[HPforGrownups] Re: Scapegoating Slytherin (was:Punishing Draco )

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 143986

La Gatta:
I think you have a good idea here, but it's gotten off the track. I
don't think the Wizarding world demonizes the Death Eaters out of
fear because they're outsiders. It demonizes the Death Eaters out of
fear because the Death Eaters have an unfortunate habit of torturing
and murdering and (at their least objectionable) manipulating
(Lucius Malfoy's in with the MoM) to get what they want. They aren't
just "different" people being persecuted because they aren't "just
like us". They really are nasty, deadly, unprincipled power-grabbers
who will do anything to seize control of the world. I am old enough
to remember that in the decades following WWII (the Muggle one), it
could be the ruin of a political figure to have it revealed that a
parent or other near relative was high up in the NAZI regime. Does
this mean that the NAZIs were being demonized by a dominant society
because they were "different"? Or were they being demonized because
they were demons who finally got what they had coming to them?

Magpie:

I think her point is that they are both these things, as anti-Semitic 
prejudice often makes Jews.  They are controlling everything, but are also 
outsiders.  The Slytherins are both marginalized in that they are disliked 
by 3/4 of the school, but they are also somehow well-connected with unfair 
advantages.  They aren't just one thing.

To me the crux is that yeah, they do conform to a lot of those 
stereotypes--only it's real.  The Jews' in the Prioress' Tale (I think it 
is) really do slit the little Christian Boy's throat, too, so within her 
fictional universe they really are evil.  But Jews are real people and there 
are no Slytherins in real life, so it's not like you can say the books are 
putting across an unfair presentation that promotes bigotry towards 
Slytherins.

To relate it to Sydney's point, I think it's because they are fulfilling the 
role of Shadow.

Sydney:

It makes sense now for the Cups to be a negative sign in the books, because 
the whole point is that the emotional world of Hogwarts is out of balance. 
The love aspect of the Cups is blocked. The image of
a blocked pipe keeps coming to me-- I really think she's going to go back in 
the next book all the way to the Founders, to clear up what caused the 
conflict in the first place. I don't think it's a coincidence that the 
Slytherin exile is so closely connected to the bathrooms overflowing in CoS. 
And I don't see how the books can end without some sort of bringing to light 
of this repressed past of the Founders and their initial split.  I think 
it's significant that there's a contradiction between the 'official' history 
of the split,
as laid out by Binns in CoS, and the new version the Sorting Hat gives in 
it's song in OoP.  Part of the point of the integration of the Shadow side 
is the acknowledgement of how close the behaviour
of 'those' people is to 'us', a mirror of how our consciously constructed 
thoughts are rationalized versions of the selfish drives of the Shadow side, 
which is why it's so important to bring them to
light.

Magpie:

That is the way it seems to be working so far for me.  Sometimes it's even 
explicit in the text that this is what is going on, where Harry will even be 
aware of the fact that he uses Slytherin as a negative touchstone, something 
to define himself *against* or he'll come close to making a connection 
between himself and something he doesn't like and then avoid it by pushing 
it onto a Slytherin. HBP obviously makes this even more clear--he feels a 
real connection to the Prince when he doesn't know he's Slytherin.

I did a post on the last four books being focused on the four houses once, 
but the basic thing was: PoA=the Gryffindor book, where we learn about MWPP, 
the villain is Peter the coward and Harry learns to deal with Dementors, 
creatures that kill via fear.

GoF=the Hufflepuff book, where Cedric is the true Champion and Harry puts 
working together and Hogwarts above personal glory.

OotP is the Ravenclaw book where Hermione reigns supreme, everyone is 
scheming and figuring stuff out, Harry teaches a class because his real one 
is denied him, Ron gets attacked by a brain, Snape and Voldemort get into 
Harry's mind and everyone studies for tests.  (Cho's emotions make her a 
"hosepipe" and completely confuse Harry, while Hermione tries to reduce them 
to an intellectual thing.)

HBP is the Slytherin book with water everwhere--bathrooms, drinks, Potions, 
shipping, love Potions, tears, blood and liquid luck.  Harry is constantly 
having to "submerge" himself in Slytherin, being just a passive observer 
(the train car, the Pensieves, the Tower, the textbook).  This was the first 
book I could remember when Harry actually spoke of Slytherins as being like 
himself in some way, in order to figure them out, and he ultimately sees 
some emotions there that he would not have before.  He's even separated from 
his own friends by his closer ties with that house. (Dumbledore allows him 
to tell Ron and Hermione about Riddle in the Pensieve, but Harry's obsession 
with the Prince and Malfoy cause conflict.)

They are, as you say, the emotional house, and just as "love" is the thing 
that Harry has that V doesn't, it seems like their own love is their hope as 
well.  They don't lack the ability the way Voldemort does, but by following 
him it tends to get twisted to bad ends, even to hate.  (Lollipops 
definitely seems like a possibility post-HBP.)

-m