Hogwarts Legacy Gameplay Showcase: Return of the “Goblins are Jews!” Claim

November 11, 2022 by 2 Comments

Read about ‘Hogwarts Legacy,’ a role-playing computer game set in the Wizarding World of the 19th Century, at the Wikipedia page dedicated to explaining its ins and outs or just watch the video embedded in the tweet above. The game won’t be available for play until next February but it can be ordered before that time, whence the big news of the day: a ‘Gameplay Showcase’ debuts today to encourage those gamers interested in the product, a crowd estimated to number in the millions around the globe, to purchase it in advance.

As you might expect of anything involving J. K. Rowling today, the game already has its critics. Take a look at Did Hogwarts Legacy Seriously Just Make The Anti-Semitic Goblins The Villains? at the gamer.com or vice.com’s Hogwarts Legacy Imagines a Harry Potter Without JK Rowling. Each contends that, although Rowling was not involved in the evolution of the game as a creator or consultant, that her “bigotry” and “transphobia” by necessity inform it, based as it is on the Gender Critical and racial prejudices that permeate her novels. A touchstone argument for both critics is the risible chestnut that Rowling’s Goblins are caricatures of Jews, rapacious for money and privilege.

Beatrice Groves exploded this contention in March 2019 with two posts on the supposed anti-Semitism, Rowling’s Goblin Problem? and The Sword Until Recently Known as Gryffindor’s. To their credit, the creators of the game and its owners, a division of Warner Brothers-Discovery, have not redesigned the game to remove the Goblin Rebellion core of the narrative.

None of the HogwartsProfessor faculty and adjutants are ‘gamers’ so please be sure we welcome contributions from those of you who are — in the form of a Guest Post — about the Hogwarts Legacy Gamesplace Showplace to explain and critique what the big deal is. Let us know what we’re missing as well as the bugs and room for improvement in the game design and format!

 

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Ink Black Heart: Strike as Zeus to Robin’s Leda and Cupid to Mads’ Psyche

November 10, 2022 by 2 Comments

Ink Black Heart has confirmed certain ideas about the Cormoran Strike books and introduced new mysteries about Rowling’s second series. The field of Serious Striker Studies, quite simply, is in a state of flux at the moment even about ideas we think of as sureties; Rowling-Galbraith’s longest work, though published some time ago, is a long way from being fully understood on its own or in the context of the Strike canon. Before advancing what I think are two important points about Strike’s mythological roles in Ink Black Heart, allow me to explain how I see the Strike Studies status quo.

If there had been any doubts remaining about the Parallels Series Idea (PSI), that the Strike novels are being written in parallel with the Harry Potter apposite numbers, Strike 6’s many echoes with the Hogwarts Saga’s sixth entry, Half-Blood Prince, removed them. See the discussion here at HogwartsProfessor, and articles at both The Rowling Library and even MuggleNet for the conclusive evidence on this point. There is more to add on this subject, most important in my view the liquid albedo quality of Ink Black Heart‘s pronounced drinking of alcohol as in Prince, a quality The Times of London noted in their review as “a pub crawl:”

The Ink Black Heart is essentially a pub crawl — with the emphasis on the crawl — through West End watering holes. It starts at the Ritz, continues at Annabel’s (where Strike picks up a celebrity jeweller) and goes on to the Arts Club, the Tottenham on Oxford Street, Bob Bob Ricard (with its “Push for Champagne” buttons) in Upper James Street, the Flask in Hampstead, the Ship and Shovell in Craven Passage and ends in St Stephen’s Tavern opposite the Palace of Westminster.

Strike is no stranger to drinking holes, but The Times was right to note that the imbibing goes to a different level in Heart, which is mysterious outside of alchemical symbolism and parallels with the firewhiskey friendly Half-Blood Prince.

