Harry Potter and the Woman at the Train Station
Or, the Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of J.K. Rowling.
Harry Potter and the Lost Generation
It’s a neo-liberal legend.
Joanna Rowling was a English author that was so powerful and influential that she could use children’s literature to create… man-children. She had such mastery over the written word that she could actually keep them… from ever growing up.
“She could actually… save people… from adulting?”
The left side of the political spectrum is a pathway to many abilities…
“Wh… what happened to her?”
She became so revered among Millennials that, eventually, the only thing she feared was… losing their adoration. Which, eventually, of course, she did. Unfortunately, she told her fans everything that she thought they might want to hear, until one day, she tragically miscalculated. And, then… her Millennial fans cancelled her while she slept.
Ironic… she could use her internet clout to save others… but not herself.
In 1995, struggling single mother Joanne Rowling’s manuscript was being shopped around various English publishing houses. With twelve rejections and years worth of pavement-pounding behind her, there’s little doubt that she must have felt some level of dejection that her first and only writing endeavor - one that had served as something of a life-line, a creative project that offered some escape and catharsis from her constant struggles with poverty and mental health - was failing, time and time again, to catch the attention of anyone who would give it a chance. However, the fates, as we all well know, have a strange sense of humor, and, perhaps somewhat ironically, it wasn’t until her thirteenth pitch that Rowling found the success she’d been looking for.
The series of events has been documented for posterity. Christopher Little - Rowling’s agent - turned to one last publishing house, Bloomsbury Publishing, and handed the manuscript to the head of their children’s literature division, Barry Cunningham. Conveniently omitting the fact that it had been rejected twelve times prior, of course. Cunningham, it seems, was rather lukewarm on the book when he read it, but felt it had promise. So, to get a better opinion on what the target audience might think, he handed the manuscript to CEO and founder of Bloomsbury, Nigel Newton, who in turn gave it to his eight year old daughter, Alice. Alice wrote a small review, which goes as follows: “The excitement in this book made me feel warm inside. I think it is possibly one of the best books an eight- or nine-year-old could read.”
That ringing endorsement was enough for Newton and Cunningham to present the book to the rest of the children’s division, who, after reading the manuscript, were in unanimous agreement - they had a potential hit on their hands. Within only a few scant days, Christopher Little received a call from Cunningham. After ten minutes of negotiation, the rights to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone were sold to Bloomsbury Publishing for the astonishing, eye-watering sum of two-thousand and five-hundred British pounds. Not two hundred thousand - two thousand.
Cunningham recounts, “I said to her – and she teases me about this to this day – you need to get a day job, because you’ll never make any money out of children’s books.”
With that statement, I think we can safely say that Barry Cunningham is in the conversation for winning the title of having made one of the most wrong statements in human history.1
Today, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, with an estimated value of thirty-four billion dollars as a brand, stands as the seventh most profitable intellectual property of all time, eclipsing the likes of Batman, Marvel Comics, and Barbie, and coming short of… Anpanman.
Yeah. You know. Anpanman.
Think I’m kidding?
I don’t get it, either.
These are humble beginnings for a titan of pop culture. For even more context of the slow-burn that was Potter’s ascendency to cultural ubiquity, by the time the second book of the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was released, Rowling had only collected the equivalent of $4,200 American dollars.
She wouldn’t even have qualified for an apartment in Seattle, these days.
In fact, in 1997, the American publishing rights to the series were auctioned to potential buyers, as, much to Nigel Newton and Barry Cunningham’s chagrin, Bloomsbury lacked a North American division, and were unable to publish there themselves. However, to Rowling’s immense surprise, powerhouse publishing firm Scholastic, riding high on the successes of the immensely profitable Goosebumps series, came in and scooped up another winner. At the time, they paid $105,000 for the rights. As Cunningham said about his own meager investment of twenty-five hundred pounds - "It’s the best money we ever spent.”
That’s a pretty incredible story of perseverance, resilience, and a whole heapin’ load of serendipity. It’s the kind of story that just makes you feel good, you know? A classic rags-to-riches tale of a woman struggling to make ends meet who would go on to become one of the wealthiest people on planet Earth for a time, on nothing but hopes, dreams, and a story about a boy wizard. It’s the kind of story that you could imagine being made into a movie. I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t been, yet. I’d like to say they’d probably cast Anya Taylor-Joy as Rowling, because she’s the hot It-Girl of the now, but, at the same time, I could also easily imagine them casting a strong, black, independent, and suitably sassy woman of color who confidently takes no bullshit from those evil, bigoted publishing houses, run by backwards white men who just don’t understand her vision.
But, if that ever comes to pass, we’ll talk about it. The question for today is this…
Who is this mysterious single mother? Where did the idea for Harry Potter even come from? You don’t hear that much about her, these days. How did she go from being one of the wealthiest women and most successful authors in the world to reviled by her erstwhile political allies and hundreds of fans who once held her stories in such high esteem?
Born in Yates, Gloucestershire in the West of England, during the summer of 1965, Joanna Rowling - no middle name given - lived a very ordinary and unassuming childhood. Her father was a member of the Royal Navy, and, after retiring, worked a factory job that, back in those days, could provide his family with a comfortable middle-class existence. She describes herself as being bookish and living in day dreams, and reportedly wrote short-stories to entertain herself from a very young age. Her first attempt at writing - simply titled Rabbit - was a bold start to a promising literary career, which was followed by her second story - The Cursed Seven Diamonds - which was released when she was but the tender age of twelve. Though reviews for her early works are scarce and difficult to find, I can only imagine that Rabbit and The Cursed Seven Diamonds smacked of the potential this budding literary supernova possessed. A self-proclaimed victim of aggressive and demeaning teachers, she would seek refuge in the stories of the fantastic and magical.
As she aged, she found herself drawn to eclectic interests that made her a target of bullies, which only further forced her into a self-constructed shell of escapism. Around this time, at a very formative age, an aunt gave her a copy of the autobiography of Jessica Mitford, who Rowling described as a personal hero.
Jessica Mitford was one of the Mitford Sisters - social activists, authors, and debutantes of the inter-war period. Unlike her sisters, two of whom were avowed fascists, Jessica renounced her privilege to the family’s aristocratic wealth to participate in the Spanish Civil War, and became a card-carrying communist, later moving to the United States and becoming a renowned investigative journalist and deeply intertwining herself with the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s.
Though she and her husband would leave the American Communist Party in 1958, it was only because they felt as though the organization had dwindled in influence and utility, and their goals could be better reached without the dead weight.
This is the woman who Rowling proudly proclaims as the most influential author she’s ever read2. “I think I've read everything she wrote,” she wrote. “I even called my daughter Jessica Rowling Arantes after her.”
