All pizza is created equal, but some is cut more equal than others.
I lied when I said I was finished talking about Harry Potter. I've had a little trouble articulating my disgust with the seventh book, but today I was reading Fandom Wank with people bitching about JKR's absolute portrayal of a heteronormative society. While I don't necessarily think it's a writer's responsibility to, y'know, pointedly NOT portray normative society in their fiction just because it's popular (that's getting into irritating territory like: "if you're a feminist, all your writing should be about feminist issues!"), they're not wrong. And reading this discussion made me realize just what it was that made me want to chuck Deathly Hallows across the room when, honestly, as shoddily written as it was, the plot was not *that* bad. WELL- *deep breath*
So what is Harry Potter about? It's a traditional wish-fulfillment children's story, of course. A boy with a miserable childhood is whisked away to a magical world full of wonder and bedazzlement where he is the "Chosen One" and proceeds to gain a whole bunch of nifty things like an invisibility cloak, a wise old mentor and an escaped convict godfather. The little orphan boy deprived of a proper family, builds himself a makeshift one through his adventures. Blah blah blah good vs. evil and all that.
But what's the other narrative in the story?
Harry comes to the magical world and it is awesome, way more awesome by comparison than the world he came from. BUT THEN, OH NO, during his years at Hogwarts he begins to see that Wizarding Society isn't as great as it's cracked up to be. In fact, it's possible that the Wizarding World is just as ill with dogma and prejudice (if not more so) as the Muggle World!
How sick is the Wizarding World?
- The segment of society that is desperate to "Preserve and Protect Pure Wizard Blood" still has an incredibly strong and disturbingly valid voice in mainstream society despite how much Voldemort kind of fucked everyone's shit up back in the 70's and 80's.
- Not only can you NOT trust the government (partly for the aforementioned reason),
there isn't really such thing as free press in the Wizarding World. The newspaper lies through it's teeth. And, uh, everyone totally realizes that it lies through it's teeth, and yet no one does a thing about it.
- The judicial system is kind of skewered. Sirius Black didn't really have any reason whatsoever to have betrayed the Potters and killed all those Muggles and yet he was sent to Azkaban without trial. Granted, Peter did a brilliant job at framing him and he didn't help matters much by laughing like a madman when the Aurors dragged him off BUT, ON THE OTHER HAND, Lucius Malfoy with his VERY VISIBLE DARK MARK and well known SYMPATHY TOWARDS VOLDEMORT did get a trial and DID call Imperius and in a world where a 100% failsafe truth serum exists, no one thought to double check his story.
- Remus Lupin is just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet with a whole bag full of Very Useful Life Skills. Not only is he a fantastic teacher, he'd probably make a decent Auror. Or, y'know, librarian. Clerical work. ANYTHING, REALLY, however he can not hold a job for more than a few months because he has a disease he can't do anything about. I mean, no six year old goes around saying: "OH GEE I REALLY WISH A WEREWOLF WOULD BITE ME AND MAKE MY LIFE REALLY DIFFICULT." He's never actually *hurt* anyone, but he gets lumped in with creeps like Fenrir Greyback anyways because, yay, Prejudice is Institutionalized in the Wizarding World.
- ALSO ON THAT NOTE, Hagrid gets a lot of prejudiced slack for being half giant. I doubt that he would have been expelled from Hogwarts had he been a human student (I mean, if Sirius didn't get expelled for that "prank" with Snape and the Shrieking Shack...). If Dumbledore didn't keep him around for charity's sake, he'd likely be in the same position as Remus, except worse off because Remus, at least, is exceptionally clever and not visibly lupine. Hagrid definitely, really, totally has never hurt anyone. (His affinity for dangerous beasts, maybe, has. BUT UH, ALSO ALSO ON THAT NOTE the reason he has that affinity in the first place is because he *relates* to them, what with the way he's been marginalized by mainstream society).
- House elves.
- Oh, right. Everything Umbridge did in OotP.
- THERE'S MORE, I JUST CAN'T THINK OF IT RIGHT NOW. But the point is that you get the point, right?
Not that I have a problem with any of these plot points existing in the first place. On the contrary, this kind of shit is why I love the series so much in the first place.
