Harry Potter and the half-baked debate

Everyone and everything you love will eventually fall short of your expectations. That’s just how life works. Nobody’s perfect, and the longer a piece of art abides, the more likely it is that it’ll start to suck. Few constituencies understand this better than comedy and fantasy fandoms, like-minded crowds that tend to share an affinity for the written word. Some of my favorite comics are also experts on elves and superheroes.

I don’t know where “Have I Got News for You” star Michael Ian Black falls on the nerd scale, though the comedian hosts a literature podcast called “Obscure.” Its current season dissects “An American Tragedy,” which I haven’t read. I’d bet I’m not alone there, and I’d further guess that far more people are familiar with J.K. Rowling than “Tragedy” author Theodore Dreiser.

All that is to say, when Black moseyed into a Bluesky hornet’s nest about the upcoming HBO “Harry Potter” series, I honestly think he underestimated how much he’d get stung.

More than a week ago, HBO released the teaser for the reboot, introducing Dominic McLaughlin as the new face of The Boy Who Lived. Within 48 hours of its Mar. 25 release, the TV series preview trailer became the most-watched in HBO and HBO Max history, racking up more than 277 million views.

Not everyone is excited about that.

“[If] you watch or support this you’re a bad person btw,” said one Bluesky user. “[I’m] not arguing with you about it either.” She’s entitled to that stance. If you’re willing to consume a product that supports discrimination, that says something important about what and who you stand for. Others can react to that information in whatever way they see fit.

Black, though, viewed the situation differently. “I wonder whether there’s an argument to be made (I’m making the argument) that art does not belong exclusively to its creators, that art is a collaboration between artist and audience and that it’s ok to fall in love with this world, or any world,” he posted in response. “There are many abhorrent creators. Whether we can look past their abhorrence or not is up to the individual, of course, because art appreciation will always be up to the individual. I don’t think loving “Guernica” (sp?) makes me a bad person even though Picasso was a colossal d**khead.”

To say all Hell broke loose after that is an overstatement, but the barrage of counterpoints was piercing. So Black followed up with a blog post explaining, among other things, that he finds Rowling indefensible.

As for the series, “I won’t be watching,” he said. “But, I’ll be honest, would I turn down a role in one [of] the films? That one’s tougher for me to say . . . Maybe that makes me a bad person. Regardless, I just really miss nuance, you guys.”

This ignited another eruption, inspiring Black’s follow-up to his follow-up, “Advocacy for the Flailing.” In the main, it responds to another Bluesky user, Violet, who challenged Black to think about how he can better use his influence as an advocate.

“When does morality compel advocacy?” he asks in reply. “If I have, say, a half-dozen issues about which I’m passionate, what are my obligations to those issues? Is it enough for somebody like me to run my mouth from the sidelines without ever getting fully into the game? I don’t know the answer, and I don’t pretend to know the answer.”

All of these posts should be read in their entirety, by the way. They cover a lot more territory than these snippets describe and are generally models of good-faith exchanges. What brought this discourse into my area of the social media shade room, though, was the part where Black cites a statement Malcolm X made in a 1961 debate with James Baldwin that explains his disagreement with the sit-in movement.

“If they are willing to wait for another hundred years for the white man to change his mind to accept them as a human being, then they’re wrong,” Malcolm X said, “But if they’re willing to lay down their life tonight, or in the morning, in order that we can have what is ours by right tonight, or in the morning, then it’s a good move.”

“Must all advocates be willing to lay down their lives tonight, or in the morning?” muses Black in light of that citation. “Or is there space for those willing to wait a hundred years for their deliverance?”

Oh no.

I did not come here to bury Michael Ian Black. We’re beyond the Ides of March; besides, I don’t think he’s a terrible person. (Amber Ruffin and Roy Wood Jr. put up with him, and those endorsements aren’t easy to get!) He’s simply another famous white man who has no actual skin in this game. Like many of his ilk, he’s trying to be an ally, but still hasn’t quite learned that meaning well doesn’t cut it.

What’s important is that Black is voicing a view silently held by many whenever circumstances require the public to choose between what is right and what is easy or, in this case, fun. That gentle plea for patience represents the moderate’s evergreen fecklessness. It permits those who don’t know what to do to continue to do the least for their fellow citizens who have cried out helpful suggestions for many years — hundreds, even — only to be advised to please continue to hold. I’m glad that Black is familiar with Baldwin, and I wish he knew better than to bring him and Malcolm X into this, however obliquely.

