Man that example with the native girl hit hard, seeing as how I'm Canadian and we have a long, brutal history of abducting native children to place them in white-run schools.
God, it never occurred to me how much weight is placed on shopping and buying things in Harry Potter. Great job, and I'm glad you managed to sort out those audio issues.
This is a really great video! It is horrifying how static the wizarding world is. Like the books demonstrate how easy it is to corrupt the ministry with death eaters and yet theres very little indication that there will be any reforms/changes to how the ministry of magic operates to prevent this in future? I suppose now Hermione and harry work for the ministry its all good now....
I actually didn't start thinking about this sort of stuff until I saw the first Fantastic Beasts movie (I've never been a huge fan of the franchise so may that's why). When I saw the president of the wizarding world in America was a Black American woman, it seemed... off. It's set in the 1920's, during the Jim Crow era, and this wizard with immense political power does nothing to help her brothers and sisters, not to mention that at least some of these wizards aren't horrible racists was something else. I know it's not the focal point of those films but to ignore historical context like that is just bad and kind of marginalizes the struggles of those who suffered at the time. I think putting the film in the past drew a lot of attention to premise of the whole thing.
I remember seeing a tumblr post (RIP) about why millennials etc didn’t like the epilogue because the protagonists end up in the professional class, working for the government in some sort of capacity and for a generation which has lived through some of the worst economic crisis since the depression the idea that these kids who fought against fascism would grow up to be centric ‘neo liberals’ unbelievable and frankly disgusting.
This stuff has bothered me ever since I read the first two books for my high school english class. I never understood why all my classmates loved the series so much, because the wizarding world seemed so unfair to me. Thank you for putting these thoughts into words better than I ever could.
perhaps this is why such an empty feeling overcomes me during the DHP2 ending. They've killed 1 bad guy but nothing has changed, and the future isn't pointing in any direction, we just see clones of the trio (their children) going off to repeat the exact same story. "You may not like him minister... but you can't deny...it was fun living as a rich famous wizard born to defeat my bald evil wizard twin"
DAMN THAT'S DOPE CONTENT Great integration of the several seemingly separate points that you teased up front, into one interesting flow. I also appreciate you making it audio- only friendly as i frequently consume long-form video essays through audio only Keep up the good stuff!
this is a bit of a late comment and more tied to the fbawtft series, but im personally quite interested and absolutely horrified at what the next movie has in store. "rio de janeiro should brace itself", as jkr said on twitter. its very hard for me to ignore both the fact that brazil (along with argentina, where i come from) is famous in europe and the usa mostly by being both "exotic" (so, like, where creatures can be found), and the place where a lot of nazis hid -making it, i am assuming, where the nazi-metaphor of grindelwald and his team will hide next in an extremely nonsubtle reference-, and the current wave of center-to-right neoliberalism and extremely damaging social and economic measures that parallel the ones we had during our disastrous military dictatorships caused by the usa government during the red scare in the 70s. touching the subject of south america as a whole, but especially in brazil where the current management is so unbelievably, cartoonishly evil (he literally defends dictatorship torturers), seems like a really dangerous idea, especially coming from someone who evidently doesnt look at history from a global perspective and who has a record of being insensitive when dealing with issues of culture and race. this is the second video i saw from you (the good place one was fantastic, btw) and im really looking forward to your next analysis.
how dare you put my growing uncomfortable feelings about Harry Potter and it's problematic issues that I realized were there as I've gotten older in a 30 min video. For real tho this was an excellent video Clearly the costumer does not know what they want. We wanted more Harry Potter. We got more Harry Potter. And it's terrible. JK Rowling's becoming more like George Lucas and ruining their franchises. This is why fanfiction exists. To fix the mistake of the creator.
It's a bit funny to watch this now with all that has gone down JK over the year. I still love Harry Potter, but I can see her ideologies come through in the text. Her depiction of goblins are rooted in deep anti-Semitic history. Snape as the flawed hero always bothered me because of how he treated Harry.
Honestly if this was as short as you planned it to be I don’t think it would have had the impact that it did! It was so though provoking and interesting! I might have to watch it again to fully digest it! Do you happen to have a paetron? Or somewhere where your viewers can donate! Love these videos!
Thank you! I don't have a patreon set up yet; I need to get myself together before the end of the year with that, but I will let you know when I get it set up!
Another thing I dislike about Harry Potter is that it sooo much endorses celebrity culture. You feel successful if your favourite celeb does something great. I believe that to be successful you need determination and hard work. Putting some else instead of yourself as your hero will not only harm your self confidence and lower your self esteem, it also damages your feeling of being in control and prevents you to have any kind of accountability of what you are going to do in your own life.
Another reason to prefer Lord of the Rings: the Hobbits live in a communnist utopia. They help each other in time of need, we never get to know that there is anything like money, we don't see poverty and we don't see billionaires. Humans strive for power and might and can thus be corrupted. They rely on money instead of mutual aid. Orcs are obeying a master without second thought. There's a reason why the Hobbits are beloved within the universe and amongst the fans: they live without a big state, outside of capitalism on the idea of mutual aid. They are thus a lot more happy. They were enslaved but they never did let that happen. They fought it and freed themselves. HOBBITS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
The Shire is not really much of a communist society, what with the glaring income and capital inequalities, the dominance of a few aristocratic families such as the Took and Brandybucks... The absence of organized state institutions in the Shire is probably due to Tolkien's conservative mindset that consider proper common sense as sufficient in and of itself to having a smooth, working society. In the same vein, we don't really know how Bilbo or Frodo feed themselves but they probably don't till fields all that much. Certainly all the food at Bilbo's lavish birthday (not to mention the gifts) was bought and paid for (in fact it's funny that Tolkien takes the time to establish that Mordor has wheat fields to feed its armies, but takes it for granted that an idle youth such as Frodo has his personal manservant in the person of Sam)
Hey this video is making me wonder....where does the food at Hogwarts come from? Where does *any* food wizards eat come from? Like, Daddy Weasley's whole job is based around wizards not knowing how Muggle shit works so it's not like they're going to the supermarket or wholesalers so...where do wizards get food? Are there secret wizard farms where all their wheat and beef comes from? Are there enterprising Mudbloods who have a business buying food in bulk from Muggles and then reselling it at a huge markup to the me wizard community?
