Gender roles, u/dystopia and realism

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 33400

Literary Luke:
> I think it would be a great disservice to the literary form if publishers were to suddenly 
declare that, from here on out, they will only accept works that 
present a utopian worldview.  Or only works with a realistic 
worldview.  Or, for that matter, a dystopian worldview, which I 
notice you left out either intentionally or by accident, but which, I 
think, also has the ability to promote social change just like these 
other two.<

As writer and a card-carrying member of "keep your politics out of my art, whether I agree with them or not!" who suspects that novels self-righteously written to the fashionable progressive views of the time will date embarrassingly, I agree.  However, as social observer and psychologist, I have to wonder about books and so forth that reinforce attitudes which I find oppressive and counter-productive.  I'm inclined to hedge my bets between these reactions and differentiate between significant players, like Molly Weasley, whose "female" behaviour serves a definite plot-related purpose, and throwaway characters like the "girls" who always seem to be the ones squealing and crying and screaming.  Those tearful Beauxbatons girls, for example, are irrelevant.  Cutting out their stereotypically feminine behaviour or de-genderising it would improve her ideological score for almost zero artistic cost.  (Thin end of the wedge?)

I did contemplate including the dystopian vision as well (portraying the world as it might but must never become, for cautionary purpose, a la 1984?), but my post was already long enough!   (What do you thing are the comparative measures of realism, utopianism and dystopianism in HP?)  And, as one of these "HP is children's literature" types, I thought I'd restrict my comments to the two categories to which this genre mostly restricts itself.  Though now I say this, it occurs to me that Robert C O'Brien did quite a line in dystopian children's books... "The Silver Crown" and "Z for Zachariah", for example, are utterly chilling (far more so than anything I've ever seen issuing from JKR's pen, graveyard scene in GoF and all).  The latter, which is more firmly dystopian, is probably YA, but the former is definitely for children, and dares to start the novel on the heroine's 10th birthday when her entire house and family are burnt to the ground (HP parallel but much darker), and follows her through to the discovery of a world domination plot beyond V's most evil dreams (though that's a matter for further discussion on OT).

>Tabouli implies (probably unintentionally) that by choosing the "warts and 
>all" realistic portrayal, an author is choosing to not educate.

Quite unintentionally.  Or rather, intentionally, in sarcastic parody of the moral crusader types who feel that all literature should be a vehicle for (their own) socio-political views, and that any book which *isn't* is by definition sending the wrong messages and Not Educational (me, I find education in everything).  One of my main objections to such types is that they tend to underestimate the intelligence of their audience to an insulting degree.  It's like the HP detractors who think that unless Right And Wrong are spelled out in capital letters in words of one syllable without any ambiguity whatsoever, children might get the Wrong Idea and think that it pays to be Evil (after all, look what a stint with the Death Eaters got Snape!  A senior post at a prestigious institution at the side of the greatest wizard alive).  Or that the presence of "magic" alone is enough to render a series Evil.

More Luke:
>I believe that what is ultimately important is not the type of portrayal itself, or even the 
individual elements of that portrayal, but whether those elements are 
apparently rejected or condoned by the work (...)  A good author 
will rarely take an explicit stance, but even without the explicit 
stance, an implicit stance is, well, implied.<

Is it possible for the author to present a scene neutrally enough to conceal his/her hand and let the readers make up their own minds?  Sometimes in my own writing I honestly don't have a definite agenda to incorporate: my aim is to make my readers think.  Demonstrate to readers that if they explore the subject deeply enough, it is so complex and contradictory that there can never be a clear-cut judgment one way or the other.  Though this *so* obviously ties in with my bicultural, fence-sitting, cross-cultural training ways...

In some ways, "Nice Work" (which you should read, Luke - very entertaining, especially for anyone who's dabbled in academia) has elements of this approach... Robyn is a strongly left-wing idealistic type who's anti-racism, pro-gay rights, all for the emancipation of the oppressed worker, etc.etc. but, amusingly, when confronted with some real-life working class factory workers it throws her completely and shows her just how sheltered and middle-class she really is.  Lodge's own politics are readily discernible, but nonetheless, he does present an interesting quandary to the middle-class left wing reader (and the majority of people who read David Lodge are likely to be middle class and tertiary educated, though I don't know about wingedness).

> The point is that that scene could have
> been written from an utopian, realistic, or dystopian viewpoint and 
> still ultimately take the same stance on the issue.

It's getting too late to get into this properly (I could devote a long post to almost any point in Luke's post), but reading this it occurs to me that the most important thing for me is that a scene is presented in a convincing and well-written way, regardless of viewpoint.  The only problem with the utopian angle is that it tends to be the angle of choice for moral vehicle drivers who are really writing sermons rather than novels.

> if all boys were looking for in their books was a "return to tradition" 
in gender role presentations, then I see no reason why they needed to 
wait for HP to come out in order to experience this, seeing as how 
this can be found in a large enough percentage of the much older 
children's literature.<

I'm sure there was more to it in that article I mentioned, but anyway.  My feeling is that it's not so much the traditional gender roles per se as the "able to relate to it personally" factor.  At 11, my brother was a very immediate sort of boy with little inclination to read anything he "couldn't relate to", including books with a female protagonist (or male protagonist too far from his own age), books set too far before or after his era (mid eighties), anything in the fantasy genre (sci-fi was marginally more acceptable), anything without enough action or implausible dialogue... you get the picture.  He devoured "Adrian Mole" and "A Boy and his Bike", but anything further removed than that would drive him back to the joystick.

I suspect it may be *this* style of male child that is warming unexpectedly to HP.  HP is, after all, set in modern times, and has things they can relate to directly in it, like contemporary slang (at least for UK kids), Playstations, snappy, pacy action, accessible language, school, friends and foes, trouble with teachers.  In which case, "older children's literature" would be the last thing they'd want, and it's possible that hordes of feisty females might also turn them off.  Pure speculation, of course...

Tabouli.


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