Wizard-Muggle marriage, & further commentary on Kevin

[lucky_kari]

No: HPFGUIDX 33843

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Tabouli" <tabouli at u...> wrote:
> However, I prefer to be fair to Clive on the feminism and 
Islamophobia front on the same grounds that some have used to defend 
HP... they are a reflection of the prevailing values of the time in 
which he was writing, as upper-middle class Christian academic in a 
>very masculinised world.  

While I agree with you to some extent, I think we should be fair 
enough to him not to call him "Clive"! :-) After all, he struggled his 
whole life against the name, and wanted to be known as "Jack". 

I find that the Narnia Chronicles, btw, are not only Islamophobic but 
inconsistent in that respect. You cannot miss the parallel, but it 
doesn't even work in the books. For example, Aslan tells Rabadash that 
he will be transformed back into a person at a great temple feast 
honouring Tash. There's obviously the connotation that Aslan and Tash 
are the same, even if people believe different things about them, just 
as many Christians today believe that we (Christians, Jews, and 
Muslims) worship one God. Then, in "The Last Battle", we're told to 
throw that out, and realize that Tash really is a blood-thirsty devil 
to whom you make human sacrifices. Well then, why did Aslan endorse 
the worship of Tash in "The Horse and the Boy"? It's stuff like this 
that, after I had got old enough to perceive the extent of the 
allegory, gave me a bad taste about Lewis, while I was becoming more 
and more of a Tolkien fan. However, "The Horse and His Boy" is still, 
imho, a great book. Unlike you, I side with Aravis against Lazarleen, 
though I'm sticking up for Susan against Aslan, allegory of Christ or 
not! (I won't drift off into an explanation of why the Aslan allegory 
does NOT work.) But, putting aside the problems in portraying culture, 
(unless you want to correspond Lewis's apparent dislike of Arabic 
culture to J.K. Rowling's mocking of suburban middle class English 
life.....) you are quite correct in the parallel. Shasta doesn't seem 
to be expected by Lewis to have respect for the old fisherman, any 
more than Harry for the Dursleys. They were both child abusers, in 
their own ways, imho. 

> 
> catherine:
> > In Lord of the Rings, with few exceptions those that were evil are 
so 
> because they were created that way.   That makes it so easy and 
> safe.  That person is an Orc, they are evil.  It's comforting to 
> think that those who are evil are so because they were preordained 
to 
> be so.  Makes your choice obvious doesn't it: `should I side 
> with `ugly orc' or the fair Galadrieal?'<
> 
> And as for Tolkien, obviously a clear sign that someone fits into 
the Evil category of humanity is ugliness!  A fine Judeo-Christian 
education for the children.  Nothing like that unambiguous distinction 
between Good (where all people are fair and wise) and Evil (where all 
people are ugly and foolish and come to a bad end on Legolas' arrows), 
eh?  Moral stuff.
> 

You people haven't read the Silmarillion, eh? Tolkien was really 
annoyed by people who said such things about Galadriel and the elves, 
and when that book came out, you could see why. If you don't have time 
to read through it (a daunting task), just rexamine "The Temptation of 
Galadriel" in the LOTR, and imagine it as a final redemption scene of 
someone who went off the right track, has paid for it, and now has the 
chance to reject what she before coveted, and come to peace with her 
past. Neither Galadriel nor the elves have too nice a past. In fact, 
an HP parallel might be the astonishment we have at discovering the 
rot in the wizard world, which even impinges on our favourite 
characters. 

However, there is in Tolkien and Rowling, a disturbing correlation 
between evil/good and looks. It's not simplistic. Gilderoy Lockhart 
and Saruman are fair-looking and evil. So far we've had no HP 
character that's not fair-looking and is also good. (The real Mad-Eye 
Moody exists, for example, but he's not a character.) Snape has a shot 
at this, perhaps, but he's not, I think, meant to be out-and-out ugly, 
 just not handsome. (Though Alan Rickman disturbs this line of 
thought.) In the Lord of the Rings, there's enough people who are 
plain, but down right ugly and good? And, when we make movies, draw 
pictures etc. we want plain people to be pretty. For example, how many 
Jane Eyre movies are there where she finally lets her hair down and 
you see she's a stunning beauty? A lot. 


>However, I wouldn't at all say that all listmembers are 
"fans" if this implies we are "blindly adoring readers of the HP 
series".  Clearly the main point of having such a list is not to 
wallow in the unquestioning devotion of 3000 fellow fans, but to 
debate and analyse the series from different perspectives, many of 
which are quite critical.  In the recent spate of posts on gender 
roles in HP, there were a large number of listmembers who expressed 
disapproval about JKR's writing in this area, for example.  Our eyes 
>are open to HP's flaws, we just like the books anyway.

Exactly. One of the things that I disliked about GOF was when Hermione 
was able to do up her hair for the ball. Totally irrational, since I 
have hair like Hermione's and sometimes do get a nice result, but did 
she really have to becoming stunning to get Ron's and Harry's 
attention. At least, Viktor Krum became interested in her as she was, 
which ALMOST makes me feel like liking him. 

> My 
impression was that he sincerely meant what he said, but, with the 
>limited vision that people with those sorts of views tend to have 
(due 
to limiting their social contact to people like themselves for fear of 
corruption), never imagined that the list would in fact be full of 
intelligent, educated, literature-savvy people (of whom some are 
>Christian) who are very familiar with all three of the series he 
mentions and are more than capable of understanding, rebutting and 
rejecting his arguments.
> 

I hope this isn't the case, since I like nice arguments :-), but I'm 
afraid you're likely right....... 

Eileen