I guess this is nothing new, but here's a recent clip of Jon Stewart slamming J. K. Rowling for portraying the goblin bankers in the Harry Potter universe as caricatures of Jews:
So @jonstewart recently broke Hollywood's complete silence on @jk_rowling unapologetically maintaining antisemitic folklore through Harry Potter. pic.twitter.com/ezWrxpzryB
— raf (@rafaelshimunov) January 3, 2022
I don't have a side to take in this, but in the books the goblins are just goblins. Unless I'm misremembering, there's nothing to suggest any kind of Jewish resemblance. So if the goblins in the films are Jewish caricatures, that's all up to the filmmakers, isn't it?
Am I missing something here?
I'm not going to bother with the clip, but would guess the line of "reasoning" is something like "Gringotts is where the wizarding world (well, in the UK) keeps all its money. Banking and finance is (stereotypically) the province of Jews. Goblins run Gringotts. Ergo, Goblins are Jews." ...
Well, no, they aren't.
I'm not an expert on Goblins and whether goblins are actually some sort of made up slur on Jews in general, but in the HP world there are nowhere near as many distinctions as there are among humans in real life.
Including religious ones and racial ones. Wizards come in all human races, and since Wizards can create anything out of magic, the actual need for money is somewhat vague in the books and movies.
Yet, there is Wizard commerce, but the part of the story where Gringotts is relevant is not about money, per se.
There seems to be "classes" of Wizards, but the story makes a big point that the classes are not based on human classes, but are based on how many in your family and ancestors are wizards.
The classes of Wizards are also not based on having money, either.
You could make a better argument that actually its the Wizards in general who are the Jews (if someone has to be the Jews), since the Wizards are historically discriminated against or worst by Muggles who vastly outnumber Wizards.
Anyway, the story of the HP world is not based on having groups of Wizards substitute for groups of Muggles.
I think his point is why do the bankers have to be anything but normal humans/wizards? Why do they have to be goblins, a term no one ever said was a positive?
There's literally a star of David on the floor of the bank as the scene opens:
https://youtu.be/DwC6IFi6RuU?t=14
Game, set, and match.
But that's not in the book. I'm boycotting this round of Rowling because she's dishonest and a bigot, but... that's not in the book, so she didn't select it.
Haven't read the books or watched the movies. But, wasn't Kevin's point that any anti-Semitic guilt here resided in the people who made the movie rather than the author of the book?
Kinda interesting though that for decades anti-Semites have railed against Jewish influence in the movie industry.
Possibly possible that the set designers are so ignorant that they don't know what a Star of David means.
I gather then Gringotts remodeled by the time Hermione entered as Bellatrix... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwPIaGKgYik
Dude, did you read the actual f***ing post?
Well of course the horrid anti-Semite who produced the films, Heyman: "David Jonathan Heyman (born 26 July 1961) is an English film producer and the founder of Heyday Films. In 1999, he secured the film rights to the Harry Potter film series and went on to produce all eight installments, as well as the subsequent spin-offs. ..... Heyman was born in London. He is the son of John Heyman, .... His paternal grandparents were German Jews who left Nazi Germany and emigrated to England prior to World War II"
Obviously the anti-Jewish agenda ran deep...
The Gringots scene was filmed in the lobby of the Australia House in London which has always had that floor. Did the producers seek out that location because of the star or was it coincidence?
Come on. The star symbol has generic uses. Among non-religious people like myself, a connection to religion doesn't even come to mind. The film creators may have been like-minded. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. Were the writers, director, and producers really working to add a reference to Jews in the film? I really doubt it. Should they have realized the star could be offensive? Perhaps.
Since the Producer in lead himself is a grandchild of Jewish holocaust survivors, I would suggest that people should stop searching for anti-semetism buried in any star-pattern.
Or perhaps the woke offenderati feels they need to lecture the grandchildren of Jewish holocaust survivors about the proper consciousness they should have...
I am anything but a harry potter expert. I thought the movies were silly and nonsensical (but fine for kids) and never read the books. But I will say when I saw the first goblin scene in the movie, I did think "wow, is this supposed to seem antisemitic?".
Yes, you're missing something. Also Ferengi from Star Trek.
