VITTLES, the HP bestiary, irony vs sarcasm, counselling, excusing vs understanding, accents

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 34509

uncmark:
> I'm surprised the Hogwart's crew wasn't more creative in Goblet of 
Fire. Did anyone try anything but age potions?

Yeah, I noticed that myself.  A poor effort.  You'd think at least the Slytherins could have come up with something a bit craftier.  Mind you, it's Dumbledore's imagination they're pitting themselves against here... something tells me the big D is a creative chap...

Hollydaze:
> I can't remember who now, but about a month ago someone suggested that the books might go full circle and that the main confrontation in the whole books, may not actually be the one where Harry defeats Voldemort the second time, but the one where Harry "temporarily demobilises" LV, his first confrontation as a Baby. That would be the final confrontation of the books. I don't know quite how it would work (would you like to re post your original message or explain more your idea -sorry I can't remember who you are) but I really like that idea two (as long as it is coupled with the "Love is the downfall of LV" theory presented above - An acronym? Tabouli any ideas?)<

Let me see.  If you just want the "at the end of Book 7, love vanquishes Voldemort" line, you could have:

V.I.T.T.L.E.S. (Voldemort Is Trounced Through Love, Ending Series)

On the other hand, if you want this theme *plus* the series ending where it began with infant Harry's semi-dispatch of the big V... (phew, you're really challenging me here):

H.E.L.P.A.N.D.L.A.C.E.R.A.T.E. (Harry Exercises Lily's Posthumous Adoration, Neutralising Dark Lord; A Commencement Event Repeated At The End)

Abigail:
> Sirius' transformation into a giant dog allows for some very fun red herrings in PoA, not to mention that 
Padfoot, the giant spectral dog who haunts cemetaries and suchlike is part of Scottish (?) folklore.

Is said giant spectral dog really called Padfoot in Scottish folklore?  Do we have any folklore buffs who know more about this myth (or is this in the Lexicon somewhere)?

Abigail:
> I have to say that my cultural biases are still showing.  Intellectually I understand that a stag is a very powerful symbol, but a part of me is still going "Wait a minute!  That's *Bambi's* dad!.

Depends on whether we have Disney's Bambi or Felix Salten's original Bambi (who was no cutesy household pet, as I recall...).  From all I've heard, deer, pretty though they are, are in fact skittish, vicious beasts, and very hard to tame.  There was a scene in Rowena Farre's "Seal Morning" where she hand-raises a roe deer and releases it, only to have him come back and slash holes in her a few months later.  You don't mess with dem antlers...

Gabriel:
> Okay, I've been keeping quiet on this whole thing, but I've got to react to this. <snip information about rats>  I was thrilled when Scabbers showed up in the first book. Good press for pet rats, YAY!

If it's any comfort, in Chinese astrology the Rat is quick-witted, loyal, resourceful and charming (Tabouli, who was born in the Year of the Rat, nods approvingly).  For that matter, the Snake is wise, elegant, shrewd and philosophical.  The Dragon, of course, is impetuous, forthright, passionate and a born leader.  Note that there's more to it than just the year of your birth, as I've seen implied - there's also the element of the year you were born in, the moon you were born under, the hour of the day you were born, and so on.  I'm a Water Rat, born under the moon of the Horse, in the hour of the Horse.  In Western astrology, Gemini with Virgo rising.  While we're musing on science, religion and belief systems in general, do we have any keen astrologers in our midst?  (Ron as Aries, Hermione as Virgo, Harry as Leo...?  Whatever you think of astrology, you have to wonder if JKR took a peek in a book when setting their birthdays...)  My left brain scoffs disgustedly at such things, but my right brain loves it so much I indulge it now and then!

Devin:
> However, I can see someone else attempting to kill Harry in a finale (more on who that could be 
later) and whoever (Hagrid?--I'm not fond of the idea, I really love Hagrid) taking the "bullet" instead.<

Ahaaa.  Link in to Wormtail as Gollum (interesting idea).  I think JKR is setting us up for a Nine Fingered  (well, OK, Silver Handed) Wormtail takes the bullet scene, a la Gollum at the end of LOTR.  Maybe just as all seems lost for Harry, and Voldemort is leaning over his fallen body, wand in hand to finish him off, a rat will scamper in out of nowhere and bite him hard on the leg, so he misses.  Blinded with fury at this distraction, Voldemort blasts the rat, giving Harry time to recover, grab his own wand and polish him off.  Scene ends with Hermione and Ron (or someone) arriving what would have been just too late, to find a dead Voldemort, the corpse of a rat with a silver paw, and Harry, unconscious with exhaustion, his sweaty hair pushed aside to show his SCAR...

