Casual Vacancy

Rowling’s Messaging about Elections: Fictional Ministers and Mugwumps

November 9, 2022 by John 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

Beatrice Groves: Rowling’s Process- Insights from a 2015 Interview

November 2, 2022 by Nick Jeffery 2 Comments

Beatrice Groves, Research Lecturer and tutor at Trinity College, Oxford, and author of Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, has written a Hogwarts Professor Guest Post: Rowling’s Process – Insights from a 2015 Interview. Join me after the jump for the insights Prof. Groves’ found, in an interview J. K. Rowling gave seven years ago today, to publicise Career of Evil. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Beatrice Groves, Casual Vacancy, Cormoran Strike

Wild ‘Secrets of Dumbledore’ Theory: Rowling Puts Pro-Trump Message in Script that Kloves Didn’t See or Remove

April 21, 2022 by John 6 Comments

This is a wild, which is perhaps to say “wildly irresponsible,” post of rank speculation based on exactly zero actual, y’know, factual evidence and direct testimony. It does include, however, (a) a valuable survey of Rowling’s recent work with respect to the elections and politics shared therein and its conclusions, (b) a pair of contrary allegorical readings of the latest Fantastic Beasts film, Secrets of Dumbledore, and (c) it does factor in both Rowling’s Peter-John Distinction and, the Seventh Crisis, her trials as an opponent of the trend that turns a mental disorder into a civil rights movement.

I have written it up, though, I have to admit, only because I love the idea of Rowling, pushed to the sidelines by Warner Brothers to protect their Wizarding World cash cow, inserting an IED-esque covert message in her “original script” that Kloves couldn’t scrub out and which the Hollywood Screenwriters Guild would find anathema, namely, that there was massive fraud in the 2020 US Presidential election.

And I have to admit, too, of course, that I have not seen Secrets of Grindelwald yet. This isn’t even my theory and I certainly have little right to comment on its validity or vapidness. ‘Let the reader beware.’

Having noted those several necessary caveats, let me begin. This post has three parts: a review of Rowling’s “obsession” with US Presidential elections and politics (her word), a fixation that includes her acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome and Obama-philia, a survey of the elections featured and politic notes sounded in her most recent work, Ickabog to Christmas Pig, and then allegorical readings of the election for Supreme Mugwump in Secrets of Dumbledore. I’ll lay all that out for you folks who have seen the film to discuss — after the jump! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Casual Vacancy, Christmas Pig, Cormoran Strike, Fantastic Beasts, The Ickabog

Rowling Writes Trans Views Tell All Post; Fandom Divides ‘Team Jo,’ ‘Team Trans’

June 12, 2020 by John

On 6 June, J. K. Rowling tweeted nine separate times on the issue of transgender people and their rights. I think the most important thread is this one:

Though only a reiteration of her #IStandWithMaya Tweet Heard Round the World from last December, one with special emphasis in each part of the thread that the accusation that she hates transgender people is untrue and unfair, the world that believes with former Vice President Joe Biden that transgender rights “are the civil rights issue of our time” have doxxed her thoroughly. Celebrities as closely tied with her as Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Eddie Redmayne, and Evanna Lynch have all gone public to affirm that “transgender women are women.” [To my knowledge, Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger have not yet checked in on this issue.]

On 10 June Rowling responded with an essay which was posted on her website, ‘J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues,’ and she has pinned a link to this post to the top of her twitter page (she has been silent on twitter since 6 June). In this essay she reviews the history of her involvement with the transgender issue, the story of her several fat-finger mistakes at the keyboard that led to her being identified as “transphobic” by trans activists online, and of her decision to return to twitter in December after a long hiatus to support Maya Foraster. She details, too, the fallout thereafter, not only the verbal abuse and threats she endured and expected, but also the unanticipated “avalanche of emails and letters” “the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive.” These notes, she writes, [Read more…]

Filed Under: Casual Vacancy, Cormoran Strike, Hog Pro Notes, Twitter

Casual Vacancy

December 25, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

Welcome Guests from the 18 December 2013 Diane Rehm Show about Casual Vacancy!

Round Up Url

If you’re looking for a place to start in the posts below, Post #3 details how much cursing there actually was in the book , Post #4 how very autobiographical this book is (and why that shouldn’t matter), and Post #5 is an exegesis of the not very subtle political allegory of John Bull and his wife the Queen vs. the Empire’s legacy and promise in its outliers. After that? 6, 8, 11, and 12 will help you see the anagogical meaning that reviewers and first time readers miss in haste and because the social message is so loud.

Enjoy!

The Original Introduction to the Post:

I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to throw together my first thoughts and questions on J. K. Rowling’s new novel, Casual Vacancy, but I found time today to write up some of my impressions after a hurried reading last weekend. This is only a small beginning, of course, for a thousand neglected topics. I think immediately of the Casual Vacancy title and Part captions, the propaganda quality of the work, and how much our reading of this book because we love our Harry Potter experience colors our appreciation of the novel. None of that below, though you will find literary alchemy, the political and personal allegories, and a word by profane word count on the cussing in Vacancy among other subjects

We’ll get to the neglected topics I mentioned and others soon enough, I’m sure. I hope in the twelve threads below to jump start our conversation of the artistry and meaning and experience of Casual Vacancy, subjects I suspect have been largely lost in the fanfare and shock of the book’s publication. Thank you in advance for joining the discussion and for inviting all the serious reader friends you know to jump in, too!

1. The Harry Potter Echoes

2. MuggleMarch or A Modern Moonacre Manor

3. Potter to Potty-Mouth: The Profanity by the Numbers

4. Literary Narcissism or The Art of the Psychic Realm

5. Barry Fairbrother and the Political Parable

6. Literary Alchemy: The Conjunction of Sex and Death

7. The Seven Part Ring Composition

8. Andrew and Gaia: Fallen Man and the Natural World?

9. Andrew and Stuart: Doppelganger, Ouroboros, or Diptych?

10. The JayZ song ‘Umbrella’

11. Religion: Christian Hypocrites and Sympathetic Sikhs

12. Authenticity and Hypocrisy:’Penetration,’ Suffering, and the Birth of Consciousness