WP Book 3, Episode 5 - Werewolves - A Metaphor

Book 3, Ep.
5 | Werewolves- A
Metaphor?
SPEAKERS
Marcelle Kosman, Hannah McGregor
(Witch, Please Theme Music plays) (Dance of the
Priestesses by Victor Herbert Orchestra)
Hannah McGregor 00:09
Hello and welcome to Witch, Please a fortnightly podcast about
the Harry Potter world. I'm Hannah McGregor.
Marcelle Kosman 00:16

And I'm Marcelle Kosman. And even though we're recording right
in the thick of grading, aka every professor's least favorite time of
year, I propose we start off today's episode by thinking sun-shiny
thoughts in the sorting chat. Hannah, I want to talk about summer.
And specifically, I want you to tell me about your favorite tasty
summer treats.

Oh, okay. Marcelle, I'm so glad you asked because there is a
thing that I have been just thinking of and longing for, as I
mentally project myself forward to an imaginary summer when the
weather is beautiful. And it's my like, I'm taking time off, and we're
all vaccinated, and life is good. And that image is the concession
stand at Jericho beach.

Okay, tell me about this.

Jericho Beach is one of the beaches in Vancouver. I say one of
the beaches because we have many. Yes, this city is amazing.
(Marcelle laughs) Jericho Beach is my favorite beach. It's like a
little further off the beaten path. So it tends to be a little less busy.
One time I was swimming there and a seal swam by.

Shut up! (laughs)

Right? I was just like, that's cool. And also scary. But the best
thing about Jericho Beach is the concession stand because the
concession stand has both veggie dogs and vegan ice cream.

Oh. That's the most Vancouver thing I've ever heard. (laughs)

It absolutely rules. It's so Vancouver. And there is nothing more
satisfying. It's quite a bike ride for me. It's an over an hour bike
ride to get from where I live to Jericho beach. So it's like a hot
day, like a long sweaty bike ride. And then you get there and you
strip down to your bathing suit and go for a swim in the cold
ocean. And then have a veggie dog and a scoop of vegan ice
cream. Like literally name a better thing to do. You can’t, cause
that’s the best.

I mean, that sounds like the best. Wonderful. (laughs) Yeah. Oh,
wow. Yeah.

What about you? What are your favorite summer treats?

Oh, gosh. Um, so I think I've talked about this on the podcast
before. I'm not typically a person who enjoys sweets very often.

What a lie.
Well, it's a lie when I'm pregnant. (both laugh)

Fair enough, you are more of a chip girl.

I'm a little salty, you might say. And so generally, I don't go out of
my way to acquire things like ice cream, when I could instead
acquire a poutine, for example. But there's something about oh,
wow, this is gonna sound really, this is a hot take. There's
something about warm weather that makes me enjoy a nice cool
treat. (both laugh) Hot take.

This is the kind of cutting edge think outside the box commentary
that the people come to this podcast for. This is the kind of
counterintuitive radical thinking that really makes feminist critique
worthwhile.

(laughs) So recently, an H Mart opened in Edmonton, I say
recently, because I don't know when it opened, but it wasn't there
when we moved here. And it was there when we drove past it not
that long ago and decided-

Qu'est ce que an H Mart? (What is an H mart)

So I believe that an H Mart is a sort of mainstream North
American owned Asian grocery store. So like TNT. But like North
American bougie, kind of?

Okay. All right.
I think it's owned by Loblaws. But I'm not I'm not positive about
that. But I'm pretty sure that it is owned by a North American
conglomerate or something. Anyway, so I went to an H Mart for
the first time and as often happens when I go into a new grocery
store, I am swept away by the various treat opportunities that lie
before me. I bought a box of what I believe was called a brown
sugar boba ice creamsicles, or something like that? And Holy
moly. I'm just really living for these right now. I need to go back to
the H Mart.

You really do. You need to stock up! Fill your freezer.

We have a deep freezer. Thank goodness. And so I think I need
to buy a case.

Yeah, you absolutely do.

Buy so many that I eventually hate them.

It's the only way!

That’s how I like to do it.

(laughs) There's something you find that you like, the only
answer is to over consume it until you hate it.

Precisely. Yes. That's how you plan for the future, Hannah. (both
laugh)
I know it's snowing in Edmonton right now. I wish you warm days
to come to heighten your frozen treat enjoyment.

Thank you, that means so much. (both laugh)
(Witch, Please Theme Music plays)

Summer may be just around the corner. But we've got some final
exams to get through first, which means it's time for revision.

So this is the segment where we summarize pertinent
conversations that we've had and sort of draw them into the new
episode. And since we're going to be talking a lot about Lupin
today, (soundbite of wolf howling) I think we should start off
with a quick refresher on how we already talked about him as a
character in our most recent two episodes.

A great idea, Hannah. I love this. So far, we've talked about Lupin
through the frame of animal studies and disability studies. From
the perspective of animal studies, we focused on how the power
to define someone as human or not human is entangled with
other structures of power, including the dehumanization inherent
in racism. We looked at how Lupin’s liminal status as both human
and non human marked him as less than in the eyes of the larger
wizarding world, aligning him with other not quite human
characters, including house elves, goblins, centaurs, and even
Hagrid.

