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In light of the JK Rowling controversy, is it still OK to enjoy Strike: Lethal White?
For some, the uncoupling of art from the artist is far from an easy feat, says Molly Marsh.
BBC One detective drama Strike returns to our screens this week for a fourth series – an adaptation of the book Lethal White – but the recent controversy surrounding author JK Rowling, who penned the novels the show is based on, is likely to leave some viewers uncomfortable about the prospect of tuning in.
This year has been a tumultuous one for fans of the Harry Potter author, who has faced a backlash from the LGBT community since she published a controversial essay detailing her views on transgender rights back in June. In the essay, ‘TERF Wars’, Rowling expresses her ardent opposition to allowing trans people to self-identify. She cites women’s rights as the key motivator for voicing what she frames as “concerns around single sex spaces”, but what many trans people have interpreted as thinly veiled transphobia.
In the wake of the essay’s release, countless alumni of the Wizarding World, including actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Eddie Redmayne, released their own statements expressing their support for the trans community and distancing themselves from Rowling’s stance. But undeterred, she has continued to unapologetically rebroadcast her views on Twitter in the months following.
For me as a trans person, the media response to Rowling’s comments has been nothing short of exhausting. Spats between transgender people and wilfully ignorant bigots have been ubiquitous in the Twittersphere for years, but the enormity of Rowling’s fame has meant that the ‘debate’ she’s fostered has been picked up by mass media in an unprecedented way. This speaks to what is ultimately so troubling about the whole ordeal – thanks to Rowling, I’m now quizzed about the ‘trans debate’ by people in the real world, where previously I could reassure myself by believing that these pseudo-intellectual attacks on trans people existed only on Twitter, or only in columns by attention-seeking journalists. It feels disheartening to say the least that Rowling’s ill-informed diatribe will now be many people’s gateway into conversations about LGBT rights.
So what does this mean for our future enjoyment of Rowling’s output, from classics like the Harry Potter books to the upcoming fourth series of Strike?
For some, celebrating or just consuming the author’s work from now on is tantamount to endorsing her offensive views, but others disagree, instead abiding by a mantra of ‘separating the art from the artist’. It’s a phrase that’s brought up time and again when artists of all stripes commit moral transgressions and we are confronted with the difficult choice of whether to remain part of their audience. ‘Separating the art from the artist’ is a motto that takes that choice out of our hands – if we can treat a person and their output as entirely unconnected, then we can sit back and enjoy it guilt-free.
However, for some commentators, this uncoupling of artist from art is far from an easy feat. While it might seem simple enough, many have pointed out that narrow-mindedness and bigotry do not exist in a vacuum. In recent months, all manner of problematic elements have been highlighted in Rowling’s back catalogue, including her tendency to equate ugliness and fatness with evil, the anti-semitic stereotypes embodied by the goblins of Gringotts, and the Harry Potter series’ tepid engagement with the issue of chattel slavery. While these are all issues distinctly separate from transgender rights, it has been suggested that perhaps they are emblematic of a lack of interest on Rowling’s part in dismantling systems of oppression. It may well be possible to ‘separate the art from the artist’, but some critics convincingly argue that if you look hard enough, the artist’s ideology is always hidden in the text.
When contemplating whether to watch the upcoming series of Strike however, I think the question is a different one. While Rowling is the sole author of the Cormoran Strike books, the television series is an adaptation, written for the screen by Ben Richards (Series 1) and Tom Edge (Series 2-4). Rowling receives an executive producer credit, but aside from that has limited involvement in the project. Which begs the question: is it productive to boycott a TV series crafted by myriad actors, writers, directors, and producers, purely because of the hateful opinions of an author whose relationship with the final product is arguably quite distant?
There’s certainly a conversation to be had there. In a recent Radio Times interview, cast members Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger themselves weighed in on the issue. Both actors appear to be sitting on the fence, with Burke opining that “there is fear on both sides” and Grainger lamenting that social media doesn’t allow for “nuanced conversation” while heralding Rowling as “a massive influence”.
If you’re looking to me as a trans person to give watching the new series of Strike the OK, I say… go for it. Burke and Grainger turn in fantastic performances, and who am I to deprive you of some great telly in this most depressing of years. But I will add the proviso that if the TV industry was more interested in telling trans stories, and if we as the viewing public demanded trans stories more zealously, we probably wouldn’t be worrying so much about JK Rowling in the first place.
Strike: Lethal White begins on Sunday 30th August at 9pm on BBC One and continues at the same time on Monday 31st August – check out what else is on with our TV Guide