Dissin' the Gryffs - Slytherin and the Reader

[Eileen]

No: HPFGUIDX 51271

The question is now coming up.  Aren't we supposed to
cheer on the Gryffindor team, agonize over Harry's
defeats, celebrate with him when he wins? And what is
it with those people who cheer the Slytherin team on? 

Like me. 

Why do I cheer the Slyths on? It's not from any sense
of identification. I think I'm a Gryffindor, when push
comes to shove, though I guess a good case could be
made for putting me in Slytherin. The current canon
Slytherins do not impress me in the least. I can't
stand Draco. 

But the Slytherins are the underdogs. And hopelessly
so.  JKR seems to want to keep emphasizing that the
Gryffindors are underdogs, the Slytherins winning the
seven years before, and the Gryffindors not winning
the Quidditch Cup till PoA, but the truth is that all
we see is Harry winning, except for the one time where
he didn't win because of the dementors, which wasn't
the miraculous child's fault. 

If Harry does not naturally and fairly lose a game in
OotP, I shall be even more fed up than I am at this
point. It's just not good writing, imho. You can't
keep up a sense of excitement, of rivalry, with this
lame competition, this knowledge that Harry will
always cruise to victory over the Slytherin seeker.
While there are plenty of laughs still, the Quidditch
suplot is  becoming for me rapidly more and more
boring. I was relieved to see it gone in GoF if that
meant no more spectacular Gryffindor victories. 

It's this resentment of the author's choices that have
got me rooting for the Slytherins to the point where I
unthinkingly found myself cheering aloud in the
theatre during PS/SS to the shock of my fellow
movie-goers when Slytherin scored. 

Or at least I think so. There is also that little
matter of a sneaking liking for House Slytherin. 

In many people, it's a little more than sneaking. And
this seems to be one of the issues that upsets people
most when it comes to debates about "proper"
intrepretations of canon. 

There are more than a few reasons that some readers
develop that sneaking-or-not-so-sneaking liking for
Slytherin. 

1. Slytherins Are Simply Sexier

They aren't, of course, but there's a whole section of
the fandom that does seem to believe this to be the
case. A fondness for silver blond hair and pale faces
may be at the root of many a self-declared Slytherin
fan's alleigances. 

This is not a category I'm poking fun at. Let me point
out that the character whom I found rather sexy in GoF
is, I think, obviously marked as a Slytherin. And that
probably does influence my feelings towards that
House. :-) 

And I'm not sure that JKR is entirely innocent here.
I'm sorry but you just do not write characters as
having silvery blond hair if you want to stop the
audience from crushing on them. Draco's hair is by far
the most convincing component of any argument for his
eventual redemption, imho. 

Even if JKR is completely innocent of these
intentions, though, the fact is that people find
sexiness in the strangest places. And, I think that
reaction is quite as valid as if she had intended it
in the first place.  But hark, what is it Elkins is
saying?

>After all, it often turns out that other people 
>are seeing things in the books that I find 
>rewarding as well, once I'm willing to give them 
>a try.  
>
>Or not.  Sometimes when you try a new food, after 
>all, it really *does* taste every bit as disgusting 
>as you thought it would.  That happens too --
>especially to me.  I'm a pretty picky eater.  ;-)

Is that C.R.A.B.C.U.S.T.A.R.D. you're talking about,
Elkins?

Hey, I'll be the first to concede that I seriously
doubt JKR sat down and said, "And now I'm going to
write a character named Bartemius Crouch Sr. who will
be very sexy." But, darnit, I did find him sexy, and I
can show you why in the text, and Elkins has gone and
showed more reasons for that reaction from the text,
reasons that left my face a vivid scarlet. 

However, I think the Sexy Slytherin question is often
a red herring in any debate about Slytherin sympathy.
It's often thrown around as an insult. 

"You only sympathize with the Slytherins because
you're an immature and shallow person who wants to
have Draco/Snape's babies." 

There's no shame in finding one of those Slytherins
sexy, if I do say so myself, but I don't think that
really explains the widespread Slytherin sympathy. 

2. Rooting for the Underdog

The Slytherins are really the underdogs in canon.
Sure, Voldemort is out there taking over the world,
and Crouch, who was pretty definitely a Slytherin,
was... errr... protecting Wizarding Britain from the
greatest evil of modern times, but when we talk
Slytherin in terms of rooting for the underdog, we're
really talking school here. 

And the Slytherin students never, ever, get to win.
Neither does the Slytherin Head of House. Even their
temporary victories are few. As noted above, Slytherin
has not won one Quidditch game on-screen. They're
derided by the other Houses. They get "dissed" by
Dumbledore at the end of PS/SS. Lucius gets the team
Nimbus 2001s and Harry outstrips Draco on a Firebolt.
Malcom Baddock is hissed when he's sorted into
Slytherin. Snape loses his Order of Merlin. It's the
Slytherins who suffer most when Harry and Ron throw a
firework into one of the cauldrons. Hey, even in PoA,
it's a Slytherin who has to be alone and friendless at
the Christmas dinner. 

