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The Book Thread Book • Page 69

Discussion in 'Entertainment Forum' started by Melody Bot, Mar 13, 2015.

  1. The Lucky Moose

    I'm Emotional, I Hug the Block Prestigious

    I don’t think the parallels between the Nazis - as in the actual WW2 Nazis - and the Deatheaters are very subtle so there’s that. The book invented and then condemned its own version of racism. I assume that is what led to the alleged results of those studies.
     
  2. The Lucky Moose

    I'm Emotional, I Hug the Block Prestigious

    Btw I agree that even the non-Deatheater part of that world is a scary autocratic police state lol
     
    Wharf Rat likes this.
  3. Letterbomb31

    Trusted Prestigious

    Her politics is neoliberalism; the antithesis of positive change.

    Also, she is grotesquely rich, just like every other millionaire- the least she can do is donate to charity. However, it's important to remember that charity is ultimately just a band aid. Unless you challenge the system itself (which she absolutely does not), inequality, poverty, disease, etc will remain entrenched.
     
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  4. Wharf Rat

    I know a little something you won't ever know Prestigious

    I mean, okay. Condemning the Third Reich is good, sure. But also, lots of racists, eg Churchill, didn't like the Nazis? It's not exactly a bold stance. And I mean, inventing a kind of racism for a fantasy world as an analogy usually works, but the whole message is reduced by the fact that, outside of the wizarding world, the regular world exists more or less as it does in real life, with all of the same wars and oppressions, which the wizards refuse to engage with at all on principle. And that principle is supposed to be noble.

    I mean, can't wizards literally defy the laws of physics and create something from nothing? Couldn't they turn huge deserts into fertile, arable soil? They could create a post-scarcity world with barely any effort but don't.

    The more I think about it, this analogy works pretty well. The wizarding world is the first world, attempting to solve its institutional racism against half-bloods and muggle borns who are analogous to people of color in the first world with ancestry from the global south. Meanwhile, muggles/people in the global south suffer constantly, and wizards/people in the first world live in relative luxury without much concern at all for their suffering counterparts. And it's Harry's job to make sure everything stays that way.
     
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  5. GBlades

    Trusted

    Are we seriously stating that Harry Potter should not have fought Voldemort and instead have turned the Sahara into a giant vegetable patch?

    This is a BOOK, I think that this has been taken further than it has to.
     
  6. Wharf Rat

    I know a little something you won't ever know Prestigious

    Yeah it's a book that's trying to advance a social message, my point is that this social message is muddled and doesn't make much sense. I don't know what you're trying to say by saying "this is a BOOK." It's a work of art and thus is political and must be examined in the context of the world in which it was created. Extremely not here for acting like books are apolitical or have nothing to say about the world and how the author views it. That's, like, the whole point of literature and art.
     
  7. Garrett Aug 18, 2018
    (Last edited: Aug 18, 2018)
    Garrett

    i tore a hole in the fabric of time Moderator

    As one of the few authors in the world adequately compensated for creating literature, get out of here with that nonsense of being too rich. Especially in the current publishing set up/public view of paying for art. We’ll never truly know how many careers were given a chance because of additional funds raised off her sales. Let alone jumpstarting the YA boom that remains the only fiction subset of publishing that remains profitable (outside of romance). The average author makes pennies for writing their books at the end of the day. Without the “grotesquely rich” outliers, the medium would be dead for 96% of books and authors. With those sorts of numbers, we’d lose all sense of diversity in publishing. We’d lose almost all sense of different voice and background. Her wealth is, ironically, a fluke of a terrible system that monetizes art and doesn’t pay artists unless that deliver sales that few ever see.

    She’s absolutely challenging the orphanage system in the world and goes a long way to educate many on the horrors of the current system. If you can’t see the good in that (and the way Lumos works to address the poverty that leads to the current orphanage system), I don’t know what to tell you.
     
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  8. Wharf Rat

    I know a little something you won't ever know Prestigious

    Yeah, charity is like the bare minimum for hyperrich people. Things that go beyond the bare minimum would be, like, supporting worthwhile political causes, not having the only asian character in your book be named some racist nonsense, not having your banker characters be der sturmer cartoons made in CGI, not being transphobic, etc.
     
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  9. GBlades

    Trusted

    Not all art has to be political. I respect your views on the art itself however I feel that the book should be separated from the author. Rowling is writing a book about magic that has changed young persons views on life and uplifted them but that's not the take here.

    I'm not going to get into an argument about it because I feel that art is subjective and everyone is write in their own way. I also have a few books to read myself.
     
    The Lucky Moose likes this.
  10. Wharf Rat

    I know a little something you won't ever know Prestigious

    Are you out of your fucking mind? She's made over a billion dollars. She has too much money, end of. If you want to argue that her sales allowed publishing companies to take more risks or whatever - fine, but that has nothing to do with her personal wealth. She doesn't need enough money to feed and house thousands of people for their entire lives. She just doesn't
     
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  11. Garrett

    i tore a hole in the fabric of time Moderator

    Nah. Money doesn’t make you a villain. What a childish view of the world. Only three artists in the world are/have been billionaires (which, she’s not one anymore because of charitable giving but whatever, apparently that doesn’t mean much to you do some reason even though you want billionaires to give money away). Excuse me for not buying into a worldview where artists shouldn’t be compensated equally to their cultural relevance and impact and sales. We already live in a world where people think art should be free because they don’t understand the cost/time of creation. Let an artist adequately compensated be—especially when they continuously give money away and establish charities and keep raising awareness for issues.
     
