Dumbledore on the Dursleys in OotP (was:Re: Old, old problem.)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 151243

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at ...> wrote:
>
<SNIP>
> 
> In the end, I guess I don't want that speech to go away or be 
> edited. It was raw, hard to hear, and made me feel uneasy but it 
> was a 'darkest hour before the dawn' moment that seemed right for 
> the transition between the dark and depressing tone of OOTP and 
> the more hopeful and active themes in HBP. 


Well, I guess the question is what JKR was trying to accomplish with 
that speech.  If she was just trying to lay out some plot points then 
the speech did its job.  If, however, as I suspect, the speech had the 
additional goal of putting forth and reinforcing a positive view of 
Dumbledore, then for many of us the results were at best ambivalent and 
at worst positively off-putting.

The sources for this ambivalence have been put forth by others and I 
won't go into them in detail. But the reasons for it, that is why JKR 
wrote the speech the way she did -- who knows?  I suspect being under 
pressure had a lot to do with it.  It has been suggested that she may 
have been trying to echo certain cultural tropes having to do with 
British stereotypes, but if that is the case those echoes certainly 
fell on deaf ears as far as many of us are concerned -- and I do think 
that is an example of poor writing, falling in the category of being 
too clever for your own good.  And I agree that a recent version of DD 
in a medium that is not to be named was probably an attempt to 
partially correct that misfire.

This is one area where we badly need some interview quotes.  Maybe 
we'll get some one of these days.


Lupinlore