Also Chakotay from DS9.
Watto in The Phantom Menace.
Ok, never to old to learn something, but in order for, say, the Ferengi to be a form of anti-semitism wouldn't the story have to involve some sort of set up where the non-Ferengi discriminate against the Ferengi on the basis of the Ferengi being a minority with semitic characteristics?
The Ferengi, like all of the Star Trek aliens, exist in their own system of power over their empire or planets or whatever.
I mean, once Klingons came around, there were fewer and fewer aliens who even qualified as the "enemy" - I can't even count the number of Star Trek episodes where basically some group of aliens who started out as an "enemy" turned out to be simply "misunderstood."
Isn't 'ferengi' an Indian word for 'westerner'?
yep, based, like the word 'foreign'. on Frank, going back to the Franks of the early Middle Ages.
Ferengi is from Arabic via Persian, origin: Faranj (essentially French or Frankish, although referenced medieval French crusaders not late roman/dark ages Franks). Transmitted via Islamic influence (invasions but also merchant traders, e.g. usage in South East Asia).
In the books they are probably vaguely, if possibly unconsciously, based on gross antisemitic depictions of Jews. In the movies the connection is undeniable.
But my main take on all things Harry Potter is that those books are and have always been grotesquely overrated. But millennials love them so tread lightly.
More than half of Millennials were too old for them when they came out.
i am still shocked that so many of my adult friends read and loved them. as 30+ year olds. i did not read the books, but i imagine they are at least loosely similar to the movies, which were uniformly terrible and stupid IMO.
I'm a late boomer and read the books along with my daughter as she grew up and the books came out. I think you are being rather dismissive of a book that was good enough to spark a reading phenomena in children during a period when TV and games were gaining dominance. I recall taking her to a bookstore premier with a crowd that looked more like one waiting to enter a concert. As a parent, anything that gets your kids interested in reading has to have something going for it. High literature, no, great fun read, yes.
Every non-English character in J.K. Rowling is an ethnic caricature.
She fits exactly what I've meant by 'social conservative leftist'.
Having said that, I don't know if it's intentional or non-intentional, or represents a general them, but it's important to remember that Rowling's books are very explicitly anti-fascist. Voldemort represents the Nazis and contemporary fascists, while Grindelwald represents the romantic and militant ur-fascists of the generation leading to WWI.
Though other nationalities are represented in cartoon, it's not condemnatory.
'represents a general theme'
!
TBF to Rowling, kind of, this is an endemic problem in fantasy writing.
Often, the non-humans in fantasy writing fall victim to racist tropes about non-white humans in the real world, whether intentionally or not.
That's certainly true, as in the way Klingons started out as Russians and evolved into Arabs.
But Rowling really leans into it, with every non-English character having their funny accents spelled out phonetically.
Ok, what an afternoon.
The Klingons started out as Russians and evolved into Arabs?
I thought they started out as what Spartans would have been and stayed there. Eventually only "evolving" to the point where it made more sense to end a cold war with the Federation.
They were very explicitly Russians in the original series, and afterward they started speaking Klingon, with huge masses of glottal aspiration, I am forgetting the term, and, seemed to me at least, to come with a very Arab tone in everything they did.
I understand they've been almost entirely redesigned again for the new series on Paramount, but I haven't seen any of that.
It never occurred to me that the Klingon were even remotely similar to Arabs. Not in the way they look, act, or dress. If anything they always seemed vaguely like Vikings.
I would say that what kept Star Trek going through all of those series and movies is that every plot is basically the same: liberal humanism (really, "species-ism") v. some particular aspect of human nature taken to a crazy extreme.
Klingons like Spartans, take war to the extreme. Vulcans take logic to its extreme. The Borg take supression of individualism to its extreme. And the Ferengi, with, instead of a bible, the "Rules of Acquisition" take greed/capitalism to its extreme.
And, in pretty much every case, "extremism" loses. The moral of almost every plot is liberalism and compassion wins.
Vikings? I thought the redesign for the movies and TNG that they turned out more like Mongols of Genghis' Hordes.
I’m with you; Klingons are future Spartans. Chekhov was Russian; clearly the Cold War was ancient history, so enemies (as the Klingons were in the original series) would not have been assimilated to Russians.
