Television interview: The Royal Wedding and the Princess Myth

The ‘death’ of J. K. Rowling: Why it doesn’t matter what she has to say about Harry Potter

The invisible diversity of Harry Potter: Joya Wu/Flickr         

Who owns a story? When an author writes a book, are the words on the page the definitive version of the plot and characters? Does what the author have to say outside the world of the book have the power to add to the meaning of the book itself?

Youth Project poster shared by J.K Rowling

In response to a question from a Jewish fan, J.K. Rowling recently explained on Twitter that the Harry Potter series includes a Jewish wizard, Anthony Goldstein. Goldstein’s name is recorded in an early notebook in which Rowling listed the original forty students whom she imagined attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Within the series, however, he only appears as a minor character in the fifth and sixth novels.

Within the same Twitter question-and-answer session, Rowling also “revealed” that the school was similarly diverse in its inclusion of gay and lesbian students. She shared an image created by a Canadian LGBTQ organisation that reads, “If Harry Potter taught us anything, it’s that no one should live in a closet.”

Both Jewish and LGBTQ news sites have reported these brief comments by Rowling in positive terms. The Harry Potter series, which totals some 4,000 pages in US editions, did not give millions of readers any clear sense that Hogwarts was home to Jewish or gay and lesbian students. However, Rowling’s declarations on Twitter are not only newsworthy, but a cause for pride.

Similar feelings of celebration were evident when Rowling announced in 2007 that she had “always thought of [beloved headmaster Albus] Dumbledore as gay”. Likewise, very few people had gathered from the books themselves that Dumbledore was homosexual. Although subsequently his penchant for “plum velvet” and high-heeled boots were interpreted as clues to his sexual orientation.

With both of these announcements, some fans have also questioned whether these extra-textual announcements carry any weight. If it was not possible for readers to detect that a character was gay or Jewish then how could they possibly be considered as positive signs of increasing representation and inclusion of minority groups in popular culture?

Admittedly, there is an argument that attempts to depict a character as being of a particular race, sexuality or religion could appear tokenistic. Should Rowling, for example, have made more of Anthony Goldstein’s Jewish identity by mentioning his observance of Hanukkah, or need for kosher meals at banquets in the Hogwart’s Great Hall?

Nevertheless, depicting a character like Dumbledore as having fallen in love with a man as a matter of course could have done much to present gay and lesbian relationships as unremarkable. In an imagined world in which the supernatural is possible and the limitations of reality are few – something for which the books have been criticised by religious extremists – it speaks volumes that a gay relationship cannot be represented to the degree where it is discernable.

The Harry Potter series has had worldwide influence Hung Chieh/Tsai/Flickr  

To figure out to what degree Rowling’s comments should influence our interpretation of the highest-selling book series in history, we can turn to a standard idea within literary criticism.

In his 1967 essay “The Death of the Author”, French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes challenged the traditional practice of analysing literature by focusing on the motivations and biography of a work’s author. Barthes argues that looking to the author for a text’s explanation not only limits it to a single meaning, but also denies the influence of other texts (intertextuality) and the responses of the reader in producing meaning.

Indeed, Barthes famously suggests that individual readers produce their own, different interpretations of the same texts, dismantling the idea of the author as the creator of a text’s definitive meaning. As Barthes describes the process of removing the author as the explanation of a text, “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”.

Barthes and Michel Foucault, among others, contributed to changes in the study of literature under the umbrella of the poststructuralist movement. Scholars abandoned the search for a work’s “true meaning” – as imparted by the author – to marshalling a variety of critical approaches relating to gender, sexuality, and class, for example, to expose the shifting meanings of a given text.

When we study literature today, we are not interested in answering what we think an author truly “meant”, but what readers understand it to mean. We examine the words within a book, their interaction with other stories in all kinds of media, and their reflection of and influence upon the world in which they have been written.

If we approach Rowling’s Twitter comments armed with Barthes, we can say that what she “always thought” of a particular character, or whether she always imagined gay and lesbian students at Hogwarts are irrelevant to how we interpret the Harry Potter series.

Though the final Potter book was published in 2007, Rowling seems eager to retain an influence on how we understand her books by revealing ostensibly new information about her characters. Whether these character points were announced to readers via Twitter or alluded to within the Potter books, however, the meanings that we as a diverse international community of readers wish to take from them trump Rowling’s intentions as an author.