one thing that comes to mind: when i was 11 and read harry potter for the first time, did i think about this stuff? did they matter to me at all? what kid would like to read a book (fantasy book) about government, politics or our real world history? as a kid, history was just another thing to learn at school, and i loved (and still love) to read fanstasy books (sf, urban fantasy, steampunk fantasy) because there were a different worlds, things that i could find only in this type of books, characters, magic, people doing right things. in our world you wouldn't meet Kate Daniels walking down the street with a sword and in a blood armor, wouldn't you? but thats a point, that's because i love this genre, it helps me distance from our world and its problems. and yes, i could dicsuss all day about "what if" scenarios, and references to our history and events in real world, but i dont think that magic would solve all of our problems, just like giving money to everyone wouldn't, people would find another thing to argue about (longer life, teritory, resources ...). in ideal world we would still find something wrong, thats just our nature JK Rowling may have a lots of opinion about our world, but thats not something interesting for me, i read her books, she is just one of few (as i know of) authors that have that kind of ideas, and say them out loud, when most of the authors, whose books i read spends their time in social media to talk about their books or other authors
it was also condoned as silly and childish by the narrative as not even Ron and Harry supported Hermione in this (despite knowing Dobby) and everyone else at the school was shown to be like "oh those silly teen girls".
I really liked this, I thought it was great! I promise I'm not just doing filthy self-promotion but I think you'd really like my Socialism in Space video essay. It could be a good reference point for you to use even though I doubt it would teach you much new. Keep up the good work, this is badass!
A year has passed and that remains one of my favourite videos on your channel (though it's not an easy pick, you've got a lot of high quality essays over there).
I've been thinking on this video and what I remember from the movies and I realized something, there's no real poverty in the wizarding world. Let me explain. Poverty is bad because things cost money and those things include food, shelter, clothes ectra. These needs have been met for the Weasleys. Magic solves shelter, I guess food? I've never been clear if someone has to make food in the Harry Potter universe and it's teleported or if it's completely magically created (in the first senario are there magic farms? Are they muggle farms they have secret contracts with? What? I mean did wizards die in the potato famine?) The clothes are hand me downs and they don't buy new things they don't need. This is the only tangible thing I can see that separates Weasleys from other wizards. They have magic to avoid the consequences of real poverty, and they just don't buy things. This aligns with the information here. Because only the "poor" would opt put of the booming capitalist economy and isn't it a pitty they can't by new dress robes ? Even though " because fashion" is a shitty reason to replace perfectly good robes. She writes Ron as someone with the pride of a poor person, who wouldn't just ask for things from his super rich buddy. Which some of us do have and I've been unlearning, because it isn't nobel to go hungry but the context just isn't there. I mean hell Mrs Weasley has magic washing dishes spell, probably has floor washing, laundering and so forth so she doesn't even face the at home labor cost for having that many kids (as an aside like why do the Weasleys have so many kids? She seemed like she was taking inspiration from Irish Catholics whose faith forbid contraceptives and thus result in many children but uh? Why would a all magic family even know what a Jesus is? They don't even know what a rubber ducky is ffs and they'd have access to potion based contraceptives, is their life at fertilization discourse in the wizarding world what the fresh fuck Rowling) so how are they actually poor? Poor people suffer from a lack of being able to secure resources and security and things like medication and treatments. These things do not exist for wizards (the medical thing especially because Rowling lives with NHS ) while it's important to take into account the variety of ways poverty can exist in the world, for the Weasleys it looks like they can't or don't want to buy new things all the time. Every need is met, and while they appear to be on the less wealthy side like on the wizarding works economic scale it doesn't mean anything. They were doing reduce, reuse, recycle when it wasn't cool, they were not keeping up with the Joneses and that was the real social pirahahood the Weasleys carried. Idk if any of this made sense I just woke up pissed off about how nice it would have been to grow up with real food security and not living in a cockroach infested shit hole like the Weasleys.
the one time i remember the Weasley's financial situation having a truly negative impact was in book two. Ron broke his wand and could not get a new one, a working wand is more important than school books. The Weasley's definitely seemed to have there basic survival needs met but not the money to give there children working school supplys for a proper education. frankly its upsetting that no one offered to help pay for a wand for Ron that whole school year.
This video was brilliantly done! You put in to words (almost) all of my problems with the Harry Potter series and Rowling herself. I honestly think your disclaimer of maybe being too harsh at the end is unnecessary. When we really get down to it Rowling is a centrist who seems to refuse to deeply contemplate not just history but her own perspective. She’s transphobic, uses minorities as afterthoughts to seem inclusive, and has absolutely no true understanding of the current plights of the working class. If it doesn’t affect her, she doesn’t really seem to care too much. Hell, even the time when she was ‘poor and out of home’ before publishing actually meant she was just staying with some well off relatives, not eating scraps desperate poor as so many people seem to think. Rowling is, at the end of the day, a rich white centrist woman who lucked into prestige and a cult following. The fact that so many people are willing to defend her and her views to the death for no other reason than “she wrote the book I liked as a kid” is honestly terrifying.
Dániel Lányi below suggests a comparison to the prime directive. This comparison is interesting for a variety of reasons. First off, because the TV format gives the writers the opportunity to regularly challenge the ideology of the Prime Directive. The show typically ends up coming down on the side of 'the prime directive is good, actually,' but the fact that it is challenged is essential to the philosophical project of Star Trek. In addition, the Prime Directive generally articulates what might be considered the 'best' reasoning behind the similar choice made by wizards: that, basically, the imperial/colonial imposition of a more powerful/violent culture's moral ideals is too great a risk to run, thus the superior alternative is to do nothing. Now, one could make the argument that this is just an expression of centrist ideology, but I think it could also be compared to the more anti-imperialist strain of thinking on the left. In essence, because of the wizarding world's greater material power, it's easy to imagine that any attempt at intervention could start sounding a lot like the neoconservative "we just want to bring democracy to [country that just happens to have lots of oil]!" It would be different, of course if wizarding societies were more integrated into their respective cultures, but in that case then who's to say that, for example, fascist wizards who supported the Nazi cause weren't present and just as well equipped to protect the Holocaust as the liberal/leftist wizards who opposed it were to prevent it. Obviously the same 'well, there are just two sides that were evenly matched' can't be said of poverty and material insufficiency (and the question of Red Witches is particularly fun to ponder). It's not like those things aren't political choices in our world as well, though, and that's where I think this argument hits home. The wizarding world is static not as in gridlock, with changes occurring slowly because the progressives are balanced by equal and opposition reactionaries, it is static as in frozen. Even if they can't *really* do anything to fix the problems of the muggle world, there is no debate about the way in which one can approach those problems. The wizarding world of Harry Potter is left playing out a tired old two-step of isolationist ideologies. There can be no change for the outside because there is not change inside. It is Britannia isolated and unchanging. It is a cyclic Christ metaphor delivered by way of Moore's Utopia contorted inside of Steve Bannon's Fourth Turning (made more grimly ironic given the age wizards can attain). If it is a power fantasy, it is a grim one, where even those with tremendous power are able to do nothing to change anything, for everything is just as it should be. Still love the books though. I learned to read for Harry Potter, and I'm sure I'll still return to his Wizarding world.