Rowling’s mother, Anne, also played a formative part in fostering her creative side, encouraging her to pursue literary endeavors. The two were said to be extremely close. Unfortunately, when Rowling was 15, Anne was diagnosed with a particularly nasty case of Multiple Sclerosis, which forced her to quit her job and relegated her to the house more often than not. This upended Rowling’s life entirely. Her home life deteriorated as her relationship with her father frayed beneath the stress imposed by her mother’s illness. Around this time, Rowling took up an interest in alternative rock and the surrounding subculture, taking up the habit of smoking and adopting a personal style influenced, she says, by Susie Sioux.
I can’t find any pictures. But, I’d love to see them.
Ironically, despite modeling herself after the protean forebear of the modern ‘goth’ e-girl, Rowling did something that few, if any, modern e-girls have ever done, and actually read a book. A lot of them, actually. I’m sure if she had been born in 2005 rather than 1965, she’d have been posting thirst traps on TikTok and baiting simps into sending her cash, but, since the internet was still a fevered, distant dream relegated to the mind’s of the most insane doomsayers locked within the bowels of asylums at the time, she did the logical thing and spend most of her newfound free-time out of the house studying in the school library or local coffee shops. Though a high school teacher described her as, hilariously, not particularly exceptional, her marks were sufficiently high, and she applied to attend Oxford.
She was rejected. Instead, she attended the University of Exeter.
There, Rowling freely admits that she pretty much went through the motions and spent most of her time socializing, which, given the typical college experience, probably meant smoking weed, getting belligerently drunk, and getting bizz-ay with the co-eds. She cheesed her way through four years to get a degree in French.
Afterwards, Rowling's humdrum life continued at pace. She moved to London, got a job as a secretary - one that, too her credit, was for an office that worked with French companies and did need that “useless degree” she got - and lived in this flat there, this flat here, so on and so forth, moving around with friends and partners and generally living an average, mundane life of a work-a-day stiff.
In other words - she was a wagie.
Truly, a fate worse than death.
During this time, Rowling wrote adult fiction during her free time, but often found it difficult to find inspiration or motivation to finish a product, if not too busy, too tired, or too stressed to really put pen to paper some days. As an avid writer myself with a 9-to-5 - I can sympathize.
If Rowling was content to live such a mundane existence, we do not know. But her fate was not in her hands - greater powers had other ideas in mind. Like most of those thrust suddenly into greatness, Rowling's journey began humbly and without warning, starting her down a path that would lead to success and prosperity the likes of which I truly do not think she could have ever dreamed of, even in her most absurd and outlandish dreams.
That journey, perhaps fittingly, began at a Manchester train station on a balmy summer's eve. There, Rowling sat alone, annoyed, and anxious, waiting for a long delayed train that was bound for London. In the advent of the smart phone, there wasn't much to do when a train was late save for do some light-reading, or, maybe, if one felt particularly brave, actually talk to someone. Terrifying, I know. Well, prospective conversational partners were sparse, and Rowling was operating on a tight budget, which meant that she couldn't even spare a quid for a paper. There wasn't much to do aside from let her mind wander. As she mulled over things of no great importance, her eyes listlessly drifting about and absently taking in the details of her surroundings, something distinctly out of place caught her eye. There, on the opposite platform, she saw a motley trio of young teens, plain as day - a tall, gangly ginger, short, mousy girl with bushy hair and thick brows, and a bespectacled boy, scrawny in build, bearing a strange scar visible through the black hair on plastered to his forehead with sweat. The three young teens wore odd, black robes over what looked to be school uniforms, replete with silk ties of a brilliant gold and scarlet color, standing beside old, antiquated pieces of luggage packed tight with their belongings. They chatted aimlessly with one another for a minute or so until the boy with glasses - he seemed to notice Rowling watching. The two met eyes for a moment. He gave her a queer look, almost as if he thought that, for some reason, she shouldn't be able to see him, and it was odd that she could.
The sound of the approaching train momentarily seized Rowling's attention. She looked to see the long-awaited for train, rumbling down the tracks. When she looked back to the boy - no one was there.
Two names - Harry Potter - seemed to just appear in her mind, as if put there by some foreign intelligence. As she stepped onto the train, she found her chest burning with a familiar sensation. One she hadn't felt in many, many years - arguably since the time she sat down to pen The Cursed Seven Diamonds. It was strange, almost alien, in a way, after being absent for so many years. Rowling had almost forgotten that it was a sensation that she could feel. But, as the train lurched and started for London, she stared at the very spot she thought she'd seen the strangely dressed boy with the odd scar and his friends standing on the platform. It was then that she knew what she was going to do.
Yes - Joanna Rowling knew, then and there, that she was going to write a book. And this time? She would finish it.
Pretty neat origin story, huh?
Just one problem.
I had you going there, though, didn’ I? C’mon. It’s okay. You can admit it. There’s no shame in falling for such a masterful ruse. I am quite the adept bamboozler.
Now, I must amend my statement and say that, actually, the train story did happen. Apparently. I just took some artistic liberties with the details, because outside of J.K. Rowling had the idea for Harry Potter while waiting for a train in Manchester, details are quite scant, because the internet is flooded with low-effort click-bait articles that all regurgitate the same base-level information. I remember back in the day when you could type in just about anything and find the information you were looking for, but these days, you have to sift through fifteen pages of bot-generated listicles and Amazon items just to even find anything written by a human. I digress.
I had to take extreme efforts - by which I mean, I had to go to the second page of Google search results - to find this gem, which was about the only article that even had a scrap of information more than just Rowling was at a train station. Which is actually an excerpt from a book. This is good, because I would actually like to read books to do research, but I’m a bit strapped for time these days and I also ain’t buyin’ nothin’. Anyways, citing a New York Times interview with Rowling that’s behind a paywall now, Rowling is quoted as saying, “It was the most incredible feeling… out of nowhere, it just fell from above. I could see Harry very clearly; this scrawny little boy, and it was the most physical rush of excitement. I’ve never felt that excited about anything to do with writing. I’ve never had an idea that gave me such a physical response.”
So, not exactly the schizophrenic hallucination I was hoping for, but, hey. Close enough.
By the time Rowling arrived in London, she’d already begun to sketch out what she wanted the story to look like.
“By the end of that train journey I knew it was going to be a seven-book series. I know that’s extraordinarily arrogant for somebody who had never been published but that’s how it came to me.”
I don’t think that’s arrogant - just a sign of an overactive imagination. I regularly come up with multi-part, sprawling fantasy epics in my mind when I’m driving through the barren wastes of Texas or Eastern Washington. When you move out here, no one tells you that almost everything between Seattle and Spokane looks like this:
Again - I digress.
