Harry Potter

Probably not since leprechauns are in Book 4 as rude pranksters and nobody cares.

It's not just that they're goblins, it's how the goblins look, and the sort of names they have. They are coded as Jewish.

The coding is the more defining part, and it varies across depictions in various works. For instance, Tolkien's goblins (who were retconned into being orcs) are instead accused of drawing from stereotypes about Asians, due to their appearances being compared to "the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."

I thought that Orcs were intended to be more like the lower working classes of people, only going along with what the master wants because they have no other choice.

People forget one thing about unfortunes implications: that unless states they were unfortune, this is most likey a bunch of stuff that just become anti semitic: goblings were often seen as greedy so maken them bankers make sense, but between that and start of david just give a bad vibe.

Not familiar with that stereotype, how does being greedy make someone a good fit for a banker? Most ones that come to mind tend to be about it a boring profession, which is why Bill not fitting that mental image (among other reasons) was surprising.

Greedy Jew trope.

Edited by tclittle on Feb 24th 2021 at 7:57:44 AM

There's a lot of ugly history behind the stereotype of Jewish people as greedy immoral bankers.

Edited by M84 on Feb 24th 2021 at 9:57:29 PM

So it wasn't something tied the specific job, but back to antisemitism.

One of the most insidious things about the "Jewish banker" stereotype is that it blames Jews for something they had no choice in - money-lending was literally one of the few trades a Jew was allowed to pursue in the past and the ones that didn't end up being murdered because some asshole nobles (and the common mob they stirred up) didn't want to repay their loans passed down their business to their descendents.

So first people got pushed into a limited number of jobs and then people demonised them for having those jobs.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 24th 2021 at 3:37:35 PM

A lot of stereotypes come from people groups being forced into roles that they had few legal options around. Jews in banking, Jews in the movie industry starting when film was viewed as a cheap curiosity, Black people and watermelons to denigrate newly freed Black farmers, Chinese people with restaurants and laundries because American laws restricted immigrants from China unless they started such businesses, Mexicans as farm laborers and housekeepers, etc.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 24th 2021 at 6:55:06 AM

I mean, say what you will about George Lucas but he didn’t go on a rant about how much he hated black people.

He made Jar Jar to do that.

Honestly, George Lucas issue was more that he uncritically referenced things from the movies he grew up with.

Star Wars is heavily inspired by old westerns etc and it shows in some of the depictions - for example, the Tuskens are inspired by the media depictions of Bedouins and Native Americans, i.e. "brutal savages waylaying you at every opportunity" - the human colonists even have what very much sounds like a slur for them ("Sand People").

He was basically writing a love letter to all those movies he loved without realising how problematic some parts of them were (which, granted, took a lot of people a long time to realise) - I doubt he included that stuff because he actively hates ethnic minorities etc.

I have noticed something in the fandom: A tendency to blame the victim. There's a very popular fan theory that the Dursleys' behavior towards Harry was caused by the Horcrux inside him. Those people conveniently forget the first chapter of the first book establishes how much the Dursleys want to be seen as "normal" and hate everything unusual. Not to mention, Ron, Neville, Dean, Seamus and Hermione spent far more time with Harry because they not only had classes with him but also partly slept with them in their dorm rooms for a good chunk of the year, far more than he spent at the Dursleys. And we know the effect of a Horcrux wears fast off because Ron immediately regrets his actions once he leaves in Deathly Hallows. The Dursleys sent Harry crap for Christmas even though he was absent. The way Petunia treated Lily was also without a Horcrux. So this theory is basically contradicting with the things we know. Especially since we only know of this effect from the locket, and none of the other Horcruxes. The diary didn’t make Ginny a mean person because of possessing it. It partly possessed her because she wrote in it. It had a totally different effect.

Ron haters bash Ron in Deathly Hallows for abandoning Harry and Hermione, and complaining constantly. They overlook the fact that he was injured and needed nourishment (and the way the whole camping trip was structured didn't help^note Seriously, they spend weeks to come up with the most basic and uncreative plans just so the book can have time passing and events happening on certain dates. Harry and Hermione spend weeks planning the Godric's Hollow trip, and in the end their plan was "cloak and polyjuice". That's it. And they didn't even remember to take snow and footprints into account and give up on the cloak almost immediately, and then Harry just goes and wings it with Bathilda Bagshot. Wow, brilliant plan right there, I can 100% see how that took weeks of planning and was totally not just a way for making time pass so they could be there on Christmas Eve.), not to mention the locket Horcrux manipulating him and magnifying his fears and insecurities. Harry was also wrong to trivialize Ron's concern for his family. And as for Harry and Ron's blowout in Goblet of Fire, let them find a 14 year old who wouldn’t feel inferior to a very famous and a very smart best friend.

