Real characters & persuasive argument

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50429

Amy:

> Let's take a really, really obvious example instead of a 
> subtle one like whether Ron and Harry are on balance 
> inconsiderate idiots. Let's say someone is trying to 
> explain (<g> not persuade anyone else) that Snape strikes 
> her as a particularly kind person.

Amy, I think that you are still misunderstanding the
nuances and subtleties of the conversation that had
actually been taking place, before it became diverted
into a defensive exchange over whether people's readings
are a by-product of the long wait for OoP, whether 
people were or were not "trashing" characters, and so
forth.

This really frustrates me, not least of which because I 
feel that the arguments of the posters were *themselves*
rather badly mischaracterized -- dare I even say 
"flattened?" -- by this digression.

As I read it, the exchange between Ebony and Eileen up to 
the point at which the conversation became diverted by the
bone-picking and trashing objections, could have been 
paraphrased like so:

------------------

Ebony:  

I don't see how Hermione could ever countenance a romantic
relationship with Ron, because he has said such very 
horrible things to her, things that are just *so* mean 
and inconsiderate that I believe they must have hurt her 
feelings terribly.  If I were Hermione, the things Ron 
has said would disqualify him from my consideration,
because I would have been so hurt by Ron's statements 
before the Yule Ball that I would never be able after
that to think of him as a romantic partner.  That's why 
I just can't see R/H.


Eileen:

Yeah, I agree with you that the things Ron said there were
horrible, and they would have upset me a great deal too, if 
I had been Hermione.  But you know, Harry *also* strikes me 
as a really mean and inconsiderate person?  Just look at how 
he treats Neville, to take only one example.  Really, when I 
read the books, I am always struck by how unkind *both* of 
these boys are.  If I knew Ron and Harry in real life, I would 
consider *both* of them to be such mean and inconsiderate 
people that I wouldn't even want to be friends with them, far 
less to date them.  I'd be more interested in Neville.  Yet 
Hermione herself obviously doesn't feel the same way.  She 
*is* friends with them.  She really *does* like their company,
in spite of the fact that they act like such jerks.

This leads me to the conclusion that Hermione isn't 
bothered by the same sort of behavior that would
bother me.  It also leads me to believe that Ron's
comments probably don't upset her all that much.
You see, just as I know that other readers' emotional 
reactions to these characters are not the same as 
mine -- most readers do *not* consider Ron and Harry to 
be inconsiderate jerks, nor would I wish to try to convince 
them to share my reading -- so I can realize that *Hermione's* 
emotional reactions to Ron and Harry are likely not the
same as mine.

I therefore don't find it at all difficult to believe that 
Hermione could consider Ron a potential romantic partner 
in spite of all of those inconsiderate statements.  I would
feel differently, sure.  But then, by the same token, I 
wouldn't want to date Harry either.  And besides, I am
not Hermione.


Amy:

I think that the fact that we've been waiting so long for
OoP has had an unfortunate effect on the nature of our
discourse.  It makes me sad when people trash the characters.  
When you cite Ron and Harry's inconsiderate behavior without
offering up examples of their kind and generous actions,
you flatten out the characters.  Furthermore, it is not 
a persuasive argument.  If you want to convince me that 
Ron and Harry are inconsiderate, then you need to do 
better than that.  It makes me sad when people treat
fully realized and three dimensional characters as
shallow renditions of good or evil.


-----------------------

Do you see the problem here?  

For one thing, I don't think that the argument you were 
addressing was the argument that either poster was trying 
to make.  In fact, one of the posters in the original 
exchange went out of her way to *specify* that her intent 
was *not* to persuade others to share her emotional response 
to Ron and Harry.  Indeed, the fact that different individuals 
differ in their emotional responses was part and parcel of her 
argument: "The things that bother me about Ron and Harry's
behavior don't even bother other *readers,* so why on
earth should I assume that they bother Hermione?"

Now, admittedly, Eileen's rhetorical methods are sometimes
a little bit sly, so perhaps people simply didn't take her
meaning.  Ebony's post, on the other hand, I thought was 
very straightforward.  Yet I felt that people's responses
flattened out both of their arguments by responding to
them as if they were just "Ron Is Ever So Evil" posts, or
somesuch.

It is frustrating to me.  There were nuances and subtleties 
to that exchange that went well beyond the question of whether 
or not Ron (or Harry) are inconsiderate twerps.  To address 
these posts as if they were simple hortatory pieces on the 
nature of Ron and Harry's character therefore struck me as 
not only somewhat disingenuous, but also as a rather serious 
mischaracterization.  An over-simplification.  A "flattening," 
if you will. 