Anyways, Rowling claims to have quite literally had the entire series from beginning to end mapped out in her head by the time her train got to London. The broad-strokes at least. I remember her saying as much when the final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released, when she claimed that she knew exactly how the series would end from the moment she conceived of it. I believe that. To most writers, endings tend to come in one of two ways - either they remain elusive, evasive, and difficult to coax out, like a skittish and ill-tempered cat, or they come bounding out of nowhere like an oversized dog, bowl over you, and refuse to leave you alone.
For the next five years, Rowling would work on Harry Potter, on and off. If anything can be said about her talents, she is nothing if not thorough - she quite literally sketched out not just the plot lines for almost all the books well in advance of writing any of them, chapter by chapter, but meticulously built the setting of the Wizarding World around it, down to drawing maps of various places, diagrams, and charts depicting different spells and other such things.
She even drew her own sketches of the characters, some of which served as inspiration for the iconic art at the beginning of each chapter.
So, whenever anyone tells you that world-building is a waste of time - you can show them this as proof otherwise. I will say that modern authors - especially amateurs - are prone to often getting hung up on world-building because, hey, it’s fun. I get that. But there comes a time where you have to actually, y’know - write the story that takes place in the world, unless you’re writing a lore book for a table-top role-playing game, or something. So, I really do have to give Rowling credit where it’s due. Big ups to her for spending so much time fleshing out the setting and the skeleton for the story and then actually following through on it.
The world-building in Harry Potter is often cited as one of the most influential and enjoyable parts of the Harry Potter world. And, when it comes to the books, I would agree. The setting of Hogwarts and the Wizarding World are almost characters unto themselves. It’s difficult to read the books and watch the movies and not want to see more, or even dream about what it must be like to spend some time in a world populated with such colorful character, fearsome beasts, and amazing sights. Don’t lie - if you read the books, you knew exactly which house you wanted to be in, you knew exactly which professor you’d be tight with, you knew exactly which subjects you excel at (and, conversely, fail miserably at), and, because female characters were kind of scarce in the beginning, if you didn’t have a crush on Hermione - which, yes, you did, don't lie - you had a vividly detailed image of your own Original Character (Do Not Steal) Witch - or perhaps Wizard, if you swing that way - that you’d be sweet on.
I mean, when we were teenagers, didn’t we all imagine ourselves being sorted into Ravenclaw, since they were the house for more… intelligent, intellectual, cerebral students, with a talent for Defense Against the Dark Arts (I’d whip a dementor’s ass, without a patronus), and having a diverse and varied selection of fetching Hogwarts ladies coming after us for a taste of the magic? Wasn’t it totally normal to write two-hundred thousand words worth of fanfiction about your own wizard self-insert and his romantic escapades with a wily Slytherin vixen, a bookish, awkward Hufflepuff, and a domineering Gryffindor upperclassman?
No? Just me?
Tell you what - if you’re all very good boys and girls, and you behave… well, I might be able to dredge up something special that I’m fairly certain you’ll all get a laugh out of. At my expense. But I’ve never been above making a fool of myself for the entertainment of my peers.
It’s because I love you, you know.
We’ll touch on the finer points of Hogwarts and the wider Wizarding World at a later date, but, for now, suffice to say, there’s a reason that it captured the imaginations of so many.
Returning back to the woman who wrote it, one must wonder if that sudden bolt of inspiration, perhaps divinely fashioned by one of the fine and delicate fingers of the muses, was not some sort of gift - an offering of clemency, or, perhaps, a shield, of a kind. A fantastical refuge, like those she once escaped to in her youth. You see, she’d seen need a place to seek solace from the world, as things were about to get very bad for Rowling, very fast.
1990 was a year that would change Rowling’s life in many ways. 1991, as she describes it, in her own words, as a year of misery. She begun to unknowingly walk the path that would bring her to Potter, but it would not be an easy one to tread. Shortly after that fortuitous train-ride, she moved to Manchester with her boyfriend at the time, and worked various temporary jobs at the University there, as well more secretarial work at the city’s chamber of commerce. Though the works was menial, it was tolerable.
Then, in December of 1990, an already bad year saved one last wicked surprise for her - her mother passed away, succumbing to complications from Multiple Sclerosis. As if to compound insult to injury, some of her mother’s personal effects were stolen, her boyfriend broke up with her, and her job with the chamber of commerce became, as she said, redundant, and she was out the door of both her work and her flat.
Ouch.
In a fit of desperation to escape the downward spiral she’d been thrust into, Rowling packed her bags and moved to Porto, Portugal, where she’d hastily accepted a job teaching English to adults at night classes. During the day, she’d continue to work on the first draft of Harry Potter. Within half a year of relocating to Porto, Rowling met Portuguese television journalist, Jorge Arantes. Several pictures of the two are public, and, in each one of them, I noticed a constant theme - Rowling looks deeply, profoundly, unmistakably miserable in each one.
Anyone with a pair of functioning eyes can tell that she was not in a good place in her life when she and Arantes met. So… why not get married?
She and Arantes married in October of 1992. In July of the next year, her aforementioned daughter, Jessica, was born. Only a handful of months later, in November, Arantes would throw her out of the house, and she’d return with the police to claim her things and her daughter. Though the couple separated, they did not legally divorce until 1995, after Arantes came to England seeking to take his daughter to Portugal, and was promptly slapped with a restraining order. Rowling described their marriage as short and catastrophic. She claimed that Arantes didn’t allow her to have a house key, and often used the manuscript for Harry Potter as leverage to keep her in line, threatening to destroy it if she didn’t comply with his wishes.
For his part, in a 2020 interview with The Sun, Arantes stated, “I slapped Joanne — but there was not sustained abuse. I’m not sorry for slapping her.”
Though I will say The Sun is tabloid trash and the article reads like a hit-piece, by all accounts, Arantes is not the most charming man in the world.
By December of 1993, Rowling had once again relocated from Porto to Edinburgh, Scotland, where she took refuge with her sister. With her sister recently married, Rowling chose to seek long-term lodging elsewhere, and rented a flat she described as mouse-ridden and decrepit. Jobless, she collected a small government pittance of roughly $103 U.S. dollars a week. She described herself as being as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. Needless to say, being a penniless single mother is not exactly great for one’s mental health. She credits her daughter as being the only thing in her life that pulled her through that time. After finding herself seriously contemplating suicide, Rowling sought professional help and, after months of intensive therapy. Generous donations from friends enabled her to secure better lodging for her and her daughter, as well as enroll in teaching courses, as she had decided to go into the field of education, as she’d long considered doing. On one hand, I can’t imagine any worse for someone with suicidal ideations than a public school, but… well, it takes all types, I suppose.