This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

So Long God and Liz: The New Australian Girl Guides Promise

Girl Guide salute, as used when making the promise,
demonstrated by a Canadian Guide and Brownie (1985)

For an organisation with a small membership, Girl Guides Australia has attracted local and international media attention in the past week. Though there are fewer than 30,000 girls and women involved in Guiding in Australia today, down substantially from a peak of 80,000 and despite a century-long legacy in which one million Australian women are former Guides, the very idea of changing a traditional organisation still excites public opinion. This week the more than century-old Guide promise was revised to remove reference to a “duty to God” and service to the Queen. The change is clearly intended to stem the decline in Guiding in Australia. This downward trend is not reflected in the United Kingdom where there are more than half a million Guides and one in every three girls of the appropriate age is enrolled in Brownies. For an organisation teetering on the edge of becoming unviable in its current form, the change in the Australian Guide promise is a major, and controversial, step in demonstrating that an organisation built out of British imperialism is still relevant to 21^st century girls in a postcolonial nation.

Across the past decade or more, Guiding in Australia had already begun moving away from many of the traditions that defined it during the mid-20^th century. Uniforms became more casual, with mix-and-match polo shirts and other casual wear. Overall the new look is less reminiscent of a 1970s QANTAS flight attendent crossed with a sailor in full regalia in an attempt to lose some of the daggy connotations associated with being a Guide. In what I thought was a sad moment, the Brownie section of the movement was merged with Guiding such that there is no separate uniform for Australian girls in the younger age group (and no toadstool, Brown Owl, skipping around mirrors, or Woorails, Tintookies or Lullagullis).  

Australian Guiding has been eager to show that it is modern and progressive and a cool place to be. Witness this television advertisement from three years ago that was clearly not impressive to the one Guide who chose to comment on it. The logic of tween and teen years means that anything that girls need be told by adults is "cool" is, in fact, the farthest thing from being so. Even I knew that I was flirting with danger as a Brownie in 1988 and did not make the transition to Guiding when I became too old for my brown dress and yellow skivvy.

Changes in uniform and name, coupled with attempts to promote Guiding on television, seemingly did little to attract more girls to an organisation that was nevertheless making great efforts to provide a relevant and challenging program for today's girls. Guiding in Australia has an image problem. As in the UK, the shifting cultural make-up of Australia's population has prompted some of the changes to Guiding. In 2007, Girl Guides UK introduced a headscarf to the official uniform to encourage Muslim girls to feel welcome in Guiding. Last year a Muslim Guide unit was established in New South Wales in an attempt to draw in girls from communities who have not traditionally been part of Guiding in Australia.

Ismaili (a sect of Shia Islam) Girl Guides circa 1920s holding a portrait
of Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan

Nevertheless, any idea that Guiding was or is a solely Christian organisation is untrue. A substantial number of units, especially in the United Kingdom, had associations with church groups, but an equally substantial number were run from neutral community halls or purpose-built huts. From the beginning, Scout and Guide founder Robert Baden-Powell made it clear that girls must believe in a higher being in order to join, but the notion of God did not preclude girls of faiths other than Christianity from becoming Guides. Indeed, it was the imagined relevance of Guiding and Girl Scouting to girls from every kind of background that meant that it was adopted in one-hundred-and-forty-five countries, with Hindu and Muslim nations among those that formed affiliations with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts not long after its formation. Guiding began in India in 1911, Turkey in 1923, Lybia in 1958 and the United Arab Emirates in 1973, to give just a small number of examples.

Without denying some of the missionary efforts underlying the establishment of Guiding in some of these countries, or the historical separation of Indigenous girls from white girls in some places, Guiding did set out with goals of being relevant to, and inclusive of, girls of all faiths and races. Olave Baden-Powell, the World Chief Guide from 1930 until her death in 1977 (and Baden-Powell’s wife), visited over one hundred countries to meet with Guides, and spent a substantial amount of time in places such as Kenya.

How curious, then, that it is imagined in 2012 that steps need to be taken to ensure that girls of all faiths and backgrounds are welcome in Guiding: this idea has been at its core for more than a century. The recent change is oriented around the “promise”, a brief paragraph that is generally only spoken once in a Guide’s time in the organisation, unless there is an extraordinary situation in which the promise is renewed (as at the Guiding centenary celebrations recently). In this way, it’s reminiscent of a marriage vow—symbolic, but of little ongoing importance in day-to-day living.

