Somehow reading about some of the controversies surrounding <a href="https://quillette.com/2020/09/18/the-dishonest-and-misogynistic-hate-campaign-against-j-k-rowling/">JK Rowling</a> had me thinking along the same lines. Full disclosure #2: I haven't read the book Troubled Blood myself. The early Harry Potter books are the only thing I've read by her. But it does sound like a lot of anti-fans, haters, call them what you will are distorting what the book is about in order to stoke outrage. And maybe some people who used to like her have fallen out with her because of things she said. Fine, that's their right. But you can, you know, just kind of leave it there. Not everything has to be a crusade.
Friday, September 18, 2020
Failure to communicate
I recently came across a quote something along the lines of "White people shouldn't be writing POC characters." I'm not sure how widespread this opinion is. Full disclosure #1: The person retweeting it was not in agreement. It's shortsighted anyway. White people who have James Baldwin quotes on their Instagram might well feel constrained by this edict. White people who lock their car doors while at a drive-thru restaurant with a black cashier, not so much.
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The idea that art and literature are only allowed to consist of nothing other than a succession of memoirs with everyone stuck in our own lives sounds quite horrific as well as ridiculous. I mean how could Shakespeare have dared to write about kings and women when he never experienced their realities? The doctrine of 'cultural appropriation' is broadly applied to include areas other than writing. The proponents would also forbid people to play or listen to music across cultures, experiment with clothing and hairstyles, and perhaps food too. Why not? Imagine not being able to eat spaghetti unless you could prove you're Italian? We'd be stuck in individual towers forever, forbidden to communicate with anyone other than people exactly like us.
I read about the latest twitter hate fest against JK Rowling a few days ago. One interesting point was that everyone jumped on the Telegraph review of a book that hadn't yet been released. I too have only read the first few of the Potter books and I haven't been able to work up an interest in her detective stories, but that doesn't have anything to do with having a personal opinion about the author. It seems to me that jealousy and spite have reared their ugly heads.
The artist needs room to breathe and experiment and sometimes to make mistakes. But that's not too special, since the rest of us need the same thing in our lives. I distrust people who want to take away our rights on either of those fronts, much less both.
There are, I'm sure, a number of points on which I'd disagree with her. But I have to kind of admire that she has things she's very serious about, and insists on addressing these things. It's a lot easier to go along and stay protected by the crowd, rather than have the crowd out for blood.
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