It was around this time in 1994 that Rowling feverishly worked to finish the manuscript of the first Harry Potter book, eager to bring it to completion before her courses began and her free time would diminish. She did, indeed, finish the manuscript, take her courses, secure a teaching certificate, and gained employment teaching at Leith Academy in 1996.
By that time, Harry Potter was already published, but earning her very little in the way of significant profits, as explained above. As also explained before, in 1997, Scholastic Publishing would buy the rights to the Potter books, and, on September 1st, 1998, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone would irrevocably change the landscape of American literature. The name had been altered from The Philosopher’s Stone - a real piece of alchemical, occult folklore - to Sorcerer’s, I assume because Sorcerer’s Stone has a better ring to it. Also, philosopher is a bit of a tricky word for kids, and, generally -
While Harry Potter's initial release in Rowling’s native England was modestly successful, it was a slow burn. It took only a handful of months for American children, however, to make a decision - they fucking loved Harry Potter. By December, the book was on the New York Times best-seller list.
Due to Rowling’s diligent work ethic and careful pre-planning, she was able to churn out the sequels in short order with the speed of a line cook geeking on Colombian snow. The second installment, The Chamber of Secrets, was released in England the year of The Sorcerer’s Stone in America, followed by the The Prisoner of Azkaban in 1999 and, my personal favorite of the lot, The Goblet of Fire in 2000, before slowing down to meticulously edit the next - The Order of the Phoenix - which wouldn’t see a release until 2003.
Also, while we’re at it, I just want to say that the covers for those first four books? Utterly immaculate.
From the first installment to the fourth, illustrator Mary GrandPré’s unique and highly-stylized art truly captured the more fantastical feel of the early novels, and I love the way that she crams so many plot important elements into such a small space, leaving the reader to wonder what all they are and how exactly they fit into the narrative before the book is evened opened. Of course, as the wonder and whimsy of the Wizarding World gave way to more sober and mature thematic elements, the cover art, while still impressive and beautiful in their own right, changed to become more sedate, more simple, and the art-style (slightly) more realistic, and lost much of the fantasy spark that made the first four so special.
Fast-forwarding to 2018, things were going swimmingly for Rowling - now widely known as J.K., since she added the middle name Kathleen in order to have an abbreviated pen name, as requested by Bloomsbury Publishing, who wanted her to write under a gender-neutral pseudonym because, apparently, they believed young boys would not want to read a book written by a woman. Tsk tsk, Bloomsbury - very backwards of you.
Rowling was happily remarried and enjoying the lofty status of being the best-selling living author in the entirety of the United Kingdom, accruing a tidy sum of an estimated £820 million. Not bad for a woman of ordinary means with a story to tell, huh?
In 2011, she wrote her first non-Potter and inaugural adult-oriented fiction, called The Casual Vacancy, and, in 2013, began publishing mystery novels under the psuedonym Robert Gilbraith, featuring a detective named Cormoran Strike. The first - The Cuckoo’s Calling - only sold a meager fifteen hundred copies at release. Then, intrepid internet investigators discovered (or, perhaps, were strategically told, if you catch my drift), the true identity of Robert Gilbraith. Naturally, sales spiked. I can’t speak to the quality of these books, as I haven’t read them, but I’ve been told that some of them are quite good. The latest mystery featuring the character Strike was released earlier this year, and the fourth adaptation of one of the novels wrapped up in 2022, which suggests that she certainly isn’t hurting to find an audience outside of the Potter crowd with her adult fiction.
Even if her dalliances with adult fiction had failed, I assume that Rowling wouldn’t have been strapped for cash, or opportunities. Ever since 2013, she’d been raking in dough from royalties stemming from the Fantastic Beasts line of spin-off movies that, while being less than fantastic in quality, still performed fantastically at the box office, up until the most recent installment. She’d even penned a follow-up to the main series of novels itself in the form of a 2016 West End stage-play called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which… oh, boy.
This trashfire deserves a write-up unto itself. Suffice to say, if it looks bad? It plays out even worse. And it went down like a douche-flavored Bertie Bott’s Ever-Flavor Jelly Bean with the fans.
But, hey - we all have our off days, right?
Well, J.K. Rowling was going to have a really off day one fateful night that year. Just as she had no idea what kind of fortune she was about to discover when she dreamed up Harry and his friends at that lonely Manchester train station in the summer of 1990, I believe she had no way of knowing the whirlwind she was about to unleash when she clicked that little red like button on a small, insignificant tweet that claimed transwomen are just men in dresses.
Again - the clockwork wheels of fate began to turn once more.
I don’t want to get into Rowling’s politics.
I will, but I don’t really want to.
Not because there isn’t enough of it to talk about. Conversely, there’s way too damn much of it. Her political views have a fucking individual Wikipedia article separate from her own, which I have been putting off reading because, honestly? Part of me doesn’t really care, and even the part of me that genuinely wants to write the best, most insightful article still dreads the prospect of having to hack through a slog like that. And then comprehend it.
Look, I’ll just say it like it is - Rowling is not a reserved woman. If she has an opinion on something, she will let you know, regardless of whether you asked or not. She joined Twitter in 2009, and has accrued 16.5 thousand posts, which, if my math is correct, means she tweets on average about three times a day. She has three genre’s of tweets - posting various tidbits of extraneous lore that often contradict previously established facts, snide commentary on current political events, and getting into internet fights.
Even before Twitter, she had her own blog and actively posted on various websites before the Eternal September of 2008. The woman was terminally online before that was even a thing.
If I was her publishing agent, I would have been doing everything I possibly could to keep this lady away from a keyboard and a stable internet connection at all costs.
This is all to say - we have a very, very detailed image of Ms. Rowling’s political convictions. I’ll give you the skinny.
Blairite.
She’s a Blairite neo-liberal and a card-carrying member of the Labour Party, which, to crudely butcher a very nuanced political topic, is to British politics what the Democrats are to American politics. For those unaware, Tony Blair was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007, who’s tenure was longer than any other save for Margaret Thatcher. Like Thatcher, he experienced wildly varying levels of popularity, and trying to make an honest assessment of his time is difficult, especially for a foreigner. He was, however, a neo-liberal to the core - a guy who was all about expanding social programs, but also, always willing to toss his fellow countrymen into meatgrinders overseass, as no one was a bigger ally to Big Daddy Dubya than Tony Blair when it came to the War in the Middle East.
Despite being the equivalent of a British Democrat - again, I know I’m grossly oversimplifying the matter - I seem to remember him and Walker, Texas Ranger getting along quite swimmingly. Then again, I was also young at the time, and if I was just beginning to understand American politics, British politics were far beyond my scope of comprehension. I recall actually thinking Tony Blair was the President of Britain when I saw him on TV with Bush.
