Dehumanizing Language--Sirius' Prank

Thu Jan 31 01:26:46 UTC 2002

No: HPFGUIDX 34362

Eileen, who is a Canadian, wrote:

> Actually, I'm not an American, but a Canadian...

Oh, I was *so* afraid of that!  From your diction, I was pretty
sure that you were North American, but...

<very small voice>

sorry.  

> ...and capital punishment has not been a legal penalty for murder 
> for quite a number of years either....Even so, it [Vernon's
> pro-capital punishment stance in PoA] struck me as unduly 
> political. 

<nods>  Okay.  So maybe it could read as highly politically-charged 
to a Brit as well.  I don't know.  Certainly here where I live, it's 
absolutely not a topic about which people can be counted to keep 
their tempers under control.

On the subject of Granting Slack To Characters We Like, I wrote:

> For an example of this phenomenon, I might cite my own vehement 
> condemnation of Moody for using nasty language to describe 
> Karkaroff in the Pensieve scene of GoF, while noting my own utter 
> lack of dismay over Sirius' use of similarly unkind and degrading 
> language to refer to Pettigrew in PoA.  

Eileen said:

> That's a funny example, b/c I find it hard to stomach Sirius's 
> attitude in that scene, even though I can offer up a million 
> justifications for it. There's something about its dehumanization
> of Pettigrew that just sickens me. 

Well, yes.  It *is* sickening.  It has to be, I think, for the scene 
to work.  All of the adult characters allow themselves to become
distressingly dehumanized there; IMO, that's precisely what makes 
that entire sequence so very effective.

"Lack of dismay" was a poor choice of words, as I certainly did find
Sirius' behavior dismaying.  But not nearly so much as Lupin's, which
made me surprised to hear you say:

> And on what appears to be a third hand,(/me looks down at her hands 
> in amazement), I don't feel the same way towards Lupin, whom I very 
> much love, even though he was right with Sirius in that scene. 

Funny, because I found Lupin's reaction to the situation more 
upsetting by far.  Sirius' snarling rage was only mildly painful
to me because really, that was just about the only emotional state 
I'd ever seen him in at that point in the book anyway.  Lupin, on 
the other hand, I'd had an entire novel to get to know and love, 
so his cold-bloodedness -- he totters perilously close to the 
borders of outright sadism in that scene, IMO -- was pretty 
devestating.  It really brought home the extent to which the entire 
situation was corrupting and dehumanizing everyone that it touched.

By 'lack of dismay,' I suppose I really meant 'inability to inspire
me to pass harsh judgment on the character.'  Sirius' use of the
dehumanizing language there didn't make me think of him as someone
who regularly dehumanizes people, mainly because the situation is so
obviously extraordinary -- and because his use of the language is not 
in the least bit casual.  He's furious, and he's been personally 
betrayed, and he's slightly deranged; and he's working himself up to 
murder in cold-blood someone who is grovelling for his life -- and 
someone he used, at one time, to care about, at that.  His 
dehumanization of Pettigrew is deliberate, and it is personal, and
it is directed at its target: even when he's ostensibly addressing 
Harry, Sirius' language is aimed dead straight at Pettigrew himself.
There's nothing in the least bit casual or off-hand about what he
is doing.

Moody, on the other hand, isn't even addressing Karkaroff in the
Pensieve scene, nor can Karkaroff even hear him.  He's talking to
a third party, in a fairly relaxed way, and it doesn't even seem
particularly personal.  It's a generalization of type: the use of
dementors is okay for "scum like this."  It seems casual, off-hand, 
automatic, just a reflection of how the man thinks: "Men like 
Karkaroff are filth and scum: they are not fully human and therefore 
do not warrant the considerations we accord to other people." 

It makes a big difference to me.  It's a bit like the difference 
between hearing a man fling an extremely offensive gender-based 
epithet directly into the face of a woman who has betrayed him while 
they are having a screaming argument, and then hearing some guy on the
street casually chatting to his friend about how he feels about 
"<precise term deleted>'s like that."