The Klingon Empire was the Soviet Union for the original series. It's the most hamfisted analogy in tv history.
Then the Romulans were the Chinese?
Romulans did the lableak!?
Just decloaked long enough to let it out.
Yes! The Balance of Terror!
Right, I wasn't sure, I was a kid. As I got older I always felt the Chinese were mysterious as players, there, showing strength here and there, but now they've discarded the original Bird of Prey class and the D'deridex is ready.
I must be dense then, or more inclined to suspend disbelief. It never occurred to me to take them except at face value, as an alien race with an extremely militarized social system. Which the USSR actually wasn’t; its leaders almost all rose through the bureaucracy, not the military.
You have to think more like television, not like the Earth.
And I should say I absolutely loved the books, and the movies each needed to be at least twice as long.
I like the books too and I'm a baby boomer.
I'm a boomer and found the books a good read, full of clever humorous writing and the occasional nugget of wisdom, like "don't do magic in front of the muggles". The original book was the classic fairy tail, where Harry (like Cinderella or Luke Skywalker) goes from being a disadvantaged kid to hero of the universe. The movies didn't do nearly as much for me.
I like the movies, but, aside from the casting, they really don't do the books justice, they all but cry out for HBO.
OUT: You're a wizard now, Harry.
IN: You're a Bruenig now, Ms. Rowling.
Well, there you go. Outvoted already.
Because being a wizard alone covers all the dramatic powers you need for the conflict and comedy in the saga, there are a number of other magical creatures but I took them really as just filler in the magical world.
It turns out humans/wizards, do work in the Gringotts organization, but in the HP world wizard money is not portrayed as any sort of goal -- the evil in the wizarding world comes from a desire for power, not money.
I thus don't think that when you read the books and see the movies the point was "even in the wizarding world the wizard equivalent of Jews control all the m money" -- the goblins don't appear in any other plot point of the story at all, its not even clear if they gain an advantage over running the bank.
Its almost more like Gringotts is Switzerland or something, a place where the security of your vault is everything.
But, I guess I was wrong on this one.
I find it a bit more interesting that there is this set up where elves are essentially slaves.
I don't know what the point was there, other than giving Hermoine a chance to show her empathatic creds at one point.
Wow, this is a timely question for me. I just finished reading the first book to my daughter this weekend, and we just watched the first movie this weekend. And I would say no, you are not really missing anything. I didn't think anything of the goblins in the book, but when I watched the movie I though, "Huh, those goblins are kinda...jew-ey." (I'm Jewish, in case that wasn't obvious.)
You could certainly make an argument that the goblins in the book are subtly rooted in specific stereotypes. They are short, cunning, they handle other people's money, they may even have long noses (I don't have the book in front of me). But I don't think there's quite enough there to make the leap.
And anyway, it's sort of irrelevant. The films underline all this stuff in a way that is uncomfortable, and yes, that's very much on the film makers.
I always thought Nicolas Flamel was Jewish from the books.
He was a real person,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Flamel
Yeah, it's open season to dogpile on J.K.Rowling again. Yawn. Trans"women" are angry! Jews are angry! Quiddich players want to rename the game they love so much, created by ... You Know Who! (and it ain't Voldemort.)
Yawn and yawn again. The Outrage Industrial Complex has clearly passed its sell-by date.
Salamander, it appears you may have missed a few important sentences (and paragraphs) in Kevin’s post and many of the foregoing comments. Kevin wrote—totally unambiguously—“ in the books the goblins are just goblins. Unless I'm misremembering, there's nothing to suggest any kind of Jewish resemblance. if the goblins in the films are Jewish caricatures, that's all up to the filmmakers, isn't it?”
Many of the commenters agree with that. It looks to me like you’re just looking for something to complain about.
I admit you make some good points. Yeah, blame Chris Columbus for the "look" of the goblins and Gringots. I blame him for a lot of things, although he got many more things so right. However, I've been seeing too many J.K.Rowling hate-fests lately, and wanted to put in a few words in her defense.
Is it just me, or is John Steward becoming more of a crank?
I thought his belligerence in pursuing the 9/11 first responder thing was an exercise in strategically being a pain in the ass, but now I'm thinking it might not be an act.
