Fan Readings & Subversion (WAS: Where's the Canon -- Part Two)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 35117

> I'd like to jump into this thread <said Porphyria who will probably 
> prove to be more un-subversive than will amuse Elkins ;-) >

Oh, I shouldn't worry about that, Porphyria.  I'm easily amused.  ;-)

> For starters, I'm interested in summing up a few areas of potential 
> reader unrest in the HP series to see if anyone else would like to 
> discuss them. 

Cool!  Let's see, now.

> 3. Frustrations of being an adult reading a series which is 
> designed to be suitable for a child or young adult audience (i.e. 
> certain issues like teen pregnancy or drugs seemingly will never be 
> addressed; sex gets glossed over)

Hmmm.  I can't say that this one has bothered me much (not yet, at 
any rate).  I was fairly impressed, in fact, with the way that in the 
last book, JKR managed to suggest some rather adult nastiness without 
actually straying from the PG path.  The harrassment of Mrs. Roberts
at the Quiddich World Cup, for example, certainly suggests muggle-
rape as a popular DE pasttime to adult readers; to a child I expect 
it would have had far stronger associations with the playground 
obsession with seeing people's underwear.  (Not, of course, that the 
two phenomena are completely unrelated, which is part of what made it 
such a very *clever* gloss, IMO.)

> 5. Inconsistencies of genre: the series combines elements of 
> fantasy/fairy tale (in which one typically finds archtypical roles 
> with distinct functions) with that of the mystery (where characters 
> are often not what they seem and break type), plus other genres as 
> well: boarding school, coming-of-age, and certainly satire. Do 
> these genres combine in a satisfactory way or are they often at 
> cross-purposes?

Now *this* is a really interesting one, because I think that my 
answer would have to be: "Both."  The 'genre-soup' aspect of the 
books is certainly one of the things that I find most appealing about 
them, and I doubt that I'm alone in that: I suspect that it may well 
be one of the things that accounts for the series' enormous 
popularity.  At the same time, though, the genres that JKR is 
combining *do* often work at cross-purposes, and I think that this
can definitely be...anxiety-provoking.  

Take that infamous Gleam In Dumbledore's Eye, for example.  That 
gleam does seem to have caused some people a great deal of 
consternation, and I think that the genre-medley is largely to blame 
for that.  If this were merely a fantasy/fairy tale, then the Gleam 
would be far less of an issue: a gleam in the twinkling blue eyes of 
the Old Wise Wizarding Mentor can mean nothing but good news in sucn
a story.  In a series which owes so much to the mystery genre, on the 
other hand -- a genre in which People Are Not Always What They Seem --
the Gleam really seemed to frighten some readers.  Could Dumbledore 
Be Up To No Good?  What if the gleam is there because Dumbledore has 
just realized that Harry's death might now serve to banish Voldemort 
permanently -- and he's just *thrilled* about it?  Could Dumbledore 
actually be a Machiavellian manipulator, driving poor Harry 
relentlessly onward to his doom with all of the consideration and 
compassion of a farmer whipping on a reluctant ox?

Heh.  Anxiety, yes.  And in this particular case, a type of anxiety 
that I am almost certain was not at all what the author had intended 
to inspire, one that I don't really know if I think is terribly 
beneficial, overall.

In some cases, though, I think that the anxiety provoked by the genre-
mixing is tremendously beneficial to the books.  PoA, for example, 
was such an engaging read in part, I thought, because it had all of 
these tremendously powerful mytho-poetic archetypes running all the 
way through it, and yet at the same time was so firmly rooted in the 
mundane details of the boarding school story, and *also* at the same 
time had strong aspects of an Agatha Christie-like mystery novel...
it was a page-turner in part because you just couldn't be certain 
*how* all of these genres were going to interact.  It wasn't just a 
matter of wondering what would happen next, or what was really going 
on in the plot; there was also a kind of metatextual mystery in play -
- "Which genre conventions will take precedence here?" -- that really 
made the book (for me, at any rate) impossible to put down.  

Anxiety there, too, certainly.  But a really really *good* kind of 
anxiety.


> Does anyone have any issues with the writing style?

<wince>

Er...do I get lynched around here if I say that I do sometimes
have some problems with the writing style?

What can I say?  I think that Rowling's an excellent story-teller.
Her prose style, on the other hand, leaves something to be desired.  
All IMO, of course.  Obviously I read the books with enjoyment, so 
it can't be all that big a problem for me.

Where it *does* become a problem for me, though, are the few places 
where I find myself running into a conflict between how the writing 
itself led me to visualize a scene while reading, and how I feel 
almost certain the author meant for me to visualize the scene.

Rowling's fondness for the verb "to shriek" is a good example of 
this one.  My *God,* does she love that verb!  She uses it every
chance she gets.  Whenever people raise their voices in the 
Potterverse, they are almost always "shrieking."  (The Shrieking 
Shack has always amused me for this very reason.  Of *course* it 
would be called "the Shrieking Shack!")

