What is Manipulation (was Re: Nice versus good, was: Hagrid and Snape)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 152827

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "marionrosnl" <M.Ros at ...> 
wrote:
> Remus Lupin is always kind, polite, politically correct, always 
> prepared to find excuses for people's behaviour and so *nice* it 
> scares me. The man is so *fake* it hurts! He never shows what he 
> feels, truly feels. He never get angry, never shouts at people, 
> even when confronted with Pettigrew (finding out after twelve 
> years that the friend he supposedly mourned was a traitor and the 
> friend he condemned to Azkaban was innocent) he keeps his cool and 
> shows no great emotion. He's so eventempered that it is subhuman. 
> But for all his 'niceness' (or perhaps because of it) he is also 
> incredibly manipulative: he knows how to win people and how to 
> piss off those he dislikes in such a way that he *still* looks 
> nice (that BoggartSnape incident was no accident, I tell you).
  

Well, I certainly agree that Remus has a lot of problems, and you 
have certainly touched on some of them.  So let's focus on one issue 
you bring up -- the charge of being manipulative.  I think this is 
important because it shows up with regard to DD as well -- in fact, 
it's hard to have any mention of DD without it showing up.

What is manipulative?  What about DD and Lupin lead people to 
suspect that they may be being manipulative?

Is it being nice and getting what you want from other people?  I 
suppose it depends.  I would say that manipulation occurs when there 
is miscommunication.  That is, when one person thinks "Oh, this is 
the nicest guy," and the other is thinking "Oh, now to get what I 
want."  In other words, manipulation occurs when a lie is involved.

On the other hand, if the verbal cues and protocols are well 
understood by all involved, there is no lie and hence no 
manipulation.  I went to school in the American South.  I remember 
clearly when a friend from New York exploded because he thought he 
had been manipulated and lied to, when the others of us (all raised 
in the area) could see no such.  Finally, another of my friends 
simply shook his head and said "Poor Kent, he simply doesn't 
understand how civilized people communicate with each other."  
Exchanges that to us seemed perfectly transparent and 
straightforward were to him examples of rank dishonesty.  For 
instance he felt misused when he found out a certain person disliked 
him a lot.  It was very obvious to all the rest of us that the 
dislike was there and that said person had been attempting to 
clearly communicate it.  But somehow it didn't get through.

More directly with regard to Lupin, I think he is often in denial.  
However I don't think he means to lie, which is what it takes to be 
manipulative.  When he told Harry that he neither liked nor disliked 
Snape, I think Harry was right to be sceptical, but not because 
Lupin was deliberately telling a lie, but rather because it's hard 
to credit that that's how the man really feels, despite what he 
might tell himself.

DD's problem is more the first kind.  He just isn't very good at 
communicating.  It probably comes from being surrounded by people so 
much younger than himself -- and indeed, he confesses something like 
that.  DD is much more to be blamed that Lupin, I think, because he 
has much more of a burden to make sure his messages are getting 
across clearly.  In that they don't, he at the very least has a 
severe problem.

Finally, I think most of this isn't really the problem of the 
characters at all.  I think it comes from the fact that Rowling 
knows them so well that sometimes when she thinks she's getting 
things across clearly she isn't.  Hence the fiasco with DD's speech 
at the end of OOTP.


Lupinlore