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Oct 9, 2006
the politics of harry potter I feel like writing again. Hoperfully, the feeling will stick for a while. Anyway, I'm walking through Clifton during the early afternoon hours, and I notice a car that has the license plate number "GRFNDR." Of course, any Harry Potter geek such as myself knows that this means Gryffindor, the school house that the protagonists in the Harry Potter series hail from. Despite my enthusiasm for the books, I felt that this vanity plate takes the geekery a bit over the top. Regardless, I noticed that the car also had may bumper stickers, which of course is the sign of a hippie. Curious, I read some of the stickers. 2 of them were Harry Potter themed. "George Bush is a muggle." "Voldemort votes Republican." Now, regardless of the implied political ramifications of these stickers, I found them to be amusing. But, given what the implied implications of the stickers are, they are also inaccurate to the message they are trying to imply (at least when taken together, and given the overall market for Harry Potter political stickers, I'm guessing that these were made by the same manufacturer). The Harry Potter books are not about magic. They are about many things, and magic is used to create a world in which to explore these topics. One of the greatest themes in the book is that of racism. Only, the racial lines in the book are not drawn by skin color, but by ability to do magic. Thus, some of the pure-blood wizards are racist toward both half blood wizards and non-magic people, who are called muggles. So, by calling George Bush a muggle, the Mr or Mrs GRFNDR is accusing Bush of not being a wizard, which of course, is accurate. However, given the sticker about Voldemort voting Republican, it can be assumed that GRFNDR is not supportive of President Bush, and this calling him a Muggle is intended to be an insult. Thus leading to the inconsitency. The people in the HP series who consider Muggle to be an insult are, of course, the bad guys. Thus, GRFNDR is aligning him/herself with the racist characters in the book. Which is odd, considering that they chose GRFNDR as their license plate instead of SLTHRN, since the Gryffindors tend to be the most friendly to Muggles and it is the Slytherins who consider muggle to be an insult. Which takes us to the second sticker, Voldemort votes Republican. Not if George Bush is a Muggle, he doesn't. Voldemort is the leader of all of the racists, the most racist of the bunch. This sticker would be the equivalent of saying that, "David Duke voted for Jessee Jackson." It's just not plausible. Of course, if any of our Harry Potter politicians had any sense, they could keep the Voldemort votes Republican sticker, and then change the other one to "George Bush is a Death Eater." Then, GRFNDOR can remain a Gryffindor, Voldemort can still vote Republican, and Bush can be the bad guy that they indended him to be. So, why did I just go through all of that? Because, I like busting up hippie arguments! posted
by Unknown @ 4:18:00 PM |
