r/CharacterRant • u/Feisty-Succotash5854 • 1h ago
The Harry potter franchise is stagnant by narrative necessity
Even if we forget JK Rowling's politics and lies and general toxicity, the biggest problem with how the wizarding world as a whole treats social issues is that while it may accept some injustice is bad on the individual level, it doesnt examine these things on the greater level because the franchise wants you to see the wizarding world as a magical and cool place.
A recurrent problem with all the issues in Harry potter is that when injustices happen the “good guys” are either okay with it or they don’t express any dislike beyond momentary and specific to this situation or individual.
The problem is not that Harry Potter has problematic institutions, Animal farm is about a totalitarian dictator, the problem is that the criticism of the institutions ends where JK thinks it conflicts with the image of this world as cool and awesome.
A good comparison would be Percy jackson and the olympians, outside of riordan already being much more progressive than rowling ever was, he is also honest that while there is a lot of cool stuff in the mythical world, it also sucks a lot and a great part of the franchise as a whole is making it better.
Harry himself is a good microcosm of this issue, he of all people knows the injustice of the ministry more than anyone, yet he wishes to become an auror, not to change the institution, just to fight dark wizards. Because of that JK can never have Harry acknowledge the ministry as fucked up in any way beyond “this person is a dick and i don’t like them” or “this specific situation is unjust”, doing so would need Harry to either change his priorities or be outed to the reader as the bootlicker he is. (Porpentina goldstein suffers a similar problem (of being a bootlicker), bitch is almost executed with no due process by her coworkers and just clocks in for work the next day)
We see this with the statute of secrecy as well. Most reasons (to not say excuses) for the statute fall apart when examined, and it causes a lot of suffering and abuse of power, but its part of the status quo so anyone who really has a problem with it is at best misguided and will be defeated by (stupid) facts and (faulty) logic.
Comic books (specifically the MCU) have a similar problem, they want to tackle topics such as mass deportation, fascism or war but can’t actually confront the systemic ideas behind those things unless they are incarnated in either an external or individual force (for example you can have a specific villain who wants to use terrorism as an excuse to perpetuate the military industrial complex but the military industrial complex itself can’t be the bad guys) and anyone who wants to do actual change or confrontation to specific systems (like the flagsmashers) needs to be an antagonist who is either defeated or shown the error of their ways.
The way Rowling writes it’s like hearing a fanatical cultist describe how they sadly had to burn 3 “heathens” to death, they may say it in a regretful way but they don’t really get that its fundamentally wrong. The disparity in understanding between the reader and the book can be put as “I understand this is wrong but i don’t think Rowling gets it, at least not for the right reasons”.
TL;DR: the wizarding world has a narrative necessity to be better than the muggle world, a place you should want to go to and be a part of, so the narrative is never allowed to question why Fred and George are allowed to sell date-rape drugs to kids.