Although trans activists have regularly called for boycotts on Harry Potter, due to author JK Rowling’s transgender comments, that wasn’t the reason that the franchise’s second movie was called out. Instead, the bizarrely named Beard Liberation Front, an organisation aiming to end discrimination against bushy facial hair, furiously claimed that Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets featured fake versions of beards.
Both Robbie Coltrane (who played Hagrid) and Richard Harris (who played Dumbledore) appeared to have been sporting faux beards on-screen from the beginning, and the BLF vocally encouraged supporters to show their contempt by booing and hissing at the screen. Most fantasy film fans would have been oblivious to the term pogonophobia – the fear of beards – but it’s very real for socialist historian Keith Flett, who continues to campaign over the issue. It might sound like a light-hearted joke, but there are serious undertones too, with the organisation citing discrimination in real life.
For example, there was a case of a fireman who was suspended for refusing to shave off his goatee beard, and another of oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil banning beards in the workplace altogether.
Then, back in 1998, the BLF claimed that Sean Connery had been denied a knighthood due to his beard, according to comments they’d had from “normally reliable New Labour sources”.
Sean was knighted two years later, however, and suggested that the delay had been down to his support for Scottish independence, rather than facial hair.
In 2002, the BLF struck again, complaining that the second Harry Potter movie had been released at a time when taunts against bearded men were already rife due to the festive season’s connotations of Father Christmas.
According to an article published in the BBC, BLF founder Keith Flett argued: “The Santa season is the worst time of the year for beard wearers. The taunts from children and comments we get from White Van Man get worse.”
However, he relented on his original plan to boycott the film altogether, explaining: “Some BLF supporters said they would be given hell by their children if they weren’t taken to see Harry Potter.
“Now we’re just asking our few hundred supporters to hiss and boo when the fake beards come on the screen.”
Meanwhile, Keith’s own bushy Karl Marx style beard has been taunted publicly and even called a “garden gnome affair” by the Evening Standard.