So, uh, is it just me or is there a deeper narrative about the damaging effects of prejudice and classism going on here? Sure, sure, a lot of this is just exaggeration in the tradition of most British children's literature (I've read Dahl, I know how this works), but even the Dursleys, being wholly unpleasant people, are portrayed as being particularly unpleasant because they have no tolerance for things that are *different*. This is their most important character flaw (that and the emotional abuse, lawl).
The problem is that all of this amounts to nothing in Deathly Hallows. After carrying it through six books, showing how it split families apart (over several generations even: Percy, dragged away by the corrupt government; Sirius and Andromeda as "blood traitors", Narcissa's split feelings on the issue), implying that Voldemort was more or less SHAPED by this environment (even if he was *eyeroll* a sociopath, he's still like that thanks to his family being crazy pureblood inbreeders) and demonstrating how weak all this made the government (which fell to Voldemort in about a year), she did absolutely NOTHING to address it. Okay, yes! We just need to conquer death and kill Voldemort and then everything will be okay I promise. Attacking the symptom rather than the virus and all that rot.
I suppose that JKR's answer is that Kingsley Shacklebolt became Minister of Magic. Okay, so now a guy with liberal ideas is in charge, which means everything will be okay, I promise. E-except that it won't be. The issue is still largely unresolved. We didn't get any indication that anyone *outside* the Order of the Phoenix gave a shit about changing anything. None of Voldemort's supporters are even shown displaying any regret besides "Oh shit, our side is losing." The Malfoy family "redemption (or something) sympathy" was that they, as a family, honestly loved each other (OMG, EVIL PEOPLE CAN LOVE?). As much as I appreciated that, uh, it shouldn't really count towards making them look less like "bad people" since it shouldn't be too surprising that racists in favour of preserving their "pure" blood line would want to protect their own family members. *eyeroll*
WHICH IS WHY I was kind of unimpressed with Draco (and, like, all of Slytherin House) in DH. I loved every moment he in because it was all very adorable and lame, but I guess I was just expecting something along the lines of... showing that the younger generation was just caught up in their parents' dogma. That they didn't really understand or believe all that racist bullshit, they just *did* it because that's how they were raised. Parroting mommy and daddy, ect. (that's what happened with Regulus Black, right?). Given just a *GLIMMER* of that, I would have found the book that much easier to swallow.
So can Hagrid be a full member of society now? Can he teach again without weary Slytherins looking for reasons to get him fired? Yay, Teddy didn't inherit his daddy's "furry little problem", but what about Bill? (and possibly Lavender?)- sure, it's not full lycanthropy, but it's still *enough* Is having a cool-dude Minister really going to fix these problems?
And is having house elves bad or good? Was Hermione right? Does it really matter considering Harry's last thoughts before the epilogue are: "KREACHER, MAKE ME A SAMMICH." (which in itself is confusing: so Sirius is bad because he abused the little bugger outright, but was Regulus bad for taking advantage of his loyalty?). Did Dobby dying in the service of the person who freed him mean that house elves are better off serving after all? JUST. WHAT?
Ugh, I suppose the answer to a lot of this is: "DUH JENN, THINGS DON'T CHANGE OVERNIGHT." It's just that Deathly Hallows didn't give me the impression that anything would change at all. :P It just felt like: "Oh, we killed Voldemort. Now everything's peaceful until our kids have to deal with the next Dark Lord." The circumstances that created Voldemort *still exist*, or at the very least, still have the capacity to exist in the way that they still do exist, it's just not as blatantly apparent. OR SOMETHING. D:
And the answer to that is: "DUH JENN, IT'S MORE REALISTIC THAT WAY." to which I say: Fuck that. It's a fucking kid's book. I want a fucking idealistic ending in which they fix the goddamn fucking world because that was the fucking point. The reason we read a story about Harry Potter and not, say, James Potter (or Albus Dumbledore taking down hischildhood sweetheart old friend, Grindlewald) is because *THIS* was supposed to be the end all, be all battle. The one that fixes the problem "for good" and all that. The nice thing about Fantasy epics is that you do, in a way, start at the end.
SO LONG STORY SHORT: There was a moral message here that I feel JKR failed to follow through on. And I am a whiny, self entitled fan.