Devin:
> Especially good point about Aragog's remembrance of Hagrid and the possible Norbert 
connection therein.  Beautiful.  Yes, I'm sure Norbert will be back.<

This might be an OoP twist... Charlie writes to Ron to say his Dragon Keeping organisation has been overthrown by Voldemort, and all the dragons stolen... Mrs Lestrange comes roaring into Hogwarts with the Norwegian Ridgeback, deadliest of them all, to kill Harry... just as Harry is Accio-ing his broom, the dragon sees a panicking Hagrid, tenderly lays his head in Hagrid's lap, and accidentally takes Mrs Lestrange out with an affectionate lash of the tail.

Amy Z:
> And I'd love to know where you'd categorize the sorts of verbal humor in 
which JKR is very adept; they usually get classified as some kind of irony, 
e.g. "Just then, Neville caused a slight diversion by turning into a large 
canary" (that's physical humor, but it's the "slight diversion" phrasing 
that makes me LOL) and "Professor Trelawney kept predicting Harry's death, 
which he found extremely annoying."

Gwen:
> JKR does irony often and well. (Side note: if written, it's irony. If
spoken, it's sarcasm. So Ron's little comments are "sarcastic" if we are
talking about his delivery, but "ironic" if we are discussing JKR's literary
convention with the character.)<

To the first comment, I agree.  In fact, clever ironic humour is probably my favorite sort.  All very Australian of me - Australians have this habit of being so self-conscious about appearing pretentious that they have to dilute *any* comment about emotions, "proper" behaviour, compliments, insults, taking something seriously (gasp!), etc.etc. with some irony, just to make sure no-one could accuse them of pretension.  This causes a lot of trouble when they go to the US, because Americans (O dear, should I respond to recent plaints on this list and use the phrase "citizens of the US" instead?  It's a bit unwieldy) are apt to take them literally and get offended or confused, having more of a culture of emotional expressiveness and taking things seriously and less ironic tendencies.  Ooooo, the problems I have seen.  In fact, there was a very ironic article about ye olde Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman break-up which went into US/Oz differences in detail, which I'll post the link for on-list if I can find it...

However, I don't know about Gwen's explanation of the difference between irony and sarcasm.  I thought the written/spoken difference was only for libel/slander.  I think the terms have very different nuances: "sarcasm", to me, has a more biting, harsh tone about it; "irony" is lighter, more aloof (and sometimes indulgent, but rarely acid).  Maybe from a strictly literary analysis perspective Gwen's definition is correct, but I've certainly heard spoken language referred to as "ironic" by people whose grammar and language in general is usually pointedly correct.  I used this distinction on-list once myself to compare Dumbledore and Belgarath:

Me (17/8/01):
>Dumbledore's humour is lightly ironic (terribly English, that!), articulate and satirical, and he projects a sort of wise >kindly grandfather image most of the time, whereas Belgarath projects the disreputable, slovenly old man image, and >his humour is more sarcastic and involves baiting people, usually Polgara.  The kindly grandfather is only an >occasional visitor.

>Compare Dumbledore: "What happened down in the dungeons (...) is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole >school knows.  I believe your friends Misters Fred and George were responsible for trying to send you a lavatory seat."

>with Belgarath (to Garion after he's just blown their cover): "Are you sure you don't have a trumpet somewhere under >your clothes?  Maybe you could blow a few fanfares as you go along."


Of course, the most ironic example of irony is Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic", which lists ten or twelve different examples of irony, none of which is actually genuinely ironic!  Ironic indeed...

(I always thought she could substitute "Isn't it a bummer?" for "Isn't it ironic?" in that song and it would work much better)

Spy Game Fan:
> Dumbledore seems to be rather friendly and available to the students. He is 
always there to help Harry, even asking if Harry is okay. He seems to be 
Hogwarts school counselor. Which makes me wonder why there isn't a separate 
position for helping students cope.<

Ahhh.  I feel the native cross-cultural psychologist rising to the surface again.  I always find it interesting that therapy/counselling is the primary solution in the Anglophone (and particularly North American) world for addressing mental/psychological/social problems.  It says a lot about the Anglophone perception of emotions and rationality... you go to a stranger who isn't emotionally involved with your problems because s/he is therefore able to look at them "objectively" and help you do so (the idea being that emotions interfere with people's ability to be objective, rational and effective at addressing their problems, and therefore need to be "worked through" or "gotten over").

