Sexuality in HP (WAS So, why did Snape turn on Voldermort?)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 40118

I've deprefixed this thread, since it's really more about sexuality 
and homoerotic overtones in the HP books in general than it is about 
any particular relationship or romantic speculation.

*However.*  This post does contain discussion of both homoeroticism 
and sexual sadism.  We don't have a prefix for that.  So consider 
this a warning: if that sort of thing bothers you, then you'd be well 
advised to skip now.  

No.  Really.  I mean it.


-----


Rochelle wrote:
  
> But when you examine them closely, are the HP books REALLY that
> innocent? 

Er, no.  They're not, very.  

Their less innocent aspects are, however, often very cleverly 
glossed.  Take the harrassment of Mrs. Roberts at the QWC World Cup, 
for example.  To adult readers, the scene cannot help but suggest 
that Muggle rape was a regular part of the modus operandi of the 
Death Eaters.  To a child, however, it is far more likely to be 
associated with the common playground game of trying to see other 
people's underwear.

Of course, the reason that allowing others to catch a glimpse of ones 
underwear on the playground is so humiliating in the first place is 
due to precisely the same cultural dynamic that makes rape such a 
devestatingly effective terror technique.  This scene therefore 
serves both to suggest some very adult nastiness to the series' more 
mature readers and to inspire precisely the right *flavor* of 
discomfort in its younger readers -- all while remaining perfectly 
suitable for children.


> Here are a few things to think about, mostly subject to 
> interpretation, and some harder to ignore than others.

> 1)From the "easily ignored" category, we have the thing that Harry 
> would "sorely miss" [p.463] which, of course, turned out to be Ron 
> [p.498] Granted, this is innocent enough; Harry IS ron's closest 
> friend. But especially when given the fact that two of the other 
> three competitors had to rescue their girlfriends/dance dates (Krum 
> had to save Hermione; Cedric had to save Cho), the homoerotic 
> subtext here isn't that hard to find.


Hmmm.  Well, Harry's still practically pre-pubescent in his thinking 
in GoF, isn't he?  I don't know if I find Ron's role as the thing he 
would "sorely miss" quite so much homoerotic as I do simply 
homosocial.

Where I see a lot more homoerotic subtext, actually, is in the
particular tenor of Harry's envy of "pretty boy" Cedric Diggory.  
(I also seem to remember that the last person who brought up this 
aspect of the Harry-Cedric dynamic got flamed.  Before my time, that 
was, or I would have felt compelled to defend her.  I see it there 
too.)  

But as you say, this sort of thing is always highly open to 
interpretation.  

Far less so, I think, is the unrelenting homoerotic insinuation to 
which Percy is subjected by both Ron and the Twins throughout _GoF._  
JKR can't come right out and let Percy's brothers call him a...um, a 
derogatory term for a gay male, of course, but the precise tenor of 
their needling about the depths of his attachment to his employer -- 
he *loves* Crouch, he wants to *marry him,* and so forth -- makes it 
pretty clear that this is exactly the nature of their teasing.


<Moaning Myrtle's infamous voyeurism>

> Humorous, yes, but a little perverted no matter HOW you interpret 
> it.

Heh.  Yeah.  But again, voyeurism is really very popular among 
children, isn't it?  We're back to "I see London, I see France" 
here.  Or "playing doctor," for that matter.

It may be a little bit perverted, but it's perverted in a specific 
way that, for whatever reason, our culture has declared to be 
particularly suitable and appropriate for children.


> Tom Riddle's "hungry eyes" in CoS [p.309, 311]. Okay, so maybe 
> looking at someone "hungrily" means something completely different 
> in England than it usually does in the States (though I doubt it). 
> And yes, if you try, you can just brush it off. But nonetheless, 
> we've got some pretty blatant homoerotic subtext going on.

Mmmmm.  Yes.  Well.  We get back to dear Riddle and his little...uh, 
quirks in that graveyard sequence, don't we?

But JKR's depiction of Riddle in CoS really is pretty interesting.  
The language that she uses to describe him is both sexualized and 
somewhat feminizing.  He does indeed have that "hungry" gaze, as you 
mentioned.  He speaks "quietly," "softly."  In the Chamber sequence, 
JKR pays particularly close attention to his hands, to his "long 
fingers" (a trait upon which she will positively *obsess* by the time 
we get to his reappearance as the reincorporated Voldemort at the end 
of Gof).  When Harry first notices Riddle in the Chamber, he is 
leaning languidly against a pillar.  He twirls Harry's wand "idly" 
while speaking to him.  This is sensual language, and the behavior 
that it depicts is flirtatious.  If Riddle were a woman, you might be 
tempted to call his demeanor "vampish."  It is both a sexualized and 
a highly seductive depiction of character.  