I'm always in a bit of awe when I try to envision the future far after the time we're gone It's difficult to imagine because of this End of history mentality As a society dependent species, we desire for stability over anything else And that usually means wanting your experience with the world and it's behaviours, systems, ideologues etc, to stay exactly how they are now We can't imagine a life rhat would be so different to us, so we must be at rhe peak of progress with nowhere else to go But that's not true at all. Those very same sentiments were undoubtedly present, even in the era of our ancient ancestors It doesn't feel goof to confront the mortality of everything you've ever known, experienced or valued And the fact life will get on without But most importantly, we're too dead to have a chance learning what society will be like and that's frustrating Change is inevitable, and whilst I'm no radicalist, or even centrist - just left leaning, it's something you have to come to terms with due to the fact you're often working actively against what conservatives want, and often already incite to make changes that they wish to keep them as they are We've been changing and having people complain about said changes, throughout human history The rights to let women work, the legal elimination of slave labour, and more importantly meritocracy being challenged as a myth All these problems do fall back to capitalism. It's America in particular who get their influence and power through capitalism, and for that nation it's intrinsic to their way of life, of not just them, but their country too. It's valuable, breeds success and became a patriotic power house of a nation A lot of their ideologues and actions are filtered through the capitalist lens A fairly innocent example of this is their customer service standards, and that weird WatchMojo voice that's always uses commercially They place a LOT of emphases on the institutions that feed into a capitalist structure The strangely fake, extremely generic and inoffensive way of speaking is a result of the fierce competing in the costumes market Their blinding optimism, over friendliness (not I had thing in my opinion), is born out of the personas which greatly benefit from the system of capitalsm Talking and acting in that very specific, loud and almost boisterous way is synonymous with success. It worked for them for the most part The people who most often do these kind of WatchMojo voices are people trying to advertise to you as a customer specifically But even when that's not the case of them selling something material; there's still a sense that you are being treated in a customer-friendly manner, just out of the fact such friendliness is a huge part of their socialisation It's most certainly interesting when you visit from Europe, and the customer service is practically overbearing due to how much focus they have on it Like please just - just let me use rhe checkout, bag my stuff and go. You don't have to make small talk or be excessively cheerful when I order something like a lemonade. The enthusiasm is wild. Gone off on a bit of a tangent there but w/e. Additionally what's also ironic to me is how that customer oriented attitude to strangers and the like just isn't a thing and sometimes isn't even well received and successful even in other capitalist nations An example of this is when Walmart utterly failed to launch their stores in Germany. The culture shock clashing just made it a disaster. Cult-like team exercises and customers complaining the staff were annoying them by trying to talk all the time I think it's Aldi that has the most global success as a store from Germany, and their approach is just practical and efficient shopping Doesn't mean customer service exists, but you bag your own stuff, return your own trollies and don't get asked if you need help every five minutes It's pretty no nonsense and so a quick to shop Although it's hard to imagine now, those same defining characterics could change in ways, in which we may never guess It'll be such a different world a century from now
There are a lot of movies and books series that explore the concept of secret magical worlds. Harry Potter is just the most popular one. I'm just going to talk about one of my favourite book series about secret magical worlds, Skulduggery Pleasant (a book series) and analyse it the way you did it.Honestly, I think it addressed this problem a lot more than Harry Potter. For one, it's obvious that there is a left (yes, the center is seen as good, but there is still a left), with Argeddion in Book 7 wanting to give everyone magic. This makes everyone fear that this will send the world into World War III. Also, it's obvious that the protagonist of the book, Valkyrie is very different from Harry Potter. Valkyrie is, in my opinion, one of the best protagonists. In Book 7, she thinks Argeddion's plans are good, and is conflicted, she still wants to help her friends. Also, a lot of the problems you addressed aren't really there in the series. Most characters in the series don't care about money and they don't need it. They isn't anyone I remember in the series to be poor except maybe Vaurien Scapegrace and even he gets a bit of success. Nobody is that obessed with shopping, and the new books do focus on a character who hates being rich, because he has a brother who is better at him at everything, Omen Darkly, who is again, one of my favourite characters ever, he falls in love with a mortal in Book 11, but she rejects him because of the ideals that go on in her world.Books 7 and 8 particularly revolve around the issue of the separatism. Book 7's villain being Argeddion, and Valkyrie is obviously conflicted about these issues. We see her in Book 7 getting persuaded by her friends, because she believes his plans are good, and this doesn't really change. The world in which Valkyrie goes to is a place where the right have won and the sorcerers are now in charge of the mortals, but the problem (which I didn't think about the first and second time I read the book) is that it is the opposite ideology that Argeddion is following. Mevolent wants to rule the mortals as slaves, and Argeddion wants to live with the mortals in peace. Derek must've thought these two ideologies are similar somehow, because they both advocate against separatism. From what I've described to you, this obviously isn't true. Book 8, on the other hand, thinks that Ravel's plans are this: Mortals are so bad at running the world, we are so good at running our world, therefore we should run the entire world. This is seen as a nonsense ideology, but when you look at it, it really isn't. Unlike in the Harry Potter world, where it is the same capitalist world as our own, most of the leaders (except people like Guild of course), are concerned with problems, and as I said before, there isn't really a class who is poor or anything. The characters think this is bad because they saw a world where this was true, Mevolent's universe, and they were all slaves. It becomes understandable why this is the case, because if you see a world where slavery is top, you would think the ideology is bad. In Book 9, Valkyrie asks Serpine if he will let the mortals run the world after they defeat Mevolent, his response is "No, look at them! Do you really think they can run the world?", and when you look at our current society, yeh, maybe just the way Mevolent done it was wrong.With all this said, it is still one of my favourite series of all time, and in my opinion, the most underrated series ever. I encourage you to start reading it and tell me what you think. I didn't spoil the ending of Book 9 now, did I?
