456
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
456 points (86.1% liked)
News
23659 readers
3834 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Do the books glorify that, though? I seem to remember that only the blatantly evil characters thought like that.
Granted, the last 3 Harry Potter books I read were all Methods of Rationality, so perhaps my understanding of canon is too good.
I admit it's been a long time and I only read the first book, but I seem to remember everyone used the term "muggles."
Like @mellowwheat said, the main character is a "half-blood" and the chosen one; one of the friends is "muggle-born" yet one of the most powerful magic users in recent memory; and the other friend is a "full blood" wizard who still kinda sucks.
Even the core three characters are supposed to be allegorical for "racism doesn't mean shit." I honestly don't know how JK went from writing fiction that could be interpreted as pro-trans (at least from the standpoint of the movies), into doubling down on bigotry. I guess it was Twitter after all.
I guess, but the impression I got from the book I read was that those terms weren't considered offensive enough for even the good characters to stop using them. Maybe I'm misremembering or maybe that gets addressed in a future book?
Tbh I've only watched the movies so I can't say for the books, but the movies definitely gave me that vibe. Well, any of them after the first one. And from what I remember, the main "good guys" only use the "no-no human words" a few times at the beginning of the series, whereas they're mostly used by the bad guys throughout the whole thing.
In that case, it's hard to know whether that is Rowling and I have a poor memory about this or that the movie's screenwriter made revisions on that front. I think either is a possibility at this point. I'd love someone else to chime in who is more familiar with the books.
I think thats the script writers, if memory serves right muggle is pretty inoffensive in the books partly cause the bad guys have their own term "mud blood" for those who are born to non magical parents. Honestly I think at worst its comparable to how people said "negro" in a non racist way back during and before the civil rights era here in the US. But I legit dont know if Rowling meant for those undertones, im not familiar enough with British civil rights history.
Also Rowling may have been aluding to that for all I know cause the wizarding world is pretty explicitly backwards, serisouly they cut themselves off from the rest of the world sometime in the 1800. One of the secondary protagonists dad is a magical ATF agent who tracks down enchanted mundane artifacts that re-enter the non magical world.
Muggle isn't considered offensive within the world, it's just the British term for a non-magical person. Wizard/witch for those with magic, muggle for those without (in America we call them No-Maj, which is fucking awful)
Some of the bad characters will say it in a sneering or mean-spirited way, but they often don't use it at all and go instead for subtler terms like "those lesser than us" or "the filth" and similar
The only term in the series that's considered "offensive" is mudblood, which is basically a mixed race slur (it's a wizard/witch born to one or both muggle parents), and it's very much addressed as not OK to be said and why it shouldn't be said and how much it can hurt people (from Rowlings fave character, no less!)
It's insane to me that the person who wrote that into book 2 went on to be a fucking TERF
It's "the British term" because Rowling made it up.
The main character is "half-blood" and his main sidekick is "muggle" herself, so I'd wager not so glorified. Of course, there's an undercurrent of racism there, because the bloodlines really really matter. But this is fantasy fiction so I don't how much of a sin it is. Bloodlines mattered in Tolkien too.
I'm not sure if that last sentence is against or for my argument.