The Author Who Cried Wolf

Noma Dumezweni as Hermione

J. K. Rowling is once again attracting the fury of social media for making an obviously shallow play at identity politics.

Some time ago, Rowling drew fire after black actress Noma Dumezweni was cast in the role of Hermione. Yes, it was true that many fans (and or trolls) were shocked and even upset that a character visually cemented in eight films was suddenly going to experience a drastic race change, but the real nonsense occurred when Rowling alleged that she never stated Hermione’s race.

This is complete nonsense.

Are all Harry Potter fans suddenly racist? No. Once you become accustomed to a character’s design, it’s difficult to see them a different way, and changing ethnicity is as extreme as you can get. A race change is a whole lot bigger than darkening someone’s skin.

Expert from a Harry Potter book.

I usually am not a fan of race changes. In the long run, I don’t care if it makes sense for the story being told and if the actor/actress is a great fit. I thought Zendaya as a legit Mary Jane for Spider-Man: Homecoming would have been awesome, but they wasted her. In the case of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage play, I don’t personally care that much. What I did hate was Rowling’s rewrite of history.

If Hermione was black, Rowling wouldn’t have written “white face”. I don’t care how shocked or scared Dumezweni gets. If her complexion was in mind while Rowling was writing, only a spell or a medical condition would have made her “white”. Rowling has sketched Hermione. She didn’t specify a black girl. The books have colored illustrations. Hermione was obviously not black. To top it all off, Emma Watson portrayed her on screen.

A sketch drawn by J.K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter.

It bothered me in general, but it also bothered me as an author. If J. K. Rowling wants to showcase how important representation is and create an iconic black woman, all she has to do is take a pen to paper. She’s just that famous and powerful in the literary world. Just do it. The Black Delegation does not need her sloppy seconds. We didn’t need her permission to cosplay and draw black fanart, and it’s frankly weird that Rowling is writing her own fanfiction now.

The rage machine returned after Rowling issued too much information in the DVD extras of Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald. Rowling had this to say about Dumbledore and Grindelwald: “Their relationship was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship.” She also went on to say she was less interested in their physical relationship but believed “there is a sexual dimension” to it.

She’s the author. She wrote the screenplay. Why does she “believe”? Why doesn’t she know? Regardless, many fans felt like it was too much information. I don’t even want to know what a sexual dimension is.

Many fans felt that it if were important enough for Rowling to mention on DVD extras, then it certainly should have been mentioned in the books or film. Last year, Rowling received backlash and alleged death threats after Director David Yates explained the film wouldn’t be dealing with the relationship.

I don’t have a dog in the fight. I’m not big on Harry Potter, and I honestly only became interested in Rowling and her work when I began writing novels myself. I recall watching an interview with her just as she was finishing up Deathly Hallows and sending it off to her publisher. It was then that she dropped the bombshell of Dumbledore’s sexuality. I hypothesized that she was merely annoyed with Christians that dubbed her work satanic and decided to give them a final middle finger after she wrapped it up and made her cool billion, but who knows? It doesn’t seem plausible that Rowling would try to score brownie points back then, but she sure does virtue signal hardcore today.

I believe Rowling’s fans are mostly frustrated by the fact she created wonderful characters that don’t need to be icons in the game of political correctness, yet she feels the need to sacrifice them on a social justice altar anyway. Rowling made a story with characters that experience prejudice, and nobody needs to be a person of color or battle in the Oppression Olympics to convey that message, just as the X-Men so brilliantly told that story in comics. Rowling doesn’t need to alter the details of her characters or pander to make the majority of her fans appreciate her work. Perhaps she should learn to appreciate them herself…or at least pick up a pen and start a new adventure.

Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald