Harry Potter's Bookshelf (17 page)

So we have a superintelligent cat as the pet of the “cleverest witch of her age” (
Prisoner of Azkaban
, chapter seventeen) that no one appreciates. The most notable aspect of its intelligence is that it is able to discern the reality beneath the deceptive but suggestive surface of people and creatures it meets.

Crookshanks the cat is named for nineteenth-century England’s most famous caricaturist and political satirist, George Cruikshanks. Cruikshanks was legendary for his deadly broadside cartoons that pierced the mighty, especially royals and aristocrats, but all the powerful, Whigs and Tories alike. The smart money, consequently, is not betting against the idea that Ms. Rowling, too, is writing political satire, just beneath the skin of her characters, rats and heroes. Let’s see if we can make out what Cruikshanks might have seen in the Hogwarts adventures.

It’s a safe bet that Ms. Rowling writes as a political liberal. Her writing pre- and post-
Potter
speaks from the left side of the partisan house. She admires Jessica Mitford (for whom her eldest daughter is named), she worked for Amnesty International as a bilingual secretary and researcher after college,
¹¹
and she has donated as much as a million pounds at a time to the U.K. Labour Party to protect “the poor and vulnerable” from the Conservatives.
¹²
Keith Olbermann, an American television talking head and
Harry Potter
fan, claims Ms. Rowling “told me the parallels between the Ministry of Magic and its false sense of omniscience and the conduct of the American and British governments were no inferences. She had put them there.”
¹³

Ms. Rowling has repeatedly said that she is against “fundamentalism of any kind,” fundamentalism tending to be a partisan buzzword used to describe the positions of religious people with conservative political beliefs. She said during the presidential primary season that she is “obsessed with the U.S. elections” and “I want a Democrat in the White House.”
¹⁴
She has agreed that her satirical depiction of the Death Eaters as racists and Nazi-echoes was a pointer to their being “neo-conservative and Thatcherite.”
¹⁵
One French philosopher and critic has gone so far as to say, “
Harry Potter
is a war-machine against Thatchero-Blairism and the ‘American way of life.’”
¹⁶

Where does her satirical slant to the political left show itself? In almost every character-as-caricature we are offered as representatives of government, the justice system, media, and schools. She skewers specific real-world individuals, whole institutions, and human types with big brush strokes and a dark, comic touch.

Did someone mention Margaret Thatcher? Ms. Rowling’s experience on the dole as a single mother resulted in a depression that was bad enough that she “contemplated suicide.”
¹⁷
She felt the “right-wing government” of that time and the media “scapegoated” single mothers as “feckless teenagers who didn’t know how to use contraception.”
¹⁸
The Ministry of Magic and the
Daily Prophet
reflect, as we’ll see, her thoughts on government and media, but Lady Thatcher gets special treatment.

Aunt Marge, Uncle Vernon’s mustached, self-important, and outrageous sister, a breeder of bulldogs (a mascot or symbol of England because of its determination and fighting tenacity), is easy to see as a Rowling caricature of the former Prime Minister. Her dog, Ripper, isn’t lovably tenacious; it is violent and mean-spirited. Just like his mistress. After explaining to the Dursleys after dinner and too many glasses of wine that Harry’s runtishness was a function of his poor breeding, she does a little scapegoating on her own:

Harry loses control at this point and blows her up, literally, like the overinflated bag of wind that she is. What less could you expect him to do, not only because of the insults to the memory of his parents, but because of the eugenicist “breeding” comments only Death Eaters and Voldemort voice in these books?

Tony Blair gets the more direct treatment.
Half-Blood Prince
opens at 10 Downing Street, in which the Muggle Prime Minister meets with Cornelius Fudge and the new Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour. (The P.M. is not named and some say it is meant to be John Major, though U.K. friends assure me the speech patterns are Blair’s.) The Muggle minister is presented as a man concerned only with political praise and blame, a man wanting to be treated with respect by the “Other Minister,” as he thinks of the Minister of Magic, but wanting them to fix his problems post-haste. “The President of a far distant country” is about to call and the P.M. dreads the conversation to come with “that wretched man.”

The institution of government is pilloried more than individuals, of course. On nonsensical things like the thickness of cauldron bottoms, the importing of magic carpets, and the organization of “Bread and Quidditch” events like the Triwizard Tournament, the government lavishes indefinite resources and manpower. But on the critical issues of the day, namely, the return of Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters, they rush only to denial and inaction, except to be sure that the
Daily Prophet
is given the correct spin so that the Minister himself doesn’t look bad.

The best part of her satirical treatment of U.K. government officials is her depiction of types. There is the ambitious young man on the rise, putting aside thoughts of right, wrong, family obligation, and even common sense to be seen with the right people and to get their attention. I give you Percy Weasley. What sort of man Percy would have turned into if he had continued on this path is visible in the tragic Barty Crouch, Sr., who so neglects his family that his son becomes a Death Eater and a patricide.

Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic for the first five books of the series, is, as Dumbledore says, “. . . blinded by . . . the love of the office you hold, Cornelius!” (
Goblet of Fire,
chapter thirty-six). He becomes a stand-in for Neville Chamberlain, denying Lord Voldemort’s ascendancy and evil as Chamberlain did Hitler’s. Rufus Scrimgeour, in contrast, is no appeaser and dies heroically after the Ministry is overtaken by Death Eaters. Even he, though, is not interested in winning the war as much as he is in gestures to foster public morale, gestures that include imprisoning the innocent, men like Stan Shunpike; tolerating vicious people like Dolores Umbridge within the Ministry; and holding the items left to Ron, Harry, and Hermione by Dumbledore in his will. Both Scrimgeour and Fudge are about power, not mercy, justice, or truth.

There
are
good guys in government. Arthur Weasley works in the least important government departments (Misuse of Muggle Artifacts and Head of the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects) but manages to write and help pass The Muggle Protection Act. This makes him and his clan “Blood Traitors” to other Pure Blood families. The Aurors, Ministry Dark Wizard hunters, range from the duty-observant street cops like Dawlish to the self-sacrificing heroes like Alastor Moody.

But, taken all together, the Ministry as Rowling presents it is sympathetic to the powerful rather than the needy and vulnerable, to the racist rather than the oppressed, and focused on the trivial and superficial rather than the vital and essential. When the Death Eaters succeed in putting Pius Thicknesse (a name suggesting the religious right, “fundamentalists”) under the Imperius curse and take over the Ministry with Thicknesse as Voldemort’s puppet, it is no surprise that it quickly becomes a totalitarian, Pure Blood regime.

Ms. Rowling’s relationship with the media, by which inclusive term I mean television and print journalists, is a remarkable one. She is a media darling; getting an interview with her is a difficult thing, especially when it is not in association with a charity event or the release of a book or movie—and reporters’ gratitude for the privilege is evident. She is rarely asked a hardball question and has not been presented in an unflattering light, to my knowledge, in scores of articles consequent to interviews.

Nevertheless, Ms. Rowling clearly is cautious about the press. She has set up her own website so she can communicate directly to her fans without having to work through the medium or filter of the press. She
does
do interviews and press conferences, online and in person, with nonjournalists—i.e., fans, especially children and young adults, whom she trusts will be kind and attentive to detail rather than having a “selling papers” agenda. She never looks comfortable at designed-for-media events like red carpet charity or theatrical appearances and press conferences.

She has sued newspapers and celebrity photo services to protect her privacy, especially the privacy of her children.
¹⁹
The press, as a rule, fawn over her, but they are not her friends. Here is a telling response to a question from a fan about political allegory:

She gets her shot in there at the Bush and Blair governments, makes a fist pump for her postmodern celebration of tolerance, but summarizes her message in the axiom “Don’t trust the establishment
or the press
to tell you the truth.”

When Harry “leaves our world” and finds “exactly the same problems in the Wizarding world,” then, it should come as no surprise that one of these problems is an obnoxious, irresponsible, dangerously mean-spirited and unregulated press. And that is exactly what we find there.

But not right away. Though Harry learns about the Wizarding world newspaper, the
Daily Prophet
, the same day he is told by Hagrid he is a wizard (
Sorcerer’s Stone,
chapter five) and almost all news of the outside world comes to Hogwarts through this medium, Harry doesn’t meet the press, per se, until he becomes an unwilling Hogwarts champion in
Goblet of Fire
(chapter eighteen). Then he meets Ms. Rowling’s memorable type and caricature of a Fleet Street reporter, Rita Skeeter.

We actually hear her name mentioned earlier in
Goblet of Fire
(chapter ten) because she writes up a misleading and rumor-laden report in the
Prophet
about the Dark Mark appearing above the Quidditch World Cup campgrounds. We are forewarned, consequently, when she pulls Harry into a Hogwarts broom closet before the weighing of the wands ceremony for Triwizard Tournament champions. Harry gives pedestrian answers to her questions and insists, despite her fishing for a more titillating response, that he hadn’t entered the Tournament voluntarily.

Before talking about the story she writes and Rita’s further adventures, it’s probably best to unwrap the meaning of her name. The photographer accompanying her to Hogwarts on this visit is called “Bozo,” and the reporter with the acid-tipped Quick-Quotes-Quill has a tag that is just as disparaging and revealing. In brief, “Rita Skeeter” should be said aloud: “Read-a-Squiter,” i.e., “Read a Mosquito.” The cameraman is a buffoonish clown and the journalist is a blood-sucking parasite that, at best, is a nuisance, and, as often as not, spreads diseases that could be fatal. If the insect analogy seems far-fetched to you, Rita is revealed in later chapters to be an Animagus who turns herself into a bug.

Not a name you’d give someone you liked, right? And Rita is not someone we’re meant to like.

The article she writes, as you’d expect, has little to nothing to do with what Harry said and everything to do with a story Ms. Skeeter knew would be a “wow.” She makes up “facts” and quotations whole cloth (e.g., that Harry was the only Gryffindor champion, cried about his parents at night, etc.), which proves to be the source of teasing and embarrassment for Harry. Because everyone seems to believe everything they read in the
Prophet,
though they know it is a rag.

Rita writes stories in
Goblet of Fire
about Hagrid being a half-giant, about Harry’s being “disturbed and dangerous,” and about Hermione as something of a tart who toys with the affections of both Viktor Krum and Harry Potter. This last bit was a mistake on Skeeter’s part because Hermione figures out how Rita listens in on their conversations unseen via a “bug.” She captures Skeeter, an unregistered Animagus, in her beetle form and exacts pledges of journalist abstinence from her to “see if she can’t break the habit of writing horrible lies about people” (
Goblet of Fire
, chapter thirty-seven).