I would genuinely like to know, why do people believe that meritocracy is bad? for example, It seem ideal that the people with the most talent in a particular job should get the highest paying position in that field.
Because meritocracy is a literal joke term used to mock the idea that everyone has a chance. Being born to parents with resources and connections gives a person such a head start that the poor person will almost never even get to the well off person's starting line. It was a literal joke term that is now being used unsarcastically. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
You lost me at your take on modern-day politics. It seems your critique of the series is that it isn’t liberal enough. Do most of your critiques play out the same way? I did not see at the end where you stated how you would improve the world. You called on others and authority figures to handle it by creating movements. I’m not saying you don’t do anything, but you never mentioned how you improve the world. You cannot simplify complex world politics into left=good and centrist/right=evil.
Yeah, no. Shaun didnt come to the same conclusion independently from this. Its a stretch to interpret left-right thinking into a simple good vs evil story.
Lol, when will you Far Left & Right Types Get it... The System will never Change as Long as The People at the Top Control things in their own self interest. Hell, even Far Left Commie's like you guys would throw all your beliefs out of the window if you were given the Power & Capital to do so, just like Every other person who has tried to be "Against the System" in the Past. All in all, Being Political is a waste of time as Ultimately the Politicians you guys vote in aren't going to change anything Radically, no matter how much you want them to. They will always act in their own self interest. Peace.
You dismiss the best explanation in the 1st few minutes. Harry Potter along with Star Wars, Hunger Games, etc are indeed engineered to indoctrinate. These themes are baked into the plot. One can speculate that folks like Rowling, Lucas, etc are merely fronts for committees of writers. Like a Guild of Renaissance craftsmen producing ideological art for the Medici. Is there no better motivational text for Silicon Valley middle managers than Atlas Shrugged? Is not Harry Potter the perfect primer for a generation of supposed "creative class" types? Is there any coincidence in Ender's Game being handed out to supposed "gifted" students?
Firstly, I do admire what JK Rowling has done by making children pick up a book and read even though some might have done it for the wrong reason of just 'conforming' to popular zeitgeist. Secondly, you are being pedantic with this analysis because you'll run into this same kind of inference about heroic characters in much of fiction that takes place with our modern socio-economic fabric as underlying base line, where they do not concern themselves with 'saving' the entire population. For the purpose of entertaining readers, Rowling's works do succeed but of course upon scrutiny none of it will seem logical. You are right about the Wizards not having a better political system instead just copy-pasting the muggle world's capitalist democracy. But you can look at it another way when you consider that an author creating a whole new world has the luxury of hindsight and privy to control over all the characters, while a real world political system only emerges due to intersecting and non-intersectional reasons coupled with an inherently unpredictable human emotion leading the masses. For e.g as of now the majority of a population in any country is swayed by nationalism and opting for leaders with extreme right sentiments. So basically the wizards have laid a new world for themselves but still lack that one leader who will create an improvement in the socio-economic fabric. Come to think of it, Rowling has a path set out for her to design such a system in sequels if she so desires, but noone really wants to task themselves with such an ordeal, and we arrive right back at your problem of the majority supporting the norm for convenience and ease, really.
Lost interest 10 minutes in. I thought you'd be criticizing the movie in a legit way (which you did at times), but then you start talking about "Why hasn't this happened yet?" Oh, I don't know, maybe because we still have three more movies to go through? I am sure you have valid and very interesting points throughout the video but people should really stop complaining about stuff that hasn't come into play when there's a slight chance they might later on. Wait however many years it takes for them to release the five films to start talking about this stuff. You might be right, and this will end up sucking and will never address issues but I will wait to complain until we have the finished product.
Viewers beware, this video advertises itself as being about the harry potter universe but the author basically just uses the universe as an analogy for the real world to spew political commentary.
"I am perhaps being too harsh on her"
Coming here two years from the future, I can definitely say that you were not.
Coming from a bit later than this and if anything they're far too lenient
Nearly four years after uploading, Jo's gone full mask-off. Viddy's definitely too lenient.
Man that example with the native girl hit hard, seeing as how I'm Canadian and we have a long, brutal history of abducting native children to place them in white-run schools.
same in the US
you are right lizze s it's fucked up
God, it never occurred to me how much weight is placed on shopping and buying things in Harry Potter. Great job, and I'm glad you managed to sort out those audio issues.
Thank you! (And thank you so much for telling me there were problems.)
This is a really great video! It is horrifying how static the wizarding world is. Like the books demonstrate how easy it is to corrupt the ministry with death eaters and yet theres very little indication that there will be any reforms/changes to how the ministry of magic operates to prevent this in future? I suppose now Hermione and harry work for the ministry its all good now....
@GuidoSalami1 If you need instructions on how to prevent a fascist takeover, check out the enclosed instruction book.
I actually didn't start thinking about this sort of stuff until I saw the first Fantastic Beasts movie (I've never been a huge fan of the franchise so may that's why). When I saw the president of the wizarding world in America was a Black American woman, it seemed... off. It's set in the 1920's, during the Jim Crow era, and this wizard with immense political power does nothing to help her brothers and sisters, not to mention that at least some of these wizards aren't horrible racists was something else. I know it's not the focal point of those films but to ignore historical context like that is just bad and kind of marginalizes the struggles of those who suffered at the time.
I think putting the film in the past drew a lot of attention to premise of the whole thing.
I remember seeing a tumblr post (RIP) about why millennials etc didn’t like the epilogue because the protagonists end up in the professional class, working for the government in some sort of capacity and for a generation which has lived through some of the worst economic crisis since the depression the idea that these kids who fought against fascism would grow up to be centric ‘neo liberals’ unbelievable and frankly disgusting.
It has traditionally stood that Western humans get more conservative with age. Millennials are the first generation that bucked that trend.