Then in our conversation with Tea Gerbeza we talked about
reading werewolf-ism, or as we will sometimes call it in this
episode, lycanthropy- such a good word- as disability or chronic
illness. So we talked about how the failure in the wizarding world
to regularly provide werewolves with reasonable
accommodations, like the wolfsbane potion, can be read as an
example of the social rather than medical model of disability. That
is the way that structural ableism is, in fact, sort of more limiting
and harmful than the disability itself. And Tea also introduced us
to the scholarship of Renee Ward and Ruth Anolik, who have both
looked at the history of werewolves in literature.
So Ward explains that werewolves have historically been treated

as markers of otherness and difference. While Anolik points out
that the Gothic trope of the monstrous other, including the
werewolf often signifies the desire to exclude non normative
bodies from society. And we talked about how werewolves in
particular signify this kind of hidden threat or like an invisible
pathology. You sort of look at a werewolf most of the month, and
you cannot perceive their werewolf-ism. But that invisible
pathology ultimately reveals itself, right? It comes out when the
moon is full. It reveals itself as not only monstrous but actively
dangerous. And we talked about how, because of ableist society's
obsession with cure, the incurability of lycanthropy is particularly
horrifying.

Yeah, with all these interpretations of Lupin as other established,
you might be wondering why we are revisiting him again in this
episode. And the reason is because we have yet to grapple with
one of the most significant ways werewolves in the Harry Potter
series have been discussed. And that is as a metaphor for HIV
and AIDS. In order to explain the significance of this metaphor in
particular, we're going to take a deep dive into the whole concept
of metaphor and its relationship to illness. But before we do that,
we need a little bit more context on what our favorite author has
said lycanthropy- lycanTHROpy? LYcanthropy.

LyCANthropy? Or LYcanthropy? I think its a Lycanthrope and
lyCANthropy.

A lycanthrope? Is that a person who likes werewolves? No it’s not.

(laughs) I think that would be a lycanthropeafile.

Yes. Oh, right because misanthrope is a person ,anyway. Okay.
Oh my God. Mhm.

A misanthrope is a person who hates people, and lycanthrope is a
person who likes people. (both laugh) Whew.

Okay, okay, okay. But before we do that we need a little more
context on what the author, JK Rowling herself has said about
lycanthropy in relation to HIV and AIDS.

So this interpretation of werewolf-ism as a metaphor for HIV and
AIDS comes specifically from Rowling. It is an interpretation she
has stated on record multiple times, but its sort of most
established version is one of Rowling's many ill advised additions
to her fantasy world, published on Pottermore. That's really, things
really started taking a downhill slide, when Pottermore was
launched. What a cursed site. Anyway, so one of the ebooks
published on Pottermore is called Short Stories from Hogwarts of
heroism, hardship and dangerous hobbies.
And this is a story that arguably makes this interpretation of

werewolf-ism as a metaphor for HIV and AIDS canon because it's
like a published text in the Harry Potter world. I am not totally
convinced that the Pottermore stuff is anything more than
sanctioned bad fanfiction that Rowling is writing about her own
books, but that is the topic of canonicity and its relationship to
Paratext is a conversation for another day.

I've seen people liken her tendency to do this to George Lucas-
ing. Like, JK Rowling is George Lucas-ing her wizard universe.
Anyway, sorry, continue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and people ‘George Lucas’ when they are mad
that fans have taken control of the meaning of a cultural text.
(Marcelle laughs) So that's fine. Anyway, let me read what
Rowling writes about Lupin. Quote, “Lupin's condition of
lycanthropy was a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a
stigma, like HIV and AIDS. All kinds of superstitions seem to
surround blood borne conditions, probably due to taboos
surrounding blood itself. The wizarding community is as prone to
hysteria and prejudice as the muggle one, and the character of
Lupin gave me a chance to examine those attitudes,” end quote,
yeah, yep, yep. She also gives the backstory to how Lupin
contracted lycanthropy. He was bitten as a child by a werewolf
who wanted revenge on his father.
So in this reading Lupin’s story becomes one of being

intentionally given a blood borne illness as a child by a dangerous
man. Being haunted by the stigma of that illness throughout his
life, and struggling to live in a society that fears him. And that to
some degree is right to fear him, because he is constantly at risk
of transferring his illness to the children under his care. Now,
Marcelle, tell me, I feel instinctively how this metaphor is troubling.
But I would love to have some theory to help me understand my
deep intuitive discomfort.

Yes, you are right to feel that way. And I am very pleased to have
some theory ready to go. So let's turn to that section now.
(Hannah laughs)

If I had the power to transform things, I would definitely turn right
now into July. That's how transfiguration works. Right? I'll find out
for certain in transfiguration class, the segment where we talk
theory to you.

Okay, so we're going to talk about metaphor. Let's start with every
elementary school English definition of a metaphor. (clears
throat) A metaphor is a comparison between two things without
using like or as.

Okay, so, that basically sounds like metaphors are just similes
minus the conjunctions.

Exactly. But that's not at all how metaphors work. In literature as a
discipline, metaphors are way more interesting, and I dare say
downright magical. So in the context of a story or poem or play,
for example, metaphors allow for the transformation of one thing
into another. It's not just a figure of speech, but a new way of
seeing the world.

Oh, oh, it's like real life transfiguration. Amazing! So even outside
literature, we see metaphors structuring culture in all kinds of
ways, like the tendency among white people to reduce the
systemic issue of police brutality, to quote “one bad apple”,
unquote. These aren't just expressions, they're ideologies that say
something about the reality people are constructing.
Mm hmm, exactly. Social and Cultural metaphors are so
pervasive that Susan Sontag, who we'll come back to in a
moment, writes that quote, “one cannot think without metaphors,”
end quote, now, is this true of everyone on an individual scale?
Probably not, but it is definitely true of me. And it's certainly one of
the ways that ideologies circulate in our society.

