Purebloods, potions and power: social justice and Harry Potter
Written by Theodore Chow
Harry Potter is possibly the most universally known and beloved cultural touchstone for our generation. But are the stories of “the boy who lived” just a common set of escapist fantasies for children across the world to share?
No. Deep beneath the wands, the spells and the potions, Rowling reveals profound truths about reality through the themes of evil, prejudice and tolerance. The evil antagonist, Voldemort, symbolically represents the escalation of oppression between two groups, whilst the Ministry of Magic is allegorical to the abuse of power within the government. On the other hand, Dumbledore is depicted to be the epitome of goodness.
Rowling’s truthful revelations about power and oppression are clear in the divide between those who are “purebloods” and “mudbloods” in the wizarding world. This divide that runs deep into the narrative as the main goal of Voldemort throughout the seven-book series is to purify the wizarding world by eliminating “mudbloods.” His strategies include separating communities according to socially perceived biological discrepancies and giving them labels. He achieves this by positioning Death Eaters as the defenders of traditions and the natural order, and uses fear and hatred to weaken the bonds of solidarity throughout society.
Fear? Hatred? Voldemort’s strategy sounds very familiar. Take for example, the colonization of Rwanda that created divides between the Hutus and the Tutsis which was a major contributing factor to the Rwandan genocide. The colonizers, Belgium, favored the Tutsi population because of their lighter skin and taller build. These imposed socially-constructed separations sparked the Rwandan genocide, which resembles the narrative of Harry Potter because injustice disguises itself under different names but ultimately sings the same tune.
It is easy to see the parallel themes of power and oppression in the fiction of Harry Potter and the reality of the Rwandan genocide because we have the hindsight of history. However, for many years, as the genocide evolved, there was a deliberate obscurity formulated by the international community who turned a blind eye, calling such an event a civil war to avoid the need for intervention. Fiction makes these issues of power and injustice crystal clear because they are contained within thematic lines. However, in the real world, because the hands of injustice are cunning and masked, it takes quite a while for such atrocities as the Rwandan genocide to gain worldwide attention.
Rowling provides further truths by revealing the extent to which injustice is rooted in the abuse of power by governments, in this case the Ministry of Magic. Between her lines of the fiction is a call to resist unjust authorities. It was through the Order of the Phoenix, a secret society that opposed Voldemort and his Death Eaters, that people across many institutions and communities with shared values were united to take action against the constraints of unscrupulous institutions. Through our understanding of Harry Potter, we can see that those in authoritative positions can abuse their power to perpetuate injustices against those in opposition just as the Ministry of Magic did.
The Ministry of Magic is representative of governments around the world on the matter of abuse of power, but in reality it is difficult to pin down what exactly that abuse of power is. In relation to my home, the Hong Kong government, in an attempt to quell the ongoing protests, has implemented increasingly strict regulations on its people such as the anti-mask law, and has allegedly colluded with the Chinese government to threaten whoever actively supports pro-democratic activities. However, in real life, the use of social media and propaganda from both sides distorts such truths, resulting in obscurities. In Hong Kong’s case, the pro-government news agency, Television Broadcast Limited, selectively shows certain video clips to emphasize the violence of certain radical protesters and de-emphasize the extreme role that the police played. These exaggerated reports have been countered by fake news perpetrated by pro-democracy protesters, particularly with regards to police brutality. Unlike in Harry Potter where the abuse of power is very clear, it is almost impossible to determine exactly whether it is the protesters or the government that are abusing power in Hong Kong due to media biases. Hopefully, history will remove this obscurity and show us the truth with time.
Rowling who has the luxury to create whatever she wants in a fictional world is able to give a clear representation of what we understand to be “good” through the character of Dumbledore. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore famously says, “You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!” He rejects the idea propagated by the evil Voldemort that some wizards are inherently better than the others because they were born with a certain background. Dumbledore’s philosophy is the epitome of “good” because by considering people for what they do and not what they were born into, he clearly sets the conditions for combatting racism, classism and segregation in the real world. His is a vision that we must fight for what is right and for the common good.
While Rowling portrays a clear image of “good” and “evil”, in real life, this distinction is not so clear cut. Dumbledore’s rhetoric is seen in many politicians who are eager to obtain public votes. Candidates may promise to target the root causes of inequality or even campaign for universal healthcare. In reality, the problem is that in striving to reach public office, all politicians claim that they have the power to invoke good and defeat evil. In the United States, decades of politicians have claimed to have America’s best interests at heart but simple issues, like universal healthcare, have become obscured due to competing political ideologies. In Rowling’s books, good triumphs over evil, that’s clear. However, in real life, politicians can’t even agree on what “good” means. This is made even more complicated through special interest groups who have hidden agendas and heavily subsidized campaigns to skew policies in favour of their profits. Many politicians may try to mimic Dumbledore’s rhetoric, but ultimately it is up to us, as a society, to become well-informed so as to cut through ambiguity and make decisions that impact our future with veracity.
What may initially appear to be a mere work of fiction carries with it Rowling’s powerful use of fantasy to explore historical and future instances, and even patterns of oppression, abuse of power and “goodness”. Whilst this gives us tools to help analyze political and historical events, it is incredibly difficult to know the truth of any contemporary event as it unfolds because of deliberate obscurity to distort and drive ideological positions.