[HPforGrownups] Re: DD at the Dursleys: Why do people dislike the scene?

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 158010

Snow:

I've heard you say in most of the posts to this subject that it was this 
particular scene that you are replying to and not the abuse issue. My 
question is how you can possibly see this scene out of context by 
discounting the origin that created Dumbledore's actions?

Magpie:
I said they were two different questions, so "I didn't enjoy this scene" 
can't be answered with "But don't you remember what the Dursleys did?"  I 
know all the facts, and they don't match up the same way for me to give me 
the same emotional response, as happens with many scenes in canon that break 
down along similar lines. As a response to years of abuse, albeit years 
before, it seems a rather odd kind of response. I think it's very important 
to be able to separate the two.  Otherwise it's easy to just sort people 
into "people who can not be done wrong to" and "people who can not do 
wrong."

So, as I said in response to why I did not enjoy the scene, well, I didn't 
enjoy it and now I'm trying to analyze why--which is hard because it's a 
feeling, not an intellectual process.  I doubt either of our emotional 
reactions are about our ethical sensibilities first; I've been known to 
enjoy scenes where a person is being childish or wrong or bad or mean as I 
think everyone has.  If you enjoy a scene you automatically find reasons you 
should enjoy it, if you don't you find reasons why you shouldn't.

I don't like the kind of thing DD is doing to begin with on a visceral 
level--the knocking somebody in the heads with the mead?  That makes me want 
to clonk Dumbledore on the head with the mead, and it probably would have no 
matter who he was doing it to, because I hate that kind of teasing. 
Seriously, I hate it.  It's like nails on a chalkboard for me, and it 
doesn't seem to even say much to the Dursleys. I also don't see the context 
that's being described, and trying to make this Dumbledore righteous 
response to abuse years after the fact doesn't make me think Dumbledore's 
just so compassionate he loses it a bit with these people.  It makes it seem 
like an act to me.

Betsy:
> So it's not like I was outraged on the Dursleys' behalf.  But I was
> more like, "See?  Even the best of them can't stop themselves from
> misusing their power.  Darn, arrogant, wizards."  Because I'm a
> Muggle.  And I'd be just as helpless to defend myself as the
> Dursleys' were.  I'd have had to drink the stupid mead, even though
> I'm not a drinker and would probably hate the stuff.  I'd have to
> fake it in order to not anger the all-mighty wizard.  And that ain't
> right.

Magpie:
That's pretty much how I feel, I think.  It's not even that I don't *want* 
to be a witch, but that I'm not, and I wouldn't grovel about it.  That's the 
thing--I'm not. I don't really know how people can always identify with 
wizards.  As characters, sure.  But it's not like "we" as readers don't have 
a place in that world.  Why would anyone assume that s/he would be a wizard 
if this were all real?  We can't do magic, we go to regular schools, we get 
stitches and talk on the telephone.  I'm not a self-hating Muggle and it's 
not the job of wizards to discipline my people.  It's not like I can 
discipline them back.  Muggles are more often than not used or messed with 
in some way and then forgotten about again.

-m