Feel free to argue and tell me how wrong I am.
THE END
But on the other hand, Book 7 is awesome because
wired_lizard wrote Dumbledore/Grindlewald.
EDIT: I SEEM SO ANGRY, BUT I AM IN A MUCH BETTER MOOD THAN THIS POST WOULD IMPLY. :D :D :D :D
I just can't believe the Busker Festival is so close. Lici comes back this week, yay! ♥
So what is Harry Potter about? It's a traditional wish-fulfillment children's story, of course. A boy with a miserable childhood is whisked away to a magical world full of wonder and bedazzlement where he is the "Chosen One" and proceeds to gain a whole bunch of nifty things like an invisibility cloak, a wise old mentor and an escaped convict godfather. The little orphan boy deprived of a proper family, builds himself a makeshift one through his adventures. Blah blah blah good vs. evil and all that.
But what's the other narrative in the story?
Harry comes to the magical world and it is awesome, way more awesome by comparison than the world he came from. BUT THEN, OH NO, during his years at Hogwarts he begins to see that Wizarding Society isn't as great as it's cracked up to be. In fact, it's possible that the Wizarding World is just as ill with dogma and prejudice (if not more so) as the Muggle World!
How sick is the Wizarding World?
- The segment of society that is desperate to "Preserve and Protect Pure Wizard Blood" still has an incredibly strong and disturbingly valid voice in mainstream society despite how much Voldemort kind of fucked everyone's shit up back in the 70's and 80's.
- Not only can you NOT trust the government (partly for the aforementioned reason),
there isn't really such thing as free press in the Wizarding World. The newspaper lies through it's teeth. And, uh, everyone totally realizes that it lies through it's teeth, and yet no one does a thing about it.
- The judicial system is kind of skewered. Sirius Black didn't really have any reason whatsoever to have betrayed the Potters and killed all those Muggles and yet he was sent to Azkaban without trial. Granted, Peter did a brilliant job at framing him and he didn't help matters much by laughing like a madman when the Aurors dragged him off BUT, ON THE OTHER HAND, Lucius Malfoy with his VERY VISIBLE DARK MARK and well known SYMPATHY TOWARDS VOLDEMORT did get a trial and DID call Imperius and in a world where a 100% failsafe truth serum exists, no one thought to double check his story.
- Remus Lupin is just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet with a whole bag full of Very Useful Life Skills. Not only is he a fantastic teacher, he'd probably make a decent Auror. Or, y'know, librarian. Clerical work. ANYTHING, REALLY, however he can not hold a job for more than a few months because he has a disease he can't do anything about. I mean, no six year old goes around saying: "OH GEE I REALLY WISH A WEREWOLF WOULD BITE ME AND MAKE MY LIFE REALLY DIFFICULT." He's never actually *hurt* anyone, but he gets lumped in with creeps like Fenrir Greyback anyways because, yay, Prejudice is Institutionalized in the Wizarding World.
- ALSO ON THAT NOTE, Hagrid gets a lot of prejudiced slack for being half giant. I doubt that he would have been expelled from Hogwarts had he been a human student (I mean, if Sirius didn't get expelled for that "prank" with Snape and the Shrieking Shack...). If Dumbledore didn't keep him around for charity's sake, he'd likely be in the same position as Remus, except worse off because Remus, at least, is exceptionally clever and not visibly lupine. Hagrid definitely, really, totally has never hurt anyone. (His affinity for dangerous beasts, maybe, has. BUT UH, ALSO ALSO ON THAT NOTE the reason he has that affinity in the first place is because he *relates* to them, what with the way he's been marginalized by mainstream society).
- House elves.
- Oh, right. Everything Umbridge did in OotP.
- THERE'S MORE, I JUST CAN'T THINK OF IT RIGHT NOW. But the point is that you get the point, right?
Not that I have a problem with any of these plot points existing in the first place. On the contrary, this kind of shit is why I love the series so much in the first place.
So, uh, is it just me or is there a deeper narrative about the damaging effects of prejudice and classism going on here? Sure, sure, a lot of this is just exaggeration in the tradition of most British children's literature (I've read Dahl, I know how this works), but even the Dursleys, being wholly unpleasant people, are portrayed as being particularly unpleasant because they have no tolerance for things that are *different*. This is their most important character flaw (that and the emotional abuse, lawl).
