There's something about Harry

[dan]

No: HPFGUIDX 105203

I'd like to draw attention yet again to an article on The Boston 
Common website by Michael Bronski, "There's Something About Harry." 
If you haven't read this article, I strongly encourage you to read it.

In it, Bronski states that "the Harry Potter books celebrate a revolt 
against accepted, conventional life, against the world of the 
Muggles, who slavishly follow societal rules without ever thinking 
about whether they are right or wrong, if they make sense or not.." 
She uses the term queer, in its larger sense, to describe the series -
 or more particularly, those in the series with whom the reader will 
most readily identify, meaning Harry and his friends at Hogwarts - 
not Harry's dim-witted relatives. By setting up muggle life, as Harry 
experiences it, as the Dursleys, it is clear what Rowling 
considers "dull, unexciting, unimaginative, and deadening."

Bronski also points out that, though the gist of Order of the 
Phoenix, and really, the series, since the introduction of Riddle and 
the Death Eaters, the central theme, is "a clear attack on racial 
purity," that theme is rarely discussed - even though it is really at 
the very heart of the story. Does it slip below the radar of adults? 
Bronski wonders. Are parents even aware of how subversive the books 
are? Or that the subversion exists on this fundamental level?

Here I quote Ms. Bronski: 'If Harry Potter presents children "and the 
rest of us" with a tantalizing vision of Misrule and the world turned 
upside down, let's try to understand why we don't like parts
of the 
world in which we live now. If we don't want to be Muggles "at
least 
not all the time" maybe being queer, in the broadest sense, might be 
a lot more fun. This means, on a very basic level, reconceiving the 
very structures of what we call society, civilization, and freedom.'


The significance of this particular aspect of interpretating 
Rowling's books cannot be downplayed. In the books themselves, even 
in Philosopher's Stone, Rowling makes it pretty clear that she would 
consider sitting in front of the books and daydreaming away before 
our "deepest desires" something that will bring no truth, no 
enlightenment. That is, Dumbledore's Erised speech is a fairly 
precise meta-theme that attacks the simplistic, the sentimental, the 
wistful. She is asking us, in a way, to go along with Harry - he has 
to eschew such daydreams, and we must as well, if we are to make the 
journey with him. It is in this sense I take her oft-recited 
disavowel of any belief in magic. Magic is what we do in our heads to 
see a way clear, to envision a way toward our goals, to deal with 
this or that contingency. It is not something we do with wands or 
spells.

Rowling, I have stated a number of times, seems to be amoral. The 
questions posed in the books deal entirely with ethics, with the 
satirical and with something far below, and above, any discussion 
about this or that question phrased in moralistic language. During 
the Second Task, when Harry saves not only his own but also 
Fleur's "thing that would be missed," he acts without falling prey to 
rationalization. He acts. (In the past I have identified this 
unconscious acting as a kind of secular Calvinism.) What is clear, 
though, is that Rowling did not provide any moralistic this or 
thatting on the subject. None. She instead refers to Harry's 
embarassment over discovering the lack of real danger in the 
situation. (Of course, I think there was real danger in the 
situation - the danger of falling prey to rationalization. Harry, of 
course, passed the test, and we love him for it.) Later on, this will 
become what is jokingly referred to as his penchant for "saving 
people."

How are we to take this joke? Is it the same thing that led to 
the "Rescue Mission" at the Ministry of Magic? Or was that situation 
contaminated by Harry's rather idealistically framed personal 
connection with Sirius? A connection that again is thematically 
rounded, in the book, with a two-way mirror phone? That is, was 
Erised at work? Was Harry's idealistically framed relationship with 
Sirius the problem, and not his "penchant for saving people?" And was 
this idealistically framed relationship a result of Sirius 
manipulations as well, at Grimauld, for instance, when he seemed to 
want to appear the best advocate for Harry, and where appearing so 
was rather important to Sirius? I think so. In fact, that entire 
relationship was based on the desire to have a deep connection - not 
on any real connection. Harry is oversensitive when Sirius modifies 
his favourable comparison of Harry with James. Sirius, in spite of 
his assurances that Harry's best interests are at heart, is too often 
motivated almost purely by revenge.

So, in a sense, it is that unconscious acting, that humanist ethic 
that is at the very centre, physically (middle of middle book) and 
thematically in Rowling's Harry Potter series. And, if my reading of 
Rowling is correct, all the really important questions will shrug off 
petty moralism like so much dust.

The link to the Boston Common article by Michael Bronski is here:
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/docume
nts/02977459.htm

Dan