J.K. Rowling has been in the news recently for her continual need to tell everyone more details about the Harry Potter series and we can criticize that while still being her fans.
The idea that J.K. Rowling is the end all be all is a little outdated. She’s still a human being who makes mistakes. More recently, fans have been calling out her tendency to paint the world of Harry Potter as this diverse and inclusive place but not depicted that in her work.
With this ‘call out’, other fans have begun yelling at the fans trying to hold Rowling accountable. Which brings up the question: Can we criticize J.K. Rowling? Arguably, yes. She consistently puts it out there that she thinks Hogwarts had a large LGBTQ+ community with a diverse racial background and yet the more we see of the series, the less that seems to be true.
It isn’t that she can go back and change the movies already made but she can adjust the Fantastic Beasts series to fit this view and…she hasn’t. Sure, Grindelwald and Dumbledore had a sexual past but in the movie, it isn’t ever brought up. They could have easily made it a plot point that Dumbledore couldn’t go after Grindelwald because of their past but, instead, we’re left with subtext.
Subtext can only go so far and going on Twitter and declaring they had a sexual relationship after the fact isn’t representation. To be honest, Rowling needs to either be accountable or she needs to maybe stop answering fans questions on Twitter if she isn’t going to apply it to the movies she’s currently working on.