Riddle sure doesn't show very much interest in Ginny at all, though, 
does he?  Both as Riddle and as Voldemort, he is consistently 
depicted as both distinterested in and highly dismissive of women as 
a general class.


> 4)CoS, pages 285-286 where Percy goes to great lengths to keep Ginny
> from telling anyone what she caught him doing. All right, so it 
> turns out that he was kissing his new girlfriend [p.341]. But up 
> until that gets revealed, you know very well what you THOUGHT he 
> was doing! ;) 

Hmmm?  You've lost me here, Rochelle.  Weren't we supposed to be 
thinking that Percy was messing about with Salazar's basilisk?  I 
never went chasing after that red herring myself, but I'm pretty sure 
that our suspicions were supposed to lie in that direction.

I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, though.  Do you figure that 
JKR wanted to lead her older readers to think that Percy might have 
been kissing a boy?  Or just that he was up to something rather more 
sexually advanced than snogging?


> 5)And finally, we have the elephant that's sitting in the living 
> room: that entire... thing... that happened near the end of GoF 
> [p.636-658]. 

Oh, thank heavens!

And here all this time, I've been thinking that I was surely the only 
person Bent enough to have found myself staring with slack-jawed 
incredulity at that whomping big elephant.

<Elkins strikes boldly into the center of the drawing room and grabs 
the elephant by the trunk>

I can *feel* it!  I can *feel* it!  It's a ROPE!  A rope just long 
enough to use to *hang* myself!

Heh.  Yes.  Well.

Yeah, the entire graveyard sequence is really pretty, er, 
astonishing, isn't it?  It certainly did make me blink the first time 
I read it.  I kept thinking, "Oh, lord, is she really getting *away* 
with this?"


> We have Harry bound and helpless as his blood is "forcibly taken" 
> [p.642] -- a violation of his body. To me, this looks like a fairly 
> obvious metaphor for rape; to make it even clearer, the knife (a 
> common phallic symbol) "penetrates" [p.642 again] Harry's flesh. 

That it does.  It penetrates the virginal young Harry and strips him 
of those protections with which his sainted mother had imbued him.

Yup.  JKR even goes for the straight-out word choice 
there.  "Penetrates."  Not leaving anything to chance, is she?

But then, the entire graveyard sequence is really just one great 
massive sado-masochistic orgyfest, don't you think?  I mean, the 
sexualization of the language throughout those chapters really is 
unrelenting.  The newly rebirthed Voldemort doesn't just check 
himself over.  He actually *caresses* himself (yes, with those "long 
fingers"). "His expression rapt and exultant."  Then, as if 
one "caress" in this context weren't disturbing enough, in the very 
same paragraph he caresses his *wand.*  

"Gently caresses" it, mind.  Gently.

His Death Eaters, crawling forward to pay their homage, "murmer" 
their obeisance. It's a peculiar word choice, that.  "Murmered" has 
somewhat sexualized connotations.  Later on in this scene, the DEs 
will appear simply terrified but here, in their first appearance, 
they come across as more...well, transported, really.  Transported by 
a kind of submissive ecstacy.

And then there's Voldemort's *thing* with Harry.  That single-
fingered stroke on the cheek.  That comment about Harry's father 
facing him "straight-backed and proud."  (Gee.  He hardly paid that 
much attention to how Harry's *mother* died, did he?  Far less her 
*posture* at the time.)  And what I think must be one of the most 
disturbing lines in the entire series:

"'A little break,' said Voldemort, the slit-like nostrils dilating 
with excitement, "a little pause...'"

Nostrils dilating with *excitment?*

Um.  Yeah.  Look.  I've just written and then erased three separate 
attempts at this paragraph, trying desperately to avoid getting too 
vulgar here, and I'm just not having very much luck with it.  So, uh, 
can we just leave the question of *who* precisely might really be the 
one in need of a "little break" at this point in the duel as read, 
then, and move on?   


It's some seriously disturbing language, this.  Genre villains are 
nearly always sadistic, that's de trope, but it's really quite rare 
to find their sadism marked so very blatantly as sexual.  To come 
across it in a series marketed for children borders on the downright 
shocking.


> This list is not complete. I could add quite a bit more if I 
> wanted, but I think that's enough for now.

Ah, yes.  Restraint.  That's a virtue, I'm told.  Sadly, it's not
one that I've ever quite mastered, myself.

> Personally, I think J.K.R. is a closet slasher. ;) But that's just 
> my opinion.

Do you think so?

I'm actually made uneasy by the conflation of homoeroticism, 
effeminacy and sadism in these depictions.  Yeah, yeah.  I know, I 
know.  It's just standard genre convention.  It's hardly restricted 
to the HP books.  It's everywhere.  It's just plain inescapable.

But it's not a genre convention that I've ever much cared for, 
myself.  It often strikes me as uncomfortably homophobic.


-- Elkins