Yeah. I mean, I think we could talk about, you know, the way
we've discussed discourse, discourse as the language that enacts
ideologies and makes them real, and like discourse is always kind
of metaphorical, right? It's always a sort of an attempt to replace
the real conditions, real lived conditions of reality with language.
Language often meant intentionally to distract us from what's
actually going on.

Exactly, or to reshape it in some way or another. And so, you
know, much like magic, metaphors can be used for good and
righteous purposes. I can't think of an example. (laughs) But, you
know, well, we, you know, we hear about this with things like
science fiction, right? That it's an opportunity to de familiarize
oppressive ideologies, by reconstructing them in a new way.

I mean, poetry, right? Like so much of poetry is about making
language strange in order to show us how it's working. And that's,
you know, you can look at so much of the radical world changing
poetry being written by Black and Indigenous poets today, that is
absolutely about seizing and metaphor and making language
strange in a way that is exposing how it's been used harmfully,
and like reversing that. Yeah, there's a wonderful Chantal
Gibson's poetry collection, How She Read, that is exactly about
this.
Super good. We'll put a link in our show notes. And again, like
magic, we can see that metaphors can be used for nefarious
purposes, like reinforcing oppressive systems of power. The one
bad apple metaphor that you mentioned, Hannah is a perfect
example of this. What we see with Rowling's use of lycanthropy
as a metaphor for HIV is, to be generous, a failed-

Yeah, by all means, be generous.

(laughs) I, you know, I do. It is a failed attempt at
defamiliarization. As one of my favorite metaphors goes, the road
to hell is paved with good intention. So, Rowling might have
meant well, but using lycanthropy as a metaphor for HIV brutally
reinforces the very stigma that she sought to unpack, and her
representation of Lupin altogether omits any of the valuable
counter narratives that emerged out of HIV positive communities.

Yeah, yeah. 100% it is not metaphor itself, that is a problem. But
what you do with it, as is the case with so many things, and when
all you do with it is reinforce stigma, then your metaphor has not
been particularly useful. So, to use one of our favorite metaphors
here at Witch, Please, let's make sure we're all on the same page
about how the medical and cultural meanings of HIV and AIDS
have changed over the last 20 years.

Yes. Always a great idea, Hannah. So first things first. HIV stands
for human immunodeficiency virus. This is a virus that weakens
your immune system. It's also the virus that can lead to AIDS. But
AIDS isn't just one thing. So the acronym stands for Acquired
Immunodeficiency Syndrome. And a syndrome is a cluster of
symptoms. So a person diagnosed with HIV does not necessarily
have and may never get AIDS. And AIDS is a clinical diagnosis
based on the status of your immune system. So medical speak,
generally it's when your CD4 T cell count, your CD4T cell count
falls under 200. Or when you acquire, and there's the acquired,
when you acquire certain infections that your body would
otherwise be able to prevent.

Huh. That was a really helpfully clear explanation.

Thank you. I wrote it.

(laughs) It’s almost like you have worked in this field.

Oh, ages ago, but by golly, does it come in useful? So we're not
doing a medical episode though, the way we're going to talk about
HIV and AIDS will reflect what and how these terms mean, in our
society. So specifically, we're talking about the terms as
metaphors. So I might refer to AIDS as an illness or a disease
because that's how it's understood culturally, even though it's
literally not a disease, but a group of symptoms, which could
include diseases, such as cancer. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Makes sense.

Okay. Great. All right. So for this segment, I have drawn on
Susan Sontag's work AIDS, and its metaphors, which is a
companion to her earlier book, Illnesses as metaphor.

Amazing. So I've read Illness as Metaphor, but I've never read
AIDS and its metaphors. So I'm excited to learn more.
Okay, published in 1989, AIDS and its metaphors examines, as
the title suggests, the metaphors that dominated the way we in
North America understood HIV and AIDS at the time. So the book
was published at a time when AIDS was desperately
misunderstood. And when paranoia about transmission was high,
like really irrationally high. And when the life expectancy of
someone diagnosed with HIV was around only about 10 years.

So it's like, right in the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Yes. So in 1989, treatment had only been available for about two
years, it was really expensive, and it had a lot of side effects. And
it was not nearly as effective as what's available today. And so in
light of all of this, the public perception of HIV and AIDS was both
fearful and sensationalized. And this is the culture that Sontag is
responding to, with the book, AIDS and its metaphors.

Yeah, this makes perfect sense, too, because like she'd already
established in Illness as Metaphor, this sort of larger critical
interest in how contemporary discourse around illnesses, like how
quickly illnesses get turned into metaphors, right, that basic idea.
And in that first book, she's talking about tuberculosis, and
cancer, and the sort of these different historical moments where
these diseases or illnesses, like, have held a great deal of cultural
weight. So I'm, I'm really interested to hear more about what she
sort of did with the cultural weight of HIV and AIDS.

Yeah, so she's very much building off of Illness as Metaphor in
this companion piece. To begin, Sontag explains that the
metaphors for HIV and AIDS as well as these other illnesses like
cancer and tuberculosis, also syphilis, and the plague, that they
depend on, quote, “the perennial description of society as a kind
of body, a well disciplined body ruled by a head,” end quote.