Given that Rowling is something of a problem child among the Rainbow Bloc, it’s interesting to note Blair was also the prime minister that really kicked open the door to LGBT politics and passed sweeping reform in their favor.
I can’t find any evidence that she even dissented against the Invasion of Iraq, which, from what I understand as an American with limited comprehension of British politics, was what drove a schism between the neo-liberals and the true leftists in the Labour Party to begin with, which means she must have really towed the Pro-Blair line. Perhaps in a bit of revisionist history, she claims on Twitter to have wanted to march against Iraq, refering to the massive, global protests against the invasion of Iraq - and effort largely spearheaded by the United States and the United Kingdom - but says she was eight months pregnant and couldn’t, because getting in the middle of a political fracas when you’re ready to pop like an overripe tomato with a baby is probably not the best idea.
But, I ask you, Miss Rowling - were you? Were you really eight months pregnant at the time?
Well, I put on my fact checking hat, because Snopes ain’t the only one who can work some Google-fu, and I started running the dates. Now, there were many, many marches and protests held to defy the invasions of Iraq, but the largest of them, coordinated on a global scale across six hundred cities, was held on February 15th, 2003. The below image was taken from the protests in London, which, as you can imagine, was indicative of how the public had turned against Blair only a scant year or two after he enjoyed a lofty approval rate higher than any other prime minister.
Rowling has three children - Jessica, David, and Mackenzie. Jessica was born in 1993, and Mackenzie in 2005, but David?
David Gordon Rowling-Murray. And he was born in what year? Why… 2003. And the day?
Well, butter my monkey and call me a biscuit’s uncle. The verdict is in. J.K. Rowling really did have a valid excuse for not attending the Iraqi War protests. And that fact? Is checked.
If you want a real Q-tier conspiracy theory, look at her son’s name. David Gordon Rowling-Murray. Well, would you believe me if I told you that she was such a good Blairite that she’s personal friends with Blair’s chancellor, buddy, and successor, Gordon Brown, to the degree that she named her son after him?
Because she is.
Being a good neo-liberal, she thinks that Donald Trump is a dire threat to “our” democracy (though she’s not an American), and compared him to Voldemort, so, if you were ever wondering who started that trend… well, now we know who to blame. Naturally, she also thinks that Putin is now also Voldemort, and she believes that Brexit was headed by racists and bigots. You know. Pretty garden variety neo-lib beliefs. And, she’s always been eager to keep up with the current year, as it was.
Remember when she just dropped the little factoid that Dumbledore was a homosexual out of the blue? In the middle of a public book-reading, no less? Like, Oh, yeah. Dumbledore? He’s a fruit. Thought you should know. Anyways, here’s Wonderwall.
That was in October, 2007. Oh, that was also the year that the Sexual Orientation Act was passed in the United Kingdom, which outlawed the discrimination in the provision of goods, services, education, facilities, and public functions on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Just a funny coincidence, I suppose.
Let’s be clear. She did that for brownie points. She did it for the the clout. She wanted to be seen as a good ally as the stigma around the LGBT bloc began to thaw, so, she just kind of decided to retcon her own work so it would be more amenable to modern audiences.
She does it so much it’s become a running joke.
Here’s that fun fact about Moaning Myrtle, if you wanted to know. Word of warning: don’t watch if your sensitive to crass humor, or Gilbert Gottfried’s voice.3
She caught similar flack from saying that Hermione was always intended to be of African descent in response to criticism for Hermione being race-swapped in the stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
You, uh… you sure about that, Jo?
Because, I mean, you did draw this yourself in the manuscript, and she looks awful pale compared to ol’ Gary, there.
The point is, Rowling is always looking for ways to keep in the good graces of her fans, and the wider culture at large, never overstepping her boundaries and saying anything too radical, but always pushing the boundaries just far enough to be safely transgressive in a very calculated way that wouldn't damage her reputation. What she was and wasn’t willing to support - openly and proudly, at least - was always whatever was acceptable in the neo-liberal purview at the time.
Until… until…
Well, despite being a life-long Labour lover, Rowling has split with the party in recent years after the ascendancy of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the party. Now, Jeremy Corbyn is not a neo-liberal - he’s an out-and-out Progressive. As someone who has, at various times, been called a champagne socialist, openly flirted with socialistic ideas, and openly idolizes a literal communist to the point she named her daughter after her, it strikes me as strange that she think Corbyn is too left for her tastes.
But -
Ah. There it is.
You’re probably aware of the offending opinions that took Rowling from a good, reliable Neo-Liberal apparatchik to persona non grata. She’s a TERF - a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. She says she’s not, and, honestly, I believe her when she says it. I don't think Rowling believes she is a TERF. But I also know plenty of pricks that think they're the nicest people on planet Earth. Just because Rowling doesn't fit her own definition of TERF doesn't mean she doesn't meet the criteria for many other people's concept of the term. And, these days, it's not hard at all to do that. Believe it or not, I've seen transwomen who have been called TERFs for supporting laws that make would ban gender transition surgery and medication for anyone under 18, so, if even a trans person can qualify as a TERF, you'd best believe anyone can.
For Rowling’s been quoted as saying, "Sex is real and has lived consequences. I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them.”
And, again, I believe she means that. I believe that Rowling has it in her head that one can both support the trans cause while also preserving a particular stripe of the women’s lib movement strictly for cisgender women. I’m not entirely sure if that’s possible, and, to be blunt, whether it is or isn’t is not under the purview of this article. I have no interest in trying to split that particular hair until I come to an answer. When it comes to infighting in these particular circles, I just watch the fireworks from afar and don’t engage. Which of them is correct is often a moot point - it doesn’t matter which side may quote-unquote win the argument, if there’s anything to be won. My personal take on this kind of stuff is and always has been and most likely always will be:
I do think Rowling is sincere in her passionate support for women’s rights. I do believe that she genuinely believes that the inclusion of trans individuals into the political sphere of women’s rights is an existential threat to women’s rights. Most of her concern, when she speaks on the topic, is the disappearance of women-only spaces - cisgender women, I mean - and the easy abuse that could lead to if a man with untoward intentions, be they genuinely trans or otherwise, could use to gain easy access to vulnerable women. To which, I’ll say this - that’s a perfectly valid concern.
I think, however, most of her supposed vitriol against the trans bloc is just her trolling, done to take the piss out people who are annoying her. She is not a person who takes personal sleights lightly. She isn’t the type of person who walks away from an argument. Look at her Twitter, and you’ll see that she’s very much the kind of person who has great difficulty ceding the last word to someone else. She always wants to get one last jab in once she gets into a spat.
