The line between Media/Entertainment and Politics becomes blurring whenever literary works are read and come alive. This is not a surprising fact considering how literature is meant not only for entertainment but targets the reactions of readers and audience toward specific issues in life, which usually the author wants to address in the period when the literary piece was created. This is how Entertainment, Media, and Politics collide.
This collision of powerful industries in the society is revealing in the work of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. While the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, targets in its entirety the fascination and wonder of children about magic, the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, starts to introduce interesting and relevant political issues.
Today’s digital era pushed the Entertainment and Media industry towards its boundaries and limitations, especially when it comes to the platforms currently used. It has expanded from books, television, and movies to video games, Netflix and social media video posts, giving birth to multi-channel experiences.
Based on research, people today use digital devices including computers and phones when getting access to content and video clips. In fact, people even use these devices all at the same time to share what they think about through their social media accounts. From this fact, there has become a greater reach for content. The same approach was made in the Harry Potter Universe, which expanded from books to movies/theaters, and finally to interactive online gaming and versatile experience platform through the existence of Pottermore.
Harry Potter has become a continuous experience for people despite having been published and introduced to the society for over two decades now. The political issues, specifically discrimination, presented in the books were easily shared to the society through different avenues. The entertainment and media industry has become influential in allowing people access to the content of the Harry Potter Universe.
Before going in to how Discrimination is discussed in the Harry Potter universe, learning about the basic definitions of this political issue is incredibly important for this literary analysis and evaluation. There are many different approaches on this topic that can be considered in order to understand the subject in a better sense.
Reilly, Kaufman, and Bodino (2003) offer a simple definition that is rooted through Biology. Racism and discrimination is defined to be a prejudice that is assumed and judged based on a person’s biology, physical appearance, and ancestry. There are lots of debates whether hatred is a necessary element in order to define one’s action as racists or not, which are still ongoing until now.
If Reilly, Kaufman, and Bodino approach discrimination in a biological-based definition, Lentin (2008) covers the political side of this issue. Discrimination is an issue that comes from people’s extreme determination to be nationalistic. Discrimination is considered to be political in nature and is surrounded by several other issues, including societal diversity, war on terror, multiculturalism, immigration and Islamophobia. It is also considered dynamic and has the ability to adapt generation to generation of politics.
Discrimination comes in different forms. From actions between individuals, individual to an institution, an institution towards an individual, and finally between institutions. It can be delivered both directly and indirectly, some of the more direct forms are degrading treatment, withholding freedoms, name-calling, and physical assault Buckley, A.M. (2011). All of these direct forms of Discrimination can be found in Harry Potter.
From biological, political, and even religious approaches to discrimination, one thing is clear, and that is the actions showcasing discrimination are demeaning for the individuals who are being targeted.
Harry Potter introduces discrimination in its second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. This issue has been constant from there towards the seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In order to discuss discrimination in the series, it is necessary to have background knowledge on the Harry Potter universe.
In the Harry Potter universe, magical people (witches and wizards) exist together with non-magical people called “muggles”. While magical people live in the shadows without the knowledge of the muggles, some wizards and witches consider muggles as people beneath themselves, which is pretty ironic since they are the ones hiding from muggles in the first place. This is the reason why Lord Voldemort (Tom Marvolo Riddle), the antagonist in the entire series, together with his deatheaters, wanted to expose the magical world, enslave muggles, and kill those who do not have pure magical blood or what in the universe is known as “pureblood”. This is also one of the things that is ironic about Harry Potter since Voldemort is not even a pureblood but a half-blood with a father who is a muggle.
The Harry Potter series first introduced this idea in the second book, where Hermione Granger, a muggleborn (someone who does not have magical parents but somehow got magical powers), was called “filthy little mudblood” by Harry Potter’s rival Draco Malfoy. This got a negative reaction from Potter and Granger’s best friend, Ronald Weasley, who tried to get back at Malfoy for what he said about Granger.
The definition of a mudblood is discussed in the seventh chapter of the second book, where Weasley explained why he reacted violently towards the “name-calling”. Weasley tells Granger and Potter that “mudblood” is the most insulting name for someone muggleborn. It means dirty blood, since these people don’t have magical parents (Rowling, 2000).
Weasley explains that there are families like the Malfoy family who believe they are better than everyone simply because they are what’s known to be “pureblood” and has been in a long line of pure magical blood families, who are known to be the Sacred Twenty-eight. The sacred twenty-eight are 28 families who are considered truly pureblood, with a lot of then wanting to preserve the “purity” of their magical blood. These families include Abbott, Avery, Black, Bulstrode, Burke, Carrow, Crouch, Fawley, Flint, Gaunt, Greengrass, Lestrange, Longbottom, Macmillan, Malfoy, Nott, Olivander, Parkinson, Prewett, Rosier, Rowle, Sewlyn, Shacklebolt, Shafiq, Slughorn, Travers, Weasley, and Yaxley (Rowling in Pottermore).
This scene set up the entire struggle of Harry and his friends for why they had to battle with Voldemort and his own buddies. Of course, this is besides the fact that Voldemort wanted Harry killed since he was prophesized to be the one to kill Voldemort before Voldemort kills him. But more than just the pureblood, half-blood, and muggleborn, there is also the matter about other magical creatures who Voldermort and his buddies believe to be beneath them, including elves, werewolves, giants, and centaurs.
