[HPFGU-Movie] Re: sloppy school uniforms

[Shaun Hately]

On 29 Jun 2004 at 9:30, huntergreen_3 wrote:

> But, on the other hand, it doesn't make sense that Hermione and Harry 
> wouldn't have average looking muggle clothes, since they're both from 
> muggle familes. I guess I'm not looking for a complete fantasy 
> experience from the movie, and maybe you are. Personally, I get 
> pulled out of the movie when I see them wandering around in clothes 
> you'd never see kids wearing (like that outfit Hermione has on the 
> end of PS/SS). To me, going *too far* with the clothes would be if 
> they were wearing shirts with obvious logos, or with little sayings 
> on them (like 'Princess' for example), or if Harry started sagging 
> his pants or something (perhaps, though, I'm thinking too American, I 
> don't really know what the average British teenager would wear in 
> their free time).

Part of the problem though, is we're not really talking about 
'average British teenagers'.

I've been planning a long, heavily referenced post for the main 
list, which looks at Hogwarts and it's influence from British 
Public School tradition. Briefly, the influence of the traditional 
British Public Schools (Public School in this sense actually refers 
to what Americans call private schools - for historical reasons, 
the terms differ) on Hogwarts is very obvious. Hogwarts, as shown 
in the novels *is* a traditional British Public School - it has its 
own unique features, as well, of course (but so do all the most 
prominent public schools). JKR has clearly deliberately built 
Hogwarts on that model - which isn't surprising because such 
schools have been the model for literally hundreds of children's 
books in Britain throughout the twentieth century).

The long and detailed post I have planned will, if I finish it (and 
I may finish it by next week, or it may take considerably longer) 
go into the links to this tradition in more detail. For the moment, 
just assume I know what I'm talking about (-8

Because of this tradition, we shouldn't be looking at Hogwarts 
students just in the context of the 'average British teenager', but 
also in the context of the 'average British teenager attending a 
Public School' and those differing contexts have specific 
implications.

One of these is that the children who attend those schools 
generally speaking do *not* dress in the same way as the average 
child.

I attended such a school in Australia (a school based heavily on 
British Public School traditions). We wore mufti - non-uniform 
clothes - fairly often (it used to be that at such boarding 
schools, uniform was worn *all* the time - but by the time, Harry 
Potter is set, a lot of such schools - though not all - would have 
been allowing non-uniform clothes outside school time). Even so, we 
looked *nothing* like the average teenagers around us - because we 
were still expected to dress as neatly as was reasonable for what 
we were doing. Shirts, and slacks. Jeans were OK on weekends 
sometimes. We were expected to dress neatly mostly by the school, 
but also by our parents. Because we didn't have the same type of 
freedom to do things during term time (at my school, even day boys 
were expected to be at the school until 6 or 7pm  at least two 
nights most weeks, and on Saturday mornings, and not to have much 
in the way of a social life outside school) you didn't worry too 
much about most of your clothing - you just let your mum buy it. 
You might choose to buy one or two outfits yourself, where you 
worried about things like fashion - but you had no real need for 
more than one or two of them.

We didn't look like average kids.

And there's no particular reason to suppose students at Hogwarts 
do.

There's also no huge reason to suppose they wouldn't - but don't 
make judgements based on the idea that you 'see them wandering 
around in clothes you'd never see kids wearing'. Because you would 
have said things like that very much about me and my friends - and 
we did wear those clothes.

A vivid memory. My first year at this type of school was when I was 
13. Now I came from a *very* different background to most of the 
kids at this school. I came from a pretty average working class 
family and we lived a fair distance from the school. On weekends I 
had always worn whatever I liked. For some reason, one day, my 
mother wanted to go shopping at a mall near my new school. She laid 
out these clothes and told me I had to wear them to go shopping 
with her. I was *horrified*. They were *nothing* like the clothes 
kids wore in my experience. I was used to jeans, a t-shirt, and 
sneakers - she'd laid out lemon coloured drill shorts, a pale 
yellow polo shirt, long grey socks that went up to my knees and 
brown leather sandals.

I only wore them because she was bigger than me (-8

The thing is, we went to this mall - and about thirty seconds after 
we'd entered it, I saw one of my new classmates - wearing pale blue 
drill shorts, a dark blue polo shirt, long socks, and sandals.

*Nobody* wore clothes like that to go shopping. Except kids who 
went to schools like mine. (After you got to about age 16 or so, it 
changed a bit, admittedly - people started to make more of their 
own choices - but up until then, it just didn't seem worth arguing 
about, or even thinking about. You wore what your mum purchased for 
you).

Hermione's parents are sending her off to a boarding school they 
know very little about, except possibly that it's the best of its 
type. The clothes she wears in the first two movies seem to fit 
quite nicely with what her mother would buy in the circumstances to 
me (-8

 

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia


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