Knowing that, I believe that when she goes on Twitter and says purposefully inflammatory things like “Merry TERF-mas”, or “I march for LGB Rights” (notice the conspicuous lack of T in that acronym), or posts something like this:
I don’t think she does it out of some deep, seething hatred for trans individuals. Really, I don’t. I think that it’s just her natural, knee-jerk reaction to being taunted. She gets taunted? She taunts back. The first word that comes to mind is petulant, to be brutally honest.
And, look. To her credit - I get it. Shit-stirring morons with a panoply of byzantine pride flags and pronouns in their Twitter bio filling your feed with ad hominems, death threats, yeah, I bet that gets annoying after a while. And I get the desire to have a little fun at their expense. We do a little trolling, after all. We call it, we do a little trolling. But, at the same time, her most frequent come-back to these spats is to brag about how much money she has or her latest royalty check, which often comes off as more petulant and puerile than genuinely witty or sharp.
There was, however, one particularly brutal one I saw but can’t find now where someone tweeted at her Do you know how many people have Harry Potter tattoos they now regret and can’t remove them? As if, somehow, these people choosing to get fucking Dobby tattooed on their left ass-cheek was someone Rowling’s responsibility. Rowling replied with something along the lines of, Are you telling me these people had a irreversible body modification performed without considering the long term ramifications? That’s unfortunate. I can think of similar cases.
Fucking cold.
I don’t know how to break it to these people, but they should have regretted getting Harry Potter tattoos a long, long time ago, for very different reasons.
By the way… you think the people who get this kind of shit permanently inked onto their extremities ever just wake up and feel like -
Because I would hope they do.
Tattoo discourse aside, for as much as Rowling likes to flaunt her fat stacks of cash, she doesn’t seem to understand that there is a very the easy solution her problem with the Twitterati.
It’s not like her income is generated from Twitter interactions. If they did, she’d be more loaded as Mansa fucking Musa, but they don’t, and, really, it’s beneath a woman who’s got more money than entire Sub-Saharan African countries to be hurling shit like an angry chimp at faceless nobodies on the internet all day. She should be on some private island in the Aegean, or drinking tea on her front lawn on that nice private estate of hers, being waited on hand and foot by actual, literal handmaidens, while the little Twitter-piggies roll in the virtual mud. It’s what I’d be doing if I had her money. Man, if I had Rowling’s cash, I wouldn’t even have a Twitter account, because I'd be doing better things with my time than wasting it on social media.
Actually, that’s a lie. I would have a Twitter account, but I’d only use it for the express purpose of tweeting out something like, Jungkook is Gay #BTS or Olivia Rodrigo is better than Taylor Swift #Swifties #Rodrigals or some such inflammatory shit, then just turn my phone off, sit back in my padded, luxury, leather recliner-cum-massager while my private lear jet takes off, bound for my private Swiss chalet deep within the Alps, while a personal maid dressed in the robes of a Vestal priestess feeds me grapes like I’m some sort of Roman emperor, warmed by the sensation of knowing a thousand BTS stans and Swifties are currently tapping out fevered replies on phones with broken screens from their filthy hovels while I’m flying across the Pacific, or perhaps lapsing into violent, apoplectic fits of pure rage.
Yeah. That’s what I’d do.
But I’d certainly never engage with any of them. You know why? There’s a Nigerian proverb that a friend of similar extraction told me. It always stuck with me.
"You cannot run naked after a mad man in the street after he has taken your clothes away from you because the public will not know who is the mad person between the two of you.”
Real ones know.
But Rowling is the type of person who will engage in a full-bore sprint down the high road in the middle of rush hour clad in nothing but her birthday suit after a lunatic with her clothes just to get the brief dopamine hit of posting an epic clapback on Twitter. Hell, she’ll chase a mad man even if he hasn’t stolen her clothes, just to chase them. She’s like one of those dogs that, if you pass by their fence, they’ll chase you from one side to the other, barking and yapping the whole time if you catch their eye. You just wind her up and watch her go. Simply put - you poke her, she’ll slap you across the face.
So, like I said - I don’t think Rowling really, truly harbors a strong disdain for the vast majority of trans people in her heart. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she lays awake at night tossing and turning, wracked by fitful dreams of the day when T is finally dropped from the ever-growing acronym of the Rainbow Bloc's name, but, given her at least tacit support of sexual minorities stretching back long before it was in vogue to do so, I tend to doubt it.
If anything, she strikes me as someone who wouldn’t even care about the whole trans issue so much if so many of them weren’t constantly poking and prodding her on Twitter for a reaction. If it hadn’t become such a sore spot for her and bruised her ego, she wouldn’t still be talking about it. Sure, she’d fire off a few opinions here and there, as per her nature, but, at the same time, I also think that if no one had made so much to-do about her statements, she’d have moved on to something else to post about.
None of this is meant to cast personal aspersions against Rowling's character. Though many would characterize her as a firebrand, it wouldn't be controversial to claim her to possess an argumentative streak a mile-wide, I've also read that she's reasonably pleasant, easy to talk to, and generous, almost to a fault. In fact, she's one of only a handful of individuals to be taken off Forbes’ list of billionaires, partially due to a high tax burden imposed by the United Kingdom, but also due to charitable contributions to a laundry list of organizations. And, really, let's be real - if it's true she lost her billionaire status due to actually paying taxes… well, shit, she really is a fuckin’ saint, because usually people who make her types of mad cash spend a pretty penny on lawyers who dissect every word of the tax code to ensure they pay as little as legally possible, and, personally, every god damn penny of my future fortune is going to an off-shore bank account in a Caribbean island country 99% of people have never even heard of. Or under my mattress.
In all earnest, though, while contributing to charity does not automatically qualify someone as a “good person”, I do think that Rowling is, if nothing else, a very giving individual, and her charitable donations are laudable, regardless what one may think about her personal character. I should also mention she's tossed some cheddar to the Labour Party, too.
But, most of it was charitable. Most of it. And I respect that.
But, for as charitable as she is with the less fortunate, she is far less so with her enemies. And I think she really does herself a disservice, getting into insult-laced tussles with internet strangers. There are better ways to support your causes than engaging in winding Twitter threads, exchanging blows with malicious, bad actors that are really just looking to cause problems and spoiling for a fight - especially if you have money on the level that Rowling does.
Rather than argue with someone about whether or not transwomen should be allowed in women's shelters, why not donate to a cause that supports housing for battered, cisgendered women exclusively? And, since such places are quite literally banned legally in many places, why not contribute to causes or organizations that seek to repeal such laws? Or speak on their behalf at events and fundraisers, speaking to people who can actually, y'know, maybe do something to make some change rather than speak down to a bunch of pissants on the internet?
EDIT: Which she did. Which, I admit, is a glaring omission on my part4, and I’m not exactly sure how I missed it, but I definitely don’t want to leave the record uncorrected. Clearly, Rowling is willing to back up her bark with some bite, and, when I said I believe she’s genuine about her passion for helping other women out of bad situations similar to her own; here’s the evidence.