This stuff has bothered me ever since I read the first two books for my high school english class. I never understood why all my classmates loved the series so much, because the wizarding world seemed so unfair to me. Thank you for putting these thoughts into words better than I ever could.
perhaps this is why such an empty feeling overcomes me during the DHP2 ending. They've killed 1 bad guy but nothing has changed, and the future isn't pointing in any direction, we just see clones of the trio (their children) going off to repeat the exact same story.
"You may not like him minister... but you can't deny...it was fun living as a rich famous wizard born to defeat my bald evil wizard twin"
DAMN THAT'S DOPE CONTENT
Great integration of the several seemingly separate points that you teased up front, into one interesting flow.
I also appreciate you making it audio- only friendly as i frequently consume long-form video essays through audio only
Keep up the good stuff!
So excited when I saw this video on my feed. Keep up the amazing work!
Thank you!
This is great and I hope you feel great.
this is a bit of a late comment and more tied to the fbawtft series, but im personally quite interested and absolutely horrified at what the next movie has in store. "rio de janeiro should brace itself", as jkr said on twitter. its very hard for me to ignore both the fact that brazil (along with argentina, where i come from) is famous in europe and the usa mostly by being both "exotic" (so, like, where creatures can be found), and the place where a lot of nazis hid -making it, i am assuming, where the nazi-metaphor of grindelwald and his team will hide next in an extremely nonsubtle reference-, and the current wave of center-to-right neoliberalism and extremely damaging social and economic measures that parallel the ones we had during our disastrous military dictatorships caused by the usa government during the red scare in the 70s. touching the subject of south america as a whole, but especially in brazil where the current management is so unbelievably, cartoonishly evil (he literally defends dictatorship torturers), seems like a really dangerous idea, especially coming from someone who evidently doesnt look at history from a global perspective and who has a record of being insensitive when dealing with issues of culture and race.
this is the second video i saw from you (the good place one was fantastic, btw) and im really looking forward to your next analysis.
Oh no I didn't hear that the next one is set in Rio...given her past history that has the potential to be uhhh not great.
This was really really excellent, keep up the great work!
This was great! A really easy watch to boot (although for some reason I now feel the impulse to Buy Bitcoin)
how dare you put my growing uncomfortable feelings about Harry Potter and it's problematic issues that I realized were there as I've gotten older in a 30 min video.
For real tho this was an excellent video
Clearly the costumer does not know what they want. We wanted more Harry Potter. We got more Harry Potter. And it's terrible. JK Rowling's becoming more like George Lucas and ruining their franchises. This is why fanfiction exists. To fix the mistake of the creator.
Well done Amiga, fantastic work. Consider us fans 🤟
It's incredible how many of the points in shaun's masterpiece of a video about Harry potter seem inspired from this video
wizards be shoppin
WONDERFUL! I would love to see a modern day potter universe where a young witch leaks magic to overthrow the system.
Exceptional content. And RUclips hid it from me all these years. SHAME. If you were to revive this channel, I would be so on board.
This is very well done and deserves far more attention. I'm glad I watched the whole thing, you did a good job!
It's a bit funny to watch this now with all that has gone down JK over the year. I still love Harry Potter, but I can see her ideologies come through in the text. Her depiction of goblins are rooted in deep anti-Semitic history. Snape as the flawed hero always bothered me because of how he treated Harry.
Turns out jk is a bad irredeemable person, who knew
Eh... Not really. All she does is post bad takes on social media. There are far, far, far worse people out there.
And now she's moved on to Holocaust denial. Sure there are worse people, but she's definitely bad
Honestly if this was as short as you planned it to be I don’t think it would have had the impact that it did! It was so though provoking and interesting! I might have to watch it again to fully digest it!
Do you happen to have a paetron? Or somewhere where your viewers can donate! Love these videos!
Thank you! I don't have a patreon set up yet; I need to get myself together before the end of the year with that, but I will let you know when I get it set up!
This is a great video, I have been thinking about this since the first fantastic beast movie but I wasn't able to put it in words.
Wonderful . Much appreciated.
Another thing I dislike about Harry Potter is that it sooo much endorses celebrity culture. You feel successful if your favourite celeb does something great. I believe that to be successful you need determination and hard work. Putting some else instead of yourself as your hero will not only harm your self confidence and lower your self esteem, it also damages your feeling of being in control and prevents you to have any kind of accountability of what you are going to do in your own life.
Another reason to prefer Lord of the Rings: the Hobbits live in a communnist utopia. They help each other in time of need, we never get to know that there is anything like money, we don't see poverty and we don't see billionaires. Humans strive for power and might and can thus be corrupted. They rely on money instead of mutual aid. Orcs are obeying a master without second thought. There's a reason why the Hobbits are beloved within the universe and amongst the fans: they live without a big state, outside of capitalism on the idea of mutual aid. They are thus a lot more happy. They were enslaved but they never did let that happen. They fought it and freed themselves. HOBBITS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
Vote communist 2020 for the creation of second breakfast
The Shire is not really much of a communist society, what with the glaring income and capital inequalities, the dominance of a few aristocratic families such as the Took and Brandybucks... The absence of organized state institutions in the Shire is probably due to Tolkien's conservative mindset that consider proper common sense as sufficient in and of itself to having a smooth, working society. In the same vein, we don't really know how Bilbo or Frodo feed themselves but they probably don't till fields all that much. Certainly all the food at Bilbo's lavish birthday (not to mention the gifts) was bought and paid for (in fact it's funny that Tolkien takes the time to establish that Mordor has wheat fields to feed its armies, but takes it for granted that an idle youth such as Frodo has his personal manservant in the person of Sam)
I would argue the Shire was a libertarian society. Little to no government, people free to pursue their wishes, entrepreneurship, no taxes.
But what about this need for a king in LotR?? The need for there to be a king to lead the people? Isn’t that pro monarchy?
Love this. Great job and well thought out!
2:48 That aged like milk with JKR's newfound passion for anti-trans activism
This came out before JK went full transphobe, ah the bliss
You deserve more views
100% this; I can't believe how few there are. Shaun's critique has 5M. The two would dove-tail so well.
The algorithm pushes new content from active creators and punishes these gems from not so long ago.
That was really interesting ! Thank you !
flawless
Excellent video!
