Here’s all the info about Ilvermorny.
So what should she have done? If she hadn’t mentioned Native Americans at all, people would’ve bitched. She alludes to them, people still bitch. Was lumping everyone together a bad idea? Perhaps. But quit looking for malice where there is none.
Tumblr is probably of the least credible sites on the internet for social issues and culture.
Exactly – that has got to be one of these stupidest arguments out there. This isn’t a “Native Americans” are magical people. It’s about the whole fucking wizard world – duh. Wizards in America would’ve been just like wizards in Europe. Jesus fucking Christ. It would be absurd to think that wizards don’t exist in America. I’m guessing these people haven’t read the books.
(And if I never hear the term “cultural appropriate” ever again, it’ll be too soon.)
I also wish never to hear cultural appropriation again.
Get annoyed whenever an Indian superhero or guest star (or regular…looking at you Chakotay) are SO INDIAN IT HURTS. Very spiritual. Have magical dreamcatchers etc…
Someone above hit on it. I don’t really personally get my undies in a wad over mascots and stuff…but I reserve the right to snark on it (When will we see the Harlem Blacks with their fans in blackface doing some Zulu dance?) and If someone is offended, I’d like to let them be heard and not belittled and marginalized.
Also see a lot of Potter fans online shaking their heads over the very idea of ONE wizarding school for the entirety of North America, for many and myriad reasons - sometimes as a comment on how much research she must’ve done at all beforehand, sometimes as a standalone.
That’s kind of a blood-boiler for anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of American history, I’d think. The what of America in 1693?!
Now this objection I don’t understand. It wasn’t until about the Civil War that the US population equaled that of Britain, and only about WWII did it become twice as big (with Canada less than one-tenth as large as the US). Magical education in North America up through the 1920s, which AFAIK is as far as Rowling takes the specifics of her “history”, should have been easily manageable in a school less than twice the size of Hogwarts (which has what, something like 20 professors and 1000 students?). Am I missing something?
I was going for the relevant treaties and such (which came about after the War)… and should have included an “and as a native american as well” but by the time I thought of it the edit window was gone.
But I will still read or watch this bit and shrug because I guess it’s not our decade or maybe century to throw off mascot /magical Indians/historical figure hood.
I’ll shrug just because I like fantasy/sci-fi stuff.
So… is there another article? Just read the Pottermore article and there is literally one sentence and it isn’t the one everyone is quoting. It’s just a bit in the middle that describes a period when the school was still small and only know by local Indian tribes and colonial villages. Surely people are getting their panties in a bunch over something much more offensive…
I’m not aware that anybody’s trying to accuse Rowling of malice. AFAICT nobody thinks that she deliberately tried to slight or disparage or stereotype Native Americans. The criticisms seem to be just that she fell into stereotypes and misrepresentations out of ignorance.
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Exactly – that has got to be one of these stupidest arguments out there. This isn’t a “Native Americans” are magical people. It’s about the whole fucking wizard world – duh. Wizards in America would’ve been just like wizards in Europe.
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Well, no, according to Rowling, they weren’t. That’s the sort of thing I think some people are complaining about, when she says stuff like:
That’s less about the global unity of the wizarding world and more about the sort of stereotype that was common in earlier descriptions of Indians by whites, such as this 1912 passage:
Now, it’s one thing for an urban white European-American in 1912 to marvel at the Native Americans’ “harmony with nature” and to be impressed by their knowing more than Europeans did about American wildlife. But it’s another thing for a white European a full century later to fall back on the same sort of mythologizing tropes about Native “medicine men” who were especially skilled in “animal and plant” magic. That does come across as somewhat lazy stereotyping.
Like I said, I don’t think anyone is fiercely denouncing Rowling or accusing her of deliberate bigotry or what-not. But as BigT says, it’s kind of exasperating that when a minority group notices something about a fictional portrayal of their group that might be considered in some way stereotyping or offensive—and let’s face it, members of that group are naturally going to be more aware of such stereotypes than the rest of us are—the typical response from many members of the majority is not “Huh. I didn’t realize that. Can you explain a little more about why you find that offensive?”, but rather “Oh JFC would you whiny pussies just shut the fuck up for once?! Political correctness run mad!”, which isn’t really conducive to dialogue.
Well, first of all, to clear the air, I’m seeing contradictory info on whether Rowling made clear that this piece of writing was about one of many schools or not.
Secondly, if I’m understanding the objections right, many are scoffing at the idea that such a school would’ve somehow singlehandedly overcome regional differences, especially after the Civil War, that other cultures (native and neighboring) would necessarily quietly assimilate into a school and system made by a European man, and that apparently, there’s an implication that this is the only wizarding school in NORTH AMERICA, not the United States.
Yes, I get that bit, but as I already noted, the total North American population was still quite small up to the mid-19th century. It was maybe 10-15 million in 1800 and around 40 million by 1850, when it began to surpass the population of Great Britain. By 1900 it had reached 100 million while the British population was only about 50 million. That’s still only about a 2-to-1 ratio.
