Miranda Sawyer
THE GUARDIAN
Sat, 4 March 2023
Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling (The Free Press)
Gary Davies (BBC Radio 2)
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is a strange podcast. Rowling’s careful, crisp mind contrasts with host Megan Phelps-Roper’s mushy Christian desire to be as kind and evenhanded as possible. That’s not to say that the podcast isn’t interesting – it is – just that it’s uneven and reeeally streeetched out. It needs a far tougher editor.
A bit of background. Phelps-Roper is known for being brought up in, and then leaving, the virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist church, her fundamentalist views changed by Twitter (I know!). Landing Rowling as an interviewee is a huge coup for Phelps-Roper, as Rowling is private, and we understand why when, in episode one, she recounts how her ex-husband tried to break into her home. We should also note that The Witch Trials comes from a production company started by Bari Weiss, a journalist who fell out with the New York Times over her provocative “anti-woke” stance on cancel culture. Because of this, and given the title, we assume that the podcast exists because Rowling has been disowned by many – some of her fans and others – for her views on women’s and trans people’s rights and how they can conflict. Perhaps we will get to this subject; however, it appears, only once Phelps-Roper has gone through every single US cultural permutation of the past 20 years.
The programme is in chronological order and follows Rowling’s professional history (her personal life is included to show how it shaped her work and how her work changed her life). The longueurs occur because we are also given the context in which her work was published. By work, of course, we mean Harry Potter, or Hairy Podder, as every American insists on calling it. There are a lot on this show. The second episode spends what seems like days on 1990s US Christian evangelists and their mad belief that the Harry Potter books truly promote witchcraft to children, that kids might “drink unicorn blood”. It’s hard to maintain interest throughout this lunacy.
Safer still are the hands of the unacknowledged Gary Davies, there to smooth things over in between Ken Bruce and Vernon Kay
The third episode, out last week, about the rise of internet message boards and their overspill into the mainstream, was much better. The two examined are Tumblr (essentially sweet and lefty) and 4chan (like a racist, Columbine-loving Andrew Tate). Tumblr gave many young people the space to define their own gender queer identities. And 4chan allowed its members to rail against societal norms in a different manner, paving the way for self-promoting feminist-baiters such as Milo Yiannopoulos.
This is Jon Ronson-style stuff, though Phelps-Roper is less sharp, journalistically. Really what The Witch Trials highlights is what happens to both artist and fans when a creation balloons into something unmanageable. Harry Potter – and via Harry, Rowling – became so popular that everyone, even those who with no stake in the game, decided on an opinion and all subtleties were lost. Rowling, as she says, may have hoped that the books’ message that humans are flawed, complicated, a mixture of good and bad, is what would resonate. But – and she sees this – that’s not what’s happened. Harry and Rowling became too famous for that. Now they’re seen as entirely good or utterly bad. There are four episodes to go.
Sat, 4 March 2023
Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling (The Free Press)
Gary Davies (BBC Radio 2)
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is a strange podcast. Rowling’s careful, crisp mind contrasts with host Megan Phelps-Roper’s mushy Christian desire to be as kind and evenhanded as possible. That’s not to say that the podcast isn’t interesting – it is – just that it’s uneven and reeeally streeetched out. It needs a far tougher editor.
A bit of background. Phelps-Roper is known for being brought up in, and then leaving, the virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist church, her fundamentalist views changed by Twitter (I know!). Landing Rowling as an interviewee is a huge coup for Phelps-Roper, as Rowling is private, and we understand why when, in episode one, she recounts how her ex-husband tried to break into her home. We should also note that The Witch Trials comes from a production company started by Bari Weiss, a journalist who fell out with the New York Times over her provocative “anti-woke” stance on cancel culture. Because of this, and given the title, we assume that the podcast exists because Rowling has been disowned by many – some of her fans and others – for her views on women’s and trans people’s rights and how they can conflict. Perhaps we will get to this subject; however, it appears, only once Phelps-Roper has gone through every single US cultural permutation of the past 20 years.
The programme is in chronological order and follows Rowling’s professional history (her personal life is included to show how it shaped her work and how her work changed her life). The longueurs occur because we are also given the context in which her work was published. By work, of course, we mean Harry Potter, or Hairy Podder, as every American insists on calling it. There are a lot on this show. The second episode spends what seems like days on 1990s US Christian evangelists and their mad belief that the Harry Potter books truly promote witchcraft to children, that kids might “drink unicorn blood”. It’s hard to maintain interest throughout this lunacy.
Safer still are the hands of the unacknowledged Gary Davies, there to smooth things over in between Ken Bruce and Vernon Kay
The third episode, out last week, about the rise of internet message boards and their overspill into the mainstream, was much better. The two examined are Tumblr (essentially sweet and lefty) and 4chan (like a racist, Columbine-loving Andrew Tate). Tumblr gave many young people the space to define their own gender queer identities. And 4chan allowed its members to rail against societal norms in a different manner, paving the way for self-promoting feminist-baiters such as Milo Yiannopoulos.
This is Jon Ronson-style stuff, though Phelps-Roper is less sharp, journalistically. Really what The Witch Trials highlights is what happens to both artist and fans when a creation balloons into something unmanageable. Harry Potter – and via Harry, Rowling – became so popular that everyone, even those who with no stake in the game, decided on an opinion and all subtleties were lost. Rowling, as she says, may have hoped that the books’ message that humans are flawed, complicated, a mixture of good and bad, is what would resonate. But – and she sees this – that’s not what’s happened. Harry and Rowling became too famous for that. Now they’re seen as entirely good or utterly bad. There are four episodes to go.
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