Hey this video is making me wonder....where does the food at Hogwarts come from? Where does *any* food wizards eat come from? Like, Daddy Weasley's whole job is based around wizards not knowing how Muggle shit works so it's not like they're going to the supermarket or wholesalers so...where do wizards get food? Are there secret wizard farms where all their wheat and beef comes from? Are there enterprising Mudbloods who have a business buying food in bulk from Muggles and then reselling it at a huge markup to the me wizard community?
Pedantic Internet Nerd club badge in merch shop when?
one thing that comes to mind: when i was 11 and read harry potter for the first time, did i think about this stuff? did they matter to me at all? what kid would like to read a book (fantasy book) about government, politics or our real world history? as a kid, history was just another thing to learn at school, and i loved (and still love) to read fanstasy books (sf, urban fantasy, steampunk fantasy) because there were a different worlds, things that i could find only in this type of books, characters, magic, people doing right things. in our world you wouldn't meet Kate Daniels walking down the street with a sword and in a blood armor, wouldn't you? but thats a point, that's because i love this genre, it helps me distance from our world and its problems. and yes, i could dicsuss all day about "what if" scenarios, and references to our history and events in real world, but i dont think that magic would solve all of our problems, just like giving money to everyone wouldn't, people would find another thing to argue about (longer life, teritory, resources ...). in ideal world we would still find something wrong, thats just our nature
JK Rowling may have a lots of opinion about our world, but thats not something interesting for me, i read her books, she is just one of few (as i know of) authors that have that kind of ideas, and say them out loud, when most of the authors, whose books i read spends their time in social media to talk about their books or other authors
I loved this! Had very similar thoughts after I watched the second movie!
SPEW was quite a leftish idea...
it was also condoned as silly and childish by the narrative as not even Ron and Harry supported Hermione in this (despite knowing Dobby) and everyone else at the school was shown to be like "oh those silly teen girls".
👏👏👏 quality work
Very insightful. Eye opening analysis.
I really liked this, I thought it was great! I promise I'm not just doing filthy self-promotion but I think you'd really like my Socialism in Space video essay. It could be a good reference point for you to use even though I doubt it would teach you much new.
Keep up the good work, this is badass!
A year has passed and that remains one of my favourite videos on your channel (though it's not an easy pick, you've got a lot of high quality essays over there).
This is my favourite video on the internet
I wrote almost this exact essay in February of 2018. Never finished it, but used a similar premise in another essay on HP I wrote this month
You did more justice to this premise on the end of history than I could have
Ehhh on your first point, why can't the explanation simply be there was witches and wizards on both sides of all conflicts?
I've been thinking on this video and what I remember from the movies and I realized something, there's no real poverty in the wizarding world. Let me explain. Poverty is bad because things cost money and those things include food, shelter, clothes ectra. These needs have been met for the Weasleys. Magic solves shelter, I guess food? I've never been clear if someone has to make food in the Harry Potter universe and it's teleported or if it's completely magically created (in the first senario are there magic farms? Are they muggle farms they have secret contracts with? What? I mean did wizards die in the potato famine?)
The clothes are hand me downs and they don't buy new things they don't need. This is the only tangible thing I can see that separates Weasleys from other wizards. They have magic to avoid the consequences of real poverty, and they just don't buy things.
This aligns with the information here. Because only the "poor" would opt put of the booming capitalist economy and isn't it a pitty they can't by new dress robes ? Even though " because fashion" is a shitty reason to replace perfectly good robes.
She writes Ron as someone with the pride of a poor person, who wouldn't just ask for things from his super rich buddy. Which some of us do have and I've been unlearning, because it isn't nobel to go hungry but the context just isn't there. I mean hell Mrs Weasley has magic washing dishes spell, probably has floor washing, laundering and so forth so she doesn't even face the at home labor cost for having that many kids (as an aside like why do the Weasleys have so many kids? She seemed like she was taking inspiration from Irish Catholics whose faith forbid contraceptives and thus result in many children but uh? Why would a all magic family even know what a Jesus is? They don't even know what a rubber ducky is ffs and they'd have access to potion based contraceptives, is their life at fertilization discourse in the wizarding world what the fresh fuck Rowling) so how are they actually poor?
Poor people suffer from a lack of being able to secure resources and security and things like medication and treatments. These things do not exist for wizards (the medical thing especially because Rowling lives with NHS ) while it's important to take into account the variety of ways poverty can exist in the world, for the Weasleys it looks like they can't or don't want to buy new things all the time. Every need is met, and while they appear to be on the less wealthy side like on the wizarding works economic scale it doesn't mean anything. They were doing reduce, reuse, recycle when it wasn't cool, they were not keeping up with the Joneses and that was the real social pirahahood the Weasleys carried.
Idk if any of this made sense I just woke up pissed off about how nice it would have been to grow up with real food security and not living in a cockroach infested shit hole like the Weasleys.
the one time i remember the Weasley's financial situation having a truly negative impact was in book two. Ron broke his wand and could not get a new one, a working wand is more important than school books. The Weasley's definitely seemed to have there basic survival needs met but not the money to give there children working school supplys for a proper education.
frankly its upsetting that no one offered to help pay for a wand for Ron that whole school year.
wow. i extremely like your videos
This video was brilliantly done! You put in to words (almost) all of my problems with the Harry Potter series and Rowling herself. I honestly think your disclaimer of maybe being too harsh at the end is unnecessary.
When we really get down to it Rowling is a centrist who seems to refuse to deeply contemplate not just history but her own perspective. She’s transphobic, uses minorities as afterthoughts to seem inclusive, and has absolutely no true understanding of the current plights of the working class. If it doesn’t affect her, she doesn’t really seem to care too much.
Hell, even the time when she was ‘poor and out of home’ before publishing actually meant she was just staying with some well off relatives, not eating scraps desperate poor as so many people seem to think.
Rowling is, at the end of the day, a rich white centrist woman who lucked into prestige and a cult following. The fact that so many people are willing to defend her and her views to the death for no other reason than “she wrote the book I liked as a kid” is honestly terrifying.
Dániel Lányi below suggests a comparison to the prime directive. This comparison is interesting for a variety of reasons. First off, because the TV format gives the writers the opportunity to regularly challenge the ideology of the Prime Directive. The show typically ends up coming down on the side of 'the prime directive is good, actually,' but the fact that it is challenged is essential to the philosophical project of Star Trek.