The original British Guide promise read:

“On my honour, I promise that I will do my best-,

To do my duty to God and the King,

To help other people at all times,

To obey the Guide law.”

The promise that I made in Brownies in Australia in the 1980s was very similar:

“I promise that I will do my best,

To do my duty to God,

To serve the Queen and my country,

To help other people,

and to keep the Brownie Guide law.”

It is also how the Australian Guide promise read (minus the word “Brownie”) until the following  promise was adopted:

“I promise that I will do my best:
To be true to myself and develop my beliefs
To serve my community and Australia
And live by the Guide Law.”

Queen Elizabeth II inspects a Girl Guide

Much of the media response has focused on the removal of God and the Queen from the promise. Australian Scouts have the option of mentioning the Queen or leaving her out, but God remains. In the UK, the Guide promise wording is still in the vein of the original promise, but “to love my God” replaces “do my duty to God”. This retains the spirit of Baden-Powell’s intent that Guides should believe in a higher being (though some countries were originally permitted to replace the term God with an alternative), but that this could accommodate girls of any religious faith. While Australian Guiding could have similarly changed “duty to God” to “love my God” to more clearly show the inclusion all kinds of religious belief, they have instead opted for the vague “develop my beliefs”.

I think this wording indicates that there is no longer a requirement to have any kind of faith in a god, rather than being an attempt to accommodate girls of all religious faiths, who have been welcome from the outset. As an atheist, the removal of reference to God does not bother me, but it is intriguing that this change has been presented as a way of accommodating different religious backgrounds rather than acknowledgement of Australia’s increasing secularisation, or at least of declining participation in formal religious attendance. There has been critique of UK and US Guide and Scout organisations for discriminating against atheists in their membership terms, and this change in Australia has successfully removed reference to God in a way that seems more accommodating of religious diversity rather than being irreligious.

Though the removal of reference to the Queen has been of most interest to monarchist and republicans, the changes to the accompanying Guide Law are striking for the way they mark of changes in how we perceive childhood. The original Guide Law was composed in 1910:

"A Guide is loyal and can be trusted.
A Guide is helpful.
A Guide is polite and considerate.
A Guide is friendly and a sister to all Guides.
A Guide is kind to animals and respects all living things.
A Guide is obedient.
A Guide has courage and is cheerful in all difficulties.
A Guide makes good use of her time.
A Guide takes care of her own possessions and those of other people.
A Guide is self-controlled in all she thinks, says and does."

The new Law bears little relationship to the original:

"As a Guide I will strive to:
Respect myself and others
Be considerate, honest and trustworthy
Be friendly to others
Make choices for a better world
Use my time and abilities wisely
Be thoughtful and optimistic
Live with courage and strength."

While it is admirable that girls are encouraged to think about their potential to change the world, some of the deletions are revealing. To be “cheerful in all difficulties” does suggest a kind of outdated model of the uncomplaining housewife, yet the notion of staying positive despite adversity still seems relevant, especially in a world in which children are increasingly shielded from disappointment and its by-product, resilience. In the brief discussion of the changes in the Law in the media, the use of the words “loyal” and “obedient” were seen as especially inappropriate for girls and women. Loyalty is a valuable quality in all humans, and for girls who develop through contemporary hurdles to coming-of-age, such as cyberbullying, being a trustworthy friend is surely still important. “Obedience” is much more fraught in that the notion of women “obeying” their husbands that was embedded in the marriage oath suggested a gendered obligation to subservience. Nevertheless, it is telling that we no longer expect children to “obey” or do as they are instructed by parents, teachers, or community leaders, as in Guiding.  We also lose specific reference to being kind to animals, which is disappointing in an age of factory farming, animal testing, and wholesale destruction of habitat that is entwined with environmental degradation. What better way to "make choices for a better world" than by "respect[ing] all living things"?

I understand that the girls and leaders involved in Guiding all feel some kind of ownership over the organisation and that agreeing on a new promise and Law must have involved inevitable compromise and concession. The intent of the changes are no doubt worthy, in that they aim to make Australian parents and girls see Guiding as a worthwhile place to socialise with other girls and to develop leadership and practical skills that they might not undertake in school. The removal of God and the Queen from the promise removes much that was symbolic of Guiding throughout its first century. The test will be whether a new model of Guiding, without these traditions, retains sufficient meaning and identity, or whether holding on to these traditional signs, in modified form, and with attempts to modernise, as in the United Kingdom, is a better strategy for the survival of Guiding.