Jon Stewart has accused J.K. Rowling of including anti-Semitic depictions in her books (and subsequent movies), regarding the Goblins which run Gringotts Bank in the Harry Potter universe.
During a recent episode of his podcast, The Problem with Jon Stewart, the host stated that he believes the Goblins presented in Harry Potter's world amount to Jewish ‘caricatures’.
“It’s a wizarding world,” he said. “The train station has a half a thing, and no one can see it, and we can ride dragons and you’ve got a pet owl… Who should run the bank? Jews.”
Stewart claims that Rowling actively perpetuates Jewish stereotypes by characterising the Goblins as ‘caricatures’ of Jewish people. “Yeah, they look like Jews,” he said. “But what if their teeth were sharper?”
His argument is that the Goblins bear more than a passing similarity to illustrations in the anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “I just want to show you a caricature,” he said. “And they’re like, ‘Oh, look at that, that’s from Harry Potter!’ And you’re like, ‘No, that’s a caricature of a Jew from an anti-Semitic piece of literature.’”
The problem with characterisations such as this is that they perpetuate anti-Semitic stereotypes by making them almost acceptable. And that’s something Stewart believes has already happened here.
“I was expecting the crowd to be like, ‘Holy shit, she did not, in a wizarding world, just throw Jews in there to run the f**king underground bank,’” he said. “And everybody was just like, ‘Wizards.’”
At time of writing J.K. Rowling not yet responded publicly to Stewart's comments. The author has come under fire in recent years due to what many see as her anti-transgender views, and did not appear as part of the recent Harry Potter 20th Anniversary special, aside from in archive footage.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
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During a recent episode of his podcast, The Problem with Jon Stewart, the host stated that he believes the Goblins presented in Harry Potter's world amount to Jewish ‘caricatures’.
“It’s a wizarding world,” he said. “The train station has a half a thing, and no one can see it, and we can ride dragons and you’ve got a pet owl… Who should run the bank? Jews.”
Stewart claims that Rowling actively perpetuates Jewish stereotypes by characterising the Goblins as ‘caricatures’ of Jewish people. “Yeah, they look like Jews,” he said. “But what if their teeth were sharper?”
His argument is that the Goblins bear more than a passing similarity to illustrations in the anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “I just want to show you a caricature,” he said. “And they’re like, ‘Oh, look at that, that’s from Harry Potter!’ And you’re like, ‘No, that’s a caricature of a Jew from an anti-Semitic piece of literature.’”
The problem with characterisations such as this is that they perpetuate anti-Semitic stereotypes by making them almost acceptable. And that’s something Stewart believes has already happened here.
“I was expecting the crowd to be like, ‘Holy shit, she did not, in a wizarding world, just throw Jews in there to run the f**king underground bank,’” he said. “And everybody was just like, ‘Wizards.’”
At time of writing J.K. Rowling not yet responded publicly to Stewart's comments. The author has come under fire in recent years due to what many see as her anti-transgender views, and did not appear as part of the recent Harry Potter 20th Anniversary special, aside from in archive footage.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
Continue reading...