We’re about to arrive at a nexus for critique. The trailer for HBO’s Harry Potter adaptation is about to be unleashed onto the Internet as I begin to draft this piece and I’m already seeing swathes of discourse about What We’re Supposed To Do about it. And of course whenever Harry Potter is spoken about in certain circles, “death of the author” soon slips from the twitching fandom holdouts. I wrote a piece a few years ago about how the Harry Potter videogame caused video game writers of all swathes to embarrass themselves, and I can’t imagine what horrible soapboxes will be stood upon when this adaptation begins gaining attention.

The evocation of Barthes’s essay in conjunction with Harry Potter in specific is not new, but it feels appropriate to emphasize the perversion of Barthes’s core idea that comes when it is used in the context of ethical consumption. Death of the author has nothing to do with questioning the ethics of materially supporting a person living (read: thriving) under capitalism.

Death of the author is a framework for critical understanding of a text, a method of textual engagement that Barthes constructed as a way to prioritize craftsmanship over context. What you are dealing with when someone evokes “death of the author” around Harry Potter is a refusal to assume responsibility for refusing to participate in a boycott.

Just as with Hogwarts Legacy there will be a litany of defenses for engaging with the Harry Potter TV show in the first place, but the fact is this is not a debate that exists past a binary context. For better or worse, a boycott is a binary action: you either participate or you refuse and the chosen action is a value statement. This is beyond still thinking The Usual Suspects is a neat movie. It’s proven at this point that Rowling uses the money she makes from Harry Potter to directly influence legislation that targets trans people with the goal of complete annihilation. Paying for a subscription to HBO Max to watch the Harry Potter show directly supports this chain of actions. Death of the author has nothing to do with this problem.

This is not about critique, this is about money and community advocacy. If you see someone groping the bones of Barthes to defend engaging with this product, know that they are shamefully repeating a shibboleth of apathy. They refuse to accept that this is not about art, entertainment, or culture. This is about money.