Life just isn't good for the Slytherins. 

And whether or not they deserve it, in a lot of people
rooting for the underdog kicks in. 

I loathe Draco. Something about that boy gets under my
skin very badly. It's so irrational that I don't trust
myself to post in Draco threads lest I come off as a
raving lunatic. I have a big affective fallacy to
contend with there. I see a lot in Draco of the kids
who bullied me as a kid. Beyond that, he is ever so
lame. I'm never sure whether he infuriates me or makes
me want to yawn. 

But, sometimes, it just isn't fair that he gets so
consistently knocked on by the author. Come on Draco,
show some spirit! Let's get the author back!
Technically, that's impossible, but I'll root for you
anyway. For a little while, until my affective fallacy
kicks in again. 

This championing of the underdog is stronger in some
people than others. A lot of people don't understand
it in relation to Draco, feeling instead with the
morality of the situation. Harry is a better person
than Draco, so who cares if the author's against
Draco? That's a sensible reaction to the text, and one
that if you hold, you may find it very difficult to
understand the opposite reaction. 

I think this is related to but is not exactly the same
thing as sympathy for the devil.

3. Sympathy for the Devil

"In the end," says Elkins in Part Eight of the Crouch
novenna, "Sympathy for the Devil", "I feel sorry for
everyone."

Scott Northup wrote:
>PS A lot of the posts defending Snape (and Draco) 
>over the past few days have piqued my curiosity.
> Snape-defenders: do you stick up for Wormtongue
>and other slimy folks in literature in movies?  Do 
>you say to your friends "Grima was a good guy! He 
>just hung around with the wrong crowd!"

Oh most definitely? Did you not know, Scott, that some
of us listies practice a private devotion to St. Grima
Wormtongue, patron of sycophants? The shrine is in the
Garden of Good and Evil. Candles can be purchased at
the front desk of the Canon Museum. 

The reason I don't think that Sympathy for the Devil
is exactly the same thing as rooting for the underdog
is that you can often be rooting for the underdog
without feeling much for the character. Often, the
primary feeling in rooting for the underdog is rage
against the author, as in my example of Draco.
Usually, when JKR deals Draco a bad hand, I'm not
feeling sorry for Draco, I'm mad at JKR. Similarly, I
don't have any particular emotional attachment to the
Slytherin team. I just feel that every dog should have
his day. 

Sympathy for the Devil is part of the whole rooting
for the underdog thing, but one really is sympathizing
here. Some people, unlike me, feel this a lot with
Draco. There's a few places where I do feel it with
Draco, one of them in his description after being
bounced about by Moody. As cruelly amusing as I found
Crouch Jr. there, Draco's, "lying in a heap on the
floor with his sleek blond hair all over his now
brilliantly pink face. He got to his feet wincing" and
"pale eyes.. still watering with pain and humiliation"
tugged at my heartstrings. 

Similarly, the end of PoA is just heartbreaking for
many people, empathizing with what Snape is going
through. 

Does JKR mean us to sympathize here? Maybe... Her
description of Malfoy, which had my
hardened-to-the-charms-of-silver-blond-hair heart
bleeding does make me wonder... And, it's my humble
opinion that she wants us to feel sorry for Snape
there, though I don't know if she envisioned the
extent that we often feel sorry on the list. 

I'm just guessing that she did not mean us to
sympathize with Voldemort for being friendless, alone,
and a vapour. But Elkins found that rather piteous. 

Which I found rather amusing. But, then I have a
rather soft spot for Aragog complaining about being
locked up in the cupboard, and being afraid of the
basilisk, and Hagrid refusing to let him go, so who am
I to talk? 

Anyway, sounding like a broken record here, it doesn't
matter what JKR intends. If the text evokes sympathy,
the text invites sympathy, and here's a major reason
for Slytherin support.

4. Bad Move, JKR!

I've mentioned this a bit above, but I'll make it very
explicit here. Sometimes, what makes people feel for
the Slytherins is the feeling that JKR is making bad
artistic decisions in portraying the Slytherins. 

Steve/BBoy wrote: 
>we must view this not from Slytherin's perspective 
>or Gryffindor's, but from the perspective of a
reader. >We do not ask which method is politically
correct, 
>but which method created the better read, the 
>better story.
>
>Clearly the sudden thrilling victory at the 
>last minute, especially combined with putting one 
>over on Slytherin, made for a more thriling
>story, and had the story end on a very happy 
>satisfying note for H/R/H and the whole 
>Gryffindor house. 

