Thursday, January 06, 2022
Jon Stewart Goes Off on ‘Anti-Semitic’ Caricature of Gringotts Bank Goblins in ‘Harry Potter’ Franchise
www.thewrap.com: While “Harry Potter” fans spent the holiday break celebrating the 20th anniversary reunion special that debuted on HBO Max on New Year’s Day, Jon Stewart singled out a problem with the franchise that’s hard to unhear.
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I agree with everything Jon Stewart says in this article until it mentioned his follow up claims in which he says that he doesn’t believe Jk Rowling is anti-semitic, because I do think she is anti-semitic because of the Gringotts Scene as well as a tweet she made in her horrible twitter era where someone asked her if there were Jewish wizards at Hogwarts and she responded yes, and her example was just a jewish stereotype in the same fashion as she followed in naming characters from other marginalized groups literally the worst thing imaginable. Oftentimes when you look at the little things that JK rowling does in portraying marginalized groups it often seems relatively harmless, but add it all up and you get a pretty impressive picture of an asshole, and she deserves WAY more heat for that kind of thing alongside the criticisms for her more overt transphobia.
Jon Stewart makes a great point of how the goblins are just a caricature of Jewish people. It’s on the nose and if people can’t make that connection, then I don’t know if we’re watching the same movies. And don’t get me wrong, like most other people who grew up with the franchise, I’ll never forget how Harry Potter was a fantastical world for me to daydream about when I was a kid, but at the same time I can totally let go of the series due to the fact that JK Rowling is a TERF and her long standing views on transgender issues negatively impacts the LGBTQ community. She has so much money and she has a platform that reaches so many people and if I have to let go of a fictitious world full of wizards and magic and just put my money towards other franchises or books that have inclusive world building then so be it.
This seemed fitting for my first comment of 2022: I, like many, watched the HBO Harry Potter reunion on January 1st. It was a series of books & movies that occupied a large part of my childhood; as I’ve grown up, the more I’ve learned and realized the amount of issues surrounding the series. JK Rowling is a known TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), to start with. This article (and video clip) brings up another alarming thing: the goblins who run the infamous Gringotts bank are near replicas of anti-semetic caricatures from anti-semetic writings. I did some research to see the images myself, and they look scarily similar. Jon Stewart jokes, saying that JK just asked for the caricature but with sharper teeth: the idea doesn’t seem impossible at all. This is incredibly harmful imagery, forever etched in a movie series that is incredibly popular. I understand this series has been hugely important to so many, but we need to be having conversations about the harmful content embedded in it.
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