I’m very late to the party, but to be honest, I don’t really like anything related to Harry Potter. I think Harry Potter is, as a series, overrated. #sorrynotsorry. By typing stuff like this, I will probably get very angry, huffy replies from all of the fans, and fandom is one of those things you don’t want to mess with. But that is for another post. Recent events have reminded me that Rowling’s retconning of her universe is endless, and the more the retcons it, the worse it is for her inner universe. Let me explain why.
The Harry Potter series is famous because of a combination of luck and being in the right place at the right time, but journalists have written about it already, and in greater detail, too. Besides, that is not the point I am making. Because a lot of money is being made out of fandom, we get unnecssary expansions of the Harry Potter universe and even a Harry Potter musical. Stories that expand on a given fictional universe clog up the market of stories and push away original work that could be as good, too.
The latest contention being the new trailer for the Harry Potter movie being released in Fantastic Beasts 2, where Nagini is depicted as an Asian woman. Claudia Kim will play Voldermort’s companion snake. A lot of Asian fans think it’s great, because representation is great, right? Except when it isn’t. In my opinion, making Nagini an Asian woman doesn’t erase the problem of racism — it actually perpetuates it. As far as we know, Nagini serves Voldemort in the books, so casting her as an Asian woman reinforces the submissive Asian woman stereotype. Rowling tries to reason this out by saying that Nagini was partially human in her head all this time (and that she’s a maledictus, the opposite of an animagus, which means human trapped in animal’s body), but some background work is not meant to be included in the books because it doesn’t serve the plot. We didn’t need to know that Nagini was a woman to enjoy the Harry Potter books; knowing this fact takes the magic from it completely because we have an additional bit of information that does nothing whatsoever except serve as lazily thought-out, retroactive padding to the universe. Even if Nagini being a woman was essential to the movie plot, does she have agency? Is she more than Lord Voldemort’s servant? Does she have motivations of her own? We can only tell when we watch the movie. Moreover, Nagini’s name is derived fom the sanskrit word, “naga”, which refers to a serpentine deity in Hindu mythology. Shouldn’t we cast an Indian instead and make her less submissive in the script?
All right, I got the last idea from someone’s comment on Facebook, and I must admit, I have to agree.
Throughout the years, Rowling seems to want her cake and eat it too. She’s retconned Dumbledore and said that he’s gay, much to the LGBTQIA community’s delight, and she has accepted black Hermione as canon as a black actress plays Hermione in The Cursed Child. I sometimes wonder if we’re that starved for representation that we accept the retroactive scraps that a famous writer throws at us because she wants to give the fans what they want, which ruins the universe that she has built. Her repeated additions to the universe serve no purpose to the plot and are just fan service. Was Dumbledore’s sexuality essential to the plot? No. Does Hermione’s race change her in any way, shape, or form? No. She can happen to be black if she wants to be. What I would rather see is characters in stories who are of a different race or sexuality, and that is crucial to the plot. I want to see LGBTQIA characters have happy endings because so many LGBTQIA characters are used as sidekicks in stories or don’t often get their happy endings. I want to see other stories that have characters of different races or abilities to shine and create a life for themselves. Representation doesn’t just matter. The right kind of representation matters. If we show our audience that people of all races and colours can be happy and triumph over obstacles, then our work is done.
I understand why Rowling wants to retcon her universe. I really do. I know she likes her fans and wants to give them more. I know the fear of being obsolete and not getting with the times. But showing that you’re “woke” is more than saying that Dumbledore is gay or that Hermione can be black. It starts with using one’s own privilege to call out injustices (and to be fair, I think she’s done some of that on Twitter) and drawing attention to diverse stories. Not tokenism diverse, mind you, but stories with rounded characters who have a shot at a fulfilling life in-between the pages of a book.
Image from the Harry Potter wiki