The death of the author
For some of her formerly ardent fans, JK Rowling — the subject of a hoax eulogy this week — may as well be dead, writes
On Tuesday, the hashtag #RIPJKRowling was garnering such traction on Twitter that the platform actually stipulated that Rowling is alive and well, albeit stewing in a mire of her own making. The macabre quasi-elegy was a reaction to early reviews of Troubled Blood, the latest installment of the Cormoran Strike franchise, which Rowling writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. From what I can tell, it’s not that Troubled Blood is a bad book, per se — in fact, some critics said they rather enjoyed it, its enormous length notwithstanding. No, the problem is that the serial killer at the heart of Rowling’s latest detective-duo thriller is a cross-dressing sociopath with a fetish for women’s clothing and effects.
In itself, this isn’t a devastating faux pas on Rowling/Galbraith’s part, even if it is a tired and hackneyed trope. But given that Rowling has recently made a spectacle of her erratic, shockingly backwards attitude towards transwomen’s rights, her choice of villain is astonishingly tone-deaf. The #RIPJKRowling phenomenon is, or is meant to be, the death-rattle of her career.
Over the past few months, Rowling has successfully tarnished her reputation as one of the most beloved and inspiring children’s authors in history by penning — and then ardently defending — a series of transphobic tweets, beginning with a mocking attack on a Devex article that described “people who menstruate”, rather than simply saying “women”. The point of using descriptors like Devex’s is to include and honour the lived experiences of transmen and non-binary individuals, who, in some instances, still menstruate even if they don’t identify as women.
If you’re part of the generation that flinches at this brand of “snowflake” sensitivity, then I urge you to at least reflect on the fact that using language that makes everybody feel good costs you absolutely nothing. But, according to Rowling, the rights of the (white, straight) ciswoman are being eclipsed, and the more people who point out the flaws in Rowling’s logic, the more she digs in her heels, escalating the situation from a commentary on politically correct language to a critique of the legitimacy of trans experiences in general.
Rowling’s estrangement from the LGBTQ community is especially sad because, for many queer people, the Harry Potter series was a much-loved touchstone, a fictional testament to the power of individuality and integrity. Many queer people have said that Rowling’s books sustained them through the worst of their formative years, because Potter vilifies puritanical bullies and celebrates friendship, alterity and the transformative potential of magic. For this contingent of Rowling’s fans, the author may as well actually be dead.
Based on her behaviour so far, Rowling will, no doubt, wield this latest wave of anti-Rowling social media rhetoric as evidence of the toxicity of so-called cancel culture — historically, she’s responded to criticism by posturing as a brave, unrelenting whistleblower, instead of acknowledging that she’s been ignorant, spread misinformation, and let an enormous facet of her once-loyal fanbase down, badly. The fact of the matter is that transwomen are extremely vulnerable as it is — they’re routinely murdered all over the world, if they don’t fall on their own swords first. Most legislation is antithetical to their rights. The last thing feminism needs is Rowling’s misguided attempts to redeem it from the present and restore it to its past iterations.
Happily, if you are a fan of Harry Potter, Rowling’s demise needn’t sully the books for you. We have Roland Barthes to thank for that — his essay “La mort de l’auteur” long precedes Rowling’s noisy fall from grace. Ultimately, fictional works belong to the people who read them and love them, not to the person who wrote them; I love The Wasteland, but TS Eliot was a horrible anti-Semite, among other things. That said, buying Rowling’s books obviously benefits Rowling — at the end of the day, each of us needs to undertake a personal cost-benefit analysis when it comes to how we use our capital, for what, and at the expense of whom.
#RIPJKRowling — I for one hope that Galbraith’s latest novel stagnates at the bottom of bargain baskets.