In addition, the Prime Directive generally articulates what might be considered the 'best' reasoning behind the similar choice made by wizards: that, basically, the imperial/colonial imposition of a more powerful/violent culture's moral ideals is too great a risk to run, thus the superior alternative is to do nothing. Now, one could make the argument that this is just an expression of centrist ideology, but I think it could also be compared to the more anti-imperialist strain of thinking on the left. In essence, because of the wizarding world's greater material power, it's easy to imagine that any attempt at intervention could start sounding a lot like the neoconservative "we just want to bring democracy to [country that just happens to have lots of oil]!"
It would be different, of course if wizarding societies were more integrated into their respective cultures, but in that case then who's to say that, for example, fascist wizards who supported the Nazi cause weren't present and just as well equipped to protect the Holocaust as the liberal/leftist wizards who opposed it were to prevent it.
Obviously the same 'well, there are just two sides that were evenly matched' can't be said of poverty and material insufficiency (and the question of Red Witches is particularly fun to ponder). It's not like those things aren't political choices in our world as well, though, and that's where I think this argument hits home. The wizarding world is static not as in gridlock, with changes occurring slowly because the progressives are balanced by equal and opposition reactionaries, it is static as in frozen. Even if they can't *really* do anything to fix the problems of the muggle world, there is no debate about the way in which one can approach those problems. The wizarding world of Harry Potter is left playing out a tired old two-step of isolationist ideologies. There can be no change for the outside because there is not change inside. It is Britannia isolated and unchanging. It is a cyclic Christ metaphor delivered by way of Moore's Utopia contorted inside of Steve Bannon's Fourth Turning (made more grimly ironic given the age wizards can attain). If it is a power fantasy, it is a grim one, where even those with tremendous power are able to do nothing to change anything, for everything is just as it should be.
Still love the books though. I learned to read for Harry Potter, and I'm sure I'll still return to his Wizarding world.
JK Rowling should watch this video. Excellent work, great ideas and very entertaining as someone who also grew up with H.P. !
I feel like you need to make a video about the prime directive in Star Trek. I also feel like you need to get more subscribers. Way more.
I find it weird that fantastic beasts was made on a an enclopedia
I'm always in a bit of awe when I try to envision the future far after the time we're gone
It's difficult to imagine because of this End of history mentality
As a society dependent species, we desire for stability over anything else
And that usually means wanting your experience with the world and it's behaviours, systems, ideologues etc, to stay exactly how they are now
We can't imagine a life rhat would be so different to us, so we must be at rhe peak of progress with nowhere else to go
But that's not true at all. Those very same sentiments were undoubtedly present, even in the era of our ancient ancestors
It doesn't feel goof to confront the mortality of everything you've ever known, experienced or valued
And the fact life will get on without
But most importantly, we're too dead to have a chance learning what society will be like and that's frustrating
Change is inevitable, and whilst I'm no radicalist, or even centrist - just left leaning, it's something you have to come to terms with due to the fact you're often working actively against what conservatives want, and often already incite to make changes that they wish to keep them as they are
We've been changing and having people complain about said changes, throughout human history
The rights to let women work, the legal elimination of slave labour, and more importantly meritocracy being challenged as a myth
All these problems do fall back to capitalism. It's America in particular who get their influence and power through capitalism, and for that nation it's intrinsic to their way of life, of not just them, but their country too. It's valuable, breeds success and became a patriotic power house of a nation
A lot of their ideologues and actions are filtered through the capitalist lens
A fairly innocent example of this is their customer service standards, and that weird WatchMojo voice that's always uses commercially
They place a LOT of emphases on the institutions that feed into a capitalist structure
The strangely fake, extremely generic and inoffensive way of speaking is a result of the fierce competing in the costumes market
Their blinding optimism, over friendliness (not I had thing in my opinion), is born out of the personas which greatly benefit from the system of capitalsm
Talking and acting in that very specific, loud and almost boisterous way is synonymous with success. It worked for them for the most part
The people who most often do these kind of WatchMojo voices are people trying to advertise to you as a customer specifically
But even when that's not the case of them selling something material; there's still a sense that you are being treated in a customer-friendly manner, just out of the fact such friendliness is a huge part of their socialisation
It's most certainly interesting when you visit from Europe, and the customer service is practically overbearing due to how much focus they have on it
Like please just - just let me use rhe checkout, bag my stuff and go. You don't have to make small talk or be excessively cheerful when I order something like a lemonade. The enthusiasm is wild.
Gone off on a bit of a tangent there but w/e. Additionally what's also ironic to me is how that customer oriented attitude to strangers and the like just isn't a thing and sometimes isn't even well received and successful even in other capitalist nations
An example of this is when Walmart utterly failed to launch their stores in Germany. The culture shock clashing just made it a disaster. Cult-like team exercises and customers complaining the staff were annoying them by trying to talk all the time
I think it's Aldi that has the most global success as a store from Germany, and their approach is just practical and efficient shopping
Doesn't mean customer service exists, but you bag your own stuff, return your own trollies and don't get asked if you need help every five minutes
It's pretty no nonsense and so a quick to shop
Although it's hard to imagine now, those same defining characterics could change in ways, in which we may never guess
It'll be such a different world a century from now
So good!