Alas for counsellors in multicultural organisations, this is not the norm in a lot of other cultures!  The stigma attached to anything that hints at "mental illness" (e.g. going to a therapist) in a lot of cultures is reasonably well-known, but what's less well-known is that some cultures would see the idea of exposing sensitive family and relationship issues to people outside their trusted family circle unthinkable and an act of gross betrayal.  Why would I want to tell some stranger about my private business?  How could a stranger help me?  How could I trust a stranger?  Of course I would go to a family member or trusted friend who knows the people involved, because they *care* about me and my family!  Of course I feel passionately about it, how dare this cold stranger imply there's something wrong with this?

When you consider that the instinctive reaction of an Anglophone seeing someone with serious personal problems is to suggest counselling or therapy, you can see the cross-cultural problems this causes.  I saw a lot of this working with Asian international students in Australian universities (who have of course been cut off from their usual support network of trusted friends and family, but often find the notion of a Western counsellor threatening and incomprehensible, and the fact that people kept trying to send them to one insulting).  And then, for those Westernised enough or venturesome enough to try out the counselling option, there's the issue of cultural awareness.  If the counsellor doesn't understand the cultural values that are so intrinsically linked to personal problems, the chances are s/he won't be able to help much anyway.  Oooo, the number of times well-meaning Anglo-Australians would tell me that I should explain to my Chinese mother that she had to realise I am an independent adult now and have the right to be treated as an equal and make my own life decisions... (ha!  I'd like to see them try...)

Joanna ( An American college student who wants to live outside of the USA, to get experience and learn another than the American way of thinking)

A fine thing...

Bonnie:
> Why is everyone (even Marianne - who like me, professes to 
dislike Snape!) looking for childhood trauma and unrequited love to 
excuse Snape for ever having become a DE and for the inexcusable way 
in which he treats Harry and Neville and Hermione - and that whole 
class of Gryffindors?

Margaret:
> Well, think carefully.  Are the posters in question really trying
to =excuse= Snape, or are they simply trying to =understand= him
and his motivations?<

Hear hear.  Understanding someone's actions is *not* the same thing as justifying or excusing them.

This all links in to the black and white reasoning we've been discussing on-list.  If one puts people in boxes clearly marked "good" and "evil", there's not much point looking at motivations.  Evil people's motives are always evil, and therefore invalid, and good people's motives are always good (if occasionally misguided).  If someone with shades of grey reasoning comes along and tries to explain that the "evil" people actually have some understandable reasons and motivations for their apparently "evil" behaviour (allowing them some validity), the inevitable response of the black and white reasoner is that you are trying to say that there is some excuse for being evil!

I personally find the stark good/evil box system pretty bleak.  Where does it leave us?  If some people are just Evil to the core, what can we possibly hope to do about it?  Kill them?  (Vernon: When will they learn that hanging's the only way to deal with these people?)  Reform them?  Assuming they can be reformed, how do you reprogram an Evil person into a Good person?  I prefer the understanding approach: at least if two opposing sides appreciate each others' humanity enough to understand each others' motivations and actions (even if they think they're abominable), we have some basis for negotiating a solution other than "I'm right, you're wrong, if you won't become right like me I'll kill you".

But this is straying into dangerous waters, so I'll change the subject here...

Hollydaze:
> I presumed we were talking about the language rather than the countries anyway and in those ways it is right as the British version is written in *English* while the "American" version is in US English (hence US in the title of the discussion)<

Weeeell, if we're drawing the distinction between the English used in England and the English used in the US, it's worth pointing out that within both Britain and North America there are some pretty striking differences in the English used in different regions!  JKR has illustrated this to some degree with Hagrid's speech (West country England?).  For what it's worth, I'm pretty confident that I could understand most variations on American English, due to media exposure, but have been known to have difficulty with some of the regional accents in parts of Britain.  Before prolonged exposure to Scottish people at my Presbyterian school, a broad Scottish accent with colloquialisms could really pose a challenge (not to mention regional accents within England itself, like Yorkshire accents...).  Didn't they release "Trainspotting" (Scottish English) with subtitles in the US?  How about "Brassed Off" (Yorkshire English)?

I *am* fond of accents.  Do we have any linguists on-list who've studied accents?  I'd love to study 'em myself...

Tabouli (who has what I think is called an "Educated Australian" accent).


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