Let’s get this out of the way right up front, this post is not about Rowling recent and deplorable political/personal/aggrieved writings. On the subject of equality for transgendered people and her stance on transgendered people she is just wrong. As the British would say, ‘Full Stop.’ This about the stated theme of the Potter franchise, a ‘plea for tolerance,’ and how the text of the work itself undermines that goal.
The ideological conflict separating the heroes from the villains in Potter is a properly fascistic mentality that the value of a person is derived from the blood lineage. The villains of the work are obsessed with a purity of blood referring to all wizards with either muggle, i.e. non-wizard parents, or with one of the parents or ancestors that were muggle as ‘mudblood.’ The terminology makes the analog to real world racism evident as it is clearly derived from the slur ‘mud people’ used by white supremist. The very utterance of the word ‘mudblood’ is considered by the wider wizarding world to be offensive. The Death Eater in the franchise stands in very nicely as an analog for the genocidal monstrosity of fascist thinking that places individual human life on a scale of value determine by the accident of their birth. Harry, Dumbledore’s Army, and all the heroic characters of the work stand firmly against this poisonous ideology.
So far so good. The villains believe people’s inherent worth is determine by their ‘blood’ and the heroes stand for equality and intrinsic human value.
Except in the work to be a hero, to be a valued, noble, worthy character you still have to be the right kind of person, you have to be a wizard and that is solely determined by your birth.
Reading the books there are no admirable characters that are not also wizards. The plea for tolerance doesn’t extend to ‘muggles,’ represented by the stupid, greedy, cruel, and fat Dursleys. There are no ‘on screen’ muggles with good character and noble actions.
Yes, the story is centered on the wizarding world, the fight takes place in that setting and the wizard in defeating the Death Eaters are also protecting the muggle world from the genocidal ambitions of the deranged cult but the seven volume series there is room for a few moment where that humanity, nobility, and heroism could have been extended to the non-wizards of the world. With this omission that text makes the same mistake as its villains, though from neglect rather than malice, that value comes from the quality of your blood. Like all ‘Prophesized Ones’ stories the foundation states that to be the hero you have to be born to it but unlike most stories of that trope Potter extends the lineage requirement to all of its heroes.
I am not arguing that the central character or even on of the major recurring heroes needed to be a muggle. That would have never worked in the setting or world-building of the franchise. It is a story about wizards, the wizarding world, and the war that tore it apart. Its central character had to be wizards and a muggle in the center of it would have felt forced and inorganic to the structure, but there is a world of difference between forcing in a character to address this issue and having the sole representation of the muggle be the Dursleys.
I am reminded of the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle which suffered a similar failing. Throughout the film a recurring concept is the conflict between guy movies and chick flicks. The Dirty Dozen is used as the platonic ideal of a ‘guy movie’ while An Affair to Remember stands in for ‘chick flicks,’ with the commentary that no man ever really gets it. This is sloppy, stereotypical, and reductive. (Side note: An Affair to Remember was written, produced and Directed by men, so clearly men can ‘get it.’) At the climax of Sleepless Meg Ryan’s character is trying to get into the Empire State building to meet hank’s character and she makes a reference to An Affair to Remember to the guard who is stopping her. He comments it’s his wife’s favorite film and just like that Nora Ephron missed the chance to repudiate the stereotyping of men and women the film had engaged in. Had it been his favorite film the whole concept would have been undercut and the diversity of humanity celebrated.
In the same way Harry Potter didn’t need a main character that was a muggle all it need was when Harry and Company were on the run and hiding in the muggle world from assassins just one muggle that showed bravery and heroism helping Harry and the others to rescue the franchise’s central theme. An easy fix that an editor should have suggested and Rowling should have implemented.