Would people still hate J.K. Rowling if she wasn't a TERF?

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Art for arts sake? just because some tweed jacket bow tie wearing twat extols Tolkein doesnt make it automatically make it art. Tolkein was basically a culture vulture who drew upon indigenous European folklore in creating his fantasy world. It wasn't unkown at the time for fiction writers to do that type of thing (Hans Christian Anderson and the brother's Grimm were doing that with children's stories). His literature is hard work to get through, but like you say, it's not for everyone.

It’s art because it’s good. Tolkien’s work was highly influential, and it’s stood the test of time.
That’s how literature and art in general works. People draw from different sources of inspiration and create something new and meaningful. Art does not occur in a vacuum.

I don’t find his work difficult to get through. I first read Lord of the Rings when I was a young teenager. Of course, everyone finds different things difficult.

Right, and I don't dispute it's art....for many. But readability is a big advantage. That's where JK Rowling seems to have won the trophy. She has a knack for richly tapestried (even if it was plagiarised) works that are easily accessible even to young children with limited attention spans. I know so many people who started reading the "Philosophers' Stone" and could not put the book down till they finished it. I'm afraid one can't say the same for Tolkein or George Martin.

Children’s/YA books need to be highly accessible. Literature for adults tends to be a bit more difficult, but many find the challenge worth it.

This isn’t a knock on children’s literature. There are a lot of wonderful books out there that are enjoyable for people of any age. Books like:

Winnie-the-Pooh
The Hobbit
Anne of Green Gables
Alice in Wonderland
Tom Sawyer
The Phantom Tollbooth

However, not all art is intended for everyone. Not everything is appropriate for children. Some people find an intellectual challenge enjoyable. Having read the entire Harry Potter series, I must say that I didn’t find it demanding from an intellectual standpoint. That’s okay. Not everything needs to be intellectually demanding. If the series was challenging for adults, it could’ve turned away its target audience - children.

You don't have to dress up and act in a pompous or pretentious way to enjoy art. You can sit down and watch a play by Shakesperare in the same way you watch a blockbuster movie by someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger. If it fits your taste and intellectual abilities, you'll enjoy the experience. If you find the play boring or hard to understand, well go ahead and watch something else.

If people want to enjoy Shakespeare and are new to his work, it often helps to read the play first. A nice edition that contains footnotes is especially helpful. I still have my copy of Riverside Shakespeare from college. It might be my favorite book. It’s so heavy it could also function as a weapon, not that I’ve tested its efficacy in the realm of combat. Don’t worry! I was referring to self-defense only. I would never condone striking innocent people with Shakespeare or the work of any other beloved writer for that matter.

When I grew up (pre-internet) there was a lot of publications "for the masses"like poetry for the masses.
Yes HP is not that intellectual. One might argue her original audience was children. Her writing skills have been criticised and Indeed many of the situations/language are quite childish...and yet...

People have published dissertations on her books. The basic interesting thing for me is if Harry Potter books are written for children, why are they so popular with adults? It would be easy to surmise more popular > Tolkien. I have maintained there is some underlying reason which I am yet to uncover and worth exploring.

Agreed.

I actually did not have a problem with her writing style for the most part, especially considering that her work wasn’t intended for adults. She uses a lot of action words and knows how to make things suspenseful by showing, not telling. She reminds me of Roald Dahl somewhat whose work was one of her inspirations, so that makes sense. I LOVE Roald Dahl.

HP reminds me of fast food which could explain the wide appeal. Pleasure is quick and requires little work or effort on the part of the reader. I’m not knocking it. Even I crave a Big Mac now and then.

The public also adored The Da Vinci Code which I thought was horribly written. Sometimes people with less talent win American Idol as well. (Is that show still on the air?) With all that being said, we like what we like. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Does having a lack of intellectual content also mean a lack of depth? In the case of HP the mass appeal stems from something quite deep. Like McDonald's special secret sauce.