So I maintain that the logistics of magical education in North America up to the early 20th century should have been easily manageable in a single school that was—okay, maybe not less than twice, but not much more than twice the size of Hogwarts. Certainly no baseball stadiums would have been required just to hold the student population.
And as for the unlikelihood of a single school “overcoming regional differences”, you have to remember that Hogwarts itself was supposedly founded around 990 CE, during and after which period there were also some pretty fucking major regional differences within the British Isles. The Welsh still spoke Welsh then, for pity’s sake. Norman Conquest, anybody? Wars of the Roses, English Civil War, Irish independence?
Yet Hogwarts supposedly went on plugging merrily away at magical education through all that conflict and division. I don’t see any reason at all why, within the logic of the Potterverse, we shouldn’t readily accept that Ilvermorny could have done the same.
Depending on how urban he was, he might have shat bricks at the knowledge of European farmers about European wildlife… (memories of my Big City Cousins being terrified by the sight of a crab, to which reaction from the Little Town Folk was “oh, those are edible… Hey, we could get a bunch and make a cookout!”)
Dunnow, personally I can easily picture a school in Puebla or Los Ángeles.
I just read all the bits and enjoyed them. Sure, her writing can be clunky, particularly for historical narrative, but on the other hand she’s clever and engaging. I already know for sure I’d like more backstory on The Great Sasquatch Rebellion of 1896.
I think DIgitalC put it very well. Something can be wrong in fiction if it does not further the dramatic purpose of the work.
IIUC this is at least partly tongue-in-cheek, but it sort of illustrates what I am saying. I would say that Twilight did get vampires right, in at least one important way.
The dramatic purpose of the Twilight series is tweeny vampire porn. Presenting vampires as mysterious romantic figures who sparkle and drink puma blood (or whatever the hell it was - I only read the first installment, and only because my daughter made me) was to further that dramatic purpose. And ISTM that it did work - the idea is to appeal to the approach/avoidance conflict towards sexuality of many early pubescent girls, and it sure sold like hotcakes. Was it great art? No. Did it achieve its purpose? I would say Yes.
And I think the “United States of America in 1693” is a good example of a fictional device that doesn’t work dramatically. Rowling is not proposing a parallel universe where the USA has existed for a thousand years. Therefore presenting a USA in 1693 violates the dramatic purpose, because it is a fictional detail that does not further the dramatic purpose of the work. She can “re-purpose” vampires or werewolves or skin-walkers or witches, because she is creating a dramatic universe where werewolves are as they are presented in that universe - not in bad horror films of the 40s, in the Potter universe.
I grant you that there is a lot of fan-wanking, where people try to explain everything as if it were intentional or successful. There’s lots of that - not only with Harry Potter, but Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek and any other popular series. But fan-wanking isn’t always wrong. It is just based on different assumptions - namely that the dramatic purpose of a work isn’t to present real life. The rules of quidditch make no sense. But the dramatic purpose of quidditch in the HP books isn’t to present a realistic sport - it is to give Harry and the other characters dramatic situations in which their actions and reactions show them to be what they are. Likewise with this North American school of magic. It isn’t to show how it would really work to have a North American school of magic - there is no such thing as magic, so such a school wouldn’t work even if it were scrupulously careful to present Native American magic exactly as one or another of the Native American traditions said they were. But if Rowling is scrupulously careful to present her depiction of a North American school of magic in such a way as to create an effective narrative, then it will work.
It depends on how far you can stretch the “willing suspension of disbelief”. I am a big fan - I am able to stretch it pretty far. YMMV.
It seems pretty obvious that Rowling wanted to be right about some of the basics of her setting, in the same way that all writers of fiction intend to be accurate about setting, even writers of fantasy/sci-fi.
Rowling does not write alternate histories, for example. The Potter “universe” exists concurrently with the universe you and I are living in right now. So when I read something like:
It is an obvious, blazing, embarrassing error. One that is clearly against intent of having the Potterverse exist in the real world.
The evidence is clear that many of these errors go against her intent.
At this point, I’m guessing JK essentially phoned this in. She had the actual background of the school (founded by a previously unknown Slytherin descendant, the whole battle inside the family) fairly well plotted out, but when it came time to tie it into real world details, she did a bit of googling to get actual locations and dates (though she got that wrong too) fleshed it out with what she remembered about Native American history from her grade school days, and plopped it on the website. Since this is purely unnecessary backstory for the movie, she put as little effort as possible into it. There’s nothing wrong with that, since she’s giving it away for free, but her cavalier attitude has now bit her in the ass.
ETA: The full line about the Magical Congress is “Perhaps the most significant effect of Salem was the creation of the Magical Congress of the United States of America in 1693, pre-dating the No-Maj version by around a century.” I don’t know if she added the final clause later, but she is at least acknowledging that the actual USA didn’t exist for another 100 years. It’s still a remarkably stupid thing, since the very concept of the USA was 90+ years away, but at least she doesn’t actually think the USA existed in the 1600s.