About Ebony's original argument:

> I don't think it's a sneaky rhetorical ploy; I think it's 
> unconvincing. As I read arguments about why Ron and Hermione 
> wouldn't be a good couple, I'm thinking about each of their good 
> qualities and the interactions between them that suggest possible 
> good couplehood. 

Well, in that case, then surely the reason you find Ebony's
argument unconvincing has nothing to do with "trashing"
characters, does it?  What you're saying, if I've got you
right here, is that you aren't the sort of person in 
whose mind being hurt by someone's statements might 
automatically disqualify that person for consideration as 
a romantic partner.  You would be willing to overlook having 
been hurt, if there were many positive experiences outweighing 
those incidents in which you'd been hurt.  And you believe that 
Hermione is far more like you than she is like Ebony.

Or is it perhaps that you just don't accept the premise 
that Hermione was really all that badly hurt by Ron's 
statements to begin with?  

You see, I'm not even *sure* what your actual objection 
to Ebony's argument is.  But whichever of the possibilities 
it is, why not say *that,* rather than complaining about the
fact that Ebony had such a strong negative reader response 
to Ron's pre-Yule Ball comments?  Since we all seem to agree
that ones emotional responses to the text and its characters
are highly subjective and ultimately personal, then why not 
address the canon argument that derives *from* that reader 
response, rather than taking issue with the reader response 
itself?

> No one is going to convince me that Snape is kind without dealing 
> with the evidence to the contrary; no one is going to convince me 
> that Harry is on balance inconsiderate without doing the same.

That's perfectly reasonable.  However, there are plenty of things 
people sometimes want to discuss *other* than the rather basic 
questions of "Is Character X brave/unkind/inconsiderate/etc."

Not every discussion of these books comes down to an argument
over character.  I think that it really cripples our ability
to discuss the canon when someone's negative reader response
to a character can not even be cited on route to making a 
wider point without the conversation immediately becoming
diverted.  It's frustrating, that, because it reduces every
single conversation into "How DARE you say such a thing about 
Character X?"

We see this all the time on the list, IMO.  Someone suggests
that Lupin exhibits classic non-compliance behavior in regard
to his Wolfsbane Potion, and the response is "How DARE you say 
that Lupin is bad?"  Someone suggests that if Moody is the
'Good Auror,' then just imagine what those Bad Aurors must
have been like, and the response is "How DARE you insult
Moody?"  Someone says that she doesn't care for the Twins 
because they behave like bullies, and it's "How DARE you 
say that the Twins are pure unadulterated evil?"  

Someone makes a rather sophisticated argument about the
dangers of the affective fallacy in shipping arguments,
and the response is: "Why must everyone always be trashing 
the characters?"

I just find this so disheartening.  It constrains the 
debate.  It makes it virtually impossible to make any 
argument that involves an even *tangential* reference 
to a popular character's bad qualities.  It enforces 
a (to my mind very strange) expectation that fictional 
characters themselves are entitled to some sort of *due 
process,* as if literary discussion itself were a court 
of law in which the characters are standing trial for 
their crimes.  

I wrote:

> What I guess I'm finding upsetting here is the vague feeling 
> that I get from this thread...that so long as a reader's response 
> is sufficiently idiosyncratic. . . . it is therefore held to 
> be in some way invalid, or even *unfair*

Amy asked:

> What did I write that makes you think I was saying so?

I was perhaps unfairly conflating your comments with Petra's
comments about rhetorical ploys.  If you did not mean to
make that argument, then I apologize.

I believe that where I saw it in your post was as the subtext
to the claim that certain types of discussions or arguments 
are in some way a by-product of a lack of new canon:

> We're like the Donner Party at this point. After two and a half 
> years without fresh meat, we're reduced to cannibalism--not eating 
> each other but munching on the characters we've got stashed in the 
> hold.

There really is a very insulting implication lurking around the 
edges, IMO: namely, that you believe that others' arguments are 
based in an artificial, unnatural, or in some other way over-
ratiocinated reading of the text.  The subtext that I always 
read into statements of this sort (which I do realize may not 
have been your intent) is: "The reading you are proposing is 
not instinctive or natural.  It only came about due to the
long wait between volumes, rather than deriving naturally from 
your engagement with the text.  It is therefore in some sense 
dishonest."

It did not surprise me that both Ebony and Eileen responded 
rather defensively to that statement.  I would have done so 
as well.  In fact, I *did* responded defensively to it, even 
though it was not even one of my own arguments being so attacked.  

Well.  Not *this* time, at any rate.



-- Elkins