The part of Harry Potter that still belongs to me

We've known that JK Rowling is an absolute monster for some time now. The seeds were always there, from the initial accusations of plagiarism to the staunchly antisemitic coding of the goblin bankers to more casual stuff like "Cho Chang" and "Lavender Brown." But in recent years, she's focused her entire identity and public platform into a caterwauling, transphobic ghoul. Most billionaires (or near-billionaires) at some point lose their minds and grow so bored of having everything they want while existing in a bubble where they never have to stoop to the realities of the world at large that they lean into embracing hatred and cruelty, but very few of those billionaires gained that fortune while creating characters that an entire generation embraced so wholly and care about a great deal.

I was too old for Harry Potter, being gifted the British paperback editions of the first few books by a cousin after I'd graduated high school and finally diving into all of them after the release of the first movie in 2001, but I still had a great time reading them as they were released (beginning with The Order of the Phoenix in 2003) and going to see the movies in theaters. I identified with a House (Ravenclaw) and got invested in the lives of these dramatic little English witch tots. I never got a Harry Potter tattoo or anything, but I was definitely a fan. I probably won't ever buy a ticket to The Cursed Child, but there's a new HBO Max television series being made, and I'll probably watch that.

Since my son has been born, we've all grown to understand exactly who JK Rowling is, and it's someone that we're very, very reluctant to want to give money to, however inadvertently. We already own all the books and Blu Rays, so there's some sunk cost there, and we're Universal Studios Hollywood passholders, so we assume that some portion of our annual fees somehow sift down into Rowling's loathsome pockets, as Hogsmeade ("Harry Potter Land") is a fixture in the park. My son really loves the Harry Potter area. He loves the train, the castle, and the shop where there's an animatronic Monster Book of Monsters. The Flight of the Hippogriff, a baby roller coaster, is by far his favorite ride in the park and probably his favorite part of our visits.

We went to Universal this past weekend, and he convinced us to buy him one of the wands that interacts with various storefronts in Hogsmeade, because he wanted "to do magic." He's watched a couple of the movies and although he rarely sits through one all the way, he becomes obsessed with certain sequences (especially in The Prisoner of Azkaban). He ran up to a screen on this last visit and proudly said, "That's Sirius Black!" He doesn't even know about the reveal of Sirius Black, but he knows that moving image of Gary Oldman in the role.

So if our kid continues to be drawn to Harry Potter, I've resigned myself to taking Barthes' lead and subscribing to the death of the author in this case. It's going to be some time before I'm able to explain to him the villain at the center of this universe, but at the same time, the concept of Harry Potter (beyond the theme parks and souvenirs) has escaped her orbit.

It's a common sentiment that when a ubiquitous character or world or work enters the zeitgeist as powerfully as Harry Potter did, that "it belongs to all of us." But that's how we end up with Zack Snyder chuds and Star Wars misogynists and morons screaming about women Ghostbusters. Familiarity breeds entitlement, and it's Rowling's entitlement we're trying to separate from, anyway.

But ironically, the biggest part of Harry Potter that I still love has nothing to do with Rowling. And maybe it's a part that my son will also enjoy someday.

Let me tell you about StarKid.