Hmm, oh, gosh, I'm only realizing right in this moment how
pertinent this conversation is gonna be for the fact that we're all
living through a global epidemic.

Yeah, yeah.

(laughing) Really some overlapping concerns here.

Yes, absolutely. And because we're focusing on lycanthropy, we
won't even really get into a lot of the ways that her analysis is so
pertinent and so relevant to today. But it is, so you know, if, if
you're interested, I highly recommend, give it a read.

Yeah. So before we even get to, you know, metaphors for
disease, she's arguing that we have to understand the metaphor
used to define society itself. And that metaphor is like society as a
body is ruled by a head.

Yes, precisely. And society as body ruled by head is a very old
metaphor. It might sound familiar if you ever studied Macbeth.
The idea is that if the king or ruler is illegitimate, then that
illegitimacy will wreak havoc on the subjects. So in Macbeth, the
title character becomes king through murder most foul, rather
than through the so called proper lines of succession. And pretty
soon it's all bad weather and horses eating each other.

Sorry, horses eat each other in Macbeth?!
Yeah. Okay, so society as body ruled by head, corrupted head
can corrupt the body, the reverse is likewise imagined to be true.
So a healthy and disciplined society body can be invaded and
corrupted until its head, which is I guess the government is no
longer in control. Sontag points out that, quote, “disease is
regularly described as invading society, whereas efforts to reduce
mortality are called a fight, a struggle, a war.” So we see here how
the language of national security is used to shape popular
metaphors about illness. But what is particularly sinister about
using the metaphor of war, Sontag explains, is that the
representation of the disease as a quote, “alien other,” inevitably
leads to blaming the patient for contracting the disease in the first
place.

Oh my gosh, we see so much of this in so many places. Right?
Oh, that is fascinating. I mean, we see it with cancer, right, losing
your fight with cancer, which is so often framed as like a form of
weakness, we 100% see it with stigma around aids, we see it with
with the spread of the pandemic, right, the like, fixation on
individual responsibility, like there is so much this desire to like,
individualize and blame people for becoming ill.

Exactly. And Sontag is saying that that comes directly out of this
desire to frame illness through the metaphor of war, because we
might find ourselves inclined to say that the patient or the sufferer
was irresponsible, they let their guard down. They didn't do their
part to keep the enemy at bay, loose lips, sink, ships, etc, etc. And
so, as you're saying, Hannah, nowhere is this attribution of fault
more pronounced than in illnesses seen to be preventable,
through what we might call lifestyle choices.

Yeah, illnesses that perhaps disproportionately affect already
stigmatized communities, where the desire to or the ability to
frame those who are disproportionately impacted as alien others
is already like, ready to go.

Mm hmm. Yes, ready and willing. Mm hmm. So, Sontag writes,
quote, “indeed, to get AIDS is precisely to be revealed as a
member of a certain risk group, a community of pariahs, the
illness fleshes out an identity that might have remained hidden
from neighbors, job mates, family and friends.” And so in North
America, transmission of HIV was largely concentrated among
men who have sex with men and intravenous drug users. And
because queer sex and injection drug use are already
stigmatized, HIV and AIDS could be and indeed, were framed as
the fault of members of those certain risk groups.

Mm hmm. And we continue to see the sort of the recent news
about there being successful or promising looking HIV vaccines
that came out of the RNA vaccine technology developed for
COVID, which is like, people were not as motivated to come up
with a vaccine for an illness that continues to disproportionately
impact men who have sex with men, intravenous drug users, and
Black people.

Yes, exactly. So compounding the stigma was the fact that in the
1980s, and 1990s, AIDS was also a fairly visible illness. So in the
first decade of treatment, HIV meds could really wreak havoc on
the body, the most visible side effect being something called
lipodystrophy, which is a redistribution of the body's fat storage
and a change in the way that the body produces fat. And so it
would create these sort of visible markers of somebody who was
taking antiretroviral treatment. So what this meant is that the so
called visible markers of AIDS were then replaced with the visible
markers of treatment. And this allowed the stigma to remain
unchanged.

Gotcha. And we get lots of popular culture sort of pinpoints, like I
think of, is it Tom Hanks in Philadelphia? Who becomes this, like,
what does somebody who is sick with AIDS look like? And there's
all kinds of, right, like visibly marked as ill. Also white and male,
like, there's lots of sort of things going on. But we see how sort of
cultural representations of illness play into how we then read that
illness.

Mm hmm. That's right. And so thanks to major advances in
treatment, by the late 1990s, HIV was really becoming a
manageable chronic condition. And the new classes of drug
therapies in the aughts really drastically reduced the physiological
side effects. And so this meant that starting around, you know, the
early aughts, HIV status could actually remain private, or it could
remain relatively private. And I say relatively, because there are
still countries that you can't enter if you're carrying HIV AIDS
medications. And it wasn't actually that long ago that the US was
among them. The law changed in 2010. I remember this because
there was a huge HIV AIDS conference. And people were like, hi,
we can't come to your conference, because we can't be
guaranteed to get through the border with our medication.
So yeah. 2010 is not that long ago. So while stigma and

misinformation around HIV persists, its transformation into a
manageable chronic condition has meant that a lot of these
metaphors that Sontag wrote about in 1989, have transformed
too. And so like, rather than a war on AIDS, or the demonization
of folks living with HIV, we might begin to see a little bit more
commonly, emphasis on harm reduction, on education and
prevention, and most importantly, on the notion of treatment as
prevention, which recognizes that folks living with HIV might still
want to be sexually active and have a right to be. So all of these
things, in my humble opinion, are great.

