The above is a New Posting from The Rowling Library on their YouTube Channel, an invaluable resource. The interview is no great shakes and is without ‘WOW’ revelations. I post it to encourage you to attempt a mental exercise after watching any part of the 2006 conversation.
Try to imagine Rowling today sitting down to a casual chat with two hosts for a national television interview. Does your mental picture have her relaxed as she is above? Is she open, cheerful, and engaging as this?
Of course she isn’t.
Not after the events of the last two years and the abuse she has endured. She is not even participating in the 20th Anniversary celebration of the Warner Brothers Harry Potter film adaptations – except via archived film footage, vintage 2019. I’m guessing this means ‘happy shots’ of her with film stars who have since thrown her “under the Lorrie” as Holly did DP in Christmas Pig.
I thought during my first reading of Pig, even before I started listening to the brilliant audio production, that perhaps this story was written in part, having been conceived long before the current controversy, as an invitation to her disaffected Potter audience for reconciliation. What in the story fostered that idea is something I’ll discuss in the last of my series of posts on Christmas Pig.
Today, though, I just wanted to note that Rowling is back on Twitter, posting both chatty and challenging tweets. Compare and contrast the mental posture and tone of her latest thread on sex and gender with the teevee talk fifteen years ago. She’s braced for backlash and speaking as carefully as an explosive expert works to diffuse an IED.
Speak Your Mind