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

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 39214

Oops!

This really should have gone in with that last Hurt-Comfort
post, I suppose, but I forgot all about it.  So now Sexy!Moody 
gets to have his very own turn in the spotlight.

-----

Cindy (hoping that I would someday write an essay making her feel 
better about her *issues* with Hagrid) wrote:

> 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. 

Um.  Yes, well, like I said.  People are...diverse.  ;)

As for Hagrid, I seem to remember once getting myself into a spot of
trouble with the Hagrid fans by calling him a "bigot."  Wasn't that 
enough for you?

Cindy:

> 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.

And Eloise agreed:

> I sure can't do it.

Hmmm.  Well, let's see now....

Sexy!Moody.  Sexy!Moody.  Sexy!Moody.

Nope.  Not having a problem with it.  Although I *am* giggling over
here, I'll have you know.


As for why there are no takers for Dead Sexy Moody, though...well, 
Eloise suggested:

> There's a difference, I suppose between 'having suffered' and being 
> horribly mutilated. . . . Moody physically appears to be 
> irredeemable as a sex-object. 

Yeah.  "Horribly mutilated" is generally considered a turn-off, I'm 
afraid.  Even more so than greasy hair and sallow skin and yellow 
teeth.  Snape's physical drawbacks aren't sufficient to put him out 
of the running.  Moody's are.  Monstrously unjust, but there you have 
it.

Also, he's kind of old.

Oh, yes, yes, I *know.*  What a terrible thing to say!  That horrible 
ageist Elkins!  But the books don't, on the whole, seem terribly 
interested in providing older readers with age-aligned crush 
material, much as they don't provide much in the way of crush 
material for readers who are attracted to women rather than to men.  
The Dead Sexy Mrs. Lestrange is just about all that's on offer for 
the gynophilic, and she's Ever So Evil, so unless you get a kick out 
of that whole dominatrix schtick, you're really out of luck.  
You're left with McGonagall, who is kind of hot in her own way, but 
who also never actually gets to *do* anything.  The books are really 
very unfair that way.

While I'm on this line of thought, it's interesting to note that 
Harry's first impression of Lupin on the train is that, in spite of 
his grey hairs, he is "young."  I have to say that I've always found 
this completely unbelievable.  Thirteen year old boys do *not* 
consider men in their mid-30s "young."  In fact, it's been my 
experience that adolescents view people in their thirties as 
positively *ancient.*

I've always suspected that we're seeing a little bit of blatant 
authorial intent seeping through in that passage, myself.  I think 
that JKR wanted the reader to view Lupin as "young" primarily because 
she wanted to designate him as a romantically appealing character 
right from the very start.


Cindy:

> 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 hick: "Stunned . . . 
> very weak. . . . he's freezing." 

He's unconscious.  He's also missing his prosthetics, which is fairly 
pathetic, and not in at all a romantically appealing way.

We assume that he has indeed been brave about the whole thing because 
we have deduced both from Crouch Jr's masquerade and from all of the 
things that we've been told about Moody that he is brave and heroic 
and Tough.  But we don't actually *see* him suffering nobly 
anywhere.  In that scene, for example, he is unconscious and 
therefore incapable of doing much of anything, other than serving as 
the utterly passive recipient of a medical evaluation.  The overall 
effect, I think, is far more one of pathos than of romantic 
suffering: Moody comes across there as a weak and victimized old man, 
which isn't at all a romantic image.


> Later, Moody is in the hospital and is "motionless." 

And once again: he's utterly passive.  Complete passivity doesn't 
inspire very much in the way of romantic engagement.


> Moody fights bravely before being subdued by Crouch Jr. and 
> Wormtail. 

Yeah, he does, but we're only *told* that.  We don't actually see it 
happening.  This gets back to what I was saying in my previous post, 
about readers being far more strongly influenced by things that they 
see directly than by the things that they learn in a more indirect 
fashion.  We never *see* Moody struggle valiantly against a situation 
in which he is nonetheless compelled to suffer.  We're just told that 
it happened, which isn't at all the same thing.

> 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? 

Well, much as I would *love* to take it as evidence of Evil!Moody,
if pressed to play 'guess the authorial intent' here, my instinct 
is to say that Moody's depiction there probably had far more to do 
with how JKR wanted to influence the reader to think about Crouch Jr. 
than about Moody himself.  We know (or think we do, anyway) that 
Moody is One Tough Dude.  So the fact that he's shown there as having 
been reduced to such a traumatized state implies some pretty dire 
things about how Crouch Jr. (whom we already know to be a sadist) 
might have been treating him over the course of the year.

I think that the intended effect was probably less likely to be to 
make us either gain or lose sympathy for Moody as it was to rouse us 
to righteous indignation on his behalf, and thus to dispel any 
lingering little feelings of sympathy that Crouch's pathetic 
confession and horrifying end might have inspired.


On the question of *why* Moody wouldn't be written in such a way as 
to strike readers as attractive, Eloise wrote:

> 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. ;-)

Moody is a variant of a stock character: the Crazed Old Coot Mentor.  
JKR even has him swigging from that hip flask all the time.  (The 
Crazed Old Coot Mentor is often also a drunk.)

It's not a character type who is meant to be sexy.  Crazed Old Coot 
Mentors are hardly ever sexy.  That's really just not a part of their 
function.



-- Elkins