I’ve even seen people say that they were upset that Sirius basically “abandoned” Regulus when he left home as if he wasn’t a 16 year old escaping his abusive household. Nevermind that Regulus was just as brave as Sirius, he just made the wrong decisions. Sirius found friends in Hogwarts, friends who taught him what a real family was like, whereas Regulus only ever had his brother. (I honestly would go so far as to say that Regulus is what fandom wants Draco Malfoy to be. Regulus, like Draco, became a Death Eater at a young age because of his family. But unlike Draco, Regulus actually turned on them, tried to bring Voldemort down and even gave his own life for it. While Draco didn't really like it in the end, the last time we hear him speak in the books is to save his own ass, because after everything, he was still a coward.)

Another example of this is Voldemort's parents. Merope Gaunt is not vilified as much as Tom Riddle, Sr., even though he had every right to abandon her and never went to see her again after she basically raped him. Yet I rarely see fans sympathizing with him. Imagine Tom Riddle Sr.'s complete embarrassment and shock when he comes to. He is married, he has a kid on the way and it's all with a woman he doesn't like. She is not good-looking, she is dirty, she lived in squalor, she is the sister of a man who tormented him and her dad was continuously rude and horrible to Tom and his family. The Gaunts were considered disturbing people by the locals. He knows nothing of magic and cannot for the life of him understand how this even happened. He comes to and of course he flees. He feels raped, like he has been a hostage, he looks back on his behavior under the love potion and doesn't understand it at all. How could he have been lovey-dovey with a woman he can't stand the sight of?

He goes home with his reputation tarnished forever. It probably contributed to the fact that he lived alone with his parents for the rest of his life. Meeting new people in that little town where everyone knew could not have been easy. Tom Riddle Sr and his parents had servants and a mansion. He was in love with and probably meant to marry Cecilia, who probably was a woman more "suited to his status". When he left her for Merope it was probably the biggest kick in the teeth Cecilia could have gotten. He left her and he left her for a dirty hobo and then had a kid with her. For Cecilia there's no coming back from that. A total fall from grace for Tom. He probably also lost friends, because even if they could accept his "adventure" with Merope, why would they condone the way he left Cecilia? Why people say he should have stayed with Merope is beyond me.

Sure, Merope is a victim, a victim of child abuse from her family, but being a victim does not mean she isn't a serious abuser herself. Shitty life experiences don't excuse her shitty behavior, only explain it. It may skew her perception of right and wrong, but she still did it. She was still horrible.

The idea of Horcrux!Harry being a bad influence on the people around him is certainly an interesting idea (sort of like a living curse), but I agree it does not fit at all with what this series was going for.

For what its' worth, I think Rowling made it very clear that Riddle Sr. was the victim in all of this. Unlike her previous questionable portrayal of love potions (or maybe we are just supposed to view Magic society as screwed up in this regard?), I don't think either Dubledore or Harry blamed him for getting the hell out once he regained his free will. If anything Harry accuses Merope of abandoning her child by basically comitting suicide.

Merope had every right to abandon her abusive family and start a life of her own. But she didn't have the right abduct and rape a man who for all we know never did her any wrong.

Maybe there are also some Double Standards involved. I suspect that few people would argue that if the genders had been reversed, that the woman should stay with the man who raped and impregnated her.

Edited by Zarastro on Feb 25th 2021 at 9:27:21 PM

We probably shouldn't put the love potions thing entirely on Rowling either, that's just a general problem with the idea of love potions in fiction. And a very persistent one, at that, one of the oldest ones in the book.

George is currently married to a black woman. He quite obviously doesn't hate them.

As has been previously stated, he lifted tropes and imagery from old serials. The problem is that they're from the Thirties, and a lot has changed since then.

Anyway, it's worth noting that JKR's deranged slide into internet transphobia isn't entirely random. She had a long spat on Twitter with left-wingers because she utterly loathes Jeremy Corbyn and has a puzzling, enduring loyalty to the New Labour project. In her immortal words, "Corbyn. Is. Not. Dumbledore."