Yes. And were one inclined to use a metaphor to talk about the
stigma of HIV and AIDS and were one writing that metaphor in the
late 90s or early 2000s, perhaps one might be inclined to draw on
the harm reduction, sex positivity, destigmatization, perhaps.

I mean, maybe. (laughs)

Or maybe not.

Or maybe one would be inclined to explore the notions of stigma,
by just writing about stigma without unpacking its social and
cultural meaning.

So, we're talking about Lupin, right?

Yeah, yeah, we're talking about Lupin.

Just making, just making sure. (both laugh)

Okay, here's an official transition for you.

Alright, I'm ready.

In AIDS, and Its Metaphors, Sontag argues that, quote, “AIDS
does not allow romanticizing or sentimentalizing, perhaps
because its association with death is too powerful,” end quote. So
as HIV has become treatable and manageable, I think we've seen
exactly that shift towards AIDS as sentimental and romantic,
particularly in narratives by folks not living with HIV. And this is
where Remus Lupin comes in.

Mm hmm. Okay. All right. So he is an example of the like,
romanticization sentimentalization- that can't possibly be a word,
but let's go with it. (Marcelle laughs) Of, of the sort of metaphor
of HIV and AIDS, sort of as constructed by somebody with
perhaps a lack of deep understanding of the lived experience.

Mm hmm. Yes, precisely. Rowling's use of lycanthropy as a
metaphor for HIV relies on the stigma and suffering that were
central to the early AIDS metaphors that Sontag describes. And
because Rowling has publicly acknowledged this metaphor,
lycanthropy in the Harry Potter series thus overtly and covertly
reproduces the metaphor of AIDS as a threat to society. So more
specifically lycanthropy in Harry Potter reproduces what Sontag
identifies as a kind of us versus them mentality, in which us
always refers to this so-called general populace, and them always
refers to an already stigmatized people.
I'm going to give you a couple of quotations. Okay. So Sontag

says, quote, “Every feared epidemic disease, but especially those
associated with sexual license generates a preoccupying
distinction between the diseases, putative carriers, and those
defined as the general population.” End quote.

Yes. Yeah. So there's, that's just really interesting. So there's this
idea that like, the person the carrier isn't a member of the general
population who like became infected, like they are this this
dangerous other who, like brought it into the general population.
Yes, yes, exactly. And this is where quote number two kicks in,
which is, quote, “from the beginning, the construction of AIDS had
depended on notions that separated one group of people from
another,” this is the them and us, “while implying the imminent
dissolution of these distinctions.”

Oh, yes. Okay, this really. So on the one hand, we've got the
social construction of AIDS, that says that people who contract it,
the “them” did something to deserve it. But on the other hand,
AIDS can be transmitted to people who don't deserve it. Us. And
thus, the “us” is in danger.

Yes, exactly. In Sontag's words, “it is a punishment for deviant
behavior, and it threatens the innocent.”

Gah! it's so interesting in the case of Lupin, yeah, so like, that
seems like a transparent contradiction.

Yes. And it should be, but it isn't. And Lupin’s infection explained
even by Rowlng as not his fault is characteristic of the danger
posed to the so called innocent or the “us” by the so called
deviants, or the “them.” Even name- ugh, this is where it gets
really stark here. Even the name of the werewolf who infected
Lupin reinforces this contradiction. Fenrir Greyback's name might
as well be Fenrir Bareback. And I know that we haven't met him in
the series yet, but when we do, he'll be constructed as the polar
opposite of Lupin, one who revels in licentiousness and who
deliberately spreads his infection to others.

Yes, and who particularly targets children. Yeah, and like the
image of Fenrir Greyback as this monstrous other who is always
visibly marked as a werewolf and who preys on young boys,
which is like a thing we see in Lupin's backstory. So we've got
Fenrir Greyback as the like, always stigmatized other, and then
Lupin as that like liminal character, again, who sort of bridges the
divide between these contradicting metaphors where he is both a
threat to the innocent, but also himself, the innocent who was
threatened.

Mm hmm. Yes, yes. I want you to hang on to your hat. Okay?
Because I'm going to bring in another Sontag quote. So, Sontag
reminds us that, quote, “The most terrifying illnesses are those
perceived not just as lethal, but as dehumanizing literally so,” end
quote, the most dreaded, she argues, are alterations of the face,
quote, “that seem like mutations into animality.” End quote.

Yep, yep, yep. Yep, yep. Yep, yep. Okay.

So Lupin doesn't merely transform physically, he loses himself, he
becomes his disease when he transforms. He is the disease.

Right. He is a werewolf. You aren't just infected with werewolf-
ism. You are a werewolf. Now you have changed categories. You
are no longer fully human.

Exactly. And with Greyback again, who we haven't met yet, but we
can't talk about this without talking about him. Greyback just looks
like a werewolf all the time. And this is supposed to indicate to us
what kind of deviant he is. So with Lupin, even as a tragic
romantic figure, his infection necessarily reproduces the
associations between HIV transmission and what Sontag calls the
dissolution of the person. It isn't his fault the novel tells us, but like
Fenrir Greyback, he is constructed as a danger to the children at
Hogwarts.

My goodness, AIDS and Its Metaphors sure did turn out to be
shockingly pertinent to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

It's like Rowling read it, but took all the wrong information from it.

