[HPforGrownups] Re: Why I Dislike The Twins/Toon Talk

[MariaJ]

No: HPFGUIDX 43455

I'm coming to this discussion late, when it's almost over. May I still join?

Elkins wrote:
 
> What I suppose that I don't get is why people feel that they can't
> continue to find scenes like TTT funny just because they've decided
> that the twins are acting like bullies.  What happens to make it
> suddenly "unfunny" if you come to believe that?

Maybe you're not supposed to laugh at someone who is being bullied, because
that means you're an insensitive and callous person. I think. For the
record, I like the twins, I laugh at a lot of their antics, *and* I think
they're a couple of bullies. If I met them in real life I would run the
other way. If I were a student at Hogwarts, I'd absolutely *hate* living in
the same dorm as them, but then I'm the sort of person who would be
miserable at Hogwarts, twins or no twins.

I also find a lot of what Draco says rather funny (especially during
Hagrid's lessons) and I absolutely loathe him as a character. The same with
Snape, but there it differs a lot depending on who he's attacking. Harry can
fend for himself, so I find most of Snape's snarky comments to Harry funny.
It's when he goes after Neville my blood starts to boil. Neville is me at
age ten, so I start to feel personally threatened and that isn't funny.


Eileen wrote:

> I tried the other day to think about bullies that I like.
(snip) 
> So I racked my 
> brains further and came up with Psmith, the hero of P.G. Wodehouse's
> amusing novels, especially "Mike and Psmith." Psmith is undoubtably a
> bully. 

Oh Eileen, noooo. Erm. No, you're right. Deep sigh.
 
And speaking of boarding school-books. I read quite a lot of these in my
early teens (I don't know why. We don't have boarding schools in Sweden, so
I suppose I found them exotic.) It didn't really matter whether these books
were British or American, about boys' schools or girls' schools, there was a
lot of practical joking and so on in them, and there was a Right Way and a
Wrong Way to react. The Right Way was to laugh and get even in the same
'humorous' way, the Wrong Way was to be angry or upset or hurt. I'm
wondering, considering how much Rowling seems to have borrowed from these
books, whether the Practical Jokes Are Good Harmless Fun comes from there.
It's twenty years since I last read most of these books though, so I could
be remembering wrong.

(short interlude)

I just dug out my copy of Jean Webster's Just Patty from my bookshelf and in
the very first chapter there's Patty, Priscilla and Connie plain harassing
three other girls because the headmistress won't let PP&C share a room
anymore. Is this bullying? Oh yes. Is it funny? Actually, yes, it is. Do I
in any way condone bullying in real life and find it funny there? No. If I
did, I'm sure my six-year-old self who was bullied in school would rise up
and strangle me. 

And let's not forget Blackadder. I mean, poor Baldrick. In fact, poor anyone
who comes anywhere near Blackadder and his acid tongue. I still think he's
incredibly funny though, the slimy bullying git. ;)



And now on to something else that this discussion made me think about.
Apologies if this has already been discussed to death at some time. I'm
fairly new to the list, and I haven't read all the zillion messages.

Everything very much IMHO:

Much of what happens in the HP-books would be considered Bad and Wrong if it
happened in the Real World: Fred and George are bullies. The Dursleys are
child-abusers and so, for that matter, are the Longbottoms. Snape and Hagrid
should, for different reasons, be fired as teachers. Lupin should be locked
up for his own and everyone else's safety. And so on and so on. In fact,
Hogwarts should be closed because of all the dangers the students face on a
daily basis.

However, I think it's fairly obvious when I read the HP-books (obvious for
me, I'm not saying everyone else would think it obvious, though this has
been discussed on the list before) that the wizarding world operate from a
somewhat different rulebook than the muggle world.

The wand is, among many other things, a *weapon,* and this is a world were
that weapon is put into the hands of inexperienced eleven-year-olds. At
Hogwarts a trek through the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night is a
perfectly normal detention and was there anyone who thought that 'hey, it's
storming, maybe we should send the first-years with the coaches this year,
in case someone, you know, drowns'. No, there weren't.

I have a feeling that if a couple of muggle parents quizzed their child
about Hogwarts, became appalled and went to McGonagall or Dumbledore to say
they didn't want to leave their child in this dangerous environment,
Dumbledore, McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout (the teachers that seem to be
fairly reasonable and levelheaded - for obvious reasons I'm leaving Snape
out of this) simply wouldn't get what those parents were talking about, or
worse, consider them over-sensitive wimps who wouldn't cut it in the
wizarding world.  