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Feb 25th 2021 at 4:29:32 AM

I don't have much to speculate about Lucas nor care to, but having a Black partner doesn't mean one can't be racist against Black people, as in cases like Milo Yiannopoulos or Virginia Thomas.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 25th 2021 at 4:21:45 AM

I dont know about virgina thomas but Milo is very unusual example of bigotry, he court succefully the alt right because they want it their trolling style that was in vouge in that moment and use his gayness as shield against progresive since it was kinda hard to acused him of being racist in that way, but most rarely those kind of stuff is hard to see.

" the Dursleys' behavior towards Harry was caused by the Horcrux inside him."

If I have to guess is because the fandom want something more of the dursley rather than the annoyance they were in the book, after a while they become mostly there just because.

"And as for Harry and Ron's blowout in Goblet of Fire, let them find a 14 year old who wouldn’t feel inferior to a very famous and a very smart best friend."

I think is because the narrative is structed toward harry than ron, simply speaking we know harry didnt want that fame, that is giving to him on the simple basis that some other people(his parents) die for him, so that envy come as mean sprited...and quite simple, some people feel ron is superflous to the narrative.

With merope....I guess in some sense some people saw merope as sort of woobie who not understanding what else to do want it love at all cost, I guess is also because she is a woman and the whole love potion thing, there was a sense of tragedy in that regard.

Jar Jar is very clearly the result of person who used to watch old adventure/comedy films with wide-eyed, mushmouthed black sidekicks and thought "this was funny! Why did they stop doing this?" I've always found that the best way to describe him is that he's almost literally Mantan Moreland's character Birmingham Brown In Space

Lucas relied a lot on old-fashioned negative, tone-deaf stereotypes - some relatively benign but noticeable, others significantly worse - and is tends to come from him adapting the the genre throwbacks he's fixated on wholesale without self-awareness about how some of the elements in that media are no longer acceptable.

In short, Lucas spent most of his film career as an ignorant, tone-deaf old man. I could buy that most of what he did was less out of malice than stupidity.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 25th 2021 at 7:04:12 AM

So dmcreif wrote a few paragraphs about how Tom Riddle Sr. was a rich, privileged, spoiled asshole and then asked "why don't people feel sorry for him abandoning the poor, abuse girl and a baby?"

I wonder.

Like, seriously. He was some well-to-do shithead who left a poor woman to starve with a baby. Now, did he have to stick around to raise the baby? No. Is abandoning children to sit on your piles of money a good look No. The baby did nothing to him.

That's why literally no one in the story cares about the Riddles' murder. Their deaths might be the only vaguely righteous thing Tom Riddle ever did.

Edited by Nikkolas on Feb 25th 2021 at 8:43:52 AM

Guy was basically a brainwashed rape victim who fled from his kidnapper at the first opportunity.

If Merope had gone to St. Mungo's instead of an orphanage, Voldemort may have been better off. Or he might not have been(maybe he was always destined to be the Dark Lord). Merope did not, as far as we know, have any normal relationships in her life. Her family was crap and her relationship with Riddle Sr was a magic-fueled sham.

When she was pregnant in London and sold the locket, Burke remarked that she was alone. At that point, she probably did not have any friends out there. If she had had even one friend, could she not have gotten basic necessities from them instead of selling something remarkably valuable for pocket change?

Sure, Voldemort had a shit time in the orphanage, but Merope would not have been able to give him the care a developing child needs. She lacks empathy, none of the relationships she has in her life is based on love or even respect. They were all based on lies or fear. I think Voldemort would have had the best chance at life if he grew up in foster care where he was the only child in the house and then therapy while growing up (and of course if Hogwarts provided support services in that field).

Because Merope raising a kid? A golden retriever would have done a better job to teach empathy, love and support. How could Merope teach something she had never experienced? That would be like if I taught quantum physics with only one year of high school science education. No way.

I agreed with Harry when I read the books as a kid that Merope should have saved herself for her son to save him from being raised in an orphanage. As an adult, I think her suicide was an attempt to break the cycle of abuse. That she had a moment of clarity where she realized that her kid would be better off without her and she genuinely thought she did what she thought was best for him. As we all know though, sadly it did not work out that way.

Edited by dmcreif on Feb 25th 2021 at 11:58:23 AM

Yeah, considering what happened to the guy, I can't blame him for running away. That's basically demanding someone support their rapist because she has a baby.