wasn’t that far fetched, and I’d later go to a university with a forest and lake. To me it was just a normal school plus magic, so nonmagical children exploring the irl lake district in a nonmagical sailboat actually presented more of a fantasy to me.
Same thing about the first book being the reason I learned how to read lol. I didn’t want to wait for other people to read it to me anymore. But the setting probably has a lot to do with it. As an American who went to small schools, even the idea of grounds was cool and exciting. Houses were new and, I thought for many years, not a thing in the real world. All that paired with magic and brooms and the idea of an entire unexplored world sitting under our noses hooked me hard as a kid. I don’t even really like low fantasy as a general rule, but this was one of the only exceptions to that. The other was the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, but that entire magic system was based on puns and only dipped into the real world rarely so I give it a pass.
It’s tough. I think if you avoid art by people who have done some bad things, you are going to end up really limiting yourself.
For me personally, I try to acknowledge (really just to myself, but I’ll bring it up when the artist or their work comes up) what that person did or who they were, but then still enjoy the art. Yes, this person was shit, their art is good though. Here are some practical examples of what that looks like:
The Lord of the Rings is among my very favorite works of fiction. I love it, not just for the story but for the personal meaning those books have in my life. I don’t think Tolkien personally was all that questionable (he was completely consumed by his work so I don’t think he had much there to be critical of). However, the LotR books absolutely have some sus aspects to them (racism, classism, et al). So right now, I’m working on an effort post for here where I break down all the problematic aspects of the books from a Marxist perspective. I think it’s important that we understand these aspects of the books and where they came from (Tolkien was a bougie English white guy who lived in the first half of the 20th century, so it’s not strange that he picked up plenty of brain worms just from the society he lived in). At the same time, in my mind I acknowledge all these problematic aspects but I still enjoy the art.
The book Towards a New Socialism was the one book that helped me understand Marx’s concept of value and abstract labor better than any other book I’ve read, including the first volume of Capital. However, one of the authors (Paul Cockshott) is a massive, unrepentant TERF. He doesn’t even beat around the bush like JKR does. He just spews vile transphobic shit all the time. But I can’t deny his book can be incredibly useful in understanding what is admittedly a really difficult concept to grasp. So whenever I discuss that book, I’m always clear that he is a horrific transphobe and at least don’t buy his work, just pirate it or something. I’m also constantly on the lookout for any authors who are able to explain abstract labor as good or better that I can recommend instead.
Norman Finkelstein is providing some critical insights into the current situation and historical background for what is going on Gaza right now. We need his voice out there, because he’s among the very best. But when he’s not talking about Palestine, I understand he apparently has some chuddy “anti-woke” social views. For him, I just keep that in mind and tune out anything that isn’t about Palestine (which for him, isn’t hard because he really does seem to stay on message).
Hope this helps. Not saying any of this is “right”, it’s just my own approach.
Them being dead and not actively profiting from their works while they spew hate is a good start. Yes, HP Lovecraft was a piece of shit, but he’s dead, so enjoying a work derivative of his is easy to do. Rowling says every bit of money she makes from her work makes her right, so I can’t abide by that at all.
Edit- To answer one of your questions, I don’t expect you to feel bad for enjoying Harry Potter. My approach is more that people, despite claiming to be staunch allies, can’t fathom NOT giving JKR all of their money because they can’t let go. These people don’t pirate the media, they go to Harry Potter Land or whatever, and pretend that it isn’t directly funding JKR’s ego.
Sorry, I keep editing as I’m able to put my thoughts into words. Personally, there is no real line to cross for dropping a thing I enjoy because of what the creator did. It depends on a lot of factors, like how bad the thing they did was, their response to being called out for it, and how they operate afterwords. I have no problem giving someone the benefit of the doubt if they seem truly sorry for what they did, but they have to prove that with their actions too. JKR isn’t sorry and continues to double down.
I’ve wanted to get Legacy since it was announced, and I’ve window shopped on steam many times, but every time I do I see her smug smile and remember that whole “my money means I’m right” shit. It also doesn’t help that I can’t find a good copy on the high seas. Like i said in another comment, I just wish there was work in that universe that she is entirely uninvolved in. I would consider giving money to that, if only to prove that making her irrelevant is not only right but profitable. Imagine if the most successful work in that franchise was the only work that she never touched or profited from. I can only imagine that would steam her beans.
And that’s what I hope for her, as quick as this society will allow. The one thing egotists dread more than anything else: true irrelevance. When she goes, I’d like it to be a footnote. I want people to read the headline and say, “Who?”
It won’t happen, but a guy can dream. And if I do see an opportunity to help it along, I’ll take it
Supporting jowling gives money to transphobia.
i think this is a good place to start. placing Beethoven, Poe, Wagner, and Rowling in the same category of “great artist” seems like a stretch. i get that people think the wizarding world is fun, i think star wars is fun even though the plot is full of holes and the writing and lore are OK at best. i grew up in the HP era, and i feel that i just grew out of them. what really baffles me is that people consider HP to be a great work. like i’ve read a lot of YA fiction and HP doesn’t really stand out to me. Rowling is clearly a commercial success, which is a fine thing to be, but i think that’s different than being a great artist. buying her media contributes to that success and increases the size and scope of her platform, which does have political consequences that can’t really be removed from the transaction. i guess piracy is probably a fine way to gain access without being part of the commercial success, but i still wonder why you’d want to do that in the first place. like, i don’t agree with Rowlings politics (obviously), but i don’t even need to go there to decide that i don’t want to consume HP content.
Honestly for me, it’s mainly tied to nostalgia and just having been invested in the world the series created for so long. I was around 10 when the first movies started coming out, and I read them at release from 4 on, and the series is largely what brought me into fantasy and sci-fi in general. In a lot of ways, it was the basis for a lot of things that I’ve come to love throughout life, and letting it go is hard. I just wish the whole IP wasn’t wrapped up in so many contracts its more like papier mache. That way other creators could contribute more positively. But as it is, Universal is probably going to snap it up the moment JKR croaks and monetize the fuck out of it even more.
Idk, to me JK Rowling was just a name on the cover of books I liked. I didn’t care who that was or what they were like, it was just a couple of words I was vaguely aware of because I saw them a lot. I just want that level of not giving a fuck back. I can’t, because she’s a terrible person and that isn’t going to change. She just keeps doubling down. But I still like to look at every pirated copy of media as a dollar out of her pocket.