All this means that when I'm reading the HP-books I often come away with two
disparate readings of the same characters. A more 'external' Real
World-reading means the twins are bullies, Great-uncle Algie should be
reported to the police for dropping Neville out the window and Snape should
be fired. A more 'internal' reading, viewing the books from within, means
the twins are amusing, if somewhat loud & boisterous, clowns, Great-uncle
Algie was only being kind to his nephew and Snape, well, I have a feeling
Dumbledore thinks of Snape as a Learning Experience.

Or take the Howler. Viewed from the Real World, sending a child a Howler,
knowing full well it will explode in front of the entire school and cause
the child intense humiliation, that's almost child abuse, isn't it? It is in
my book anyway. However, do I think Molly or Gran will agree with me? No. Do
I think Ron or Neville will agree with me? Not really. I'm not even sure
Hermione (who is a muggle after all, and didn't grow up in the wizarding
world) would agree with me. She'd probably have a few choice words to say
about the people who sent her those vile Howlers in GoF, but I don't think
she'd say much about the Howlers as such.

If Neville went to McGonagall and told her about the canary incident, what
would her reaction be? Would she be angry, tell the twins off for being mean
to a much younger kid and give them detention, or would she tell Neville to
lighten up, it was only a joke (she'd phrase it differently though). Or if
Neville had gone to McGonagall in PS/SS after the Leg-Locker Curse incident,
would Draco have been punished for being a bully and hurting Neville's
feelings or because he was casting spells when he shouldn't?

And the hexing of Draco and c:o on the train. Once Molly stopped yelling and
Arthur stopped fuming about Malfoys and someone was able to explain exactly
what Draco said, would they still be angry? I imagine that Dumbledore would
tsk-tsk, but be secretly amused, and that a lot of people would think Draco
and c:o only got what they deserved. I seriously doubt if anyone in the
wizarding world would think of what happened as bullying. Not even Draco or
Lucius - this would just be the latest, and most serious, skirmish in the
on-going "war" between Draco and Harry.

The point is (there is a point?) I'm not entirely sure the wizarding world
would even know what a bully is, that they would actually be able to
recognise bullying behaviour for what it really is.

I realised this when I thought that maybe what the twins needed was for
someone to tell them exactly how hurtful their behaviour can be (I don't
think they know or that there is any malicious intent in what they do) and I
couldn't really think of who this 'someone' should be. Molly or Percy maybe,
as they are the people in the books who have been shown to find the twins'
practical jokes annoying. But finding something annoying is one thing,
finding it hurtful quite another matter.

I'm not saying that everyone in the wizarding world is completely ignorant
of what a bully is. I'm sure Neville and Percy have felt/feel bullied. I'm
just not so sure what the general attitude would be.

At the end of the first chapter in Just Patty when Patty and her two friends
have managed to harass the other students to the point where they're begging
the headmistress to let them room together again, the headmistress says (and
my blood runs cold): "In my experience of school life, it is a girl's own
fault when she is persecuted. [...] Keren is a hopeless little prig--" Poor
Percy, why do I feel that that is the argument a lot of people (including
his own family) use to explain their, eh, "teasing"?

Just Patty was written in 1911, and the views expressed in it are obviously
out-of-date. But the wizarding world of the HP-books *is* an old-fashioned
world in so many ways, why not this one too?

Because, for every time I read the HP-books I like the wizarding world less
and less. There's a hard, even cruel, edge to it that makes me very
uncomfortable and it's got nothing to do with Voldemort or Death Eaters.
It's the general condescending attitude toward muggles (I recently started
re-reading PS/SS and cringed when in Ch 1 McGonagall says about muggles:
"They're not completely stupid." Minerva, how could you?), the way
characters that are perceived as weak, like Quirrell or Moaning Myrtle, are
considered jokes (and thus legitimate targets for any kind of snide or rude
remarks) as well as the more obvious things like their Justice System, the
fact that there are House Elfs or the prejudice against people like Lupin,
Hagrid etc, people who aren't quite, quite like Us. That Draco and Snape,
ten (if not more) times worse than the twins, can get away with their
bullying is just another symptom (to me) of the fact that the wizarding
world is seriously messed up.

It'll be interesting in ten years time (or more) when we get to Book 7, to
see if Rowling has written the wizarding world like this intentionally or if
I'm just reading too much into it.

I don't have any answers. And I'm not phrasing this very well (English isn't
my first language). It doesn't help that this isn't really a structured
argument, just a string of loosely intertwined questions. Ah, never mind.

MariaJ, who is going to press Send this time. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. So
there. :)