There are a lot of movies and books series that explore the concept of secret magical worlds. Harry Potter is just the most popular one. I'm just going to talk about one of my favourite book series about secret magical worlds, Skulduggery Pleasant (a book series) and analyse it the way you did it.Honestly, I think it addressed this problem a lot more than Harry Potter. For one, it's obvious that there is a left (yes, the center is seen as good, but there is still a left), with Argeddion in Book 7 wanting to give everyone magic. This makes everyone fear that this will send the world into World War III. Also, it's obvious that the protagonist of the book, Valkyrie is very different from Harry Potter. Valkyrie is, in my opinion, one of the best protagonists. In Book 7, she thinks Argeddion's plans are good, and is conflicted, she still wants to help her friends. Also, a lot of the problems you addressed aren't really there in the series. Most characters in the series don't care about money and they don't need it. They isn't anyone I remember in the series to be poor except maybe Vaurien Scapegrace and even he gets a bit of success. Nobody is that obessed with shopping, and the new books do focus on a character who hates being rich, because he has a brother who is better at him at everything, Omen Darkly, who is again, one of my favourite characters ever, he falls in love with a mortal in Book 11, but she rejects him because of the ideals that go on in her world.Books 7 and 8 particularly revolve around the issue of the separatism. Book 7's villain being Argeddion, and Valkyrie is obviously conflicted about these issues. We see her in Book 7 getting persuaded by her friends, because she believes his plans are good, and this doesn't really change. The world in which Valkyrie goes to is a place where the right have won and the sorcerers are now in charge of the mortals, but the problem (which I didn't think about the first and second time I read the book) is that it is the opposite ideology that Argeddion is following. Mevolent wants to rule the mortals as slaves, and Argeddion wants to live with the mortals in peace. Derek must've thought these two ideologies are similar somehow, because they both advocate against separatism. From what I've described to you, this obviously isn't true. Book 8, on the other hand, thinks that Ravel's plans are this: Mortals are so bad at running the world, we are so good at running our world, therefore we should run the entire world. This is seen as a nonsense ideology, but when you look at it, it really isn't. Unlike in the Harry Potter world, where it is the same capitalist world as our own, most of the leaders (except people like Guild of course), are concerned with problems, and as I said before, there isn't really a class who is poor or anything. The characters think this is bad because they saw a world where this was true, Mevolent's universe, and they were all slaves. It becomes understandable why this is the case, because if you see a world where slavery is top, you would think the ideology is bad. In Book 9, Valkyrie asks Serpine if he will let the mortals run the world after they defeat Mevolent, his response is "No, look at them! Do you really think they can run the world?", and when you look at our current society, yeh, maybe just the way Mevolent done it was wrong.With all this said, it is still one of my favourite series of all time, and in my opinion, the most underrated series ever. I encourage you to start reading it and tell me what you think. I didn't spoil the ending of Book 9 now, did I?
I would genuinely like to know, why do people believe that meritocracy is bad? for example, It seem ideal that the people with the most talent in a particular job should get the highest paying position in that field.
Because meritocracy is a literal joke term used to mock the idea that everyone has a chance. Being born to parents with resources and connections gives a person such a head start that the poor person will almost never even get to the well off person's starting line.
It was a literal joke term that is now being used unsarcastically.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
Subscribed.
i think the weirdest thing is that, i think there is lore fo the native americans ,but it's kinda buried in pottermore
“Rip tumblr”
Well, that aged poorly
To be honest: seen the films but never read the books, I have no interest in doing so anytime soon.
Me, watching this post JKR admitting that she's a terf >
I mean the wizards would probably be experimented on or something if they came out, so can you blame them
I guarantee you within the first month someone would be burned alive... Because the bible said to.
SudenSuddenly, I like even more Harry Potter.
You lost me at your take on modern-day politics. It seems your critique of the series is that it isn’t liberal enough. Do most of your critiques play out the same way? I did not see at the end where you stated how you would improve the world. You called on others and authority figures to handle it by creating movements. I’m not saying you don’t do anything, but you never mentioned how you improve the world. You cannot simplify complex world politics into left=good and centrist/right=evil.
Not that it isn't liberal enough. Partly that it's too liberal
Yeah you can
Yeah, no. Shaun didnt come to the same conclusion independently from this. Its a stretch to interpret left-right thinking into a simple good vs evil story.
Lol, when will you Far Left & Right Types Get it...
The System will never Change as Long as The People at the Top Control things in their own self interest.
Hell, even Far Left Commie's like you guys would throw all your beliefs out of the window if you were given the Power & Capital to do so, just like Every other person who has tried to be "Against the System" in the Past.
All in all, Being Political is a waste of time as Ultimately the Politicians you guys vote in aren't going to change anything Radically, no matter how much you want them to.
They will always act in their own self interest.
Peace.
You dismiss the best explanation in the 1st few minutes. Harry Potter along with Star Wars, Hunger Games, etc are indeed engineered to indoctrinate. These themes are baked into the plot. One can speculate that folks like Rowling, Lucas, etc are merely fronts for committees of writers. Like a Guild of Renaissance craftsmen producing ideological art for the Medici. Is there no better motivational text for Silicon Valley middle managers than Atlas Shrugged? Is not Harry Potter the perfect primer for a generation of supposed "creative class" types? Is there any coincidence in Ender's Game being handed out to supposed "gifted" students?
Firstly, I do admire what JK Rowling has done by making children pick up a book and read even though some might have done it for the wrong reason of just 'conforming' to popular zeitgeist.
Secondly, you are being pedantic with this analysis because you'll run into this same kind of inference about heroic characters in much of fiction that takes place with our modern socio-economic fabric as underlying base line, where they do not concern themselves with 'saving' the entire population. For the purpose of entertaining readers, Rowling's works do succeed but of course upon scrutiny none of it will seem logical. You are right about the Wizards not having a better political system instead just copy-pasting the muggle world's capitalist democracy. But you can look at it another way when you consider that an author creating a whole new world has the luxury of hindsight and privy to control over all the characters, while a real world political system only emerges due to intersecting and non-intersectional reasons coupled with an inherently unpredictable human emotion leading the masses. For e.g as of now the majority of a population in any country is swayed by nationalism and opting for leaders with extreme right sentiments. So basically the wizards have laid a new world for themselves but still lack that one leader who will create an improvement in the socio-economic fabric. Come to think of it, Rowling has a path set out for her to design such a system in sequels if she so desires, but noone really wants to task themselves with such an ordeal, and we arrive right back at your problem of the majority supporting the norm for convenience and ease, really.
Lost interest 10 minutes in. I thought you'd be criticizing the movie in a legit way (which you did at times), but then you start talking about "Why hasn't this happened yet?" Oh, I don't know, maybe because we still have three more movies to go through? I am sure you have valid and very interesting points throughout the video but people should really stop complaining about stuff that hasn't come into play when there's a slight chance they might later on. Wait however many years it takes for them to release the five films to start talking about this stuff. You might be right, and this will end up sucking and will never address issues but I will wait to complain until we have the finished product.
Viewers beware, this video advertises itself as being about the harry potter universe but the author basically just uses the universe as an analogy for the real world to spew political commentary.