Who gives a Hoot(s) about Harry Potter?

On Christmas day, 10 weeks from the date of this posting, HBO will revive the Harry Potter series by premiering the first of eight episodes to cover The Sorcerer’s Stone. This will mark the first release of Harry Potter content actually starring Harry Potter himself since J.K. Rowling’s heel turn to transphobia in the late 2010s. That means for many of us, we are now for the first time confronted with the question: Would it be wrong for us to enjoy Harry Potter? J.K. Rowling “openly admits that she uses her private wealth from Harry Potter royalties to fund transphobic hate groups”, so in consuming entertainment whose profits eventually line Rowling’s pockets, does that contribute towards transphobia? The answer to that question might be a straightforward “yes”, but then:

• Would it be alright to pirate the show?
• If already subscribed to HBO, must we unsubscribe?
• Would it be wrong to join a book club reread of the series, or consume other fan content, reliving the magic while adding to Harry Potter hype?

I think these questions have objective answers, though ones that can vary from person to person. Like take little Huxley, age twelve, who bounced between orphanages for three years before finally being adopted into a new family. After losing his parents, Huxley’s grades dropped at school and his reading skills began to deteriorate—until one teacher lent him the Harry Potter books, which he devoured. Reading those books let him forget everything a couple hours at a time. By now he’s read every book a dozen times, watched every film almost as many times, and he’s incredibly excited for the new show. Huxley’s new parents should let him watch the show, nevermind the minor consequences.

But if a significant percentage of people boycott the show, that could make a real difference to how much money ends up flowing through J.K. Rowling towards hate groups. Personally, I vote for the piracy option. (That’s protected speech, by the way—it’s perfectly legal in the U.S. for me to advocate for piracy, only legally questionable for me to actually engage in it. I say “questionable” because only providers of pirated content are criminally liable, not consumers, and there’s no law against the watching of reproduced streams—however, HBO could still sue you for having “reproduced” an unauthorized copy of the show on your own computer in the act of downloading. I’m not a lawyer; this is not legal advice.)

YouTube essayist Hoots makes a very relevant counter point, however:

It’s partly a shameless cash grab, partly a vanity project for executive producer J.K. Rowling who has been lashing out at the former stars of the original film adaptations for nearly a decade now over their unwillingness to fall in line with her transphobia. Don’t watch it. Don’t even hate-watch it. Even if you plan on keeping your HBO subscription because of other movies and TV shows on the platform. Even if you pirate it. HBO, in particular, keeps tabs on piracy downloads. If I can lose my healthcare, you can watch a different TV show.

But this post isn’t about the new Harry Potter show, nor is it about piracy.

It’s actually about Hoots, and something about Hoots I found very difficult to understand.

In a recent video, Hoots details the deep shame she feels about having worked for years as a “Wandkeeper” at Universal Studios’s Harry Potter-themed “Wizarding World” park.

I had spent years rationalizing and minimizing my participation in something to which I was diametrically opposed. I was directly enabling the Reigning God Queen of Transphobia, Joanne Rowling... And in the meantime, quiet complacency of people exactly like me emboldened her. Those of us who shrugged and vapidly recited the truism “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism”...

I’m ashamed of what my trans friends and loved ones would think.

She apologizes for her actions, but also makes it clear that this isn’t intended as a YouTube apology video; it’s a video about taking a stand against transphobia, and one that ends in a quietly triumphant act of rebellion.

But first, what did the job of Wandkeeper entail?

Wandkeepers do a little 5-ish minute show in 45 minute sets around 4 times a day. The show went like this: The audience would be led in by a “wand assistant”... then the Wandkeeper would welcome the guests and choose the “hero”; this was a guest who would participate in the show. Usually we just picked whoever looked like they had good vibes and seemed like they were going to play ball with us. I mostly chose kids, but I know some Wandkeepers preferred grown-ups because they were a little more reliable. The Hero would be offered a wand and be asked to perform a spell from a randomized set of five spells. The spell would fail in some way involving special effects triggered by the Wandkeeper, and another wand and spell would be offered and likewise fail. Then a final wand would be chosen for the hero and the moment it touches the hero’s hand, bright lights, music, and a dramatic gust of wind would indicate that the perfect wand chose them.

It’s a nice gig, and it leads to nice moments for the kids. The harm doesn’t stem from anything to do with the job itself, but rather the financial consequences:

Harry Potter wasn’t even a Universal property. They licensed it from Warner Bros who themselves had some kind of licensing agreement with Rowling. She didn’t make any money on park admission, only on merchandise, and I was only there to do a silly little show, not sell any merchandise—even if the ultimate goal of that silly little show was to push merchandise in the form of $60 interactive resin wands.

This is the problem: Acting as a gear in the system that funnels money towards the world’s third most famous and influential transphobe.

