J.K Rowling and political art.
We all know that J.K Rowling intended for the Death Eaters and Voldemort to be analogous to Nazi Germany and Hitler. Lets not waste time trying to prove the point on that front and get to analyzing some of the comparisons that Rowling makes.
The following sentence is from Chapter Twelve of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.
“Now a gigantic statue of black stone dominated the scene. It was rather frightening, this vast sculpture of a witch and a wizard sitting on ornately carved thrones, looking down at the Ministry workers toppling out of fireplaces below them. Engraved in foot-high letters at the base of the statue were the words: MAGIC IS MIGHT.”
J.K Rowling may not have been intending to draw a direct parallel with Nazi statues here, after all the actions and ideology of the Death Eaters are only inspired by National Socialism, they aren’t directly one to one. But let’s say for the sake of argument that Rowling was intending at least some relevant parallels to be drawn. What did Nazi statues actually look like, and did they look anything like the Magic is Might display in the Death Eater controlled Ministry of Magic?
Well, sort of, kind of, a bit. Let’s read some more from Rowling, when later in the chapter we, and Harry, get a clearer look at the statues.
“Harry looked more closely and realized that what he had thought were decoratively carved thrones were actually mounds of carved humans: hundreds and hundreds of naked bodies, men, women and children, all with rather stupid, ugly faces, twisted and pressed together to support the weight of the handsomely robed wizards.”
Alright, lets get into this. The statues are described as frightening. Its somewhat subjective what someone will find frightening, so really its up to your personal fears whether you think these statues are analogous. Me, I find the mental image of black-carved figures sitting on thrones more disturbing than statues of idealized men and women holding torches and swords, but your mileage may vary. That’s a ‘to be determined’ in the whether or not Rowling was capturing the essence of Fascist art column.
There is a decided difference in the poses of these statues though. Nazi statues were generally either running, standing, or for lack of a better word, flexing. If they were being made now they might well be T-posing to assert their dominance. (Apologies to my readers if that meme is long dead by the time you read this). Whereas the Ministry exhibits are positioned to resemble the sinister final bosses of a video game or fantasy movie. In fact, funnily enough the previous Ministry statues had more in common with Nazi statues than the Death Eater ones do, at least in this regard.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Chapter Seven.
“Halfway down the hall was a fountain. A group of golden statues, larger than life size, stood in the middle of a circular pool. Tallest of them all was a noble-looking wizard with his wand pointing straight up in the air. Grouped around him were a beautiful witch, a centaur, a goblin and a house-elf. The Last three were all looking adoringly up at the witch and wizard.
So really, although there are similarities, there are plenty of differences too. Both statues are large and imposing, and of intimidating humans intended to awe onlookers. But whereas the Nazi statues were invariably of men and women striking heroic poses and standing alone, the Death Eater statue is full of disgusting untermensch which the subjects of the statue are crushing like imposing tyrants. And although the old Ministry statues are closer to the Nazi statues, they still prominently feature ‘lesser’ creatures in a subservient role, which Nazi statues tend not to, I at least haven’t seen proof of any that do.
Funnily enough however, there is a statue which much better resembles the MAGIC IS MIGHT statue, and it’s in Miami.
I won’t pretend to have a clear grasp on exactly the symbolism intended by this Holocaust memorial. I assume the hand is the hand of God, and Jews are escaping the holocaust by clinging to it as it escapes into the stratosphere like a spaceship. So is the memorial for holocaust survivors, not victims? I thought one of the main motifs of the holocaust was Jews feeling abandoned by God? His giant freaky hand seems to be rescuing them as far as I can see. Whatever, its not important for the point I want to make exactly what the message of the memorial is, like all Holocaust memorials its intention is to evoke sympathy in the audience, in this case by how victimized the Holocaust victims look. How tortured and oppressed they seem. And this is the point I feel Rowling missed.
All good propaganda, and in my opinion how people naturally try and portray themselves, to seem to be the good guys, Is in either a heroic or victim state, sometimes both at the same time.
Nazi propaganda focused exclusively on the heroic in the statue medium, and dabbled in the victim portrayal in film and posters, portraying the German people and state as victims of a sinister and powerful international conspiracy. Holocaust memorials and films like Schindler's list tend to focus much more on the victimized side of propaganda. Mind you, this doesn’t mean that the Deathly Hallows is necessarily badly written, so long as Rowling’s intentions were to use the MAGIC IS MIGHT statue to portray the Death Eaters as dumb/cartoonishly evil. Any half competent propagandist would have had a display featuring either heroic magic users fending of evil and powerful muggles (or simply standing proud by themselves) or feeble and abused Witches and Wizards being tortured or mistreated somehow by muggles.
The MAGIC IS MIGHT statues always struck me as unreal somehow, as if they were from the mind of someone who has an idea about the kind of propaganda Fascists make, instead of looking at what they actually make.
I cannot help but feeling that Rowling wanted the statues to be that way because she wanted the Death Eaters to be producing art which gave off an uneasy feeling of ugliness, despair, misery and demoralization, as opposed to inspiring or idealistic art. I would suggest that such statues and works of art do exist, but that she was looking for them in the wrong place.
Note: The version of the MAGIC IS MIGHT statue which is the first image of this article was changed to be different from the books description, and more closely fits the image of Nazi statues.