But this  is a matter of opinion. I found the ending
of PS/SS very, very weak. In fact, there were a number
of things about that book that nearly made me not
continue with the series. And the dissin' the Slyths
episode is up there. It didn't thrill me. It icked me.
I felt that Rowling was trying to squeeze out the
emotion with a cheap trick, a trick which revealed her
as a unrepentant dualist of the worst variety. 

[ed. I wrote this before I saw Elkins' post, which
made me grin. I wonder how many other people really
were not taken with PS/SS, and wonder further about
all the people I know who stopped with PS/SS. When
talking with people whom I know will react negatively
to PS/SS, I heretically recommend that they start with
PoA.]

Pippin wrote:
>Children know a moral illustration when they see 
>one, and are quite happy to see the good triumph 
>and the bad punished.

I have no doubt that JKR did mean that scene as good
vs. bad. Slytherin vs. Gryffindor. 

But I don't care for that sort of dualism. It's
cheating. It's refusing to face up to the complexities
of real life. Oh, that dissin' the Slyths scene raises
my hackles, even beyond the feelings of Rooting for
the Underdog and Sympathy for the Devil. 

"You are making a bloody mistake!" I wanted to yell at
JKR. "You have a good set-up and you're ruining it!"

I continued with the series because of Severus Snape,
who mysteriously wasn't the badguy, wasn't that nice
either, and was a Slytherin. 

Elkins wrote:
>I think that the books I've been reading are pretty
>darned good, and so far, they've grown more to my
>literary tastes with each volume.  I have hopes 
>that this trend will continue.

Oh, me too. The annoying dualism and shallowness of
the first book seems to be leaving us, whether it was
only a trap to catch the unwary, or it's a matter of
JKR's artistic vision growing. I suspect it's both.
She purposely lulled us into assuming Snape was bad,
but, on the other hand, the weak portrayal of Quirrell
shows that she has come a long way since the
beginning.

But while in many ways, things have grown more to our
tastes, Slytherin is still a problem. One of those
fault-lines we like to talk about. 

Scott wrote:
>I truly believe that if JKR had wanted us to know 
>that there were a large majority of Slytherins who 
>weren't jerks, she would have at LEAST introduced us 
>to one Slytherin who was not a jerk.

A hit, a palpable hit!

But you know what my response would be? JKR is a fool.


Well, not really ;-), but if she doesn't make this
Slytherin-Gryffindor thing a lot greyer, I will count
it as an artistic failure. That doesn't mean the books
are bad. I believe Huckleberry Finn is one of the
greatest American novels, and I am really not keen on
its ending. (Save us from the inanities of Tom Sawyer
and the Phelphes)

However, the books are changing, becoming more
complex. We had an evil Gryffindor in PoA. We had the
"good guys" doing all sorts of terrible things in GoF.
We have Snape becoming more and more complex. Perhaps,
we'll be seeing a non-jerk Slytherin soon. I hope so. 

So, Slytherin supporters are often, as accused, not
actually basing their support on how Slytherin is
portrayed in canon. They support what they hope
Slytherin will turn out to be. They would be very
disapointed if JKR was to leave Slytherin where it is
now.

5. The Wearing of the Silver and Green

The truth is that Slytherin is cool. Just that word.
Slytherin. Slytherin. Slytherin. 

I love that word. It does something for me that
Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor don't. 

That's subjective. People feel the magic of words in
very different ways. The Sugar Quill has an
interesting thread on favourite words which utterly
shocked me. Many of the posters listed as favourite
words some of my least favourite words in the English
language. 

But I know that I'm not completely idiosyncratic here.
I know people who have absolutely no sympathy for
Slytherin, except that they love that name. 

And then there's the green and silver. Green and
silver are very evocative colours. They're beautiful,
in the first place, and aesthetically, I'd pick the
Slytherin colours over the other three any day. But
think of the associations of green. There's no other
colour that is so rich in symbolism. Green is the
colour of life (though it has its connections to
death), fairyland, growth, envy etc. etc. 

Well, except for red, that is. Red has quite a few
associations as well. As the colour of blood, it
stands for both life and death. And, it's a crucial
fairyland colour as well. Anger etc. 

Red and Green are the big colours, represented in the
text by Gryffindor and Slytherin, but found over and
over again everywhere. Harry's green eyes, Voldemort's
red ones. I don't think it's all surprising that a
House whose colours are green and silver stirs the
blood of many of us. 

And snakes have their ambiguities as well. The snake
has had a bad time of it in Judeo-Christian tradition,
to say the least, but there is also much fascination
with the snake (and its relatives the sea-serpent and
the dragon (not to mention the basilisk) often all
brought together under the category "wyrm") as can be
seen from Classical, Northern, and Celtic legend and
mythology. 

