What is Canon?

Wed Apr 16 21:58:36 UTC 2003

No: HPFGUIDX 55493

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Katy Cartee" <rainbow at r...> 
wrote:
> K wrote:
> 
> > I know that views on authors' comments vary 
> > between fandoms so I don't know how widely 
> > held my opinion is in this particular fandom. 
> 
> I can't speak for the others, but for me, i partially agree with 
> your assessment. But i believe that the author's 
> interviews/comments ARE canon UNLESS they are contradicted by the 
> books. For instance, she's already said that Harry and Hermione 
> are "platonic" friends. But if, in the future books, that does not 
> hold true, i will obviously believe the books over what she said 
> several years ago. Or if she says "Harry will die" and then he 
> doesn't...well it's obvious which of the two options would 
> be "canon." 

Well, as one of the people who will be on the Canon vs. 
Interpretation panel at Nimbus this summer, I'm always interested to 
see how folks interpret various things that may or may not be 
canon.  For instance, there's no reason that some of the statements 
made above couldn't be true at a certain point in time, but not at 
others.  

The statement about Harry and Hermione being platonic friends, for 
instance, could refer to the time of GoF, when that seems to be a 
perfectly adequate way to describe their relationship.  This doesn't 
mean it will always be true.  And if she says, "Harry will die," in 
an interview (the most she's said, to my knowledge, is something 
along the lines of, "What makes you think he's going to survive?") 
that doesn't necessarily mean that a) he'll die during his seventh 
year (she has also promised to have a sort of epilogue to book seven 
outlining the futures of some major characters, and that may tell us 
that Harry dies at the age of 45, for instance) or, that if he does 
die while still a student, that he'll STAY dead.  (While Dumbledore 
has said there is no SPELL to bring back a person from the dead, 
that does not discount some other method, such as a potion.  Doesn't 
Snape tell the first years he can teach them to 'stopper death'?)  
Or perhaps at some point he'll just be MOSTLY dead, like Westley, in 
the Princess Bride. <g>

After GoF came out, for instance, she talked about having to rewrite 
large parts of it because she needed a conduit for information 
between Hogwarts and the rest of the wizarding world, and finally 
decided to use Rita Skeeter for that, although she'd initially had a 
Weasley cousin in mind.  If she'd said ahead of time that we were 
going to see a Weasley cousin in GoF and then we discovered that we 
got Rita instead, I'd just think she'd changed her mind and decided 
that Rita worked better.  

That's one reason I'm a bit reluctant to call her interviews canon, 
except as they explain confusing bits from the four (soon to be 
five!) extant books.  I think of the interviews as being more 
like 'guidance,' especially for my fanfiction writing.  But until it 
appears between the pages of an actual Harry Potter book, in that 
she has the right to change her mind about what she says--indeed, 
has an obligation, if the story would be better written a different 
way--I'd rather not treat tidbits gleaned from her interviews as 
carved in stone.  They're helpful, certainly, but IMO, not canon.

> I believe that there are different "levels" of canon and most 
> won't be explored until the series is finished. For example:
> 
> Level #1 - The Books
> Level #2 - What that author says
> Level #3 - The Movies
> Level #4 - Comic books, cartoons and god knows what else they'll 
> end up coming out with in the future ;)

That's not a bad ranking.  I'd probably be more specific and say 
something like this:

Level #1 - The Books
Level #2 - What the author says about the completed books
Level #3 - The Movies
Level #4 - What the author says about future books

(This is largely because she has said she has an interest in movie 
content not contradicting future books.)

I prefer to ignore a lot of the merchandizing, so I don't have other 
things on this list.  Should I consider the depiction of Harry on my 
daughter's cherry liquid hand soap (this is really sitting in my 
bathroom!) to be canon?  Should I regard the (terrible) Quidditch 
board game as canon?  These things don't cut it, in my book.  And 
while I was very interested to see that Chris Van Allsberg co-wrote 
the screenplay for "Jumanji," I doubt that he would feel that the 
numerous things done for the cartoon series bear any resemblance to 
his original book, which was very brief (a boatload of stuff was 
added for the movie).  If JKR were to allow a comic book or cartoon 
series sometime in the future, I have a bad feeling that it will 
diverge greatly from what I would consider canon, and perhaps be out 
of her creative control entirely (which leads me to think that she'd 
be unlikely to do this).

> So if, after the series is finished, the cartoon says that 
> Dumbledore has a grandaughter named Lemondrop, and it does not 
> contradict or "mess with" any plots from the book series, then i 
> would say that Lemondrop's existance is "canon" at that point. 
> Does that make sense?

Except that her name would probably be "Sherbet Lemon" in the 
British version. God, that would be an awful name. ;)

To get back to the difference between the author saying things about 
the published works vs. the unpublished works, she said at one point 
that James' Quidditch position was a Chaser.  Subsequently, in the 
first film, she either a) allowed Kloves to make him a Seeker; or b) 
didn't have much of a choice, not having discovered it until 
changing it would have inconvenienced a huge number of people; or c) 
didn't care one way or the other and originally gave the 
answer "Chaser" to get someone to leave her alone and ask her 
something sensible. <g>

Now, to my mind, the 'Chaser' answer made a great deal of sense and 
reflected James' general character as a team player.  The kind of 
cooperation necessary for a Chaser to be successful is not unlike 
the kind of cooperation necessary for three friends to learn to 
become illegal Animagi for the sake of a fourth friend.  It just 
seems to fit, whereas Harry being a Seeker seemed to fit his 
character well, as it's a position that is somewhat separate from 
the other team members and yet the one person who is responsible for 
the team being able to win.  As much as he works with Ron and 
Hermione to accomplish things, in the end (especially in GoF) he 
largely seems to be on his own.  I also strongly disliked the 
reference in the film to Seeker-dom being in Harry's 'blood.'  I 
won't go on about this any more, as it would belong on the Movie 
list, but I'm really hoping that if James' position is revealed in a 
future CANON book, she hews to her earlier statement concerning this 
and does not feel an obligation to adhere to something a 
screenwriter decided to insert, even with her approval (and 
something which contradicts one of the main messages of the books--
about blood being singularly UNimportant).

If she ever decides that Hermione's birthday is NOT September 19th 
and that Ron's is NOT March 1, by putting the actual dates in a 
future book, I don't think people should jump all over her for 
changing her mind.  I enjoy feeling smug about predicting Hermione's 
birth year as 1980 as much as the next person (::waves at Ebony::), 
and I'm really hoping that James will eventually prove to have been 
a Chaser, but I'm also prepared to find out that she doesn't really 
think either of these things is of earthshattering importance, and 
will not ever really say one way or the other in a CANON book.

--Barb

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Psychic_Serpent
http://www.schnoogle.com/authorLinks/Barb