It's so spot on. And I mean, it's spot on because Sontag is
identifying widespread, uncritically circulated cultural metaphors,
and thinking about how they work. Whereas Rowling as an author
loves to reproduce uncritically widespread cultural metaphors.
And we see that all the way through these texts, right, goblins as
Jews, werewolves, as people with HIV or AIDS, like all of these,
all of these metaphors are just those tropes, right, which are the
shorthands of discourses, which are the sort of production of
ideologies and when you reach for the shorthand, to try to signify
things to people, and you haven't done any thinking about the
ideologies behind those kinds of easy shorthands, those tropes
and those metaphors, you end up just reproducing them.

Yes, yes, you do.

Yeah, I'm sure many of our listeners are themselves also writers.
Let this be a lesson to us all. (both laugh)

It's not a metaphor, if it doesn't help you see things differently.

Ah, ah, so. Okay. Well, I think to really get a handle on how this
metaphor is operating, we should, we should go back to the text
for a little bit.

This is a great idea.

We have just one last hurdle before we can start summer
vacation. (gasps) Summer vacation. So let's hurry up and write
our OWL’s. (Soundbite of owl hooting) This is the segment
where we dive back into the text and think about how our new
theoretical framing helps us understand something we might not
have seen before.

So let's start with the first moment when we encounter Lupin. All
right. We see him as a character for the first time on the train. And
what is the very first information we get about him?

He’s asweep. (Hannah laughs) He’s a sweepy baby.

Okay, what's the second information we get about him?

He has tattered robes. He looks impoverished.

Here we go. “The stranger was wearing an extremely shabby set
of wizards robes, which had been darned in several places. He
looked ill and exhausted.” So the moment we encounter him, the
physical description that we get of him is he is poor. And he is
sick. And that is what we know about Lupin.
Yeah, so in our previous conversations, we've talked about how
werewolf-ism is something that you can hide, and it is because
the kids don't know why he looks sickly and weak. So thinking
back to, like the physiological indicators of AIDS or of HIV
treatment. Like if you don't know what the physiological symptoms
are, then you don't know why the person looks the way they do,
but you still can. So like, in that sense, the illness is a secret. But
once you do know, like, once you have a substitute teacher force
you to read an entire chapter to out his colleague, then all of a
sudden, the symptoms are visible, and they are recognizable, and
it is no longer a secret.

And the secret is a secret that is legible with adequate knowledge.
So if you actually are paying attention, you're like, Okay, he's
sickly. He gets much more sickly. He disappears monthly, around
the full moon, and when he comes back, he looks worse. The fear
that emerges of- the Boggart transforms into a full moon. There
are all of these, there are all of these legible clues. So even
though he represents this kind of, like anxiety about a pathology
that is not visible. It's not necessarily immediately legible, but it's
still there stamped on him.
And it still can be detected. And not only can it be detected with
adequate scrutiny, but the text encourages us to read Lupin's
body as a text that needs to be- as a riddle to be solved. Right?
And it rewards us, right, this narrative structure of sort of giving
increasingly significant clues until the revelation structurally
rewards us for interrogating his secret and trying to figure it out.
And then at the end, like knowing the real truth about who he is.

Mhm. Yeah. And like, this is as though the real truth about who he
is, is werewolf and not Remus Lupin; excellent professor.
Yes, the truth that needs to be unfolded is not a truth about his
deep kindness, his profound commitment to teaching, his-

It’s not even his friendship with Harry's dad! It’s that he’s a
werewolf!

Yeah, yeah, it's the illness that has become synonymous with his
identity.

Mm hmm. So we see in all of these ways, Lupin as representation
of stigma, right, and particularly stigma around illness. So he's
harboring the secret, he is dependent on the benevolence of his
employer to keep the secret, as well as the benevolence of the
employer to provide sick leave, to guarantee access to treatment,
because these are not things that are otherwise available to him.

And even though it's strongly implied by Dumbledore hiring him,
that his threat to the children is overinflated, by cultural stigma
against werewolf-ism. Right? The implication is like, it needs to be
a secret because people will overreact. And that proves that, you
know, is 100% confirmed the second his secret is out, he has to
leave. So that secret is dangerous. But we just, we can't ,I cannot
overemphasize enough the fact that he does almost kill these
kids.

Exactly. Yeah. Like- (laughs)

I mean, it's where the metaphor sort of both falls apart, but also
like, reaches, it's like, Its apex. Yes. Because like it both is like,
well, people living with HIV or AIDS don't transform into monsters
and bite children. But like, that's the work the metaphors are
doing, is to suggest that that is always a possibility.

Years and years ago, when I worked at a drop in center for people
living with HIV, when I would tell people that that's what I did, the
number of absolutely outrageous and ludicrous and inappropriate
questions that people would ask me about, like whether or not I
was afraid that I might contract HIV, working with people and I
was like, What do you think we do? Like one, you clearly have no
idea how this virus is transmitted. And two if you did have an idea,
you clearly have no idea what a drop in center involves.
And so to then sort of take that irrational and misunderstanding of

a stigmatized illness, and to confirm it, or to rationalize it in this
novel, is really, really fucked up. I don't know what the like, what is
the technical term for it?

