‘Harry Potter’ actress Maggie Smith dies at 89
Oscar-winning actress Maggie Smith, best known for her impeccable performances in the ‘Harry Potter' franchise, ‘Downtown Abbey’ and others passed away at the age of 89.
The Seattle based Museum of Pop Culture (MPC or MoPOC) which is dedicated as implied by its name to celebrate pop culture has removed all exhibitions of English author J.K Rowling from its Harry Potter exhibition in light of her alleged “transphobic views.”
As reported by Deadline, the MOPC had previously published a blog explaining its decision to airbrush Rowling from its display, due to her controversial views and allegedly negative views.
Project manager Chris Moore, who is transgender, wrote in the piece: “There’s a certain cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity in the world of Harry Potter and, this time, it is not actually a Dementor.”
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“We would love to go with the internet’s theory that these books were actually written without an author, but this certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored.”
“For the time being, the curators decided to remove any of her artefacts from this gallery to reduce her impact. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s what we were able to do in the short-term while determining long-term practices.”
While initially the museum kept a memorabilia, in light of her socio-political controversies, the MOPC removed that as well, as such fully dusting her off the shelf.
Rowling has made no secret of her disdain for LGBTQ movement and its activists and while she has expressed her support for transsexual people, as well as the gay, lesbian and coloured community, she had said that gender is determined solely by biological sex, and as such cannot be altered on the basis of social identification.
For this comment she had received a lot of flak, including from her Harry Potter actors such as Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson all of whom said that they felt ‘hurt’ over Rowling’s comments. This led to her being barred from the 25th celebration of her first Harry Potter novel, ‘The Philosopher’s Stone’. In addition she also did not attend the Harry Potter re-union which marked two decades of the film franchise.
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