Filks, sexual innuendo, hatred

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 24759

Caius:
> You must be new here.  Over the past several months, my fellow 
filkers and I have had the Dark Lord crooning to material ranging 
from Gilbert & Sullivan to the Bee Gees, from Cole Porter to the Lion 
King. No Mary Poppins, though (both Harry and the Ministry of Magic 
have taken cracks at MP songs, however)< 

> Voldy's high cold voice is especially well suited to reaching those 
high falsetto notes in such songs as "Staying Alive" or "Lightnin' 
Striking Again" (rendered as Barely Alive and Dark Mark Striking 
Again on the website)<

Hardly new: I've been around as Tabouli since June the 8th and as my real name with a different email address for several months before that... not a die-hard long-term devotee, but not a newbie.  I just tend to skip over the filks because I usually don't know the song being parodied, which rather ruins the joke.  Stayin' Alive I do know, though... perhaps I should glance over at your site.

Mindy:
> As for me writing about the 'zero sexual innuendo', read further on my
original post. I wrote: GoF does have some things I found objectionable,
including: Uranus, Molly snaping at Ron to go naked to the party, Harry
'bending his legs' so that Myrtle doesn't see 'anything' and Archie
wanting a breeze around his.... whatever. The first three books, I could
give a third grader to read. GoF... Dunno!<
 
I find this perspective on sex rather bizarre, despite knowing a few people (mostly devout Christians) who share it.  Why exactly are sex and sexual body parts so evil and corrupt and sinister and unmentionable and offensive??  Sure, Western society is getting a bit stupidly obsessed with sex, and sex can be a tool of abuse, but we all have genitals and our bodies *are* built for sex, after all.  It *is* necessary for the continuation of the human race.  I can't help wondering if this view is a leftover in English-speaking societies from the Victorian era, because even most major religions aren't quite this strident.  Ever read Song of Solomon?  There are lines in there about "You are a vine, and your breasts are clusters of grapes.  I will climb the tree and pluck its fruit."  And that's the pure, romantic sex bit in the Bible... there's much more racy stuff in there.
 
I also very much doubt whether many third graders are completely innocent about sex.  Children that age joke and whisper about Naughty Things all the time, "I'll show you mine if you show you yours" and the rest start younger than that.  My parents are pretty prudish and embarrassable (I didn't know the "facts of life" until my father sidled shamefaced into my room when I was 10 with a book), but I was certainly aware of sex to some degree at 8, curious about where babies came from, etc. *and* got totally humiliated at that age by some older children (10-11ish) who discovered I "didn't know" and ridiculed me until I fled in tears.

If I had children, I'd feel much, much happier about them having sex (I'm assuming that I succeed in educating them about how to do so safely, with minimum risk of pregnancy/disease and with sensitivity for their partners) than taking drugs, or getting close-to-alcohol-poisoning drunk (which our bodies *aren't* designed for), bullying other children, stealing, etc.etc.  I'd also rather they didn't grow up with complexes about parts of their bodies being "bad", and nudity being bad, and sex being a dreadful sin, because even if they don't hold hands until they're married, they're going to come into contact with sex and probably have it at some stage in their lives.

Diane:
> Snape truly hates Harry.  You can't fake that sort of thing and it should resonate nicely with the Big V
 
Why can't you fake that sort of thing?  You certainly could if the stakes were high enough.  Besides which, it's not hard to convince a sensitive 13 year old that someone hates them, especially a strict teacher...
 
Tabouli.



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