I can't see how either species can avoid being read as ethnic groups by a large portion of readers.

Then I would think that has more to do with the individual reader than how the author presented it. Like ita and Hil, I never read the books and thought, "Oh nice. The Goblins are obviously supposed to represent Jews." I mean, I can *see* how it can be read like that now, but I needed it pointed out to me.

I'm sure JKR did not intend it, but it does not mean it won't be there for many.

But is that JKR's responsibility in the end? Or any author's for that matter? Are authors responsible for how their readers will take something in their story? Should authors read through their texts and edit themselves because some readers might take issue with how a fantastical species/race of being is being portrayed and what parallels some readers draw from it?

(And I'm not asking this specifically of you, Typo. Just wondering out loud.)

well, it's kind of like the memfault!trade aliens in Phantom Menace. Lucas said that he did not intend for them to be seen as Asian, but pretty much everyone saw it.

Ok, but how much of that is Lucas's responsibility? How can he account for what people are going to infer?

Yes, that's what I was saying. Although, personally, I would have been hard pressed NOT to see it. I believe that he didn't intend it, but I think that he was in some denial.

AH!

I need more coffee.

(See - my default is noone agress with me so I inferred you were saying I was FOS. Hee.)

Intentional or not, Lucas managed to create several fictional alien species in TPM who were basically just laundry lists of racist sterotypes. (Jar-Jar, the Not!Asians, the Not!Jew who owned Anakin & his mother, and so on.)

I'm not saying he has a responsibility to not be an ignorant dumbass, but it sure wouldn't hurt.

JKR's species have enough depth to give her plausible deniability, at the very least.

Intentional or not, Lucas managed to create several fictional alien species in TPM who were basically just laundry lists of racist sterotypes. (Jar-Jar, the Not!Asians, the Not!Jew who owned Anakin & his mother, and so on.)

I'm not saying he has a responsibility to not be an ignorant dumbass, but it sure wouldn't hurt.

ITA. I used Lucas as an example becuase I thought that the plausibility line was veeerry blurry.

ITA, also.

well, it's kind of like the memfault!trade aliens in Phantom Menace. Lucas said that he did not intend for them to be seen as Asian, but pretty much everyone saw it.

Didn't they have almond eyes?

I mean, its not a big reach to say "those guys are Asian" when they have almond eyes.

To say that big nosed characters are Jewish is application of a stereotype, but to say that almond-eyed characters are Asian is more actually descriptive.

JKR's species have enough depth to give her plausible deniability, at the very least.

Not only that, she has a racial analogy with the mud blood thing and the Wizards attitudes towards Muggles.

I think there's a fundamental difference between using traits that stereotypically are assigned to one group, as JKR did with the Goblins and the Jews, but with very little textual evidence that it's meant to be an allegory, and what Lucas did with Jar Jar Binks, which almost directly referenced a series of bad racial stereotypes.

Certainly, you can look at JKR's Goblins and say "Wow. That's meant to be Jews," and make a pretty good case for it, but it doesn't seem to be intentional and you can probably make a case the other way, too. There's no way you can look at Jar Jar and see something other than a race relations timebomb waiting to happen. (Naturally, the kids loved him.)