A Taste of Moody (no thanks) (was: Draco Malfoy is Ever So Lame & A Taste of Mo

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 39091

Cindy:
> But . . . but . . . there is one male character who just doesn't fit 
> the pattern at all:  Moody.  Now, I just love Moody because I'm 
> drawn to his power and Toughness.  And he sure has been injured 
> enough times.  And he is so alone and desperately needs the love of 
> a good woman and all. 
> But good grief, is there a single person out there who can make the 
> case that Moody is *sexy*?  I mean it is difficult to even *type* 
> Sexy!Moody.

I sure can't do it. There's a difference, I suppose between 'having suffered' 
and being horribly mutilated. ;-)
I mean, right from the start, she makes sure we know that he is deeply 
physically unattractive. 
What's that I hear you say? 'Snape' was it?  Ah, there you have me, because 
she does the same thing with him, doesn't she? However, you could, in theory 
(perhaps if properly motivated, as someone once suggested) do something about 
his appearance with some shampoo and some of that whitening toothpaste that 
Porphyria goaded me into buying. Moody physically appears to be irredeemable 
as a sex-object. And there's that creepy eye that sees through your clothes. 
Snape just reads your mind!
> 
> So why is that?  Moody suffers, both before GoF and during GoF.  But 
> for some reason, I worry that I might not even *like* Real Moody, 
> let alone sympathize with him.  It does seem that JKR is trying to 
> show him hurt yet brave about it.  JKR really lays it on 
> thick:  "Stunned . . . very weak. . . . he's freezing."  Later, 
> Moody is in the hospital and is "motionless."  Moody fights bravely 
> before being subdued by Crouch Jr. and Wormtail.  Normally, I would 
> eat this stuff up.  But it doesn't work at all if JKR is trying to 
> set up Moody as another Lupin or Sirius Sympathetic Male Character.  Why 
not?

Lupin and Sirius are both younger, Sirius avowedly handsome and when we first 
meet them, they both basically need feeding up. Oh dear, plays right to those 
nurturing instincts, doesn't it? Somehow, I don't think Moody is the type to 
be nurtured. His paranoia also isn't a terribly attractive feature. Perhaps 
another reason why we don't feel sympathy at the end of GoF, is the fact that 
we've just realised that we haven't met him at all, no matter how much we 
know about him from Crouch Jr's portrayal and whilst we might feel an 
impersonal sympathy for his plight, we don't have a relationship with the 
character.

>   And why is Moody's portrayal at the staff table "extremely 
> twitchy, jumping every time someone spoke to him" so 
> unsatisfactory?  Was that JKR's attempt to make sure that we don't 
> begin to identify to closely with Moody?  Is he supposed to be 
> something other than heroic, hmmmmm?  And most importantly, is there 
> any way I can twist this canon to support Ever So Evil Moody?  ;-)
> 
Weeelll..... I suppose we can't have the whole book stuffed full crush 
material.  Perhaps he's simply another variation on the theme of the 
unattractive good guy. The one that *no-one*, not even weird Snape-fans, find 
sexy. ;-)
What you've pointed out, though, is that suffering for the cause *per se* 
isn't sexy, there has to be something else.
Is his twitchiness unsatisfactory? I guess I might be a little twitchy if I 
were already paranoid and had just spent an entire school year locked in a 
trunk. I'm not sure we can read too much into it.

But it's true that she does seem to be trying to make him unattractive. 
Whether this is because he's going to be Evil, or simply for the sake of 
either variety or emphasising the diverse nature of Dumbledore's team, I 
wouldn't like to say.

Eloise



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