Apparently, somehow also opening this shelter is a bad thing, to some people, considering that I found multiple articles criticizing the move, one of which by the Independent that labeled the charity as a backwards monument of hate. Pretty stone cold terminology to ascribe to a battered women’s shelter, don’t you think?
Now, I’d still suggest that Rowling, y’know - tone it down a little bit with the Tweets, but, at the same time, for the rest of us who don’t have the means to just up and open a brand new women’s shelter, or whatever our cause d’etre may be… well, I wrote previously about the importance of getting involved in local politics. In a world where most people are content to bitch on the internet rather than take substantive action, you can do more than you think with much less effort than you'd ever expect.
A lot of precious time, energy, thought, and effort is wasted on the internet arguing these days. I understand the appeal. Really, I do. But the problem with flinging shit at others is that you get your own hands dirty in the process. A lot of the times, the shit they fling at you really isn't worth the effort to pick up and throw back. Especially when, as it is often the case on the internet, said shit-flinger is acting in bad faith, and has no greater intention of having a debate or discussion, but only seeks to incense you. It just isn't worth it. After all these years, we seem to have forgotten this sage bit of wisdom from the Internet equivalent of the bronze age - don't feed the trolls.
And, apparently - somehow - this quote has been attributed to Oscar Wilde in recent years, which, I mean… come on. Use your brain. Not only can I find zero evidence he actually said such a thing, but it doesn't even sound like something he would say. It's just an oldhead truism from 4chan.
Anyways, the block button, as it's often been said, is your friend. Attention is currency - use it judiciously. And, sometimes, the proper way with people that constantly picking fights with Rowling - and perhaps Rowling herself, if you get on her bad side - regardless of what side of the political of the spectrum, is as simple this:
Otherwise, you might as well just give the mad man your clothes, open the door, step aside, and say, After you.
So - we explored what made Rowling so controversial. What’s happened since? Has she suffered any? How has it effected the future of the Harry Potter franchise?
Long story short? It hasn’t.
Let’s get this clear, right off the bat - there is no fall to J.K. Rowling’s rise.
Not yet, anyways.
There’s a lot of talk about the rise and fall of Rowling’s career, but, make no mistake, despite all the venom and vitriol leveled against her by her erstwhile political allies and fans, the woman is still sitting exceedingly pretty. She continues to collect royalties from a variety of revenue streams that keep her fortune padded, and I reckon she probably makes more in a day than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes combined. She has not been disenfranchised from her own creation, as much as some would like it to be so, and, even if she was, after selling an estimated total of six-hundred million books over the course of the years, I think she’s accrued enough money to live lavishly for the rest of her earthly existence.
The Harry Potter franchise is still moving books by the thousands. New movies, video games, and an entire television series are currently gestating in the dark womb of the wicked Warner Brother’s studios. For all the fans that abandoned her, legions still remain steadfast in the defense of her honor, many in spite of their staunch political convictions, which speaks to just how dedicated to the series they really are. As mentioned above, her adult fiction is selling perfectly well, or, at the very least, enough to warrant several BBC series.
Do not weep for Ms. Rowling - she has nothing to be pitied for.
However, since that woefully ill-advised trip to Twitter in 2018, which I like to assume was done while she was counting bricks of money in her remote and stately English manor, or perhaps lounging on the deck of her yacht, there has been a dedicated effort to create a fall for Ms. Rowling. Cancel-pigs, as I’ve heard them dubbed as of late, have been salivating at the prospect of finally bringing down a titan of culture like Rowling and the succulent meal that could be had from it. Why, I imagine a catch like Rowling could feed a tribe of Twitter Cancel-pigs for years to come. It wouldn’t be a feather in their cap so much as a whole damn peacock tail.
I don’t want to say that no one is beyond cancelling. Given the severity of some crimes, I’m just not sure that’s a thing. Plenty of people even more powerful than Rowling have had their careers utterly obliterated for lesser transgressions. Conversely, plenty of people who committed actual crimes - heinous ones, at that - have managed to rebound, and even experience some degree of rehabilitation in the public eye, sickening as it is.
Really, it all depends on if the media apparatus of the American politburo decides if the cancelled individual deserves to be cancelled or not. To escape a social media damnatio memoriae, you must be either useful to the machine and make too much money for it to discard, or, you appeal to the… humanity of the people who operate it. It’s warped, but it’s there. They tend to save those that remind them most of themselves.
Case in point.
Rowling is fortunate. Very fortunate. If the Potter cash cow wasn’t still bearing milk, I have little doubt that Warner Brothers, Scholastic, and the other corporate leash-holders that own the rights to Harry Potter would have cut her loose long ago. Not to say that she’d be destitute - after all, Notch, the creator of Minecraft, has been quote-unquote cancelled several times for saying things and holding beliefs that are slightly right-of-center, and, despite no longer being involved with anything Minecraft, still collects a fat paycheck from the residuals every so often. But, by the point at which Notch was shooting off his mouth on Twitter and practically painting a target on his own back, he had already voluntarily stepped away from Minecraft’s active development to pursue other endeavors, so Microsoft - who bought Notch’s company, Mojang, in 2014 - had no reason to keep affiliating with him outside of paying him his annual pound of flesh.
But, unlike Notch, and unlike many others, Rowling has the protection of her corporate overlords. Maybe she ain’t the hit factory she used to be, but what’s going on between her eyes is still very, very lucrative, and they need that. They need her to keep building out the expanded universe of Harry Potter, so they can keep churning out spin-offs and sequels and video games galore. She’s got the magic sauce, so to speak.
They still have a vested interest in down-playing her involvement in the production of future Potter-centric projects. For example, when Hogwarts Legacy was released in 2022, the studio developing the game, as well as Warner Brothers, was eager to say that Rowling had no direct involvement with the production of the game itself as a sort of compromise with those who were boycotting it. I believe she had a producer credit, which she will also have for the upcoming Harry Potter television adaptation - we’ll see if a similar boycott will be bandied about, but, if the boycott against Hogwarts Legacy was anything to go by…
Yeah.
I’m sure it’ll do fine.
As mentioned in my previous piece on Potter, despite a concerted effort by many on the left to try and drag their own political allies, constituents, and peers away from Harry Potter due to their distaste for Rowling’s views on trans people, the property still remains a staunch favorite of both neo-liberals and progressives alike. I think that’s mostly due to the true, ardent believers being Millennials, and trying to separate Harry Potter from Millennials is like taking a baby’s favorite blankie - they’ll scream, they’ll cry, they might even shit themselves, and you will have no peace until you give in and just let them have their blanket with the Hogwarts logo on it back. Every attempt to wean them off the series has failed. Spectacularly.
