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There is more to Harry Potter than witches and wizards — between the lines of the beloved series lies a troubling message about HIV.
This September, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling released three new eBooks on the website Pottermore. The books explored the history of the magical world and provided extra information about Hogwarts. In one of those eBooks, she revealed that lycanthropy, or werewolfism, was used as a metaphor for HIV/AIDS.
This insight came as no surprise to me; it has been long been inferred that lycanthropy, a transmittable and highly stigmatized affliction, functions as a metaphor for HIV in the series. However, I have serious issues with how Rowling portrayed the disease, and I am not pleased to hear that she is publicly discussing the metaphor without acknowledging how her writing contributes to HIV stigma.
“All kinds of superstitions seem to surround blood-borne conditions, probably due to taboos surrounding blood itself,” Rowling wrote. “The wizarding community is as prone to hysteria and prejudice as the Muggle one, and the character of [Remus] Lupin gave me a chance to examine those attitudes.”
Lupin is a secondary but popular character in the series, and he’s portrayed as a man who struggles with his illness but keeps it managed. However, he is considered an outlier in the werewolf community. Throughout Harry Potter, werewolves in general are described as savage, dangerous to the rest of the population, and resistant to treatment.
The worst perpetuator of this stereotype in the series is Fenrir Greyback, a werewolf who is described in the series as having a mission to contaminate as many people as he can, specializing in children. He plans to bite them, raise them away from their parents and raise them to hate normal wizards.
This is an incredibly damaging view to take of people with HIV, and feeds into the stigma that people who have HIV are unsafe, untrustworthy and intentionally malicious. There are no real-world equivalents to Fenrir Greyback, and unlike werewolves, people with HIV aren’t either “good” or “bad”— they are one group of people with a morally neutral condition.
However, the idea that people with HIV prey on innocents has been around since the peak of the AIDS crisis in the `80s and `90s, and there is absolutely no reason that it should be perpetuated in a children’s book that purportedly seeks to promote tolerance. Such a view of the disease leads to a stigma that contributes to a lack of healthcare access for people with HIV and perpetuation of the disease itself.
Furthermore, HIV stigma has long been tied to homophobia. Many people associate HIV with the LGBT community, primarily to gay men. Despite the fact that after Harry Potter ended, Rowling claimed that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay, there were no openly gay characters in the series. Lupin, Dumbledore, Sirius Black and many other characters all could have easily been portrayed as gay had Rowling chosen to do so, and having positive gay representation in such a major series would have had a powerful impact. Instead, we received a thinly veiled metaphor that could contribute to homophobia and stigmas against other groups of people associated with HIV.
The Harry Potter series was a big part of my childhood and I still enjoy it for many reasons, but it wasn’t without flaws. I wish Rowling would stop attempting to capitalize on her work while also failing to acknowledge any of its downfalls. Instead of continually producing bonus content, she would better serve herself and her fans by letting Harry Potter stay in the past.
We can appreciate Harry Potter while still wishing it had been better. My hope is that representations of people with HIV and the understanding of HIV/AIDS will one day improve among wizards and muggles alike.
Contact CU Independent News Staff Writer Carina Julig at Carina.Julig@colorado.edu.
