Neville and the Canary Creams

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 36180

Kimberley asked:

> Oh - while I'm at it... why do people see the canary cream thing 
> with Neville as mean? . . . .Those of you who consider it to be 
> mean, why is that? Did it seem like ridicule to you?


Not necessarily like ridicule, no.  As you point out later, the 
canary cream was on a public plate, so no one was being particularly 
targetted by the prank.

I did see it as rather mean, though, mainly because of the way that 
Fred gave Neville reassurance that the custard creams really *were* 
safe.  I didn't like that much.

Then, I admit that I'm not a big fan of practical jokes in general, 
and of food tampering in particular, so I'm probably biased.  Maybe 
I'm just unusually squeamish and humorless when it comes to my food, 
but food tampering is a form of practical joking that I tend to find 
particularly nasty and unamusing.  That bit in PoA about the Twins 
slipping beetles into Bill's soup...ugh.  Not funny. 

And Neville would seem to feel much the same way.  When Fred tells 
Hermione that "it's the custard creams you've got to watch--" while 
Neville has just bit into one of the custard creams, he immediately 
chokes and spits it out. To my mind, that indicates quite clearly 
that whatever the twins have done to the sweets, he *really* wants 
absolutely nothing to do with it.

And then Fred reassures them that no, really, the custard creams are 
fine.  Just to trick him into eating one.

And...oh, I don't know.  That really does seem mean to me.  Springing 
booby-trapped sweets on people isn't my idea of a funny joke to begin 
with, admittedly, but I still find that far more acceptable than 
reassuring someone who *obviously* finds the idea dismaying and 
distasteful that their food has *not* been tampered with -- when in
fact it has.  

I also see a significant difference between simply springing a joke 
on someone (when you are, after all, a notorious prankster), and 
convincing someone to trust you...only to then spring a joke on him.  
The latter is meaner, to my mind, because it forces the victim to 
look doubly the fool: first for being trusting enough to swallow the 
trick to begin with; and then a second time, for being naive enough 
to trust in the prankster's deceitful masquerade of sincerity.

> I am very protective of Neville, he's one of my most beloved 
> characters and I hate that the trio leaves him out all the time and 
> when McG was so mean to him about the passwords I wanted to shake 
> her. 

Yes.  All of my buffoonery over his backstory aside, I, too, love 
Neville.  I was a weird little semi-autistic space-cadet of a child 
myself, and so I tend to identify very deeply with him.  

(Did I even *once* remember to bring in one of my permission slips in 
grade school?  No.  I don't believe that I ever did.  Not once.  I 
was just *notorious* for that sort of thing as a child.  And I used 
to get lost a lot, too.  I would get off the school bus at the wrong 
stop and then wander around for hours, trying to figure out where
my house could have disappeared to.  No, not joking.)  

> When I read the bit about the canary cream, I thought it was great 
> because while Hermione treats Neville with great kindness, it also 
> seems rather condescending to me. 

Really?  Oh, I'm *so* glad that someone else feels that way!  I was 
beginning to think that was just me.

Yes.  Hermione is kind to him, and of course he appreciates that, 
because really, she's the only one who is, and he doesn't have any 
other friends.  But at the same time, I do see a certain 
condescension in her treatment of Neville.  When she approaches him 
after Fake Moody's DADA class, for example, that particular way that 
she explains to Ron and Harry "Neville," before marching purposefully 
towards him -- as if he's just the Cause of the Week, you know, or a 
chore that must be taken care of -- I don't think that Neville is at 
all obtuse when it comes to interpersonal matters.  He's well aware 
of the condescension.  And frankly, it really didn't surprise me that 
he chose to try to gloss over his distress.  I don't know if Neville 
would want to confide his family history in *anyone* at this point in 
his life, but even he did, I still don't think he'd be willing to 
talk to Hermione about it.  She's shown him kindness and support, but 
not much of the type of respect that inspires personal revelation, 
IMO.

I'll even let you in on a little secret here.  I thought that Lupin's 
oh-so-blatant "let's bolster Neville's confidence" was kind of 
condescending too, to tell you the truth.  And you *know* how much I 
adore Lupin!


> To me the canary cream thing wasn't Fred and George singling out 
> a "weak" person to pick on. I think at best it was them not 
> differentiating between "poor weak Neville" and everyone else who 
> *would* be a target of their jokes, and at worst it was them 
> putting out canary creams and Neville being the one to pick one up, 
> meaning that they had no particular target in mind. 

You know, you've got a very good point there.  The fact that Neville 
is pudgy probably *was* a large part of what made the joke seem so 
particularly unkind to me, but of course, you're quite right: Neville 
wasn't singled out to serve as the target originally.  And I agree 
with you that from Neville's own point of view, the way that his 
housemates generally single him out for pity and condescension (when 
they're not simply ignoring him) is probably only marginally more 
pleasant than the way that the Slytherins single him out for abuse.

So yes.  Point taken.  Not sparing Neville their practical jokes any 
more than they spare anyone else *is* a point in the twins' favor for 
me.

> What's more, the incident showed Neville in a very good light, as I 
> see it. We see that Neville is a good sport who's comfortable 
> enough with himself despite his insecurities that he can appreciate 
> a good joke, even if the joke is him.

I agree that the incident shows Neville in a very good light.  It 
does show him to be a good sport, and to possess a certain generosity 
of spirit.  I don't know if I really believe that Neville thought the 
joke itself all that "good," though.  I didn't get the impression 
that he liked the idea of the tampered sweets at *all.*  And as he 
couldn't himself *see* what he looked like as a canary, it strikes me 
as unlikely that the metamorphosis could possibly have been nearly as 
amusing for him as it was for everyone else.

But of course, once one has become the target of a practical joke, 
the best course generally is to laugh along with everyone else, even 
if one didn't personally find the joke all that amusing.  After all, 
assuming that there was no malice intended, and nothing at all 
personal about the joke, then why put a damper on everyone else's 
fun by refusing to laugh along with them?


-- Elkins, who has indeed finally learned to laugh at practical jokes 
even when she finds them profoundly unamusing, but who suspects that 
she still can't do so terribly *convincingly.*