She contemplates quitting her job, but then slowly realizes just how little that would achieve…

The guests we tried to choose were nice. Sometimes they’d traveled thousands of miles to be there. Sometimes they’d waited in line in the hot California sun for hours to be chosen, patiently returning show after show until the Wandkeeper noticed them. Many guests I’d chosen were neurodivergent kids whose special interest was Harry Potter and they’d commandeer the show to tell me everything they’d learned about wand and spell types so far. And let me tell you, it was a delight getting to improvise with a real subject matter expert.

One time I told my Hero child that the wand that chose her had properties of “healing and protection” and her mom teared up and told her to tell me what had been going on in her life. It turned out she’d been in and out of the hospital with a chronic, life-threatening illness. She needed all the “healing and protection” she could get. Unlike Disneyland cast members, we weren’t empowered to give away merchandise to certain guests, so I told the sales team that, if that mother and daughter bought the wand, to give them my employee discount.

The work itself was incredibly rewarding and the Wandkeepers wanted the guests to have the best experience possible.

The job was, in its own little way, magical.

And Rowling couldn’t control the way Hoots went about the job:

A few of my fellow Wandkeepers and I would talk about the kinds of guests we’d pick as a little fuck you to Rowling. Our Heroes were the marginalized. We’d pick the fat kids, people of color, people using mobility devices… and if you were visibly queer, especially if you were sporting a trans flag somewhere on your person, you were going to be the protagonist of our little five-minute one-act.

The truth was: The shame came from Hoots herself, not anyone else. She’d been contemplating quitting her job, losing her healthcare and her stability and maybe the ability to pay her bills, all in order to have a negligible impact (since Universal would just hire a replacement for her anyhow), holding herself to an unrealistically high standard nobody expected of her.

At least, not any of her friends or coworkers:

I remember being at work with a trans coworker on a day that Rowling was rumored to be visiting the park and she said to me that she wished Joanne could see her working in “her land”; that she could see the look on Joanne’s face—furious and powerless—at the sight of a transwoman in Hogsmeade.

I talked to some of my trans and queer friends about it. They said they didn’t care. It was more important to them that I had healthcare and could pay my rent than if somewhere along the line J.K. Rowling made a few pennies off some theme park toy some kid was going to buy whether I was working there or not.

And so Hoots came to the decision to keep the job. She’d keep looking out for those poor neurodivergent and queer kids, keep bolstering the profile of trans lives and trans flags, keep fighting the good fight from within the system. The Ally from Diagon Alley.

Well…

If you’re a fan of Hoots, you already know that I’ve been lying.

The sequence I described above is what would have made the most sense to me. Maybe because I tend more utilitarian than the average person. It really seems to me that if all trans folk and allies avoided the job of Wandkeeper, then the only ones remaining to take the job would be transphobes, and the world would get that much darker for the little kids going to Universal simply for love of Harry Potter.

In reality, Hoots quit the job. She describes herself as having had “cognitive dissonance” over this job, and it’s clear that she still views herself as having rationalized the job, not a job that could be justified (so long as she had any other option of work to pursue, unlike, she implies, her coworkers). Her staying in the job as long as she did wasn’t an act of rebellion, but of complacency.

Having known close friends and family who stayed in jobs too long, or perhaps didn’t stay long enough—either way, any kind of career change can be an absolute mental-health-fuck and terrifying. I’m not saying that Hoots should have stayed as a Wandkeeper longer, only that I entirely believe she’s being too harsh on herself.

Some video essays are impressive due to the quality of their text and its obsessive and expert focus on the subject matter. This video essay was interesting to me in a different kind of way: an artifact of the creator’s psychology, its subtext dissonant with itself. Hoots presents an enormous amount of shame (that she only ever substantiates with that one line about $60 interactive resin wands), expecting the audience to expect that level of shame—or if anything, heap even more shame upon her. She even says, “If you want to shame me further, if you want to log onto your favorite social media app and cancel me or whatever, go right ahead. Throw some more shame on the pile.” But thankfully, her audience does the opposite.

in the same way that i don’t blame the guy holding the boom mic on that new harry potter show, i don’t blame a wandkeeper at universal. i say this as a trans person who’s hated harry potter since the late 2000s. but you did the right thing, for the sole reason that you needed to quit for your own sake, cause working for something you don’t believe in will kill your soul. keep fighting the good fight

So I’d like to use this example to emphasize two things:

1. We can recognize the problematic elements within the Harry Potter novels, and we should indeed boycott anything that will line Rowling’s pockets, but we shouldn’t feel shame for loving the world of Harry Potter and the magic it’s brought to millions. Rowling doesn’t own these characters; she was only a conduit for bringing them into existence.
2. I know from personal experience, shame is very often disproportionate. Sometimes too little, sometimes too large, but in those cases you can recognize the latter, take it easy on yourself.