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  12. Wharf Rat

    I know a little something you won't ever know Prestigious

    I don't agree at all. Art is inherently a reflection of the author and how they view the world, and how you view the world is your politics. If art does not reflect on the author at all, why would I read it? How can art have anything to say if it doesn't reflect a viewpoint? If all JK Rowling was trying to do was write an uplifting children's book about magic, that would still reflect her personal view that, for whatever reason, children need to be uplifted! If all children were constantly happy and had no problems, or if JK Rowling thought so, why would she write an uplifting children's book?

    But we all know that JK Rowling wasn't just trying to write an uplifting children's book, she was also trying to make certain other points, one of which is to promote anti-racism. My point is that anti-racist point is undermined by having an asian character named Cho Chang, and by having hook-nosed goblins run all the banks. It's also undermined by the fact that racism is a global system resulting in global poverty disproportionately effecting people of color, and that isn't addressed at all. This obviously doesn't mean Harry Potter would *have* to terraform the Sahara or whatever, but there is nothing in the work or in her personal statements that indicate she even considered her work at this scale.
     
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  13. GBlades

    Trusted

    I respect that you disagree. I agree to an extent that art is a reflection of the world but on the other hand I don't think that stand has to be political, which is what the original discussion was.

    Just going to agree to disagree on this one.
     
    The Lucky Moose likes this.
  14. WordsfromaSong

    Trusted

    I’m not trying to bash young adult books, you can like them and still enjoy more difficult books too. My point is people shouldn’t limit themselves. Reading isn’t inherently beneficial, there is absolutely a difference between spending your time reading Harry Potter and Brandon Sanderson rather than Hemingway or Faulkner or whoever. Why would it take a kids’ fantasy series to get adults to read?
     
  15. jpmalone4

    Stay Lucky Supporter

    The YA debate goes beyond books, our culture celebrates juvenile works across the board. Grown men waiting in line to see the newest super hero or Star Wars spectacle and video games. The fetishizing of anything Disney by thirty-somethings and older. We can't blame JK Rowling for that, it's a symptom of delayed adulthood.
     
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  16. GBlades

    Trusted

    I don't like their works; tried and failed, just not enjoyable for me at all. I think it's also beneficial to appreciate that people read books for entirely different reasons and although I agree more people should branch out because they will see pretty amazing, under-rated work, there is also human thinking applied.

    There is nothing wrong with waiting in line to see Infinity War, a book signing for J. K. Rowling, an art exhibition for Steven Brown. People enjoy and people hate but people judge and that's also part of the problem.

    Respect each other's world views and that not everyone gets the ideas that everyone else does and it's not a "bad" thing.
     
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  17. Garrett

    i tore a hole in the fabric of time Moderator

    Brandon Sanderson is the best living fantasy author (with a few others who could put their name in then battle). To decry his book vs Hemingway really goes into the battle of “genre” vs “literary” which is one of the most useless, harmful, and backwards arguments of old academia.
     
  18. Wharf Rat

    I know a little something you won't ever know Prestigious

    You know, maybe the idea that JK Rowling deserves her billion dollars would sit better with me if people weren't starving to death or dying of preventable diseases or living in filth because of their poverty. How about this, we compensate everyone for their work to the point that they can live comfortably and never have to worry about buying food, water, or housing, and then with what's left over we can compensate people who deserve it above and beyond that?

    Too bad JK Rowling explicitly and actively opposes a political program that would move us towards accomplishing something like that. Which is why I refuse to let her be - she makes herself a political figure, she opens herself up to political criticism.

    Put it this way: does JK Rowling deserve her billion more than people in the UK deserve to live in buildings built better than Grenfell Tower? If not, she shouldn't get her billion until everyone is living in a building that isn't a death trap. Rinse and repeat.
     
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  19. jpmalone4

    Stay Lucky Supporter

    I don't want to imply I'm judging any adult negatively for indulging in adolescent culture - I do it too - but I also don't want to pretend like, you know, it's not meant for children. We should try to remember that. Like... no adult should be taking a debate about Harry Potter or the last Star Wars film all that seriously.
     
    WordsfromaSong likes this.
  20. Garrett

    i tore a hole in the fabric of time Moderator

    At the end of the day, please know that this too is also what I desire. I just have a really hard time with the idea of someone not being compensated fairly for art—which is also about the systems in place around art more than anything else. This is in part because it is my dream career, and I’ve seen firsthand in fellow artists the struggle of “making it.” A friend of mine was published last month and made a whopping $500 before (not guaranteed) royalties. It equaled out to $0.005 an hour for the work she put in. So when an author IS fairly compensated, I will defend it. It’s very rare in the system at hand.
     
  21. Wharf Rat

    I know a little something you won't ever know Prestigious

    There has to be a middleground between making $500 for hundreds of hours of work and making enough money to live comfortably for 1,000 lifetimes, no? That's what I'm getting at
     
  22. Garrett

    i tore a hole in the fabric of time Moderator

    I guess my main thought is how do we settle on what the middle ground is in a specific dollar amount. How much can a person make before the “global cap” hits? In a monetary-less society with guaranteed housing/food/water/healthcare it’s easy to find that spot. Where do we find it in the current world? Do we get everyone in the world into the standard of the Nordic middle class? Or do we find the global medium, which is far below the average western lifestyle?
     
  23. Dave Diddy

    Grief is only love that’s got no place to go Supporter

    Oh boy, this thread has taken quite the turn since last night. I think I’ll recuse myself and let you fellas discuss how to solve world poverty. I’ll be back after I finish Snow Crash though.
     
  24. angrycandy

    I’m drama in these khaki towns Supporter

    took quite the turn
     
    Colby Searcy likes this.
  25. Wharf Rat

    I know a little something you won't ever know Prestigious

    Snow Crash is actually extremely relevant to that question, lol