Scene with likeable James WAS: Re: Eileen Pince

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 156331

>   
> > >   Joe:
> > >    
> > >   No offense intended at all but are you sure your kids and their
> > friends didn't just tell you what they thought you wanted to hear?
> > Honestly if they had done those things do you think they would just
> > tell you?
>    
> 
> Ken 
> > Having been a schoolboy myself I have to agree with Joe on this one.
> > There is an exaggerated, comic book quality to life at Hogwarts, no
> > doubt about that. The interactions between male students ring true
> > nevertheless. The scene you are discussing is not the equivalent of
> > two thugs holding a victim helpless while a third beats him
> > mercilessly, I don't recall seeing *that* happen outside of movies and
> > TV shows. Two big guys holding a victim helpless while a third does
> > *something* to *humiliate* him? Yeah, I saw that several times. And
> > this was in quiet, small town schools in northern Illinois and central
> > Wisconsin in the 1950's and 1960's. I even had three fellow students
> > attempt this on me once but "Crabbe" and "Goyle" found that I was a
> > little too slippery to hold long enough for "Draco" to get a shot at
> > me. You might even say I fluttered away like some overgrown bat!
> > 
> >
> wynnleaf
> Just to clarify or remind... I wasn't trying to say this kind of thing
> doesn't happen everywhere, but that this behavior isn't common to
> *all* or *almost all* guys.  Certainly I'm sure all guys know of guys
> who do this kind of thing, or people who have had that happen to them,
> but I don't think most guys would do this themselves.  

Ken:

No, it is not something that most guys do. It is something that a lot
of guys have had done to them or attempted against them. I do think
that most guys have witnessed this kind of behaviour, bearing in mind
that what we see at Hogwarts is exaggerated as I will discuss below.
Only a few perpetrate this kind of behaviour and they *are* usually
jocks, bullies, or both. 

> Ken
> <The scene you are discussing is not the equivalent of
> > two thugs holding a victim helpless while a third beats him
> > mercilessly, 
> 
> wynnleaf
> I didn't characterize it that way.  I said it was like one boy
> accosting another without provocation, having his friend hold the
> other kid down, and hitting him.  I didn't say anything about two
> people holding one kid down, didn't characterize them as thugs, and
> didn't say "beats mercilessly."  Since Sirius *did* basically tie up
> Snape with magical bonds, that's equitable to "holding down."  And I
> equate knocking someone off their feet, doing the scourgify which
> causes gagging and choking, lifting someone upside down and dropping
> him, freezing the person to where he falls over without being able to
> catch himself at all, lifting the person again upside down from which
> position he must have presumably been dropped again as equitable to
> having hit the person.  Add to that the "pantsed" part and lots of
> verbal insults, *and* doing it in the middle of a large group of
> school kids, and I'd say it was pretty bullying behavior. 


Ken:

Ok, maybe I have exaggerated a bit myself in how I characterized your
description but I see the point of this episode as humilating Snape,
not beating him. I think that I am not alone in seeing a very stark
fault line running through the description of the Potterverse that we
see in these books. I see many of you as not reacting to it but
instead treating everything in the books as "real" and directly
relateable to real life. When I read the scenes at Hogwarts and at the
Dursleys I hear a constant "beep, beep" sound in my head. For those
who don't follow that I am reminded of the Saturday morning cartoons
we "boomers" watched as kids, eg "The Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote".
I see these scenes as symbolic of real life but very exaggerated. They
may teach life lessons, we may not agree on what those lessons are,
but we cannot take their details overly seriously. In real life your
classmates did not polyjuice themselves into housecats and teachers
did not remove all the bones in your arm while giving you first aid.
The events at Hogwarts and the Dursleys are hilarious yet serious too
when you look at them this way.

And in a way that works very well in this Snape scene. The kids who
witness these types of hazing incidents are often both amused and
repulsed by them. 

The cartoonish character does not obscure the lessons these scenes
teach unless you get all hung up on gagging and choking and all the
other dreadful things that happen to these students and their Muggle
family members on a daily basis. Yes, all these things are truly
dreadful, or would be in our world, but they aren't all that real to
me since a flick of the wand puts them right. In most cases. We don't
know how poor Dudley or Marietta will turn out, we know Snape was
deeply hurt by the pensieve scene or else he would not have hidden it.
And yet I think it is precisely the hurt that is inflicted that we
should concentrate on and not the outrageous details that are used to
inflict them. The former is symbolic of the hurts that real people
really cause each other, the latter is just cartoonish window dressing.

On the other side of the fault line is the somewhat realistic
depiction of LV and the DE. It is very jarring to me as a reader when
the author constantly drags us back and forth across the dividing line
between Toonville/Hogwarts and the deadly serious land of Pure Evil
Incarnate. I don't know what her artistic purpose in this is, or if
she has one. I'm not sure the technique works for me. Maybe it does.
It reminds me a bit of a similar fault line that occurs in Handel's
Messiah. There is this delightful little Baroque choral ditty about
the attractions of sin, "All we like sheep", that bounces along for a
while and really draws you in and then without pause crashes headlong
into the somber chords of "And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity
of us all". What a very effective way of illustrating that scriptural
lesson. Maybe Rowlings intent is something similar, I just can't
detect it yet. I do think that the events that involve the DE can be
more directly related to real life examples than most of the Hogwarts
scenes.


> wynnleaf 
> Imagine a school yard full of kids.  Two boys accost another kid from
> basically out of the blue.  They have some rope and tie him up.  While
> he's tied up they insult him and pour soap in his mouth to gag and
> choke him.  As he's starting to finally get out of the ropes, he
> throws one punch so they turn him upside down, partially undress him
> and drop him on his head, then stand him up and tip him over (he's
> tied again and can't catch himself ) so he falls again. 
> Then they turn him upside down yet again, once again partly undressing
> him, and then threaten to take off his underpants and finally drop him
> on his head again.  This didn't happen in a dorm, but outside on
> school grounds in the middle of a large group of students.  But this
> happens commonly you say?  All guys act do this kind of thing to other
> guys? 

Ken:

No, as I said above only a few would do this and almost never in
public. To do it in public would be to get caught and that is
something these perps avoid at all costs. Harry is right to be
distressed to see his dad act this way. Decent boys don't act this
way. Decent headmasters would not allow Snape to do what he does in
his classes either. Bully boys can grow out of it and James & company
apparently did. I don't know how to excuse DD. Harry truly is better
than his father in this respect, we have to admire him for that.

Ken