Emma Watson Is Trending And It’s Our Fault
Harry Potter actress Emma Watson is currently trending on Twitter and it is because of something we reported.
Just the other day, we here at Giant Freakin Robot got word from our trusted and proven sources that Harry Potter star Emma Watson is up to return to the Wizard World franchise, but not if series creator JK Rowling was involved. Predictably, this has caused some commotion and people on Twitter are pretty up in arms at the idea that a successful young actress would not want to work with an increasingly controversial figure and/or that she had opinions of her own. As we went into at the time, this is not the first time that people got upset that Emma Watson maybe might have thrown some shade Rowlings’ way, but fans seem really vocal this time.
As with most arguments online, there are several schools of thought about our report that Emma Watson was refusing to work with JK Rowlings in any further capacity. On one side, there are the people who seem to believe that Emma Watson owes her entire career to Rowling and Harry Potter, and thus should not even implicitly criticize her in any way. Here are a couple of examples of that sentiment:
Most Twitter users on this side take the stance that because Emma Watson successfully auditioned as a child for a movie adaptation of a book that JK Rowling wrote, she owes something to the author. Regrettably, many of these users also resort to ad hominem attacks against Emma Watson, claiming she lacks talent as an actress or claiming they do not know her at all, akin to Mariah Carey’s famous line.
On another side of the issue, other Twitter users defend Emma Watson for her position as stated in our piece. Many of them also point out that many individuals attacking Watson who label themselves as feminists seem to target the actress for her views, which have been echoed by other members of the cast like Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint. Those Twitter users claim the attacks on Emma Watson are motivated by misogyny from self-proclaimed feminists, labeling those people TERFs, an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” Here are some examples:
And on a third side, many Twitter users are pointing out that there have been incredibly significant changes in the fabric of American society in the last 24 hours, namely the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade that made abortion legal on a federal level. These users have a stance that self-proclaimed feminists using their time to currently attack an actress for expressing herself while women’s rights are being attacked on the highest federal level is not the best move. Some example Tweets:
In many ways, Emma Watson is not the issue here. It is unfortunate that so many people took our insider information to express hostility toward an individual that has done nothing but hold her own views and act on them. As some people noted, there is an irony here that so many people attack Emma Watson’s reported stance against JK Rowling when the author herself wrote some very succinct words on the subject:
