Aesthetics in the Potterverse (Was: Lily and Snape)

[Katherine Farmar]

No: HPFGUIDX 140424


>houyhnhnm:
<snip>
>Just as "a lot of the greatest wizards haven't got an ounce of logic",
>perhaps both the ability to create art and the ability to appreciate
>art or natural beauty are qualities lost in the acquisition of magical
>powers.



Well, I suppose *somebody* had to paint all those talking portraits...

Though the most irritating example of this aesthetic blindness has to be
the school song in PS. Good Lord, Dumbledore, if you really think music
is "a magic beyond all we do here", then having several hundred people
sing a doggerel verse to several hundred different tunes simultaneously
is not the best way to demonstrate it! Can you imagine what a godawful
cacophany that would make?

I'm inclined to think it's nothing terribly significant, though, just a matter
of authorial priorities. Do wizards have an above-average affinity 
for practical
jokes, since the small wizarding community of Great Britain is able to support
*three* functioning joke shops? I doubt it. I think JKR just likes 
indulging her
own broad sense of humour. Likewise with aesthetics. She's just not that
interested in writing about beautiful things, or about people appreciating
beauty, or about art. It has the odd effect of making the WW seem very
uncultured and rather flat. Nobody reads novels! Nobody sings, except to
cheer on or discourage a Quidditch team! Likewise with visual art -- Dean is
"good at drawing", but we only find out about this when he draws a banner
for Gryffindor. Does he sketch portraits of his housemates in his spare time?
Maybe, but we'll never know because JKR doesn't care enough to tell us.


-- 
Katherine F. aka puritybrown
-So then, Ben, it seems every track on the EP involves death, 
drunkenness, desperate poverty, diabolical dealings, incest, murder, 
and abandonment. Does this reflect your current state of mind?
-Well, you know, I have days.
(Half Man Half Biscuit, "Used To Be In Evil Gazebo")


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