Cultural standards, nasty teachers, abused children/ JKR quote new for me

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 144855

Sydney:

> > But hasn't this already happened?  Snape's 'commupance' for his
> > treatment of Neville I thought was the Boggart scene in PoA, where 
> the
> > whole school was sniggering at him (and there was the little
> > reinforcement of the vulture hat D-dore gave him at Christmas).

Lupinlore:

> No, Sydney, it hasn't.  While amusing, the punishment did put 
> a "seal" on the crime in the way that Lockheart's punishment did.

Sydney:

I'm afraid I just can't go with the total destruction of a human being
as the only satisfactory punishment for being sarcastic to children. 
Sorry.

Lupinlore:

>in that sense the Dursleys punishment has not yet happened, 
> either.  I do think it has probably begun, however.  Dumbledore does 
> seem to be a very Old Testament figure in that chapter, does he not?
> And the pronouncements of Old Testament prophets were seldom uttered 
> without consequence.  

LOL, I think an Old Testament Dumbledore would have done some smiting!
 That's the last thing that would have entered my head-- if I had to
pick, I'd lean a bit to "go thou and sin no more".  I don't know if we
will or won't see much more happen to the Dursleys-- if anything, that
scene gave me a feeling that JKR was wrapping them up, as their power
over Harry becomes insignificant.  I do expect something more between
Harry and Petunia, as a connection back to Lily-- perhaps Petunia has
some of Lily's old things somewhere?    
  
Lupinlore: 

> I do agree that JKR likes to put characters in bad situations.  In 
> fact, I will go so far as to agree with Betsy that it is often 
> extraordinarily off-putting.  The off-putting part, however, I think 
> is largely a result of the problem of three again and JKR letting the 
> narrative get away from her....I really don't think she sees pain as a 
> shared human universal... I think she really does think that 
> things are more interesting for readers the more extreme she makes 
> the situations in which she puts her characters. 

I couldn't possibly disagree more strongly.  Remember that this is a
person who spent her teenage years with a mother who was dying a
degenerative disease.  I've had a friend with MS and it's an extremely
distressing process;  I can't even imagine how I would have handled
watching my own mother suffer from it.  This alone would have given
her a sense of being connected with a darker world than the one her
friends lived in, and I think this genuine experience with the reality
of suffering is precisely what gives the series its resonance.  Not to
mention one of her top-ten favorite songs is REM's "Everybody Hurts"!

> We need to remember that JKR is, in fact, not all that experienced of 
> a writer.  The Harry Potter series is her first major sale -- and 
> what a sale it was!  Going over the top with dramatic situations and 
> emotion-laden themes is a common failing of inexperienced writers

On the contrary.  At least where I'm coming from, the biggest failing
of both experienced an inexperienced writers, at least of screenplays,
is shying away from anything not being 'nice', or anything really
dreadful happening to the major characters, of every single thing not
being absolutely perfect when the credits roll, because the audience
'can't handle it'.  What's caused the enormous world-wide popularity
of the books, IMO, despite the awkardness of the prose and
occasionally seam-showing plotting, is that they have the courage to
have really bad things happen, and not get fixed;  of being willing to
put favorite characters though hell as well as disliked ones, because
life is no respecter of persons when it comes to the inevitability of
pain.  Fiction used to be about how people overcame suffering and
learned to cope with an imperfect world;  Hollywood has been trying to
train audiences into prefering glossy, artificial worlds were death
has no resonance, heros are always right and reach perfect
actualization, and pasteboard villains get kicked in the balls to
merry laughter.  I'm reminded of the Saturday Night Live 'missing
ending' to "It's a Wonderful Life", where the townsfolk go and beat up
Mr. Potter, and give all his money to Jimmy Stewart!  I'm very much
afraid that this WOULD be the ending if the movie was made today,
because there would always be some clown in marketing who would say
that audiences wouldn't stand for the villain getting away and the
hero no better off than he was at the start of the movie.  I hope
against hope that our exectives will get a clue that "Harry Potter"
isn't popular because it has dragons, just as "Titanic" wasn't popular
becasue it had a shipwreck.  It's popular because tragedy has been
exiled as a theme from mainstream fiction, and it's a theme that
people will need until tragedy has been exiled from life. 

-- Sydney, diligently at work on yet another shiny-happy-hollywood product