JKR and the boys/ Dark Magic and Snape

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 161471

Shelley:
And, didn't Hermione actually punch 
> Malfoy? In that one, I can only image the two boys being in shock, 
> otherwise, they would have jumped right in and finished what 
Hermione 
> started.

Magpie:
Hermione slapped Malfoy.  Sorry, that movie contamination drives me 
crazy.  Ron and Malfoy do get into a fist fight in PS/SS. I agree 
JKR seems to try to put in as many near-fights as she can, with 
teachers to break it up.  And of course there's also dueling which 
is a kind of fighting--Malfoy and Harry begin to duel in GoF and in 
HBP, obviously, they have a pretty big fight.

Shelley:
> Frankly, any comment I see of Rowling not knowing her teenage boys 
is 
> hogwash- Ron and Harry look like the type of boys that I hung 
around with as 
> a kid. We were always mixed groups too, at late middle school age. 
Those 
> boys that were always in boy-only groups were the bullies, like 
Malfoy and 
> his gang, and frankly, those were the boys that were always 
bragging of 
> their sexual exploits too. Those that hung around in mixed groups 
were 
> usually more mature, in my estimation, that those that didn't mix. 
> Personally, I think Rowling is spot on in her description of boys. 
She 
> didn't want Harry to be a Malfoy, or a Dudley. She's drawing a 
more mature, 
> sensitive character, and those types of boys really do exist in 
life.

Magpie:
I think that's a little unfair, to assume that your situation was 
necessarily a mark of maturity. People are friends with who they 
happen to become friends with, imo. I was friends with a group of 
boys in high school, but the four of them were basically their own 
tight group by themselves as well. Boys that happen to have close 
friends who are mostly boys are not, imo, automatically less mature 
than those who hang out in co-ed groups.  Likewise girls who are 
mostly friends with girls are not less mature than girls who hang 
out with boys. It just happens to be who you become friends with. 

Malfoy, as it happens, seems to be very good friends with Pansy 
Parkinson (she seems to be his girlfriend, but then so will Ron be 
Hermione's and Ginny is Harry's) so he's not always in an all-male 
group either. He doesn't seem so much less sensitive than Harry in 
those ways--Harry seems to view girls as generally foreign creatures 
so doesn't seem all that sensitive that way. Malfoy's a jerk in 
plenty of ways, but doesn't seen particularly testosterone heavy. 
His only scene of bragging about sexual exploits is to play up his 
arm injury to Pansy when he's 13--something Harry comes around to 
two years later with Cho. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle are I think 
sometimes conspicuous in how different they are from each other.

Steve:
I remember the great controversy that occurred at one
time accusing JKR of not providing /positive/ female role
models in her books. I remember the 'Fat' controversy over
JKR's depiction of vitue relative to body size. None of
these things matter because JKR is not writing a book
about any of that. She has specific characters that have
specific personalities that are run through specific
circumstances, and her only concern is whether they react
'in-character' to the events they encounter.

Magpie:
Wait--just because it's not JKR's job to write a book about this 
stuff doesn't mean it doesn't matter.  Anything in the books is up 
for discussion.  If you can discuss how well you think JKR has 
presented Harry and Ron and boys as why, there's nothing wrong with 
someone pointing out the constant fat jokes, particularly since that 
mostly came out in response to JKR herself stating on her website 
how terrible it is when people care about weight. Everything in the 
books is part of the books.  It's not that she's supposed to present 
everyone perfectly, but looking at the way she deals with any 
certain thing is imo a perfectly legitimate way to look at the book. 
There's lots of ways to present people imperfectly, after all. I 
think one of the strongest glues holding the books together are just 
this sort of thing, that JKR has certain strong basic truths that 
come through with all the characters and make everything hold 
together--and too there are certain conflicts she tends to reach for 
more than others.  It's impressive that she manages to take these 
truths and patterns and give them to such a wide array of 
characters, but noticing patterns is part of the fun of seeing how 
it's not really reality, just a constructed illusion of reality.

Sydney:

I think the 'racial' metaphor of magic/non-magic blood is entangled
with a class metaphor. Class is still an amazingly bitter and
senstive subject in Britain and goes hand in hand with race
discussions in terms of 'otherness' and the establishment and
prejudice and resentment. Especially as the Wizarding World has a
distinctly 1920's between-the-wars vibe and at the same time draws a
lot of its atmosphere from Dickens. The idea of the family trees and
intermarriage is a lot more resonant of a class than a race thing.

Magpie:
Heh--I was going to suggest that but don't feel really qualified to 
talk about the class issue.  But that is what it feels like a lot of 
the time to me. The Pureblood thing, even as Ernie describes it, 
seems more reminiscent of aspirations to blue blood than, say, race 
percentages.

Sydney:

I feel sure there's some sort of connection with Lily and the Potions
book, and that might extend to the nickname. I read a very cool
theory somewhere that the famous significance of Harry having Lily's
eyes is that that's why he's the only one who can make out the
handwriting in the HPB book-- Snape spelled it 'for lily's eyes 
only'!

Magpie:
I'd just heard that one myself--I originally thought it was silly, 
supposing Harry could read it only because of his eyes, but then 
when I understood it had been spelled that way by Snape it made much 
more sense.

-m