The problem is that all of this amounts to nothing in Deathly Hallows. After carrying it through six books, showing how it split families apart (over several generations even: Percy, dragged away by the corrupt government; Sirius and Andromeda as "blood traitors", Narcissa's split feelings on the issue), implying that Voldemort was more or less SHAPED by this environment (even if he was *eyeroll* a sociopath, he's still like that thanks to his family being crazy pureblood inbreeders) and demonstrating how weak all this made the government (which fell to Voldemort in about a year), she did absolutely NOTHING to address it. Okay, yes! We just need to conquer death and kill Voldemort and then everything will be okay I promise. Attacking the symptom rather than the virus and all that rot.
I suppose that JKR's answer is that Kingsley Shacklebolt became Minister of Magic. Okay, so now a guy with liberal ideas is in charge, which means everything will be okay, I promise. E-except that it won't be. The issue is still largely unresolved. We didn't get any indication that anyone *outside* the Order of the Phoenix gave a shit about changing anything. None of Voldemort's supporters are even shown displaying any regret besides "Oh shit, our side is losing." The Malfoy family "redemption (or something) sympathy" was that they, as a family, honestly loved each other (OMG, EVIL PEOPLE CAN LOVE?). As much as I appreciated that, uh, it shouldn't really count towards making them look less like "bad people" since it shouldn't be too surprising that racists in favour of preserving their "pure" blood line would want to protect their own family members. *eyeroll*
WHICH IS WHY I was kind of unimpressed with Draco (and, like, all of Slytherin House) in DH. I loved every moment he in because it was all very adorable and lame, but I guess I was just expecting something along the lines of... showing that the younger generation was just caught up in their parents' dogma. That they didn't really understand or believe all that racist bullshit, they just *did* it because that's how they were raised. Parroting mommy and daddy, ect. (that's what happened with Regulus Black, right?). Given just a *GLIMMER* of that, I would have found the book that much easier to swallow.
So can Hagrid be a full member of society now? Can he teach again without weary Slytherins looking for reasons to get him fired? Yay, Teddy didn't inherit his daddy's "furry little problem", but what about Bill? (and possibly Lavender?)- sure, it's not full lycanthropy, but it's still *enough* Is having a cool-dude Minister really going to fix these problems?
And is having house elves bad or good? Was Hermione right? Does it really matter considering Harry's last thoughts before the epilogue are: "KREACHER, MAKE ME A SAMMICH." (which in itself is confusing: so Sirius is bad because he abused the little bugger outright, but was Regulus bad for taking advantage of his loyalty?). Did Dobby dying in the service of the person who freed him mean that house elves are better off serving after all? JUST. WHAT?
Ugh, I suppose the answer to a lot of this is: "DUH JENN, THINGS DON'T CHANGE OVERNIGHT." It's just that Deathly Hallows didn't give me the impression that anything would change at all. :P It just felt like: "Oh, we killed Voldemort. Now everything's peaceful until our kids have to deal with the next Dark Lord." The circumstances that created Voldemort *still exist*, or at the very least, still have the capacity to exist in the way that they still do exist, it's just not as blatantly apparent. OR SOMETHING. D:
And the answer to that is: "DUH JENN, IT'S MORE REALISTIC THAT WAY." to which I say: Fuck that. It's a fucking kid's book. I want a fucking idealistic ending in which they fix the goddamn fucking world because that was the fucking point. The reason we read a story about Harry Potter and not, say, James Potter (or Albus Dumbledore taking down his
SO LONG STORY SHORT: There was a moral message here that I feel JKR failed to follow through on. And I am a whiny, self entitled fan.
Feel free to argue and tell me how wrong I am.
THE END
But on the other hand, Book 7 is awesome because
wired_lizard wrote Dumbledore/Grindlewald.EDIT: I SEEM SO ANGRY, BUT I AM IN A MUCH BETTER MOOD THAN THIS POST WOULD IMPLY. :D :D :D :D
I just can't believe the Busker Festival is so close. Lici comes back this week, yay! ♥