:::: One Part FANDOM RETROSPECTIVE, One Part ANALYSIS ::::
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play that premiered in London, 2016. It was met with praise by theatergoers and disdain, even hatred, by those who read the script. Today, there is a...
Quick word about Jack Thorne. I do wish him the best of luck with Star Wars. I could be making a mountain out of a molehill, but that's kinda what I do on here...so...you know. All the best, still pissed about Cursed Child.
OKAY, so although hindsight has given me the ability to anticipate the complications to come, it was a bit premature in the summer of 2016 to question the future success or failure of the play. So, I and my fellow Potterheads settled in, eagerly counting down the days as June entered July.
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And for the next month, the fans of everything that is Potter were flicked back and forth like a yo-yo, yet again. First came new writing on Pottermore about the North American wizarding school, ILVERMORNY. Along with it, another stunning video to illustrate the layered history that JKR was weaving masterfully from afar. We devoured every sentence excitedly.
This latest installment followed the 17th-century story of the Irish witch, Isolt Sayre, who traveled to America with the Puritans. Despite some basic geographical inconsistencies about magical creatures from across the nation being somehow native to Massachusetts, or the uncomplicated walking distance between Plymouth Rock and Mount Greylock (the U.S.A. is much larger than it appears on Google, Jo. That was a 180-mile trek you just put this poor girl through...), it seemed like the start of a compelling story. Although, in the historical sense, invading European colonists weren't welcomed with open arms, erecting castles wasn't really an American thing during the Georgian era, and the Irish didn't immigrate in this fashion... but maybe that's beside the point. We were getting to read about the magical history of the North American wizarding school! Er...sorry, I know you're trying to savor this new content, I just had to bring up that JKR was kinda excluding any mention of slavery... or any distinction between the Native American tribes (if they were even mentioned). Okay, sorry again, go enjoy the story!
Within minutes, the Native American community was voicing their concerns, because Rowling took her worldbuilding into the wrong territory for the second time. And it quickly became apparent that the "skinwalker" debacle was but the hors d'oeuvre to a much larger, more controversial buffet of cultural appropriation.
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