The only real failure in the Potter-verse so far - the final of the immensely underwhelming Fantastic Beasts films, subtitled The Secrets of Dumbledore5 - performed so poorly that future installments were subsequently scrapped so development could be pivoted to the television adaptation and, apparently, another rumored series of spin-off films possibly exploring the characters created for The Cursed Child. However, this failure was not laid at the feet of Rowling’s controversy, nor even the fact that the movie just plain sucked hot ass through a straw. No - it flopped because of the controversy surrounding one of its stars, and main draws, Johnny Depp.
Playing the villainous wizard Grindlewald, Depp’s turn as the character was one of the few things people seemed to like about the movie. Even if I have to admit - he was one of the better parts of the movie. Better than Jude Law playing Dumbledore, at any rate. Until, of course, the entire Amber Heard Court Circus began. Depp was subsequently cut from the films and replaced by Mads Mikkelson.
Mikkelson is a fine actor in his own right, probably more so than Depp, too, but the resulting drama of the shake-up and the lingering sourness in the air around Depp’s name alone was enough to cause the studio to ascribe blame to that fiasco, when, really, I think people just got tired of these movies.
This is all to say, the failure of this movie was decidedly not because of the controversy surrounding J.K. Rowling. For now, Rowling’s position as entertainment royalty remains intact. Tarnished, perhaps, but intact. As I’ve illustrated, she’s not hurting. Not for money, not for opportunity, not for adoration from her fans, not for much of anything.
But - but - as the Overton Window creeps ever to the left, and as the goalposts continue to be pushed along with it, Rowling may find herself increasingly on the outs with her own party, within her own half of the political map. Today, it may be enough to say, Trump is a threat to our democracy! or We need to save Ukraine! to keep up appearances, but there may come a day, sooner than she or anyone else thinks, where it may not suffice. Her position with her corporate overlords, who are increasingly sensitive to these matters, may grow more and more tenuous as her brand of Blairite neo-liberalism becomes less and less tolerable to them and their horde of angry, spiteful, mutants that hold them up.
There are two types of stars in the entertainment world.
There are the ones who have something special. Something unique. A talent, a charisma, a sense of artistry and style and vision that can be imitated, but not replicated, and the mystique around them, their aura, that certain je ne sais quois - it will keep them an icon, regardless of their output.
Then, there are the others. They are plenty talented - head and shoulders above others, undeniably. But, they don’t quite have that sticking power that the former category has. They might have a schtick, but they don’t have an identity. These guys can be imitated. If their songs - if they even wrote them - were given to someone else of equal talent, could be replicated to similar affect, with similar success.
An icon will always be successful. They can have their ups and downs, their high points and lows, but they’ll always come back, and they’ll always be doing their own thing, and people will always be interested in what that is. A run-of-the-mill star will only be successful for as long as the hits keep coming.
It’s the difference between an Elvis Presley and Wayne Newton. It’s the difference between a Prince and a Lionel Richie. It’s the difference between a David Bowie -
and most of his contemporaries.
And even go so far as to say that it’s why Lady Gaga is now a movie star -
And Katy Perry is coming out of a giant toilet and singing with dancers dressed like turds in Vegas.
Now, this isn’t to say the Newton’s, the Richie’s, and the Perry’s of the world aren’t successful. They all made more money than I’ll (probably) ever see. I’ve never had a single hit song, and no one’s hitting me up for a residency to play for bloated old gambling addicts at Bally’s. It isn’t to say they didn’t create any value. Old people turn up for Danke Schoen, (I’ve never understood the appeal) and, personally, I think Richie has some bangers. Yeah, his music is cornier than deer droppings, but I won’t lie to you - I can get down on some Lionel Richie.
This isn’t to say that these artists didn’t have staying power in their own right, or they aren’t respected, or even that they’re destined to fade away. Sometimes, the hits keep coming, and they don’t stop.
But, what I’m trying to say is, Elvis would have been a figure I just don’t think you could cancel, if that was a thing back in ye olden days. People always wanted more of that guy. Even if Elvis went out there, shook his hips and flashed his tacky gold trim on in one of those god awful white polyester suits, and said, Uh-huh-huh - there’s only two genders, honey. Thank you very much. And then stuffed a peanut-butter and banana sandwich in his mouth and shuffled away, people would still want to see him and listen to his music, because he’s fucking Elvis. He’s a legend. He’s larger than life. People might write him off as a joke from another time, but, keep in mind, they just made a biopic about his life in 2022. There are still people who care about Elvis. Maybe not the man himself, but the story around him. Elvis the man, regardless of what he thought, said, or did, could never eclipse the mystique of Elvis the image.
If Wayne Newton said the same thing, no one would really care all that much if he was effectively exiled from showbiz and never heard from again. He doesn’t have that same gravitas. He’s fundamentally not interesting in the way that Elvis was6. And if he has an image…
It’s not a very flattering one.
This is all to say - which of these two stars is Rowling? Is she an icon? Or is she just another celebrity? Is she a true visionary? Or just talented? Is she someone who people will move on from when the Potter train comes to the end of the track, or is she one of those public figures who's legacy will still beguile, intrigue, and fascinate readers long after her last story has been told?
The ultimate question here is, if Warner Brothers is unsuccessful in their Machiavellian machinations to keep the Harry Potter wheel turning until the end of the universe, and, one day, the franchise stops printing money… will they care enough to keep Rowling in their pocket? Or will they discard her? Leave her for all the Twitteristas and Cancel-pigs to finally claim the victim they’ve been clamoring for?
When the candles blow out and Hogwarts goes silent and still… will people still care about J.K. Rowling?
I suppose time will tell.
For the sake of transparency, I will note that she considers her favorite author to be Jane Austen.
Should this be considered a trigger warning?
Credit to Xtal in the comments for bringing this to my attention, as, somehow, it completely flew under my radar.
Was it that he’s gay?
“Rather than argue with someone about whether or not transwomen should be allowed in women's shelters, why not donate to a cause that supports housing for battered, cisgendered women exclusively? And, since such places are quite literally banned legally in many places, why not contribute to causes or organizations that seek to repeal such laws? Or speak on their behalf at events and fundraisers, speaking to people who can actually, y'know, maybe do something to make some change .”
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/jk-rowling-funds-new-women-28711154
I only ever saw the first "Fantastic Beasts." Despite having sympathy for the motivations of Redmayne's character (Bartlemus Flurmb or whatever, who even fucking cares), I associate the movie with a sort of low-level lingering depression. I can't tell if that's due to the movie or where I was in my life. And I'm not interested in going back and finding out.
Also, Bowie in that picture looks rather... Trump-like.