The technical term is fucked up, right, if we return back to that
original language from the Pottermore piece, the language of sort
of stigma around blood borne illnesses, because of taboos of
hysteria existing in wizarding and muggle communities alike. All of
that suggests a version of werewolf-ism that is not actually a
danger. Right? That is taboo and feared because it is
misunderstood. But that, if correctly understood, would be seen to
be like, Yes, perhaps a difficult illness to live with. But something
that, you know, isn't actually a risk to other people, that does not
meaningfully diminish a person's ability to be a good teacher, to
be a member of society.
But that is not what happens in the fucking book. What happens is
he accidentally and unpredictably transforms, and everyone has
to flee in order to avoid being literally killed by him. And as a direct
result of the unpredictability and danger of his illness a terrible
prophecy about the return of Voldemort comes true.
Yes, this leads me to I think, probably my biggest issue with this
representation, which is Lupin’s isolation. So exactly as you put it,
Hannah, like, the implication that this taboo is misguided, but then
the way that the novel is like, but it's actually not misguided. It's a
good taboo. So this stands out to me, because it directly
reproduces the notion of the HIV positive person as an isolated
and cast out member of society, right? That this is warranted
because they could even if they don't mean to be a danger. Okay,
so the thing that really grinds my gears, to use another metaphor,
is the fact that this representation completely ignores the activism
and the drive of the early HIV positive communities.
So like, as well as agitating for access to treatment and for rights

and for protections, folks living with HIV and their allies also
formed communities to support one another, to provide resources
to each other. Like, if your goal in this text is to unpack and
problematize stigma, where is the werewolf community supporting
one another through like, recipe exchanges for wolfsbane
potions? Like where is Lupin’s support group? Why is it that Lupin
is the only good werewolf in the entire wizarding world? And all of
the others are, like monstrous underground creatures out to harm
people? Children specifically.

Specifically out to get children, like what a symptom of a moral
panic. It's coming for our children. Right? And it's, you know, to
anticipate a little bit of the conversation, we will return to these
subjects when we get to Order of the Phoenix where that's the
book where we get Fenrir Greyback.

I believe so. Listeners will tell us if we're wrong.

Yeah, tell us if we're wrong. But it's definitely where we get more
Lupin and Tonks. And we get this sort of image of like Lupin, as
somebody who, you know, is in this romantic relationship and is
fearful and hesitant because of his worry about being a werewolf.
And so the closest we get to an image of destigmatization is one
in which the dangerous infected other is accepted back into
quote, unquote, “normal society.”

Oh god!

So he can be a good werewolf because he is accepted by people
who are not werewolves. It makes him sort of by proximity, okay,
less dangerous, normal. These are all words, I'm putting in scare
quotes. That is a sort of a recurring cultural trope. And that is
profoundly at odds with the actual way that movement work
operates, which is to say, stigma against HIV and AIDS does not
get reduced, because people not living with HIV and AIDS decide
to be more tolerant. It gets reduced because those communities
do decades and decades of vital, urgent, dangerous,
transformative work, to create community support to educate, to
push politicians, to change policies and laws, like this work comes
out of these communities.
And so a deliberate erasure of those communities, right? The sort

of taking of that individual and completely isolating them from that
community totally reproduces the idea that social change
happens when the “us” becomes more tolerant and inclusive,
rather than social change happening when marginalized
communities fight so fucking hard for it.

Yeah. And it's a matter of one token representation of- token
member of the marginalized community, seemingly not
seamlessly, but still incorporated into this like dominant
heteronormative white cis centric society. Like that's supposed to
be the marker of progress. And Yeah, I. Okay. Listen, we, we
talked, we talked with Tea about the difficulty of obtaining
wolfsbane potion, and the fact that it didn't make sense that this
treatment that would actually make werewolves not a danger to
society wasn't more readily available. And this remains
infuriatingly apt to this conversation. Because it is literally just the
stigma that prevents this kind of access to medication, or access
to treatment. What is implicit in the denial, or the withholding of
treatment is the assumption or the belief that, well, if the treatment
were available to everybody, then everybody would engage in
deviant behavior.
And again, yeah, sorry, I know, I'm talking in circles. But this, but
this ideology is what is reproduced when we have our one good
token representative of the marginalized community, like really
working to maintain the structure of the dominant community,
instead of like, agitating for change, or instead of like, represented
as being part of a community, actively seeking rights, and I'm so
tired, it makes me feel tired and mad and sad. And I laugh when
I'm mad and sad in public, because feelings are scary.

