WW as Parasite (was:Snape's iPod)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 142632

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

Super Magical Combining Powers--Activate!

> I don't know about 'common currency', but wouldn't a half-blood or
> muggleborn, who constitute a large percentage of the Hogwarts
> population, go clubbing or whatever on a saturday night over the
> summer?  And take their friends as they got older?  

If they choose to engage with that side of Muggle culture.  It's 
rather unclear whether most people who have been co-opted into the 
wizarding culture (as Hogwarts is designed to do) are interested in 
keeping that kind of social contact with the Muggle world.  Clubbing 
isn't like classical concert-going in that it's a much less isolated 
and much more social exercise.

There must be some percent of the population who ventures out of 
their cultural bubble, because people do marry Muggles.  We have a 
decidedly mixed picture on these relationships, though--many of them 
are based on deception, even ones which ultimately work out.  This 
points to the Muggle-fancying being decidedly personal and individual 
rather than a broader cultural influence.

> In so far as this concerns me, I don't think I ever actually posited
> Lucius as taking Snape to the opera.  I said, quote, "Lucius is the
> TYPE OF PERSON who goes to the opera and talks all the way through
> it".  

Except that Lucius is not even the 'type' of person who goes to the 
opera, for actual discussions of operatic culture.  First is that in 
a modern opera house of any sort, anyone who talks all the way 
through is going to be kicked out by an usher.  No exceptions. :)  
(That is, if the other people don't murder him first...)  Second is 
that operagoers tend to fall into a few classes, but two come to 
mind: the regulars, and the people who go for status reasons or 
because their companies/organizations support the opera/pay for the 
tickets.  There's no social gain for Lucius to be seen at the opera, 
because it's not a wizarding institution--would he *want* to be seen 
in a Muggle place like that?  Not good for his kind of PR, and not 
something he seems interested in.  So the 'interested music lover' 
option remains open, I guess, but doesn't seem likely, as I've given 
some reasons for in the past.

Okay, maybe as a loose analogy...but for discussions of actual music 
practice...

> PJ:

> But they do touch! Each and every time an 11 year old Muggle child 
> gets a letter from Hogwarts, that new student's music, sports, 
> literature and (perhaps) art preferences goes right to Hogwarts 
> along with them! Like Harry, these children could've been exposed 
> to all of this at their public schools as well as from their 
> parents. Also when they go home for the summer and holidays they 
> hear any of the new music they missed while at school.

But their access thereto is pretty limited while they're at 
Hogwarts.  The side-effect (or perhaps side purpose) of this is to 
integrate people into their new society, both skills-wise and in 
cultural interest.  Given the "wow shiny new!" features of magic, and 
the seeming overt superiority of magical versions of things (see 
photography for a particularly apt example), it's harder than not, I 
would think, to proselytize their cultural interests to other 
students.  And we've seen that students do gradually become alienated 
from their 'home' culture; Hermione is a good example of this.  
Therefore I'm skeptical of just how much cultural interchange can 
really be promoted.

a_svirn:

> I suppose there are popular musics elsewhere, but either they are
> rock and thus derivative or they are something else and thus they
> are something else. For instance if, say, the scale of Chinese music
> is pentatonic you can hardly expect the popular tunes based on it to
> be anything like those based on a diatonic seven-note scale. Of
> course, the great break-up with muggles occurred only in the end of
> the 17th century, so there wouldn't be much difference where scales
> and pitches are concerned, but still I can hardly imagine wizards
> coming up with anything "rock-like" on their own.

Pentatony can be conceptualized as a subset of the diatonic scale, 
you know. :)  Melodic formation...okay, that's getting way too far 
afield for onlist, I think.  And tuning and temperament is the 
discussion from the deep pits.  But it is amazing how easily music 
cultures borrow and adapt ideas from other cultures, very quickly but 
in totally idiosyncratic ways.

>> Nora:
>> The whole idea of 'pure' culture is pretty laughable, of course.

> a_svirn:
> Whose idea is that?

The idea that any music culture is completely uncontaminated by 
influences from other cultures; I don't think it's been floated out 
overtly here, but postulating complete and utter separation between 
Muggle and Wizarding music cultures would get close to such a claim, 
given their temporal and geographic proximity.

-Nora would bet that no standard music theory book has made it into 
the Hogwarts library, though...