Now, to my mind a "shriek" is a very specific *type* of high-pitched 
raised voice.  The verb has an entire body of implications and 
associations connected to it as a matter of connotation, and 
JKR's "shrieks" don't always seem to quite match up with these.  (And 
no, I don't think that this is a matter of British vs American 
English.  I read many English books, and I have never run into this 
difficulty with anybody else.)  Sometimes it's almost as if I have to 
remind myself while reading: "Now, remember, Elkins: this is one of 
*Rowling's* 'shrieks.'  So you mustn't necessarily assume that it's 
*really* a shriek."

And that can be...jarring, yes.  Jarring and potentially 
problematic.  I say "potentially," of course, because I've actually 
consciously *noticed* the Shriek Problem, and so it doesn't have 
quite as much power to lead me astray as it might otherwise have done 
(my insistence on reading Avery as a pathological hysteric rather 
than as a grovelling toady aside...)

But what about JKR's idiosyncracies that I *haven't* consciously 
noticed yet?  Are they leading me into erroneous assumptions as a 
reader?

"Being Driven Right To The Brink of Sanity Draco" is another example 
of this.  I have a strangely divided mind when it comes to those 
scenes which illustrate The Very Worst Of Draco Malfoy.  The two that 
leap to mind are these:

The very end of Chapter Eight, CoS: 

"Then someone shouted through the quiet.

"'Enemies of the heir, beware!  You'll be next, Mudbloods!'

"It was Draco Malfoy.  He had pushed to the front of the crowd, his
cold eyes alive, his unusally bloodless face flushed, as he grinned
at the sight of the hanging, immobile cat."

(It's rather amazing, actually, that she didn't have him 'shrieking' 
there.  Draco often shrieks.)

And then this, towards the end of Chapter Thirty-seven, GoF:

"'So,' said Malfoy slowly, advancing slightly into the compartment
and looking slowly around at them, a smirk quivering on his lips."

<Draco's horrific "I tried to warn you" speech follows shortly
thereafter>


Now, I'm almost certain that I'm supposed to read both of these
scenes as a Just Plain Mean kid being spectacularly horrid.  And yet,
my instinctive reading of Draco as he is described in both of
those scenes is "stressed."  In the CoS passage he looks half-crazed
to me and not (as I suspect was the intended impression) with sadistic
enjoyment, either.  He looks *febrile,* like someone who is being
pushed to the very limits of his own sanity.  And similarly, in the
GoF passage, that single word, "quivering," acts to undermine 
completely for me the impression that I suspect JKR was actually 
trying to convey.

And this *is* a problem.  It's a problem because it creates a strange 
layering effect in my mind: there is the scene as I originally 
visualized it based on JKR's own writing, and then there is
the "revised edition" based on what I believe to have been the true 
authorial intent.  But the first impression can never be banished 
utterly: it remains, as a kind of ghostly shadow-image superimposed 
over my entire reading of the books -- almost like that reflection of 
myself that is always faintly visible when I look out of the window 
here in dark-and-cloudy Portland, Oregon -- so that, for example, I 
can never completely banish my mental image of Draco Malfoy as a 
deeply-divided character...even though I do not for a moment believe 
that he is *supposed* to be read as one.

And while to some extent this may be a matter of my own idiosyncratic
reading practice, it is also a writing problem.  Did JKR *really* 
stick the word "quivering" in that sentence to leave us with the 
impression that Draco is under emotional stress -- and thus to cast 
some doubt in our minds that he really means what he is saying?  
That's certainly the effect that it *has,* but was that its 
*intended* effect?  And if she didn't want to convey that impression, 
then why in God's name did she put that word "quivering" there in 
the first place?  Didn't she *know* the effect that would have on the 
reader?

Does the writer know what she's doing, or doesn't she?

If JKR were a better craftsman overall, then I would feel more 
confident in accepting my first readings as intent.  Because I don't 
quite trust her technical abilities, however, I often find myself 
revising ("Shrieked" there doesn't really mean *shrieked,* it just 
means that he raised his voice," "No, that isn't really stress,
that's sadistic pleasure; it just looks feverish because JKR got 
a little overexcited with her depiction," "That the smirk 
is 'quivering' probably doesn't really mean anything at all," etc), 
and that *is* an anxiety-provoker -- and one that can lead quickly 
into subversion.

> I'm interested in your assertion that all speculation (and fanfic) 
> is inherently subversive.... If I understand you correctly, this 
> subversion is independent of the content of the individual reader's 
> content; one does not necessarily have to offer a controversial 
> reading in order to effect this type of subversion.

