Should I introduce my son to Harry Potter when he is old enough? I will admit that I haven’t read all of the books, but my husband has and he loved them. He still loves the books, but we don’t love what the author stands for now. Can or should we separate the art from the artist?
The “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling has written many, what I believe to be, anti-transgender tweets. Here is the defense of her beliefs if you need to read them. My family supports transgender people. We believe that a person should be called whatever pronoun they want. We believe people when they say they do not identify as the gender they were assigned at birth. We also know that transgendered people are beaten up and murdered at a higher rate than their cis-gendered counterparts. Cis-Gendered means that a person identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth.
So, my husband has posed some questions to me that I don’t know the answer to. Do we still introduce the “Harry Potter” series to our son when he is old enough to read chapter books? We have already purchased the original series of books. So she has already gotten our money. Should we still introduce the fantastical beautiful world of Hogwarts to our son and let him make up his own mind of what it means to him? Should we throw out the films that we have already purchased?
JK Rowling holds on to her copyright to Harry Potter tightly and is constantly writing new books in the same universe as Harry Potter. She has two new books coming out this year we will not be purchasing. Can you separate the art from the artist, especially when the artist is still alive and making a profit off of their work.
There are many works of art that are considered classics today written by racists, homophobes, sexists and people who hold shocking beliefs, but most of those people are dead. Do we give a pass to dead authors on reading and teaching their works of art because the author isn’t making a profit?
These are questions my husband and I are grappling with, luckily we have a few years to decide.
