Like they needed one. Now some psychologist is claiming that Hermione Granger is encouraging violence among girls.
There’s so many responses to this stupid contention that I could run on for pages. But leaving aside the highly arguable claim that girls are, in fact, getting more “violent” in comparison to young people in general than they ever were–the girls who may be exhibiting the most extreme behaviors are highly unlikely to be fans of “Harry Potter”. They tend to be illiterate and not read at all, for one thing, and they tend to prefer horror movies and comedies to fantasy films. (We get young women of this type–abusive childhoods, hard lives, rap sheets of their own, often gang connections–in the shelter where I work and I’ve gotten quite familiar with them.) There are certainly a lot of hard-fisted female heroines in the media (Buffy would be one obvious example), but comic books have always been full of them. And I don’t think Hermione belongs in that category just because she gave Malfoy one very well-deserved pop in the snout! If the Harry Potter stories do anything, they show people grappling with hard, complex problems that can’t be solved through violence, or any other simplistic remedy. On top of that, the main characters have learned the hard way what it feels like to be on the receiving end of violence and cruelty. It’s not glorified in the stories, on page or film.
As always, it’s easier to scapegoat some straw target than address the real issues!