WW as Parasite (was:Snape's iPod (was: Staff's Activities...)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 142561

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

> Betsy Hp:
> For exactly the reason you've raised.  The WW is not a culture that 
> encourages artistic creativity.  They're a tiny little population 
> with one school, and that school doesn't teach music. (Or theater 
> or art or literature...)  So if a wizard is into chamber music, 
> he'll have to look beyond the WW to find his fix.

Except that we've been given examples of wizards engaging in 
explicitly derivative, but wizardly, forms of the arts.  I think of 
the book titles: "Hairy Snout, Human Heart" is an overt parody 
(although I can't quite remember exactly what of), and "Helas, j'ai 
Transfigure mes Pieds" (by the wizard Malecrit) would definitely have 
appealed to that mischevious medieval sense of humor.

I think the parodic element is the key one here, on JKR's part.

> Also, the forms of music they listen to (a torch singer, a rock 
> group, chamber music) were all formed by specific and logical 
> progressions of Muggle culture.  A culture the WW purportes to have 
> no part of.

Wizarding society could definitely support rock music; chamber music, 
one wonders about.  Opera is right out.  But there's nothing stopping 
them from being parasitic--but then generating their own *versions* 
of things, as opposed to going to the Muggle world for their fix.  
When you have the Weird Sisters, you don't need to go out of your way 
to get records of The Who.

<snip discussion of economics which is IMO a giant incoherent 
sinkhole and one thing which marks Rowling's work as wainscot fantasy 
and not anywhere near the high genre; in other words, do I think 
she's really thought about it through to full coherency?  Haha.> 

<snip>

> Or maybe it's like music and culture in the USA a while ago, where 
> a white audience listened to black performers in a hotel the 
> performers were not allowed to stay in.

Possible.  Opera, still, is a social genre and involves necessary 
engagement with Muggles...and Lucius Malfoy is one of our model 
ideologues, although not a Bellatrix-class fanatic.  Again, my 
contention is about engagement with overtly Muggle musics and social 
settings therefore, not potential wizarding adaptations thereof.  
Lucius Malfoy at Covent Garden?  Well, I guess more likely there than 
Sadler's Wells...

> But the very fact that Dumbledore is noted as being fond of chamber 
> music on his Chocolate Frog card, and the fact that chamber music 
> developed in the Muggle world *after* the WW went into hiding, 
> suggests that there must have been some sort of respectable 
> interaction between the cultures.  Even if that respect was gained 
> by the wizards deliberately fooling themselves.

But Dumbledore is also *exceptional* in his relationship to the 
Muggle world, as emphasized again and again.  He doesn't see it just 
as a source to be exploited (the Quidditch World Cup organizers 
attitude) or as something to be scorned and mocked (the default 
DE/pureblood fanatic mode).  I can't think of any other adult 
character prominent in society who has an understanding of it like 
him.

> But their world is too filled with Muggle items given a wizard 
> twist to suggest that their culture is truly separate from the 
> Muggle one.  And I'm betting that would include their music.

The twist is the essential key word.  I'm not disputing that there's 
borrowings of musical technologies: the piano is one of the most 
solid ones that we have, and an old gramophone (which would probably 
play 78s, not LPs...).  But there's absolutely no evidence of 
borrowing and maintenance of Muggle music, as opposed to the 
adaptation of musical forms.  Carnatic music uses the violin, but 
that in no way makes it 'Western' music.  I still object 
wholeheartedly to the idea that Muggle music is a large-scale 
presence in wizarding society.

-Nora doesn't quite see Snape as patient enough for most of the 
classical music ascribed to his tastes, but that's another discussion