I also laugh when I am mad and sad. But I think we are pulling out
something here that we have touched on, in some of our other
conversations that feels like it is simultaneously one of the most
crucial things that's coming out of the conversations we're having
in this podcast, it feels like a thing this both like, Oh, hey, like,
here we are, we are realizing something. And that realization feels
banal and obvious. And that is the way that this series that has
been celebrated as radical transformative progress, you know,
progressive as advocating for social change that, that is very
frequently used by scholars who want to prove that books make
us better, by like, having people like testing people for like, you
know, their feelings about like minoritized others, and then having
them read Harry Potter and then testing them again, and seeing if
they're less racist after they read the books.
Like these are books that people go to, to try to make the point
that books make us better. And this celebrated progressive series
is, at its heart, structurally, deeply reactionary. Deeply invested in
the maintenance of the status quo. And at every stage, deeply
resistant to the idea of structural change. Like I would say, you
know, our particular subsection of the fandom, the sort of queer
feminists. The points, the points where we feel drawn into the text
are often like those weird gaps, right, those textual gaps, those
irreconcilable moments. Those moments of excess that hint at
something else at some other possibility, right? And so we're
drawn to those sort of queer slippages, and to those unanswered
questions, and to all of the sort of moments where other
possibilities suggest themselves, and they are shunted back out
again.
Right? They are consistently refused, but they're there. And I think
those become for us, were for many of us the sort of entry points,
that understanding of the way that a text that is ultimately so
invested in the conventional, but that has these moments of queer
slippage, right, you know, we have this beautiful character in the
form of Lupin who is yes, saddled with this terrible stigmatizing
metaphor, but who also sort of can be read in other ways and has
been read in other ways by the fandom, you know, for a lot of fans
claim him as a queer character.
And, you know, we'll have to come back to that when we talk
about his relationship with Tonks because that is complex in its
own right. And there's a lot to unpack about Tonks and Lupin and
gender and sexuality and it’s too much for this episode. But Lupin
is this figure who is often read as queer and who and who offers
this sort of, you know, this, this glimpse of possibility for a lot of
readers. And what keeps us coming back to these books, even in
the midst of reckoning with their and their authors' failures.
Marcelle Kosman 1:01:55
I think that's really, really graciously put, Hannah. I think a lot of us
have been struggling with our relationships for the books. And it is
really, really important to hear that we weren't mistaken, when we
first saw ourselves or found like hope or excitement in the texts,
that there are irrespective of the politics of the author, irrespective
of the politics of the publishing industry, or children's literature as
a discipline, there are slippages, there are points where not unlike
real life, there are cracks in the foundation of cis hetero patriarchy.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some, you know what I mean?
Hannah McGregor 1:02:49

And that's, yeah, that's white supremacist cis hetero patriarchy.
And that's where we grow our tiny little roots. Yeah, yes. Stick our
little, we just stick our little roots in the cracks in the foundation.

Our little dandelions pop out. Our beautiful bright dandelions and
people call them weeds, but you know what? They spread.

Yeah. And you know what, that is, Marcelle?

What?

That's a metaphor. (Marcelle gasps)

Thank you, witches, for joining us for episode 18 of Witch, Please.
You can find the rest of our episodes by heading over to
NotSorryProductions.com or ohwitchplease.ca, or of course
wherever podcasts are found.
Witch, Please is produced in partnership with Not Sorry
Productions and distributed by Acast. Special thanks to our
endlessly patient producer [robot voice]— and to Not Sorry
Productions for having us. If you’re into the podcast, why don’t
you let us know by dropping a review on Apple Podcasts.

At the end of every episode we’ll shout out everyone who left us a
5-star review, so you’ve gotta review us if you want to hear
Marcelle gradually devolve into just making noises.

Thanks to: Wandook, CalmYourTits&MakeAManASandwich- Oh I
don’t like that. Did we get a five star review from somebody who?

We got a very, very nice five star review. And I don't know if that
name is ironic. Or if it’s just a surprise misogynist who loves our
podcast? (laughs)

Either the name is ironic or the review is ironic, but well Sandwich
Man, thank you. And thank you to Gender Studies Professor,
bumbleybore, Elainelainex, CupofGea, octopus_queen_phd,
Addie486, Sparbtastic, OneCandace, and Conductor Kristin!
Bless all of you.

If you want to hear even more from us, don’t forget to head over
to patreon.com/ohwitchplease to check out the many, exciting
forms of bonus content available to you. Q and A's and interviews
and watch alongs OH, OH MY so much juicy content.

On our next episode we’re continuing our discussion of Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with a whole new focus! But
until then:

Later witches!

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Book 3, Ep.

Marcelle Kosman 00:16

Hannah McGregor 00:44

Marcelle Kosman 01:16

Hannah McGregor 01:19

Marcelle Kosman 01:37

Hannah McGregor 01:38

Marcelle Kosman 01:57

Hannah McGregor 02:04

Marcelle Kosman 02:33

Hannah McGregor 02:39

Marcelle Kosman 02:42

Hannah McGregor 02:51

Hannah McGregor 03:00

Marcelle Kosman 03:03

Hannah McGregor 03:36

Marcelle Kosman 03:55

Hannah McGregor 04:09

Marcelle Kosman 04:11

Hannah McGregor 04:28

Hannah McGregor 05:14

Marcelle Kosman 05:18

Hannah McGregor 05:22

Marcelle Kosman 05:24

Hannah McGregor 05:26

Marcelle Kosman 05:27

Hannah McGregor 05:30

Marcelle Kosman 05:38

Marcelle Kosman 05:54

(Witch, Please Theme Music plays)

Hannah McGregor 06:20

Marcelle Kosman 06:44

Hannah McGregor 07:23

So Ward explains that werewolves have historically been treated

Marcelle Kosman 09:05

Hannah McGregor 09:50

Marcelle Kosman 09:54

Hannah McGregor 10:00

Marcelle Kosman 10:04

Hannah McGregor 10:12

Marcelle Kosman 10:21

Hannah McGregor 10:36

And this is a story that arguably makes this interpretation of

Marcelle Kosman 11:44

Hannah McGregor 11:55

So in this reading Lupin’s story becomes one of being

Marcelle Kosman 13:33

(Witch, Please Theme Music plays)

Marcelle Kosman 14:12

Hannah McGregor 14:33

Marcelle Kosman 14:40

Hannah McGregor 15:12

Hannah McGregor 16:07

Marcelle Kosman 16:38

Hannah McGregor 17:08

Hannah McGregor 18:14

Marcelle Kosman 18:16