Muggles v wizards redux

[lizzyben04]

No: HPFGUIDX 183241


> 
> Montavilla47:
> This is where I start to wonder if JKR is playing some elaborate 
> mind-game on us.  Because reading this benignly bigoted 
> toward muggles (us) story produces in people who might
> normally not personally feel the sting of prejudice that very 
> same effect.
...
> In HP, we're invited to identify with the wizards.  But the 
> fact remains that we aren't wizards, we are muggles, and 
> by identifying with the magical people in the story, we are 
> put into the position of siding against our own people--
> as defined by the story itself.


lizzyben:

I wondered that as well sometimes, but IMO this story helps confirm 
that there's not any irony intended. In a 7-book series, maybe you 
could say that there's something deeper going on, but this is a 2-
page story squeezed onto a postcard. And yet JKR still found time to 
make fun of the Muggles. It puts a different spin on the series & IMO 
makes it harder to see it as some sort of subversive message about 
tolerance. Officer Anderson is Uncle Vernon in a uniform & he fits 
all the Muggle stereotypes laid out in the larger series. 


lizzyben