Fat - magic of technology - evil

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 20420

Meredith wrote <lots of good stuff about kids reading about fat nasty 
Dudley/thin lovable Harry>

I've shared my concerns already, and I share some of yours.  There are 
positive characters who are fat or some euphemism thereof; Molly is 
repeatedly called "plump" and Draco calls her "porky."  Neville is 
described as "fat" again by someone who's making fun of him (Pansy in 
PS/SS 9).  Neutral characters like Ernie (a kid) and Fudge are 
described as "pudgy" and "portly," respectively.  JKR doesn't dwell on 
their weight--you have to read carefully to realize that Neville's on 
the pudgy side (his round face is described often but he's only called 
"fat" once).  That strikes me as the way I'd like kids to read about 
people of various sizes, just as we know Dean and Angelina are black 
and Seamus is white and Parvati is Asian and those are supposed to be 
physical descriptions/interesting background, not clues to the content 
of their characters.  In my view, it's okay to describe people by 
their weight if you're evenhanded about it (which she is--she doesn't 
reserve it for the overweight) and don't tie it to other, unrelated 
characteristics like having self-control.  (Please!  my husband is 
overweight and I'm not, and he has way more self-discipline than I 
do).

And yet with Dudley she can't stop calling him "fat," again, like kids 
who can't let a pudgy classmate walk by without snorting like pigs.  
That's what disturbs me.

There are three occasions I can recall where someone makes fun of 
someone else's weight:  Harry calling Dudley "a pig in a wig," Draco 
calling Mrs. Weasley "porky" and Pansy calling Neville a "fat 
crybaby."  In two of the three cases, we're clearly supposed to side 
with the pudgy person.  With Harry, I can't blame him--I called my 
bullying sister worse things than that and she wasn't nearly as nasty 
as Dudley--but I wish it weren't there because I'd like to be able to 
point out the moral lesson to kids, e.g. "Making fun of people's 
weight is a really Slytherinish thing to do).  (They'd just sigh and 
groan and tell me to get on with the story anyway.)

hfakhro wrote:

>This really bothered me too, especially when I was reading GoF. That 
>was when Dudley was forced on a diet, and when the twins played a 
>prank on him with the toffee. I thought Harry was awful for laughing 
>at him then (at least, it keeps us knowing that he's not perfect.)

Arthur accuses the twins of Muggle-baiting and they protest that that 
isn't what they were doing.  I think the following exchange works just 
as well if one accuses them of being cruel to Dudley because he's 
obese:

    "We didn't give it to him because he's [fat]!"
 said Fred indignantly.
    "No, we gave it to him because he's a great bullying
 git," said George.  "Isn't he, Harry?"
    "Yeah, he is, Mr. Weasley," said Harry earnestly.

He =is= a great bullying git, and Harry has been systematically 
tormented by him for most of his life.  If anyone deserves to be 
amused by Dudley's unpleasant experience, it's him.  I feel sorry for 
Dudley, here and elsewhere--parents who raise their children to be 
spoiled bullies are doing them no favors--but I was rather touched by 
the evidence that Fred and George have been paying attention to 
Harry's descriptions of life with the Dursleys these past three years.

Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote:

>I'm curious to see what will come of his diet.

I wouldn't be surprised if OoP opens with a thin Dudley.  He has been 
on a strict diet for a year (too strict, I agree, Meredith, though I 
don't share your view that all diets are bad; some are reasonable).  
Now if only his personality would improve . . .

Pippin wrote:

> Magic fills a niche that technology cannot. The fantasy of the
>magic wand allows us to imagine what, as children, all of us  
believed:
>that we could learn to control the outside world in the same 
exclusive,
>mysterious and innate way in which we learned  to form our thoughts 
and
>move our fingers and toes.

I agree.  This is spinning a thread in me, though.  Thinking about my 
childhood, I'm wondering whether the thrill of magic wears off if you 
live it.  I recall desperately wanting a child-sized car like Milo had 
in The Phantom Tollbooth.  Then I grew up and learned to drive a real 
car, and I own one, and as nifty as it is, it doesn't satisfy that 
longing for an almost magical ability to get where I want to go.  Is 
it just that it's ordinary now?  Would Apparating and Hovering Charms 
and Transfiguration, which seem so thrilling to us, be quite ordinary 
and dull if we'd grown up with them?  The sense of wonder has to be 
nurtured, or we walk past miracles and don't even see them.  I can 
cross the state in an hour and a half, with little expenditure of 
body energy, while sitting down, eating, and listening to music.  That 
is pretty amazing.

Just the other day I was driving and imagining myself trying to 
explain the car to a wizard, the real clueless type who doesn't know 
the first thing about Muggle technology and is eager to learn, like 
Mr. Weasley.  I realized I couldn't explain it at all.  I don't have 
the first idea how a car engine works, or even, when you get down to 
the nitty gritty, how the electrical circuit from my turn signal to 
the light bulb on my bumper works.  If I'd pay more attention to those 
things, I'd see them wondrous.  Clarke's dictum isn't just about 
people who encounter technology way beyond theirs and are amazed 
because they don't understand how it works, the way a 16th-century 
person would be by electric light or we would be by Apparition.  The 
more I know about technology, the more magical I find it.  No amount 
of explanation has made electricity any less amazing to me; in fact, 
it gets more mysterious ("But =why= do opposite charges attract?"  
"How do the electrons =know= whether the circuit is complete?").  
Magic is everywhere.  

Caius Marcius wrote:

>Voldemort reflects - in Henry Fielding's phrase - "the perfection of 
>the diabolic as opposed to the imperfections of humanity." I do not 
>see Voldemort as a "camp" or quasi-comic "Evil Overlord" character, 
>as some seem to regard him. Having just ended a century in which 
>forces of political and social evil held an unprecedented sway (yes, 
>even if the practitioners of it were an imperfect admixture of good 
>and evil), we know that many millions of people have lived - or not 
>lived - through regimes not unlike the one so well described by 
>Sirius Black (GOF, Ch. 27)

All too true.  I don't think Voldemort is unrealistic, for that 
reason.  I just find the admixture more interesting than the look at 
cold pure evil.  Voldemort is not the protagonist, so we may never 
learn what is in him besides evil, and that's fine.  The likes of 
Snape and Wormtail more interesting because the struggle is still 
going on in them.

Amy Z
who loves the Seamus Finnegan's Wake sigs

---------------------------------------------------------
 Dudley thought for a moment.  It looked like hard work.
                     -HP and the Philosopher's Stone
---------------------------------------------------------