On Harry Potter & Cancel Culture
I’ve read countless novels by 19th-century European writers in English class, but none of my class discussions have ever started with: “should we really be reading this even though the author was probably, racist, sexist, and homophobic?”
“Um… Rudyard Kipling definitely hated Indian people.”
“Didn’t Oscar Wilde do some messed up stuff?”
“I think F. Scott Fitzgerald was an anti-Semite.”
Cancel culture is a recent trend. Some consider it to be a toxic byproduct of “woke culture” while others see it as a natural result of a more inclusive society. Either way, we’ve all faced an internal battle between admiring art we like and disregarding it because of a problematic artist. There is still no clear consensus on what path a socially conscious person should take.
Recently, that discussion has shifted to J.K. Rowling, who has come under fire after her transphobic comments greatly saddened longtime Harry Potter fans. Should we keep watching the movies and buying her books? Or would doing so support someone who doesn’t fight for the rights of all her fans?
We could argue about the morality of “separating the art from the artist” versus “supporting immoral people” all day, but it shouldn’t matter what we do. We are not responsible for the things that artists do or say, and choosing to read Harry Potter doesn’t make anyone transphobic. We should approach these things on a case-by-case basis, rather than with a blanket response to each controversy that Twitter exposes.
People like to have some sort of moral code to follow every time they encounter a familiar situation because it can be uncomfortable to forgive someone for an action that you’re still angry at someone else for doing. It would be so easy to uniformly avoid all controversial art or disregard the discussions around it. But in reality, we never have the same response for everything. That’s why there are hundreds of college students who refuse to admire Scarlett Johanssen for her whitewashing of Asian roles, but still hang up a poster of Breakfast At Tiffany’s, a movie which features a white actor in yellowface. They were never really interested in Johanssen’s work, so they protested it. They loved Holly Golightly’s aesthetic, so they ignored the offensive stereotype present in her world.
If you really love a movie, you can erase the bad parts of it: the actors with domestic violence scandals, the problematic scene, the director’s sexist remarks on Twitter, etc. If media speaks to you, then the controversy surrounding the creator can’t ruin the enjoyment and education you received. I won’t stop reading Harry Potter, which hooked me onto reading, just because the author has some shady views. There are plenty of trans people whose experience reading a novel about a boy who is mistreated by his family and discovers a world where he is adored, may have inspired them as children. I’m also not going to watch Woody Allen movies because I can’t mentally distance his personal life from the weird rom-coms he created. We can’t separate all art from all artists, but each individual can decide which art matters.
I know that the vast gray area can be confusing, but I think it is valuable to be able to choose. Ultimately, the best art will outlive its creator and be taught in English classes centuries from now, with the author’s personal life just a footnote in a group discussion. None of us are responsible for another person’s actions, virtues, or opinions, so we should all just choose what makes us happy.
by RIA BHANDARKAR