You may wonder why this teeny social media skirmish is worth examining. It’s simple: Ethical debates like this are miniature versions of those about performative gestures passing as activism. The “No Kings” rallies are such an example. The most recent, reportedly the biggest yet, attracted an estimated 8 million marchers in cities across the United States in a single-day show of resistance.

Scan Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and other social media platforms, and you may notice that when Black, brown and queer people questioned whether that weekend warrior energy would be channeled into tangible, sustained political action, white progressives attacked. The feeling of being under siege is new to many of them. Non-white and LGBTQ+ communities live with it in the supposed best of times, but for others, showing up to a march to feel less alone is enough.

We’re facing problems heftier than choosing whether to watch a morally dubious show about a magical boy and his friends. Remember, though, that Rowling’s stories used to provide a potent escape from the Muggle realm’s deadly ignorance. Since the books became an international phenomenon, we’ve lined up for the resulting movies, gobbled up licensed merchandise, and bought tickets to its hit play and theme parks. HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, hopes this small-screen reboot will be its next powerhouse title, much in the way “Game of Thrones” dominated the last 15 years.

Black is known for championing free expression, especially in matters tied to cultural politics. “To participate in the gender dialogue as a man, even as some well-meaning mediator, means to inevitably . . . say the wrong thing and incur the wrath of online commenters,” he observed in a 2019 Esquire profile. Then the writer provides an example in Black’s defense of Louis C.K.’s right to move on with his life after he returned to performing stand-up comedy in 2018. I found that disappointing.

So is the list of famous actors in the “Harry Potter” cast, including John Lithgow, the new Albus Dumbledore. Lithgow explained to The New York Times that he is in the empathy business, and that means understanding every variety of human experience. For instance, he’s playing monstrous children’s book author Roald Dahl in a Broadway show that takes a hard stare at Dahl’s antisemitism.

Lithgow also portrays a trans teenager’s grandfather in “Jimpa.” His co-star in that movie, Aud Mason-Hyde, is trans and nonbinary. They describe working with Lithgow in glowing terms to Out Magazine while admitting they found his decision to participate in the “Harry Potter” series disconcerting and vaguely hurtful.

(Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images) J.K. Rowling

Black demonstrates a better kind of empathy in this moment. For one thing, he admitted his Picasso example was poorly considered: While the very dead father of the Cubist movement can’t hurt anybody anymore, Rowling is digging into her estimated $1.2 billion personal fortune to fund groups working toward trans erasure. In 2024, she donated £70,000, or around $93,000, to For Women Scotland. That organization spearheaded a legal challenge that eventually led to the U.K. Supreme Court’s 2025 conclusion that trans women do not fall within the legal definition of women under that country’s Equality Act of 2010.

Buoyed by that success, Rowling launched The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, described on its official site as “a legal fighting fund for women protecting their sex-based rights.” Every Wizarding World product that’s sold contributes to its coffers.

In a few months, Black may have to go through all of this again on “Have I Got News for You,” a topical comedy take on the headlines. Since it airs on CNN, that makes it part of the Warner Bros. Discovery empire. Assuming its fifth season is confirmed and the show returns in the fall, the Potterverse quandary is bound to be a talking point.

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When that happens, that show and other forums like it might foster honest, thoughtful discussions about why this work cannot be separated from its creator, regardless of how we used to feel about it. Rowling would happily overwrite our collective affection for the films because their star trio, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, condemns her bigotry. And it’s natural to be upset at an author for poisoning the once-beautiful misfit haven she created. Social media runs on the righteous anger such betrayals can activate and, along with its more toxic cousins, that anger immolates most attempts at nuance.

Where Black differs from other celebrities who stride through the culture war’s snares is that he doesn’t simply claim to not have any answers, and leave it at that. He shared a blog post written by Violet, who makes many helpful points, on his Substack. Her thoughtful rebuttal, titled “Michael Ian Black Is a Bad Thinker,” roughs up the comic but doesn’t paint him as irredeemable. Like countless flailing souls, she explains, he comfortably resides in an epistemic gap. That requires others to point out the distance between insufficient gestures and the common sense acts required to push back against systemic assaults on human dignity. Teaching that lesson over and over again, even when the preferred action is inaction — like watching anything other than “Harry Potter,” for instance —  is exhausting.

At least Black is willing to show his work and own his slip-ups as he stumbles toward understanding the uselessness of half measures. “I don’t know the full extent of my role in advocacy or life or anything,” the comic admits, adding that he plans to keep thinking out loud “with more curiosity than contempt.” Good. If he can move others to do the same, that’s a small step closer to breaking the dark spell that’s been cast over this world.