The ambiguity is there in canon as well. Riddle's a
parselmouth, but so is Harry, and while Nagini is
evil, there's that boa constrictor friend of Harry's
at the zoo. 

The symbolism of Slytherin is very ambiguous and also
alluring, even if the canon Slytherins aren't. 

6. The Affective Fallacy

"I refuse to believe that the Slytherins are all
jerks," said my brother. "Because I damn well know
that if I were in the wizarding world, I'd be sorted
into Slytherin."

He's right too. He's amazingly ambitious. He's
cunning, always bending the rules to reach his goals.
He understands the loyalty thing, the keeping of
strong alliances. And, he can charm most people to get
what he wants. 

He's also a pretty nice seventeen year old. 

The most heated discussions on the list often involve
whether the reader would fit into the wizarding world.
Just take a glance at the Religion threads (How would
I, as an Orthodox Jew, Evangelical, or Atheist fit
into Hogwarts?) and the Class threads (How would I as
a member of the working class, or an upper middle
classer fit into Hogwarts?).

The question here is "How would I as someone who is
both cunning and ambitious fit into Hogwarts?"

If you see yourself as a Slytherin, you're going to
sympathize with the Slytherins, even if JKR doesn't
seem entirely crazy about them. 

7. "Of coise, you know, this means woir."

In discussing HP, P.G. Wodehouse often comes up.
Anyone who knows the adventures of Mike and Psmith
will see an immediately resemblance to HP. Except, of
course, that Psmith was a definite Slytherin...

You see, JKR may not care much for the Slytherins, but
our culture cares a lot for the charming, the cunning,
and the ambitious. Over at Fiction Alley, some
ambitious Slytherin types were compiling a list of
Slytherins in history and literature some time last
year. 

Did you know that they counted Thomas More as a
Slytherin? As in St. Thomas More? As in "I die the
King's good servant, but God's first" Thomas More? 

He was certainly extremely ambitious, ending up as a
Chancellor of England. He was cunning. He was charming
and witty. And yes, he had principles that he would
not break, but so does Snape. 

To categorize Thomas More as anything but a Slytherin
would be to miscategorize him, imho. "Utopia" is quite
as Slytherin a book as "The Prince."

And then, there's Bugs Bunny. If you want to see a
real Slytherin at work, rent a few of the great Warner
Brothers cartoons. 

Not to mention that we're supposed to root for
Slytherin Prince Hal in Henry IV: Part I, not
Gryffindor Percy Hostpur. 

Fairy tales and legends are full of tricksters, who
climb to power with very below board methods. Jack and
the Beanstalk, to name one. This side of the pond, we
have Brer Rabbit. 

Point is, Slytherins outside HP are often our heroes.

8. Canonical Respect for Slytherin

(translating from my Spanish edition of CoS: I love
having my Spanish editions. Our English HP books are
always being read, but I'm the only one who can read
Spanish, so I always have access to HP.)

"Listen to me, Harry. It happens that you have many of
the qualities which Slytherin prized in his carefully
handpicked students: his own very rare gift,
parseltongue..., inventiveness..., determination..., a
certain disdain for the rules."

I doubt I am the only person to find Dumbledore's
description curiously positive and respectful, even if
the text goes on to congratulate Harry for choosing
Gryffindor.

If Harry the hero has many of the Slytherin qualities,
is Slytherin all that bad a thing?

Perhaps JKR isn't completely against the Slytherins
after all. And that brings us back to Point Four.

9. Dissin' the Gryffs 

I don't find it very surprising that many
self-declared pro-Slytherin fans vehemently dislike
many of the Gryffindor characters. In fact, this is
another one of the insults that is thrown around quite
often in fandom flame wars.

"You only dislike Ron because you like Draco and
Slytherin, and so you have to tear Ron down to make
you feel better."

But I wonder how often it's the other way around.
People dislike Gryffindor characters, and then start
rooting for the Slytherins. I know many people who
started being pro-Slytherin out of dislike for Sirius
Black. 

And, if you have unresolved issues with Oliver Wood,
as I do, you just might start cheering on Marcus
Flint, as I ended up doing. And that's helped on by
the fact that we don't know anything about Flint. 

10. The Great Unknown

We know so little about Slytherin. Our imaginations
are free to conceive the house as we wish. And that's
very appealing. 

In conclusion, there are quite a few reasons why so
many of us aren't completely set against the Slyths.
Some of them are extra-canonical. Some of them are
rooted in canon. Some have to do with the dreaded "M"
word. But one thing's for sure, the treatment of
Slytherin in canon is evidently extremely problematic,
not to mention intriguing, for many readers. 

Eileen, who is considering writing an overview of the
portrayal of Slytherin in fanfiction, and how it
relates to reader uneasiness with the canon
portrayals, but thinks that might be a little too
ambitious


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