Well, there are levels of subversion.  ;-) 

I do think that it is inherently subversive in that it is a kind of 
usurpation of authorial power.  To speculate about future plot 
events, for example, is to assume, if only temporarily, the role of 
the Author.  It is not necessarily a statement of authorial  
"superiority" -- one can speculate without ever implying, for 
example, that one could do a better job of writing the story than the 
original author could -- but it can very readily pave the way to that 
line of thinking.  

To speculate about a future plot development in a serial, for example,
involves first contemplating the possible options, and then choosing 
one over all of the others for reasons of plausibility, enjoyability, 
complexity, consistency, and so forth.  Should the next installment 
of the serial reveal that the work's true author chose one of the 
options that the fan had already considered *but rejected,* then that 
can certainly lead to feelings of authorial superiority ("My idea was 
so much better.  Why aren't *I* the one writing these things?").  It 
can also lead to a more generalized sense of disappointment and 
unrest, a loss of trust in the author. ("Of all the possible 
directions she could have taken that plotline, why did she choose
*that* option?  I mean, of all the stupid and simplistic ways to go 
with that...")

Even when speculation does not lead to these sorts of
disappointments, though, I think that it is still inherently 
subversive in that it encourages a different relationship with the 
text than the usual one which exists between a reader and a completed 
work.  It produces a dynamic in which the reader is empowered to make 
statements *as* the author ("I favor this theory because it is the 
one most in keeping with JKR's work to date..."), statements which 
even if they are not in the least bit controversial, may well prove 
to be false.  Speculation sets up a kind of *competition* between 
Author and Reader which texts which do not encourage speculation do 
not foster in quite the same way.

> Furthermore, I'd like to ask if all speculation and fanfic *must 
> be* predicated on frustrations with the text. Is there such a case 
> where a fan simply becomes so enamored with the fictional world 
> here the 'Potterverse') or with some of its characters that they 
> simply wish to become more of an active participant? 

One good example of this type of active participation, I think, is 
self-insertion.  Fan readings tend to be characterized by a high 
degree of self-insertion: the "fannish" reader likes to imagine 
herself entering the fictive world as neither reader nor as author, 
nor even precisely as character, but instead as reader-as-character.  
Fans enjoy perceiving the fictional world as one that has an 
independent existence outside of the text; imagining oneself actually 
*entering* this world is the next logical step.

Leaving aside the issue of how this often manifests itself in fanfic 
(because this isn't a fanfic board, and so I'd rather not get caught 
up in a discussion of Marysueism here), you see a lot of self-
insertion in speculative discussions too, as well as in plain old HP 
fan chatter.  ("What House do you think you'd be sorted into?" "If 
you could go to Hogwarts for one hour, where would you go?" "What 
sort of magic would you be best at, do you think?" "Who would you
hate more as a teacher: Hagrid, or Snape?" "Which characters would 
you actually like as people in real life?")

This is active participation that is not really based on frustration 
at all.  It's based in a desire to immerse oneself even more deeply 
in the fictive world.  It can often lead to frustration, though, 
because in order to imagine oneself actually *in* the world, one 
needs information about its details that the author has not 
provided.  I think that a lot of the speculation and discussion we
see here about the logistical details of the Potterverse, or about 
aspects of the world that fall outside of the scope of the books 
themselves, *is* characterized by a bit of frustration, even if 
frustration with the text was not the original impetus for wondering 
about these things in the first place.  If that makes sense.

"Can devout students even really *attend* Hogwarts?" might be a good
example of this one -- or, for that matter, "Where are all the 
Bleeding Hearts of the Wizarding World?"  ;-)  The questions, and the 
speculation they encourage, are symptomatic of a certain degree of 
frustration with the text.  But in many cases they derive from self-
insertion -- "How would I myself (as a devoutly religious person, or 
as a political leftist, or as a lawyer by profession, or as a 
lesbian, or as a superb student who would *want* to go on to higher
education) fit into this world?  Where would my place be?  What would 
my social role be?  How would I have to adapt myself, if this were 
the world that I inhabited?"  Self-insertion is the sign of an 
enamored reader, not a frustrated one.  But self-insertion quickly
*leads* to frustration with the text.

Uh...so in short, being enamored can lead quickly to frustration.

Riiiiight.  Like we didn't already know that.


> Or does all emotional involvement require some sort of frustration? 
> If not then authorial envy (wanting to write it yourself) and 
> anxiety with the text (and its consequent tendency to produce 
> readings against the grain) would be two separate forms of 
> subversion.

I think that in practice, the one almost invariably leads into the 
other.

> Here I'd like to add that the HP series itself actively and 
> consciously encourages speculation due to the way that it's 
> written. 

I think that this is an excellent point!  And JKR seems to take quite 
a bit of pleasure in teasing her fans about this aspect of the work 
as well, in interviews and such.  She may not have known she was 
doing this when she first started writing the series, but she's 
certainly doing it quite consciously *now.*

Snapestuff to follow.

-- Elkins