J.K. Rowling and the Very Freudian Fandom
29th January 2024
Although I liked the Harry Potter books as a child, I wasn’t a full-blown Potterhead. I didn’t queue for hours at Waterstones for The Half-Blood Prince or dress up as Hermione for Halloween. It’s in adulthood I’ve come to appreciate the thematic layers, world-building and glorious escapism J.K.Rowling’s imagination gave to my generation.
For many children though, what they felt for the books and, by extension, for J.K.Rowling, was pure love. Love, lest we forget, is an emotion next door to hate. They both require a degree of obsession, surrender, investment. And as a very vocal minority of Rowling’s fandom have demonstrated, ever since she first lent her support to Maya Forstater and sex-based rights in law back in 2019, the switch between can be as fast and ugly.
And relentless. The latest insidious project by self-exiled Potter fans is a “foul-mouthed” show about the author organised by an Edinburgh arts company, due to be performed in New York in early February. The title? Terf C**t.
The thing I find most … telling … about the Harry Potter books is the Ministry of Magic. Rowling is a Modern Briton and therefore assumes that every aspect of British life must have a government agency dedicated to controlling and regulating it. If the books had been written fifty or sixty years ago, there would be no ‘Ministry of Magic’, and indeed the plots might revolve around attempts to keep ‘magic’ un-government-regulated.