As well-established as PSI now is, it also presents a real head-scratching mystery in addition to the question of ‘Why is she doing this?‘ There are, after all, only seven Harry Potter novels and the author insists there will be at least ten Strike novels. Strike 7 seems on course to be in parallel with Deathly Hallows, the original series’ conclusion, without being a conclusion itself. It seems, even if one assumes that Rowling is lying and the next Strike novel will indeed be the last, almost impossible, short of a three or four thousand page novel, for her to wrap up the Strike-Ellacott relationship and the mystery of Leda Strike’s death in one book. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Rowling’s Messaging about Elections: Fictional Ministers and Mugwumps

November 9, 2022 by 2 Comments

It’s the day after Election Day in the United States, so it’s appropriate to make at least a nod of the head to the subject as treated in the fiction of J. K. Rowling.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but, with two exceptions, none of Rowling’s novels or screenplays turn on the subject of electoral democracy and its workings. What Rowling has written about how the Ministers of Magic are elected in her Wizarding World has been in a piece originally written for PotterMore, 2015’s ‘Ministers for Magic,’ and it shares nothing at all about canvassing for votes or the procedures for casting and counting votes. The Strike detective mysteries, too, though Lethal White turns on the murder of a Minister and the sausage-making in Parliament, has next to nothing about elections in it.

The two exceptions, Casual Vacancy and the screenplay for Secrets of Dumbledore (written by Steve Kloves we have to assume according to Rowling’s original plan), are as silent about the actual mechanics of democracy. They do, however, share one message about elections, a note sounded in all of Rowling’s work because it is her core belief, that I’ll discuss after the jump. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Casual Vacancy, Fantastic Beasts

‘Sorting Hat’ Pronounced Dead at 98; Requiescat in Pace, Leslie Phillips

November 8, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Leslie Phillips, CBE, actor, voice artist, and UK legend, died yesterday, aged 98. Though a star in over 150 movies, mostly bawdy comedies, he is best known to Americans as the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter movies, a part he voiced in the film adaptations of Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and the second Deathly Hallows.

Phillips’ participation in the Potter movies was somehow very fitting. The repertoire company of UK greats that were assembled for the eight Hogwarts blockbusters, after all, was somehow reminiscent of the troupe that made the Carry On film series, 31 movies over forty years, one of the most successful franchises in British history. Only the adaptations of Ian Fleming’s James Bond adventures has gone on longer. Leslie Phillips starred in three of the first Carry On romps — Jim Dale, a voice much more familiar to American Potter-philes, was in eleven of these politically incorrect farces — and his “Ding-Dong!” “Well, hello!” and “I say” catch-phrases helped make the franchise as popular as it became.

At Phillips’ death, Dale is one of the only surviving Carry On stalwarts, Sid James, Barbara Windsor, Kenneth Williams, and Joan Sims having died years ago. Phillips refused to move to Hollywood even though he had had some success in a 1957 Gene Kelly musical because he feared becoming a “poor man’s David Niven.” He wound up instead after a long career in English comedies as the voice of Godric Gryffindor’s headdress, the iconic Sorting Hat at Hogwarts. No doubt his fans in the UK recognized his voice — “Ding Dong!” — and were delighted at his appearance in the Warner Brothers films, a link to the grand tradition of Pinewood Studios.

Read all about him in the Daily Mail obituary or his Wikipedia page and watch a documentary about the Carry On films made on the occasion of the 40th anniversary party for cast and crew in 1998. I couldn’t help but think while watching that of the much slicker productions made for the Harry Potter 20th anniversary reunion last year. If any of you have Leslie Phillips memories to share, please do — especially those who think, as I do, that his voice role in the Potter films was a hat-tip from Leavesden Studios to Pinewood.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Movie Thoughts

Dobby’s Grave Pilgrimage Site Preserved

November 7, 2022 by Leave a Comment

It turns out that Harry Potter fans believe they have found the location of Shell Cottage and Dobby’s grave on the coast of Wales — and turned it into something of a pilgrimage site. Read the Daily Star twitter thread above and follow the links there for the whole story.

If you find the idea of making pilgrimage to the real-world locations of fictional events where make-believe personages ‘lived,’ or, in the case of Dobby, ‘died’ exotic, peculiar, fascinating, or preposterous, check out this podcast, ‘So What Is a Harry Potter Pilgrimage?‘ featuring Beatrice Groves, who in addition to her other areas of expertise happens to know an astonishing amount about religious and literary pilgrimages.

And then go to PotterPilgrimage.com — I kid you not! — and schedule your own tour of the UK’s Hogwarts Saga principal points for homage, reflection, or imagination re-shaping. Enjoy — and let us know what you left as a token at Dobby’s grave on your visit!

Filed Under: Beatrice Groves, Hog Pro Notes, Reading Writing Rowling Podcast