Source: Reuters
It's hard to imagine that today, decades after the Harry Potter IP has taken the world by storm, we have to discuss the topic of its original author, J.K. Rowling, who has "disappeared".
This year is the 20th anniversary of the release of the Harry Potter series of movies, the American film company Warner Bros. recently announced that HBO Max will launch the 20th anniversary special program "Back to Hogwarts" early next year, including "Harry", "Ron" and "Hermione" and many other creative actors and directors will return, but there is no author Rowling.
As for why Rowling was "disappeared", the widespread speculation from the outside world is that Rowling has recently been involved in the "transgender" dispute. The incident began to ferment in 2019, when Maya Forstater, a female worker working at a think tank, was fired for posting on social media about her perceptions of "transgender people" (a person who is psychologically unable to identify with their innate biological gender and believe they belong to another gender). Rowling spoke up for her, and was also labeled by some netizens as "transphobic" or "transgender discrimination".
In June 2020, J.K. Rowling tweeted an article titled "Creating a More Equal World for Menstruating People in the Post-Coronavirus Era." Rowling said: "I'm sure there used to be a word to describe such people. This remark once again aroused strong criticism from some netizens. Rowling then posted a lengthy essay on sex and gender, explaining why she was deeply concerned about transgender activism in the West. She openly admitted that she had been subjected to domestic abuse and sexual assault, and the trauma led her to believe that when transgender people were allowed to obtain a certificate of confirmation of any gender without surgery or hormones, it also meant that people of all genders could claim to be women and enter spaces such as women's toilets, women's bathrooms, women's locker rooms, etc., which would undermine and violate the safety of more women.
In her article, you can also clearly see how online violence is actually staged. She wrote: "I have been withdrawing from social networking sites for several months after my solidarity with maya because I know it will not do me any good for my mental health. I went back to Twitter just because I wanted to share a free children's book during the coronavirus pandemic. Then, radicals who clearly thought they were good and progressive flocked to me, believing they had the right to monitor my speech and accusing me of propagating hatred... I just talked about the importance of biological sex and have been paying for it ever since. I should be 'canceled', punched and kicked and killed. Another person said that I was Voldemort, and probably thought that I would understand it by saying this. ”
Ironically, of the many actors involved in the Harry Potter films, only a few have stepped forward to defend Rowling, including Ralph Fiennes, who played the role of Voldemort:
"I still can't understand your violent remarks about Rowling, and when you encounter different points of view, you can discuss why you have to use hatred and violence to solve the problem. This will not solve any problem at all, but will only make everyone uneasy. ”
In Harry Potter, the quirky Voldemort is a taboo that cannot be mentioned among magicians, referred to by the phrase "you know who" (that person). However, in the "Muggle World" outside of the novels and movies, Rowling seems to have become another "you know who", and it is "Voldemort" who speaks for Rowling, as if it is a bitter fable.
As for what appears to be a so-called "political correctness" controversy over "transgender people", but in fact it is a complete incident of online violence, he added, "I find the level of hatred expressed by people who disagree with their views, and the violent language of others, disturbing." ”
How radical online violence can be easily translated into real-world threats of violence is once again demonstrated in Rowling. Recently, three people in strange costumes ran to Rowling's door to take photos and posted them on the Internet, and the address and house number of Rowling's home were clearly visible on the photo. I can't think of any other explanation than directing violence from online to offline.
The address in the picture has now been mosaicked
What is even more speechless is that the three people who make the show (of course, the Western media calls these people "transgender activists") are, the British comedian Holly Stars, the actor Georgia Frost and the cross-dresser Richard Energy, and the Forbes News network report in the United States also specifically mentioned that these three are not transgender people. In other words, their move has nothing to do with fighting for the interests of the group to which they belong.
Admittedly, even with such a serious threat of online violence, there are still many people who support Rowling. Rowling said that many women, like her, refuse to blindly accept the concept of replacing biological sex with "gender identity", so they are threatened with human flesh searches, violence and rape, and she has received many letters of solidarity and confiding in her experiences of similar online violence. She said she would not be intimidated by radicals' human flesh searches or afraid to speak out about women's basic gender rights.
Now search for Rowling's relevant reports, you will find that the Western media mostly report on relevant events from a non-position or pursuit of "political correctness", while in the Chinese world that is divorced from the Western public opinion environment, the views and positions discussed are completely different. Some Hong Kong media directly said in the article that Rowling was provoked by the "awakening mob", and some Taiwan media bluntly said that "Western political correctness has fallen into a cycle of overcorrection and leverage." ”
All that Rowling is experiencing now is too magical in the eyes of Ha Fan. I believe that anyone who has seriously read the harry potter books will get the encouragement of love and hope from it, and will not think that the person who wrote these words will be a radical full of prejudice and discrimination. From Harry Potter's first day at school of magic, he befriended Ron, the "child of the poor", and scoffed at Malfoy's arrogant friend invitation from a "pure-blood family"; Harry Potter freed Dobby, a house-elf considered "born a slave" in the wizarding society... In the wizarding world, there are inequalities and wars that are the same as in the real world, and Voldemort, as the ultimate villain, gives a figurative target to the direction of all struggles; in the real world, Voldemort has a shadow of human nature, penetrating the corners of the human world, and online violence incarnates as a dementor in the real world, sucking away happiness, hope and tranquility.
Looking at Rowling's Twitter homepage now, you can still see many fans who support Rowling's comments below, and Rowling's latest Tweet update is to forward a fan tweet that says: "To my fellow radicals, if you still want to peacefully demonstrate in front of Rowling's home, I will provide the specific address again, the address is as follows: King's Cross Station 9 and three-quarters of the way." (Note: If you want to get into the platform, don't forget to run and accelerate, with your head at the front, straight to the wall in the middle of the ninth and tenth platforms.) Good luck! ”
Rowling retweeted the tweet in response: "There is really laughter." ”
The author 丨 Yu Zhemin, the main writer of Shenzhen Satellite TV.