The first man is certainly not using nice language, but I don't
automatically assume that he regularly dehumanizes women as a class.
The second fellow, on the other hand, is going to have to work very
hard indeed if he wants to convince me that he is not, in fact, a 
misogynist.

Hmmm.  I *did* say before that I had decided to just chalk this issue 
down to one of personal dislike and move on, didn't I?  Yes, I seem 
to remember that I did indeed say that.  Oh, well.  I guess I lied.  

Eileen wrote:

> I also find it difficult to see Sirius's POV in the Black/Snape 
> debate. 

Oh, you don't want to get me started on the prank.  You really don't.
You...

Oh.  But you just did.  Okay, then.

Well.  On the one hand, it *did* happen twenty years ago, so I 
suppose that one could argue that it's really long past time for
Snape to just let it go.

On the other hand, I don't feel much sympathy when the grown-up
incarnation of the popular, good-looking *and* academically brilliant
teenager's take on the affair is still: "Well, he was this oily,
greasy, slimy kid, see, and we didn't like him, and he was always
trying to get us in trouble, and besides, his hair was always dirty, 
and so it served him right."  That doesn't win any affection points 
from me.  I expect a man in his thirties to at the very least be able 
to admit that it was an incredibly stupid thing to do, that it really 
could have got Snape *killed,* and that if nothing else, that would 
have been absolutely disastrous for poor Remus.  At the very *least.*

Then, I'm not at all rational on this subject.  This one is 
*intensely* personal for me, because...well...

<apologies for anecdotal digression>

The year I turned twelve, a group of girls at the summer camp I'd 
been shipped off to (and believe me, you don't want to get me started 
on the subject of summer camps, either!) decided that it would be 
highly amusing to pour kerosene over my head and chase me around with 
a Bic lighter.  As far as I can tell, this struck them as appropriate 
because (a) they didn't like me, (b) they thought that I was oily and 
creepy and weird and nasty, and (c) I didn't wash my hair often 
enough for their tastes, and so the idea of burning it off struck 
them as somehow apropos.

And, no.  I'm not making this up.  Not even the part about the hair.

Moreover, it didn't even seem to occur to the beastly little 
troglodytes (oops! was that offensively dehumanizing language? so
sorry!) that the fact that they were actually *flicking* the lighter
and making sparks fly out and big flames appear while I had kerosene 
dripping all over my face and down my neck really *did* mean that 
they could hurt me.  I could have been badly burned; I could have 
been blinded; I could even have been killed; and maybe they didn't 
realize that fact, but I certainly did.  I was absolutely terrified, 
which they all seemed to think was hysterically funny, and...well, 
and ugh.  It was not only frightening; it was humiliating.  
Humiliating in the extreme.  

And you know what happened to them when the Powers In Charge found
out what had occurred?

Nothing.  *Nothing.*  They got a little talking to about how very
reckless they had been, and how they really could have killed me.
I, on the other hand, got a lecture on how maybe these sorts of 
things wouldn't happen to me quite so often, if only I would try to 
work harder on "learning to get along with my peers."

<Elkins, noticing that her lips have now drawn back into an actual
*snarl,* takes a few long deep cleansing breaths>

Yes.  Well.  Like I said, my feelings about the prank, and my
identification with Snape in that conflict, are not so much
canonical as deeply and intensely *personal.*  And while I do
recognize that Snape's grudge-holding is a problem, well...

I was twelve then.  I am thirty-five now.  Am I still angry about 
it?  

Oooooh, you bet.  Oh, yes.  Yes, I am.  Haven't let that one go.  Not 
by a long shot.  Doubt I ever will.

Angry enough that I might relish the thought of the ringleader of that
little group being given the Dementor's Kiss?

<long, long, *long* silence>

<very slow exhale>

No.  No.  

At least, I hope not.

But still.  I can't say I have any sympathy for Sirius at all when
it comes to the prank, or place much blame on Snape for feeling the
way he does about it.  Some schoolboy grudges have more bite than
others.

--Elkins, who still sometimes has nightmares about summer camp.