Real characters & persuasive argument

[Amy Z <lupinesque@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50450

(Note:  I see that there's a post farther on in this thread by 
Pippin, and another by Elkins.  I haven't read either one of them 
yet.)

Elkins wrote:
 
> 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.

What do you mean by "diverted"?

This is a free-flowing conversation.  Any of us can take a line that 
intrigues us from a post and go with it, even though it is just a 
side comment by the original poster.  We have to be careful not to 
misrepresent the poster's intent, of course, but I plead innocent to 
that charge (more on that in a bit).

I take the conversation in a direction that interests me.  If others 
don't find that direction interesting, the thread will die.  If the 
people who preceded me in the thread don't like where I'm taking it, 
what's the problem?  They don't have to read it.

Here's an example from just today where I was on the other side of 
this phenomenon.  Penny and I were talking about ambiguity in 
shipping and David proposed another, postmodern direction that the 
discussion might take.  He was quite explicit, in fact, about it 
being a different point than either of us was trying to make.  Good, 
and Godspeed!  Either or both of us can follow David's new spin on 
the thread if we're so inclined, stay with the interpretations we 
were hashing out, or quit the topic entirely--but I hope if we do one 
of the latter two, we won't complain that David's "diverting" the 
thread.  

I tried to make it clear that I was not taking issue with Ebony's 
post, and only to some extent doing so with Eileen's, but that I was 
following my train of thought that started with those posts.  I think 
it's perfectly fair for me to say "this reminds me of something 
that's been bothering me . . . " without imputing everything that's 
been bothering me to the post that triggered the thought.  Ebony 
objected (50199) and I apologized for being unclear (50254) and 
restated this point more explicitly.

> 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.

How did I mischaracterize the posters' arguments?  I don't believe I 
ever said that Eileen did *nothing* but flatten the nuances of Ron 
and Harry.  But I did think she flattened them, and that was the bit 
I was interested in.  If it isn't the bit Eileen is interested in, or 
you are interested in, or anyone else is interested in, please skip 
my post.  I won't be offended.

Elkins summarized my post thus:

> 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?

Yes, if you portray it like that.  But you have to skip the opening 
phrase of my post to portray it that way.  I did not start out 
with "I think that the fact . . ."  I wrote:

> Ebony's post, and more especially Eileen's follow-up trashing Ron 
> *and* Harry, made me think about how we tend to chew up characters 
> if they are less than perfect. 

Again, I accept that "made me think" wasn't a clear enough indication 
that I knew I was taking a 90-degree turn in the conversation.  But 
I'll say it again.  I was not trying to respond to all the subtleties 
and complexities of Ebony and Eileen's arguments.  I knew that I was 
picking up on the end of a thread whose history I didn't know.  It 
reminded me of something that had been on my mind before, and so I 
wrote about it.  Then you quoted Ebony and asked a more abstract 
question about what constitutes good argument (50328), so I answered 
that (another turn in the conversation).  I didn't intend by doing so 
to go back to the overall merits of Ebony's argument; I was 
responding only to the words in your post.

Maybe I just shouldn't post if I can't read every post . . . :-(

> 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.

Who are "people"?  I'm just one person.  Are you taking issue with 
what I wrote about Ebony's argument, or what others wrote?  Because 
it's usually more than I can manage to sort out my own argument, 
without being called upon to defend anyone else's.

> 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?  

I didn't.  The reason you aren't sure what my objection to Ebony's 
argument is is that I didn't make one.  Nothing I said was about the 
question of whether Hermione and Ron would be suited or how we might 
know.  I responded to your use of Ebony as an example by then talking 
about what would make a coherent, relevant, possibly persuasive 
argument about Ron and Hermione's potential as a couple--but I should 
have chosen another example entirely, because I wasn't trying to 
respond to the shipping argument as such.

Ebony wrote to me directly,

>Why would I point out all of Ron's very good characteristics in an 
>essay in which I am speaking about why I do not like the idea of him 
>with Hermione, when such evidence is tangential to the topic? 

Now, I have an answer to that, which has nothing to do with whether I 
think Hermione likes Ron or not.  I didn't give it in response to 
that post of Ebony's, but to a later post by you where you quoted 
it.  And I basically replied that I don't think counterevidence *is* 
tangential, but is highly relevant and an excellent way to make a 
coherent and convincing argument. 

> 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?"

You are right.  I find it frustrating in both cases:  when the poster 
was making a sophisticated point and the responder could only pick up 
that there was something negative about My Favorite Character, and 
when the poster is making a sophisticated point but undermines it 
him/herself by making a reductive, and thus diverting, comment.  
Jokes are okay, of course.

> 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.  

Me too.  That is indeed flattening behavior, and very discouraging.  
If I or anyone else does that, I'd suggest ignoring us is the best 
way to go.

> 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.

Thank you.  I didn't, and the apology is accepted.  (No criticism 
meant of Petra's comments, which I don't recall enough to criticize 
or affirm.)

> 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."

I don't think that this is implied.  I don't know *why* this is 
happening at this point, and I may be wrong that it has increased as 
the wait has gotten longer, but my impression is that the polarized 
("flattened") views of the characters have gotten more common over my 
two years here.  I would not presume to say that this is because 
people are reaching for over-ratiocinated readings.  In fact, I think 
that what others might call over-ratiocinated readings are the saving 
of a long-running discussion that has no new material to work on, and 
I love to read them.  They tend to be subtle, see characters as 
nuanced and complex, and make fascinating points that turn old 
understandings inside-out for me.  

Why then is cannibalism on the rise, if indeed it is?  My guess is 
that we're frustrated--some of us with the books, which are no longer 
as rewarding as they were on the first 6 readings, others of us with 
people in the fandom whose quirks have started to grate--but I'm 
really just guessing.

Amy Z