Rowling got slammed!

[trashcanman]

So at a recent slam poetry contest, one contestant decided to take on the richest woman in Britain and, in particular, her characterization of a minority character in the nearly all white world she created. Brace yourself.






Now I know I'm usually a champion against political correctness, but allow me to muddy those waters and say that this young lady raises some excellent points in a fantastically dramatic fashion. Note that she is on record as a fan and is not deriding the series as a whole, but is simply using her art to express anger at the persistence of Asian stereotypes in popular culture. I actually enjoyed this little overzealous blast on indignation. Anyone else want a piece of this?

[Ben]

Oh man. That was heavy. I don't know if I really blame Rowling, though. She's not the best writer as it is, and authors don't spend as much time developing minor characters as they do the main ones. The same thing would probably happen if I wrote about a minority character. Stereotypes sometimes slip out without us even realizing it. Even so, it's pretty bad that she didn't even give Cho a proper name and then slung her in the nerd-House for good measure. Come to think of it, isn't Slytherin made up entirely of elitist white people, primarily males? Hmmmmm...

Funnily enough, I remember reading Harry Potter as a kid, and in my 2nd grade mind Hermione was black. I was probably doing some stereotyping myself (odd name I've never seen before, must not be a white girl), but I suppose the opposite of that is I clearly didn't find any issue with a black female being smart as fuck.

[trashcanman]

The rant was pretty over-the-top (being upset that the Asian was in the smart house and the "no speaky engrish" bit), but that's kind of the nature of the format. Hermione should have been in Ravenclaw as well, but was railroaded to Griffindor to serve story rather than having the story serve the character, which is a sign of poor writing. Anyways, that ending was fucking killer, although it kind of implies that the reason she was sad her boyfriend left her was because she was conditioned that way which -while a powerful performance- is pretty much bullshit. But artistically it worked so I'll let it slide. Normally, I'd suggest that she focus on "real" racism, rather than the relatively harmless subconscious racism she's criticizing in her piece, but seeing that it was a poetry slam about a popular series of novels and films and not, oh say, a 20 minute pretentious youtube rant from some entitled womyn posing as an activist about bad writing in 30 year old video games she collected 6 figures in donations for, I'm willing to appreciate the brevity and passion of the performance in this case.

[The Curmudgeon]

Yes, I'll have lots of this, please. It got a little clouded at the end (boyfriend? What?) but her comments about the Harry Potter books were fantastic. I'm not a huge fan so I may be wrong, but Cho Chang was Potter's girlfriend at one time, right? That doesn't sound like she should be a minor character at all. I'm not saying we should have some heavy, brooding teen romance novel, but we should give a shit about her and why they were together/why the broke up. I can't think of a single individual thing about her. Now that IS bad writing, and does seem to be "oh, I'll put an ethnic in there and make her date the white kid. I'm SO diverse."

And that "Dumbeldore was gay" thing was complete horse shit. It's like Stephen King writing a blog about how, oh yeah, Jack Torrance from the Shining was totally into animal porn. Like, so obvious. I made no reference or hint to it in any sentence in the books, but it was totally there the whole time. Fuck off, JK.

[trashcanman]

At the end, she talks up her relationship with a whiteboy who loved her and her ethnicity and then ditched her, likening it to Potter's romance with Chang. This ties into the "Asian women as fetish objects" stereotype since white men and Asian women seem to go together like chocolate chips and cookies, but men seem to always hold the power in the relationship. Then when he left her, she cried -like Chang- over him and likened it to "just following the script" of the long line of Asian females in fiction being there to look pretty, but seldom being substantial enough characters to warrant a happy ending, thus personalizing the whole thing and explaining some of her anger.

I kind of want to give this girl a hug. Some of that anger is likely displaced, but poetry is nothing if not self-expression and she sure as hell carried that off. She posted another video addressing some of the criticisms she's received for her performance (apparently, Cho can also be a first name) and I thought she handled it in an exceptionally intelligent and positive way. That's a rare thing on the internet.