His sense of humor is taking a nap under all the beard.
Stewart was always a bit of a crank, using any opportunity to jump on his soap box and claim "both sides do it".
The 9/11 victims needed his outrage, as the Republicans had for months refused to fund the program to help the first responders and others. (One example of people screwed by the Republicans who vote for them anyway.)
George W. Bush kept us safe.
I never would have though this till I saw this post.
I think in general, out-groups are portrayed in an unfavorable light. Trolls and goblins and devils all have distorted features. Not saying that is good or bad. I never saw bridge trolls or goblins portrayed as super models.
The further afield from English the characters get the more cartoonish they become.
Even more so in Fantastic Beasts.
The only big plot hole in the original seven books was that although the wizarding world encompasses the entire earth, Rowling does not really deal with much beyond the UK.
Sure, there is Beauxbattons and Durmstrang, but nothing of Asian wizarding schools or US ones or whatever.
They are working on it with Fantastic Beasts but its the big plot hole.
Especially since Voldemort is sort of the ultimate super bad guy. But as someone said, Voldemort is a fascist, and is only "anti-Muggle"
To Voldemort, the most hopeless wizard is better than any muggle.
How on earth is this a "plot hole"?
The story is centred on the UK. Simple as that, not a plot hole.
Credit to Tolkien, as his dwarfs, hobbits, and elves are all portrayed positively. Dragons and Orcs don't come off so well, but are not modeled an any apparent human social group.
Tolkien's problem was with the various ethnicities of humans.
Except that orcs are described as swarthy, and swarthiness in humans is a sign of kinship with orcs. And orcs speak in a dialect of the English undercalss.
Meanwhile, "fair" is a synonym for good.
Tolkien showed some respect for Easterlings and Southrons, but there's an implication that they are morally inferior to the white Westerners. This is explained by the Westerners' kinship with the elves who are, like them fair.
Perhaps it was a play on Swiss bankers being known as the 'Gnomes of Zurich'.
This seems much more likely to have been at the front of her mind in creating them.
Also, Grindelwald is a town in Switzerland.
If Harry Potter’s goblins are caricatures of Jews, then wouldn't all goblins be caricatures of Jews? The goblins in HP are not that different from the many other goblins depicted in folklore and literature through the ages.
Maybe the origin of goblins did borrow from antisemitic stereotypes in medieval Europe, or maybe goblins had a different beginning and antisemitism in later centuries borrowed from the by-then well-established depictions of goblins to paint Jews in an unflattering light.
I don't know. But if you find goblins too antisemitic to be used in Potter, then you probably need to complain about the goblins in Tolkien and everywhere else too.
Another view:
https://momentmag.com/debunking-the-harry-potter-anti-semitism-myth/
I think the point that excellent short article doesn't quite state explicitly but intends is that anti-semitic caricatures pertain to goblins and not the other way around.
A very interesting afternoon. But the distinction is there.
Question 1: "isn't it interesting that the bankers in HP, are (a) not wizards, and (b) are goblins?" "Which, if you look at it, is sort of like a characature of Jews?"
Question 2: "In the books and the movies, do the main characters exhibit "anti-goblinism" as a proxy for "anti-semitism?"
The answer to question 1 would be yes, if you take as a starting assumption that the HP goblin look is close enough to a disgusting caricature of Jews.
The answer to question 2 is no. I think for HP to be called to task for anti-semitism, or anti-anthing ism, the answer to question 2 has to be yes.
Someone pointed out that in the HP world werewolves were sort of analogous to aids patients. Maybe so, but its also true that the lead character who is a werewolf could not have been anymore sympathetic or heroic.
Haven't read the books or seen the movies and don't plan to. But searching for "Harry Potter goblins" turns up some alarming pictures of short Jews with pointed ears.
"Credit to Tolkien, as his dwarfs, hobbits, and elves are all portrayed positively. Dragons and Orcs don't come off so well, but are not modeled an any apparent human social group."
-The orcs are generic bad guys, who you can kill without feeling guilty- they are the evil raiders and bandits of the early Middle Ages.