The entire battle that develops from the introduction of this discrimination belief in the second book developed to a full-blown war between the Deatheathers (Voldemort’s messengers) and the Order of the Phoenix (Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter’s soldiers). The division between these two groups came from their beliefs on the importance of blood in how they should be treated, as well as their violent approach to those who are not on the bandwagon with them.
According to Ray (2007), the racial parallels and themes in the Harry Potter books can be compared to several real-life struggles in discrimination. Some of those include, People’s Front of Judea, Muslims in UK, US Civil Rights Movement, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Basque Separatists, Palestinians in Gaza, and the Indian Independence Fighters. This discrimination issue is not only shown in the Harry Potter books but also in other literary pieces like the Shakespeare plays.
In the Chamber of Secrets, Dobby the Elf was introduced. Dobby is a house elf who serves under the Malfoy family. Since he knows what’s happening in the family, as well as their plans, he forces himself to do the right thing and warn Potter about the dangers of going back to school. Dobby is a mistreated elf who wants to be liberated from his duties under the Malfoy family. This is resolved as the end of the second book after Potter sneakily forces an oblivious Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s father, to release Dobby from that servitude.
This is a great parallel to the Slavery in the United States though this can only be applicable to Dobby. Nejad (2012) argues that the magical racial categorizations in Harry Potter, specifically with how wizards treat house elves, are similar to how the slaves are treated by the Southerner in the pre-American Civil War period.
In the series, Dobby is the only elf who sees servitude as something horrible. Most of the elves in the Harry Potter universe are proud to be in servitude under magical families. In the books, Hermione Granger started SPEW (Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare), most elves ran away and not appreciating the help of being freed.
The case of the elves in Harry Potter is incredibly unfortunate. Elves even must have the willingness to punish themselves whenever they do something against their masters’ will. It’s a horrible idea to think about the slaves before the American Civil War being treated similarly as the house elves in Harry Potter.
The second wizarding war in Harry Potter fully came into conclusion in the seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In the seventh book, there is frenzy of violence and killings that led to the death of several of the readers’ favorite characters, including Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, and Dobby the Elf. The violence was very evident when Voldemort massacred everyone in the Gringotts Wizarding Bank when he found out that something very precious to him was stolen by Potter and his friends.
The same way that discrimination is discussed in the Harry Potter series, some also believe that the series in itself is racist by nature. Douthat (2017) believes that the fact that muggles should be rendered ignorant of the magical world and needs to be away from the community, which even the good guys in the story believe, is something that is still a bit racist. The fact that muggles can’t be taught magic and being a muggleborn seems to be almost a curse with Rowling’s stand on discrimination.
Since the majority of Millenials grew up with the Harry Potter series, it is not surprising that a lot of people would overlook this idea. One of the proofs that Harry Potter has indeed become a phenomenon that the society involves itself in is the emergence of the “Black Hermione in Theatre's”. With the introduction of the 8th installment of the Harry Potter series in the theaters, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a Black Hermione was casted in the form of Noma Dumezweni. This turned the Potterverse upside down.
The entire product was able to sell record-breaking 175,000 just in one single day (Ratcliffe, 2016). The reactions of fans after that seemed to be very mixed. Rowling though was solid in her stand that Dumezweni was the perfect artist for the job. In fact, Robinson (2016) reported that J.K. Rowling declared being prepared to handle idiots, especially with her experience of the social media. She even claimed to encounter a lot of racists telling her Hermione should not be black. Despite a lot of negative reactions though, Rowling believed she made the right choice, especially with how successful the product turned out to be.
Besides the racial issue on the black Hermione, another proof of Harry Potter’s influence and message reception is the existence of the researches about the possible effects of the series to its readers and audience. In reality, almost the entirety of the millennial generation grew up with the ideologies they learned in the series.
According to a Journal of Applied Social Psychology study, young people who have involved themselves and have created attachment to the Harry Potter universe were less likely to be prejudiced against minority groups. Based on this study, the themes presented in Rowling’s series, including courage and kindness, rubbed off on the readers and audience. The study includes primary school, high school, and university students. The primary school students have better reaction towards immigrants, high school students are found out to be more accepting towards the LGBTQI, and finally the university students had improved attitudes towards refugees (Hampson, 2017). This study alone is more than a proof that the issues tackled by the Harry Potter series and it is even a powerful influence on the readers and audience.
Harry Potter offers its readers and audience the entertainment that a normal book or movie provides the society. And with the wonder of magic integrated in the very story of the entire series, it is not surprising how it caught the attention of its audience and readers, unblinkingly. In fact, it has continued to do so until at the presence for more than twenty years now.
From books, movies, theatres, and interactive experiences, Potterverse has become incredibly influential in people’s lives, specifically the millennial generation. But more than just the pleasure they got from the story itself, the themes that Harry Potter series provides people have also become an influence to them. And one of those themes is racism. Discrimination in the Harry Potter universe is palpable in the part of half-bloods and mudbloods, and the mistreated magical creatures. The entire war (Second Wizarding War), besides because of power, was started due to differences in beliefs on who’s worthy to be taught of and have magic. One side on the war believes that half-bloods and muggleborns have the right to wield the magic they were born with (Order of the Phoenix) while the other side believes that all of those who are not of pureblood should be eliminated or put into place through slavery. And this is just like any other racist case that the world has suffered and has been suffering since the definition of what racism is has been established.