Did Hogwarts Legacy Seriously Just Make The Anti-Semitic Goblins The Villains?
Harry Potter comes with a lot of controversies these days, but you’d think Hogwarts Legacy would have avoided the racist goblins
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Conversations around Harry Potter, and therefore the upcoming open world adventure Hogwarts Legacy, tend to be dominated by transphobia, which is weird when you consider that transphobia is one of the few pieces of discrimination not included in the original novels. I understand there’s the obvious context of JK Rowling – and have written as much previously – but it’s easy to forget everything else in the novels that’s suspect.
There are very few people of colour in the books, and those who do exist are often relegated to the background and given ridiculously stereotypical names: for example Cho Chang, whose major qualities are being good at school and… oh that’s it. Even white characters aren’t spared this – just ask background characters Anthony Goldstein and Seamus Finnigan, the latter of whom is very stupid and likes to blow things up. A Black female wizard’s skin tone changes dramatically across the movies as she’s recast with very little regard for authenticity, and the weird views on gender are clear to see with the fact the magic stairs stop boys from going to the girls’ dorm but do not stop girls from going into the boys’. Good looks are frequently associated with beauty, while ugliness of evil characters is repeatedly overemphasised, several women (and zero men) are constantly negatively defined by their emotions, and then there’s the literal slaves in the form of house elves. Don’t worry though, they like being slaves.
From what we’ve seen so far, it seems like Hogwarts Legacy has avoided these pitfalls. There’s still the somewhat Objectivist Sorting Hat, the house elves are still there, and we may well meet characters called Kim Koreanwizard, but it feels like a few landmines have been dodged. We’ve even been promised the character creator will be trans-inclusive, and the band played Believe It If You Like. All’s going well so far, eh? Now, let’s check out the plot of Hogwarts Legacy… oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no. Turns out the villains of this game are the goblin bankers, you know, the gold-loving creatures with hooked noses and beady, ratlike eyes who display the Star of David on their murals.
The goblin bankers are a wildly anti-Semitic caricature, and while I suppose the house elves are a somewhat avoidable inclusion – and at the very least are beloved characters by everyone who will overlook the fact they’re slaves – the goblins could have been left out completely. Instead, we’re seeing cartoonishly Jewish antagonists that we will need to mercilessly slay as they stage an uprising. Why can’t we just fight a Munglebunglefunglebeak in the forest? Why does it have to be the obviously racist goblins?
‘Bu-bu-bu-bu-but wait, aren’t you the racist here? JK Rowling never said they were Jews, that’s you!’ Nice try, but hooked noses and beady eyes are very well-known racist depictions of Jewish people, popularised by the Nazis but dating back much further. Caricatures of Jewish people also typically depict them as money-grubbing, secretive, manipulative, and the true keepers of power in the world – you know, literally everything the hook-nosed goblins are. They’re like the crows in Dumbo, one of whom is actually called Jim Crow. Disney never says ‘these are Black people,’ but it’s very clear that’s what the crows represent. It’s funny because crows are black, I guess. Oh, the 1930s. At least Dumbo has the excuse of being almost 100 years old. What’s Hogwarts Legacy playing at?
I don’t care that goblin rebellions are part of the universe’s history. In fact, that’s so much worse. Every attempt has been made to make these creatures seem grotesque, yet if you read up on why uprisings have happened it’s usually ‘they want to end slavery’ or ‘wizards tried to take their land’. This is a joke, right? The clearly oppressed minority that the universe has consistently demonised almost entirely based on age-old propaganda is being served up as the antagonists wholly because they don’t know their place.
I feel as if this is all a prank. As a trans woman and former avid Harry Potter fan, the debates swirling around this game have been consistently exhausting. Now it looks like standard open world fare from six years ago with bland, repetitive combat, and the storyline is about how the Jews are evil? Pull the other one, it’s got phoenix feathers on it.
Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/hogwarts-legacy-harry-potter-plot-anti-semitic-goblins-villains/