-,The Southrons are clealy Arabic, with their scimitars, but more like the Saracens of the Crusades- wrong, but worthy foes, like Saladin.
-LOTR-" and countless companies of Men of a new sort that we have not met before. Not tall, but broad and grim, bearded like dwarves, wielding great axes. Out of some savage land in the wide East they come, we deem." My personal opinion is that they are supposed to represent the Slavs.
-LOTR- from Far Harad (Africa) "black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues". Gee, I wonder who they're supposed to be?
Yes, after the black death, the desperate monarchies became dependent on Jewish finance. Something they had rejected before hand. That was a pandemic that began the beginning of the end of Catholic church 's rule. The same church which used the jews as middle men(thus the foundation for the middle class) since the 900's, when the organised religion of Judaism really became together.
Given Jon Stewart's bothsidesing at the Rally to Restore Sanity &/or Stoke Fear; his eighteen year hardon for Panamanian strongman Juan Esidney Mc Cain; & his propagation of the Intentional People's Liberation Army Bioweaponized Wuhan Lableak theory of the Rona, I have to think him going after J.K. Rowling is a case of "Worst Person You Know Makes a Good Point".
From the book:
“The goblin was about a head shorter than Harry. He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, Harry noticed, very long fingers and feet.”
Make of that what you will.
"Am I missing something here?"
You are missing that Rowling has become the enemy of the woke people and thus is to be destroyed by any means necessary.
This take is correct.
Ah yes.
Really.... having read the Potter books for my kids, one has to be looking really bloody hard to find Jews. Dislike of bankers, well... but from the Left who love to call financial people "banksters" ....rather rich
Can we please stop taking stupid offense at stupid things? I'm Jewish. I read the books, I watched the movies. I thought about "Gnomes of Zurich", not Jews.
Indeed and re Gnomes of Zurich: As would I think most any European reader.
To be horridly tedioius for the Woke left, for even the charge against the filmmakers, insofar as the main English producer himself, Heyman is the grandchild of Jewish Holocaust survivors (and without doubt the production did not lack Jews in creative areas beyond that, can't be arsed to search, but no reason to think underrepresented), this whole wokier than woke kerfuffle is just absurd.
Woke is anti Jewish underneath the covers
I always read this blog a day late -- my morning ritual. So there are always a bunch of comments. Today, I have read all 80 of them. Not one appears to explain what it is about the Gringott bankers that seems, to them, to be a caricature of Jews. I have known a number of Jews. One of them is among my closest friends. Another was a much respected boss. Not one of them bears any resemblance to anything that might be caricatured to signify a negative impression of "Jew".
I'm now 71 years old and have not yet developed a stereotypical idea of "Jewish" appearance.
Is there something deficient in my upbringing? Or is there something defective in the minds of people who do see that caricature.
You've been inadequately exposed to the bigotry of the distant past!! (Is that bad?) If you want to see the old European stereotype of "the Jew", check out "Borat second movie-film". In one scene, Borat tries to disguise himself as a Jew, so he can talk with actual Jews and find out more about them.
I guess it's impossible to have a fantasy group that tends towards avarice and money. I mean they could have been dwarves, as the theme for them is collecting treasure.
In either case, I don't read/watch fantasy to map to real world groups or situations. When it happens purposefully, I understand it's role. Otherwise, I'm inserting my views into the story.
Some people mistakenly associate Jews with bankers. They are usually antisemitic. Caricatures of bankers conniving greed are then used as examples of prejudice against Jews. Demeaning bankers then becomes antisemitic and a taboo.
A mural in England shaming bankers was used to portray Jeremy Corbin antisemitic because he would not condemn it and this was used as evidence of his prejudice. Rowling's portrayal of bankers as goblins is being used similarly.
Bankers might be Jews, but their conniving greed is because they are bankers and has nothing to do with their ethnicity or religion. Bankers steal from Jews as readily as anyone else. Henry Paulson, a good example of a corrupt banker, is a Christian Scientist.
Kevin, I'm guessing the answer to your question is that J.K. Rowling is persona non grata among a lot of leftists because she's anti-trans. Therefore it's a lot more appealing to blame her than to blame some not-so-famous filmmakers.
That's stated a lot better than my crude attempts. Thanks!