Exploring prejudice WAS Re: Harry's sexual preference

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 78719

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "bluesqueak" <pipdowns at e...> wrote:
> Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote:
> >>JKR's hands are full with her exploration of 
> prejudice, slavery, choices, hate, family...
> >>
> edit

> JKR is exploring prejudice, but has made a choice only available in 
> a fantasy world. She has chosen to create fictional prejudices. She 
> and her readers are therefore able to explore prejudice without real 
> world opinions getting in the way.
> 
> The WW has no prejudice about religion, sexuality, skin colour. 
> Unlike the muggle world, these things are so unimportant that they 
> are barely referred to.
> 
> But the WW *is* a hotbed of prejudice. The prejudice, where old pure 
> blood families are superior to `muggle borns' and mixed bloods has 
> enough of a correspondence in our world that we recognise it. It's 
> not completely unfamiliar. It has echoes.  
> 
>> 
> And the reader knows this. JKR has cunningly cast the reader as the 
> target. The WW prejudices are not against some nice safe `other'. 
> 
> They're against *you*.
> 
> Pip!Squeak


Aha!
We have met the enemy and he is us - sort of.

I agree that JKR is unlikely to bring recognisably real world prejudices
into the series, but at the same time needs to create a bias in group
identities that readers can explore.

What is interesting is how she has set this up in the series. Unlike most
purveyors of fantasy she has not placed Homo sapiens at or near the top
of the hierarchy. It  gets boring when H. sap. is considered to be the
pinnacle of the evolutionary process. Understandable, but boring. After
all, it's difficult to present a believable, valid character that is more
intelligent than its inventor. JKR avoids the pitfalls by coming up with
Homo magicus - same motivations, intelligence, etc. but different
attributes. Magic becomes the divider between 'civilised' and the outer
barbarians. Being magical, wizards, Goblins, Giants, Elves, the whole
panoply, take precedence over the Muggle. It is mug blood that makes
a mudblood. 

Within the elite, any self respecting supremacist needs an identifier,
a way of recognising and being recognised by the other loonies. She
won't use colour or Masonic handshakes (anyone come across a hand-
shake in the Potterverse?). So, it's clothes. Anyone can recognise a 
clerical collar, a Sikh turban or a Hells  Angel. Wearing robes on all
occasions (Madam Malkin, robes for all occasions) is the key. Robes 
are the Brahmin thread of the WW. I'll lay long odds that any adult
wizard seen in Muggle clothes is not pureblood.

Curious that Umbridge wears her fluffy cardigan over her robes. Is
this an idiosyncratic fashion statement or the sign of a mudblood?
I had thought that, hating half breeds, our Dolly would self-
justify the Cruciatus curse on Harry by arguing that, being of part
Muggle ancestry, he wasn't a 'real' person. But if she is the same it
would require a special species of schizophrenia, so I now think it's
political expediency. The ends justify the means.

She also likes to categorise all beings definitively. That way the
bureaucratic machine can play around with absolute rules with no
exceptions. Half breeds mess up the neat divisions.

The fun result of all this authorial chicanery of course, is that JKR
has somehow conned her public into accepting that they are the 
scum of the earth, and liking it.

Low blow, Jo! But I love it.

Kneasy