By: Amanda Valentine | Staff Writer
In any book to film adaptation, some details are altered for convenience, others simply left out due to time constraint. With such a large volume of material to work with as the Harry Potter series offers, it’s no surprise that some parts translated differently to the screen. For instance, film Dumbledore was definitely not calm when asking Harry if he had put his name in the Goblet of Fire.
Additionally, one of Snape’s most iconic lines, delivered between his last breaths, affirmed to Harry that he had his mother’s eyes. Though their matching green eyes are perfectly feasible in the books, Daniel Radcliffe’s eyes could not have been more different from those of the actress who played his mother.
These inconsistencies upset fans, but not so much that they couldn’t eventually joke about them. And the resulting jokes never dented the integrity of the books, the author, or the fandom supporting them.
However, J.K. Rowling’s more recent interpretations of her works have given her a new reputation that the other controversies were not capable of creating.
In a new interview about the release of The Crimes of Grindelwald, Rowling stated that the younger versions of the characters Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald had once had ‘intense sexual relations.’ This turned many heads her way, but with feelings much different than before. Twitter users took to their feeds to flood both her and her comment with ridicule left and right.
This isn’t the first time that Rowling has added something new to her books outside of the books themselves, but the backlash is strong this time around for two possible reasons, both complex and controversial.
The first is that this comment is one of many “additions” that Rowling had attempted to make to the series post-publication. For fans who believe that what was originally published is the only credible material, the nature of Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s love relationship may have been the tipping point for an already frustrated fanbase.
One of the largest upsets to the fandom was the debate that emerged over Hermione’s skin color. Readers began to take note that the literary descriptions of Hermione only covered her buck teeth and her bushy hair. Harry once noted that she looked ‘very brown’ on a particular day, but that comment has mixed interpretations. The general takeaway is that Hermione’s skin color is quite ambiguous based on the text alone. When a Twitter user asked Rowling if Hermione could be black, the author responded with enthusiastic support for the idea, claiming that she’d never specified the beloved character’s ethnicity.
The idea was so well-supported that eventually, a black actress, Noma Dumezweni, was cast as Hermione in The Cursed Child a few months following. This stirred up debate, because much of the fan base was attached to the fair skin version of Hermione that Emma Watson had portrayed (Although the real outrage should have been over the blonde actor who was cast as the iconically ginger Ron Weasley; that’s a bigger crime than any of Grindelwald’s).
Maybe, however, this outrage was not solely because of the association of Hermione with Emma Watson. There is a much larger issue at play.
Readers often assume that characters, if not stated otherwise, fit the profile of the majority. If not clarified, readers often assume a character is white, or cisgender, or heterosexual. There is a default conditioned in to the way society consumes works- and this played in to the upset over both Hermione’s ethnicity and Dumbledore’s homosexuality. While maybe these traits fit into the canon, they were unexpected, and never explicitly represented in the original works.
“Fans get very committed to plotlines, and get very committed to a certain cohesiveness and narrative,” said Dr. Barbara LoMonaco, Vice President for Student Affairs and a professor of a fan culture course at Salve. “We want it to be the canon. That’s the part that is very troubling: it’s not fixed.”
The upset is clearly represented in the state of the fandom right now. Dr. LoMonaco suggests that fans like to have a fixed point from which they have the power to build and imagine, from cosplay to fanfiction. The audience likes to feel like they own the creation and the characters after the story has been given to them.
“We allow the relationship one direction, from fans to influence the art. But when the maker of the art then wants to have this dynamic relationship with the art that they made, we don’t like it.” said Dr. LoMonaco.
She also suggests that this upset is possibly due to a change in the times. In today’s artistic culture, not much is fixed. Texts are no longer just written books with few handwritten physical copies, they are tweets that can be easily put up or taken down. She argues that texts have now become a “dynamic living, breathing thing” and, maybe, J.K. Rowling should be allowed to go back and make changes.
When Rowling was writing the books, issues of representation were just not on her radar. Since their publication, a push for representation in the media has become a much more widespread movement. With the positive effect it has had for her readers to be able to see characters that are like them in such a beloved series, maybe the changes should be accepted.
However, her methods of adjusting the series are the upsetting part. According to Dr. LoMonaco, “Her delivery seems to not be very intentional. That’s disappointing, because it seems that she’s just trying to fit in without really doing the work of creating a compelling narrative that supports the changes. We don’t just want ad diversity and stir, we want it to be part of the original formula.”
What fans want is not just flippant additions of diversity to the series; they want to see it reflected in the works. Assuming that Hermione’s life would not have changed at all because of her skin color is what makes the theory slightly less believable. Dr. LoMonaco posed the question, “What does it mean to add color, if there’s not positionality attached to that color? ‘As a result of being black, my life is different in these ways.’ [If] we don’t see it in any way, then again it’s just window-dressing.” If Hermione’s race has no impact on her story, then what race means in the wizarding world is entirely redefined. This has both negative and positive sides, but when representation is not thoughtfully integrated, then it does not do much to honor the people that are underrepresented.
In the same way that fans don’t just want claims about representation, they don’t want random claims about the nature of Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s relationship. They want to have either read it and believed it in the books, or seen it for real on screen. This is not to say that the sexual nature of their relationship should be demonstrated on screen, but Rowling has not represented his sexuality in the films in any tangible way, only announcing it behind the scenes. Fans would rather see representation in action, before she continues adding inconsequential details like this one. They don’t want just talk, they want action.
The second reason that this comment stirred up so many people is that it does not do much to serve the plot in a new way. Her other additions- that of Dumbledore being gay and Hermione being black- controversial as they were, they were well-intentioned, with the goal of promoting diversity. Adding that there was a sexual dimension to the relationship of Dumbledore and Grindelwald doesn’t further the series, it just gives Rowling some more publicity.
It’s a crude addition, especially for a series that was originally categorized as children’s literature. J.K. Rowling herself once warned the writers of fanfictions online, saying that if young children were to stumble upon an x-rated Harry Potter story, “that would be a problem” (Waters 2004). Her new revelations seem to go against that exact argument.
No one benefits from this one, which is why it has made her such a fool in the eyes of the internet. It makes her other additions look like they might have been equally as improvised, completely undermining the positive effects of her past changes and making it seem as though she never intended to be an activist at all. Already she faced heat for making claims about Hermione’s ethnicity, and Dumbledore’s sexuality, but hardly made strides to make that an explicit reality in the literature or the films.
She has made herself out to be an activist, while also keeping the films and books themselves uncontroversial, guarding herself from the loss of fans that would rebel at the first mention of homosexuality (or other social issues).
So were her intentions for post-publication changes really rooted in activism and intentions to better her series, or were they just meant to keep the fandom trending as this last change has?
While she may be doing it, she’s not quite doing it right.