You need to learn to use the quote text function and to separate out different quotes.

It looks like I have said what cyberdad said in your previous post.


Mod. edit - this has been corrected.

Last edited by blitzkrieg on 05 Mar 2024, 5:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I’m not sure if I’d characterize HP as being particularly deep although there is probably more depth to it than I was expecting.

Some pieces of literature have been so important to my life that they changed it in some way - changed my perception of reality, my worldview, and even myself. They made me understand the human experience in a way that I couldn’t before I read it. I did not experience that with Harry Potter. I experienced it with:

Hamlet
Macbeth
The Tempest
The Winter's Tale
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Color Purple
The Hours
The Goldfinch
David Copperfield
Bleak House
Crime and Punishment
The Scarlet Letter
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Les Miserables
Notre-Dame de Paris
The Awakening
Walden
Lord of the Rings
Huckleberry Finn
Frankenstein
L’Étranger
Metamorphoses - Ovid
The Republic
Stories by Borges
Stories by Hemingway
Dialogues of Plato
Various books by Virginia Woolf
And many others which I’m sure I’ll feel guilty for neglecting later.

Obviously, this is a highly individual thing. (Maybe some adults find HP transformative.) For me, it often comes down to philosophy. When it’s housed in a fictional narrative, I seem to have an easier time absorbing it in a meaningful way. That’s not to say that there isn’t philosophy in children’s books. Le Petit Prince, for example, is wonderful, but in my experience, work and effort usually play a role in transformation.

Children’s books that I read as a child were important to my development as well, but I won’t go into that here.

Personally, I often find children's media to be more sincere and comforting. There's supposed adult media out there that's actually quite juvenile because it relies on shock value and doesn't really have much to say. Not all mind you, sometimes I find a good series.

I do grow tired of shows and books aimed at adults that have a 'and nobody grew as a person / nothing improved because everything and everyone is terrible' mentality. Sure, I can be somewhat jaded as well, but I like something a bit lighter sometimes.

Harry Potter wasn't life changing for me either.

Works by Roald Dahl definitely were. Matilda remains one of my favourites.

Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan definitely made an impact. I only started reading it as an adult because the films gave me the wrong impression.

There was something healing about a main character with a learning disability getting to be a badass. I hate that the films delayed me in reading this, because my days I could have done with something like this as a kid.

However, I will say that there's a scene in the second series that hit so close to home that I had to put the book down. I probably would have just stopped reading there completely if I'd read it when I was younger. I'm glad I read it now and kept reading though, because I learnt a great deal about myself.

When one character called out another for pushing people away, I had a moment of realisation.

That's another thread entirely though. I've been meaning to make a thread about how the spinoff tackles dealing with trauma. That entire book was so close to home yet it was comforting somehow.

Fair enough

It's quite funny but when I see threads mean't to explore books, movies, art or literature nobody posts on them. But quite clearly many WP members have a lot to say on these topics,

The 'Art, Writing & Music' and 'TV, Film and Video' sections usually aren't as popular compared to say PPR or L&D. I think that's fair to say.

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I suppose if I wanted to keep to the subject of gender, I could talk about the Magnus Chase series and genderfluidity. It's interesting because I know Riordan used to look up to Rowling and made references to Harry Potter in the original Percy Jackson series. Considering some of his characters though, I don't think they would see eye-to-eye these days.

The actor who plays Percy Jackson in the TV series caused a bit of a stir among Harry Potter fans because when he was asked 'Who would win in a fight, Harry Potter or Percy Jackson?' he replied that Percy would and that it wouldn't even be close. (In fairness though, power wise, Percy would absolutely have an unfair advantage and it'd probably be over very quickly). Riordan said Harry would probably be too busy dialoguing.

Reminds me of the rivalry the Twilight fandom and the Harry Potter fandom had at the peak of their popularity. I don't hear much about Twilight these days.