House colors / The Thread about Bullying, with lots of MWPP - SS

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 43443

Tabouli:

<< I do feel a faint twitch at the general irrelevance of the two 
female-led Houses. >>

Look at the House colors: Gryffindor red and gold, Slytherin green 
and silver, Ravenclaw blue and bronze, Hufflepuff yellow and black. 
And we all know the meanings of gold medal, silver medal, bronze 
medal, and no medal. Speaking as a Ravenclaw, g'rrr at JKR for 
making her favoritism so clear. (Well, speaking as a Ravenclaw whose 
favorite color is blue and LOVED the old idea of Ravenclaw's colors 
being blue and silver.)

Well, to be fair: in heraldry there is no bronze and no yellow. There 
is only Or (translated 'gold'). So the Gryffies get gules and Or, the 
Claws get azure and Or, and the Puffs get Or and sable. Only the 
Slythies get argent instead of Or. Thus emphasizing their "House that 
stands alone" status.

I borrowed those House nicknames from FAP because I like them. I 
think they're cute.  But I also note that the two male Houses get 
the first part of their names used and the two female Houses get the 
last part of their names used. Coincidence or unconscious sexism? 

*****************************************************

Elkins wrote:
<< Here in the US, having been "unpopular" as a child often carries 
with it a certain cachet of moral virtue. "Popular" can be a bit of a 
bad word in some circles in the US, I think, because we tend to 
assume that all schoolboy targets are ipso facto innocent victims. >>

Not that I've ever noticed (and I have lived in USA all my life), but 
then, I'm not very firmly connected to the real world and normal 
people, so what do I know? Elkins had previously written:

<< Research into the psychological profiles of bullies in both 
Scandinavian and English-speaking countries has found that cross-
culturally they exhibit the following traits:
-- physically strong and/or coordinated
-- socially popular
-- assertive with both peers and adults
-- high levels of physical courage
-- very high levels of self-esteem
-- impulsive
-- feel little or no sympathy for victims (lack remorse)
-- positive attitudes towards violence
-- low levels of empathy
-- difficulty recognizing or understanding their own and others' 
emotions
-- competitive
-- lack self-reflection
-- resistant to compromise >>

and I was immediately tempted to reply that that seems to me to be a 
list of characteristics, not of the kind of bullies who are socially 
disapproved of, but rather of young people who are destined to be 
very successful in adult life, from getting athletic scholarship at a 
university where they make many friends who will be useful powerful 
people in adult life, to great success at a first job as a salesman, 
leading up the career ladder to management and CEO-hood (perhaps by a 
detour into founding their own start-up, attracting vast amounts of 
venture capital, and getting immense wealth by selling stock at its 
height), and finally into becoming a US Senator or President, if that 
is what they want to strive for.

Elkins wrote:
<< the map's little zingers are in fact *precisely* the sort of 
verbal abuse with which James and his friends used to taunt Snape 
back in their schooldays. >>

Well, yes, but ... 
I have always assumed that Snape gave as good as he got, at least in 
the verbal arena. Adult Snape in canon demonstrates such skill with 
words, such a splendidly sharp, brilliantly vicious tongue, that I 
assumed that he was already a master of words as weapons at age 11. 
Also, I feel that he didn't bother to wait until people did something 
to hurt him before he splashed verbal venom on them; thus causing 
many of his fellow students to fear him and his Slytherin friends to 
admire him. 

Also, it seems to me that canon shows adult Snape as a skilled, 
talented, powerful wizard with fast reflexes, and stresses how many 
curses he already knew, so I expect he also held his own at slinging 
curses, I mean at wizarding duels. I fear he was a loser when things 
came to fisticuffs, primarily because of being outnumbered, but if 
his Slytherin friends came to his assistance, maybe he was no longer 
outnumbered... 

I see Snape's clique as parallelling MWPP+Lily. Each clique consisted 
of five boys and one very strong-minded girl. Each clique hated the 
other, bullied the other in the terminology used by some listies. 
Each had one brother who would turn traitor in adult life... 
Envisioning the Marauders as having behaved thuggishly in their 
school days doesn't stop me from loving them...

