There’s another post, entitled R.E.S.P.E.C.T, about the issue of the Native American segment of Rowling’s American magical history. This is about the rest of the complaints about her writing. These complaints are amusing me greatly.
The first comment actually predates Rowling’s updates. A writer on io9 remarked something along the lines of: “I really hope the film isn’t going to be about the wise Englishman coming to save the backwards, provincial colonists.”
The rest has been about people complaining about how Rowling adapted American history. How could Salem really have such an effect on immigration? How does the MCUSA exist before the USA? Why would New York be the home of MCUSA? Why are Puritans such a focus in the history when most of the colonialists were not Puritans at all?
All of these are incredibly valid points. Rowling should have thought about them properly and her world is worse for not doing so. And yet I find these complaints completely hilarious.
Because this is what Americans do to everybody else’s history time after time. We have had films and books that literally reinvent history to fit Americans into it. The role of Commonwealth embassies in the Iranian hostage crisis? Changed for the worse to make America look more alone and heroic. In U-571, Americans captured an Engima coding device. Except, in reality, British and Canadian sailors captured them and the USA hadn’t even entered the war yet. Rewriting history, or not paying proper attention to it, is something Americans do all the time in books and films. The Americans riding in at the last moment to save everyone is basically a cliche.
So the fact that Americans are upset that an Englishman might be portrayed as the hero, or that their history isn’t being properly depicted, is just terrifying. Because now we don’t have to be scared of Americans changing our history to make them look better. We also have to be scared of them complaining if we do the same to them.
Or, in other words:
James Rowland 