chapotraphouse

I've been listening to the shrieking shack podcast, which is a leftist reread of Harry Potter, and holy shit the amount of awful stuff that goes under the radar. Like the centaurs are a sentient tribe leg by a dark skinned, dark hair centaur, and they're basically barbarians, and in book five they "carry Umbridge off into the woods" (invoking SA imagery). The only centaur who likes humans is the blonde white one.

Giants are also sentient, and Hagrid basically kidnaps the one that is his half-brother and forces it to learn English in a very "civilising the savages" kinda way.

There's an unintentional sexist undertone to everything, where pretty girls are vapid and stupid and ugly girls are also stupid, and the only good girls are the plain ones like Hermione.

There's a race of harpy people who are supposed to be really sexy, and in one scene Fleur (who is part harpy) implies that her 11 year old cousin might seduce the 17 year old Harry, and that would just be okay?

The books also really hate fat people and ugly people, saying someone is fat and ugly and short in the Harry Potter books is the main indicator that they're evil.

Also Dumbledore owned slaves and Harry owns a slave and slavery abolition is treated as a joke.

JK Rowling is like one of the worst people who could have possibly seen her level of success.

The absolute scene of a black character being ridiculed by her friends and everyone else for trying to end literal chattel slavery