Leon Adato wrote:
<< Snape was brilliant. If he had become HB, >>

Snape couldn't be Head Boy, because James got that glory in the year 
when they were both eligible. I imagine that part of Snape's pain and 
resentment is that he was cheated out of his rightful place as top 
student by an accident of timing, that he *was* brilliant and *would* 
have been the top student in most years, but he landed in a year with 
an unusually large number of brilliant students -- for James and 
Sirius, Remus told us that they were the cleverest students in their 
year and McGonagall told us that they were exceptionally bright; for 
Remus, we had a chance to see his intelligence and studiousness (as 
an adult) in action, for Lily I merely assert that she was *at least* 
as clever as James and Sirius, but kind of concealed it because of
old 1970s ideas of how girls can be attractive to boys. 

I feel for poor Severus, working his arse off and yet always being 
beaten for top marks by James (who was a Quidditch star on top of 
it!) and sometimes Sirius (who never even bothered to study!) and 
sometimes Lily (whom Severus didn't resent, because she was modest 
about her successes) ... sort of like a hypothetical 'nother kid in 
Charlie's year who was a very good Seeker and played his/her *heart* 
out, but Charlie always grabbed that Snitch and the Quidditch Cup 
anyway. 

Just because I feel for poor Severus doesn't mean I think he was an 
innocent victim. I imagine Severus and Sirius had a case of hate 
at first sight (maybe even on the Hogwarts Express on their way to 
first year), but I suppose that the lasting hate that Sirius *still* 
feels toward Severus is due to a taunt or two (or some, turn-about is 
fair play, 'practical joke') from Severus that *really* hurt Sirius, 
painful to this day. 

As I said, I love the Marauders: JKR's writing casts a Credulity 
Charm on my mind so that I am taken over by the authorial voice's 
worldview while reading, and only afterwards do I notice that my 
feelings as a reader are much different than my feelings would be if 
I was *living* it. All this concern about Quidditch, for example: in 
real life, sports bore me silly. I would turn out for my House's 
matches out of House loyalty, but I wouldn't understand when to cheer 
except by imitating all the other fans. And I-the-reader like Ron, 
asserting that 'Ron's a nice kid' when listies claim that he's going 
to turn evil. But I wouldn't get along with him if I was one of his 
classmates. I like books and try to do well in class and hate sports; 
he obsesses about Quidditch and hates school. He made some loudly 
sexist remarks about ugly girls; I was an ugly girl with Snape-ishly 
thin skin: I wouldn't have ever forgiven him for saying those kind of 
thing about me. (I'm still ugly but somewhat thicker-skinned.) Hell, 
in real life I probably would resent Hermione the same way that I 
wrote of Severus resenting James!

And in real life, the closet to a positive feeling that I ever have 
toward popular jocks (James and Sirius) and in-group members (Remus 
and Peter) is lust from afar. But JKR's writing brainwashed me into 
liking them in the books.

Abigail wrote:
<<  I think the main problem plaguing most of the F&G defenders out 
there is not the fact that they find F&G's antics funny, but that 
JKR seems to. (snip) Fred and George are never criticized by the 
narrative (snip) JKR approves of the twins and what they do, and 
suggesting that they are bullies creates a problem for the reading 
community. It's not just that we aren't nice people if we accept 
that the twins are bullies, it's that JKR isn't either. >>

Eloise wrote:
<< We know of JKR's concerns for civil liberties, her work with 
Amnesty, etc, Therefore JKR would not condone bullying, Therefore 
she would not wittingly write about bullying behaviour in a positive 
light. JKR appears to approve the twins' behaviour (except for the 
TTToffee incident), Therefore the twins cannot be intended to be 
bullies. >>

Cindy wrote:
<< "which is all the more reason that there is *no way* JKR would 
write Dumbledore's reaction as sympathetic to Frank if Frank were 
the sort of auror who abused his authority on his way to achieving 
popularity." >>

Maybe JKR and Dumbledore *would* (maybe *do*) like a Frank Longbottom 
who was an Auror who committed serious human rights abuses, the same 
way she likes the Marauders and the Twins who are insensitive gits at 
best. Which makes me wonder about JKR. How much of the authorial 
voice's worldview is her own worldview? If she does like insensitive 
thuggish popular jocks who stand together with their friends to 
physically fight other school gangs (the Marauders against Snape's 
Slytherins; Fred and George and Harry and Ron against Draco's 
Slytherins), how does that get along with all her liberal and 
anti-torture beliefs?