Snape's iPod (was: Staff's Activities (was:Re: Snape's Speech patterns)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 142529

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:


> But I'm not sure if JKR means for us to see Muggles as *better* 
> than wizards or not.  Because the only Muggles we know are very 
> much not imaginative.  At all. 

I'll stick with 'different'.  I'm not going to make the claim that 
JKR is presenting a dystopia in the WW but doesn't realize it, but 
she's pretty deliberate (IMO) in her omissions, in places that make 
people think "I'd ditch the magic world in a minute."

> There *is* evidence that wizards listen to and enjoy music.  
> Again, it'd be pretty hard for the Weird Sisters to get a following 
> amongst the youth if they were never heard at Hogwarts.  Plus, not 
> only does Slughorn listen to music, he must play the piano 
> himself.  Otherwise, why haul it around from house to house to 
> house?

Owning a piano then points to a music enjoyment and distribution 
model of pre-recorded times, back when people learned the hits from 
the latest opera, or the big new symphony, by playing it four-hands.  
Or maybe he's just a junk collector? :)  We *do* know there is 
wizarding radio, of course. This could be a more primary model of 
distribution of music, as it was in the early part of the 20th 
century--especially before longer playing record formats came out.  
You could listen to an entire symphony on broadcast that would take 
many 33s to fit in.

> I doubt he gets into the deeper theory behind musical recordings 
> and its affect on musical culture, IOW.

If anyone in the books is, it'd be him. :)  I don't know--he seems 
one to appreciate the difference between actual experience and frozen 
artifact representation, reality and simulacra...

> Hmmm, I think you're giving JKR too much credit.  I think she 
> picked a form of classical music that didn't sound quite as stuffy 
> as opera (for example) and threw it in there because she pictures 
> Dumbledore humming all the time and he's of a certain age.

But then it's still the appropriate music for the connotations.  
Actually a little stuffier than opera (or more, just in a different 
way), but not a social music (which opera always has been and always 
will be)...more something one does in reflection and contemplation.  
Fits his personality very well.

> Again, they record memories.  Recording music really wouldn't be 
> that hard for them, I'd imagine.

Then we get down to the issue raised; why and how would they be 
listening to all the *Muggle* music you want them to have been? :)

> But I also doubt he has no idea about the Muggle world and its 
> culture.  In this case I think Arthur Weasley is the exception, not 
> the rule.  Especially when it comes to a half-blood.  

So, what about the folks at the Quidditch World Cup who had 
absolutely no idea how to dress like Muggles?  That was quite a bit 
of them, IIRC.  Dumbledore is unique for reading Muggle newspapers, 
and caring about what goes on in their world.

A half-blood certainly would have been exposed to more things, yes; 
but then it turns into a question, with people with roots in two 
cultures, which ones they seek out and actively engage with.  If we 
have a Snape inclining away from interest in his Muggle side, as I 
think we've got it hinted at, he may spend summers somewhat around 
the culture, but I doubt he's going out and engaging with it.  I 
can't think of really *any* way or reason that Lucius Malfoy would be 
engaging with Muggle culture, and that includes classical music (and 
opera above all, given its peculiar nature).

The WW doesn't have many of the ways which music is spread in current 
society, but what they really don't have are the ways that music is 
spread to people when they're not necessarily looking for music.  TV 
is the prime culprit of this phenomena.  Otherwise, for things other 
than a fleeting exposure, you have to be looking to listen to music.

Wizarding society also doesn't have the kinds of public space 
interaction that spread music in the real world.  There's one all-
wizarding village.  The model for wizarding family homes appears to 
be *separate* from Muggle homes, to a large extent; the Burrow out in 
the countryside, the Lovegoods living somewhere not far, Grimmauld 
Place in London but not of it, the Malfoy house out in the country as 
well.  These are not people who live together, because they've solved 
the transportation issues.  Maybe JKR hasn't thought so much about 
it, but that profoundly affects most aspects of musical culture, even 
in the era of mechanical reproduction.  What it must affect, and I 
think she's shown, is their knowledge of and interest in Muggle 
culture.  It's exceptional, not normative.

-Nora wonders if Sluggy has Richard Tauber 33s in his collection, 
usable with an older gramophone where LPs wouldn't be...