Unforgivables - from a different angle

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 174597


> Magpie wrote:
> 
> And also the series has a pattern of changing
> how it presents pain in general. I mean, I personally not only get
> the impression that Draco is reluctant and Harry is happy to do 
their
> Crucios, but that Ollivander is portrayed as someone being given
> painful electric shocks that should make us all wince while Carrow's
> getting the equivalent of a punch in the face, all due to the people
> involved and the context.

> catlady1949::
> I think that all this discussion about how curses are intended 
making the difference, and whether once wrong is always wrong was 
portrayed very accurately in this series of books.  I see the whole 
thing as very real world realistic.  That's the way human beings 
really are!  You can state all day long that you would die before you 
would do this or that, and you can maintain forever that you so 
wouldn't cast this or that spells due to what you decide is plain 
immoral etc., but if it came down to real life, you just might do 
what you say that you'd never do, or act in a way you say that you 
could absolutely never act.  We go back to Christian thinking and the 
Bible again.  Pilot asked Jesus "what is truth?"  Is truth a relative 
thing?  Are not some of us more wise and, therefore, more truthful?  
Is what I think, the truth, even if I've been wrong, misinterpreting, 
etc?  I see this series as a whole both a good and bad commentary on 
human beings and their basic nature, and if we can rise above all of 
it, these books help us see what we should be trying to do, not 
debating the intent, disappointment, personality of J. K. Rowling!


Magpie:
So is the idea that people suck, I'd be no better, and I'm supposed 
to try to be better than the people in the books? I see the books 
showing me what I should be trying to do in some ways, and what I 
would try to avoid doing in others (though that second part seems 
maybe unintentional). If you're suggesting we shouldn't be debating 
their intent or any disappointment some might have had, this is a 
book discussion list. Those things are completely appropriate here 
even more than other places. How would I even figure out what the 
books are saying I'm supposed to be trying to do if I don't analyze 
them and figure out their intent and my own disappointment?

It just seems like the more I read the more it sounds like I should 
lower all my expectations--not my expectations for a good story or 
what I might have wanted specifically, but my expectations about 
human nature and the possibility of transformation and heroes and 
good people and myself and good guys--and then call it realism and so 
apply it to life and not demand anything more from this fantasy 
series. And all this could totally work in a different kind of story--
it's a perfectly valid thing to write a story about and it could be a 
masterpiece, but that doesn't seem to be the way it's being presented 
in this story. Nor is the story presented as realistic, since it's a 
fantasy. 

Mike:
As Captain Jack Sparrow might say, 'We have an accord, then.' That's
all I've been trying to say. It's not the curse it's the caster. LV
and his DEs use Crucio for torture, Harry used it, as you say, to
punch Carrow in the face.

Magpie:
Yes, except that torture is not a punch in the face, is it? So Harry 
is torturing Carrow and presenting it like punching him in the face, 
which is rather screwed up to me. If he approached it with the 
seriousness that the spell's name and effect implies, it might be a 
moment of struggle and interesting. Instead it's like saying you can 
torture without torturing, which I don't see how you can do outside 
of a fictional universe where you change the rules around your 
heroes. I mean, isn't that a bad way to approach you actions, by 
separating yourself from their seriousness? Or saying that when you 
do it it's fundamentally different--I mean, not just because you have 
better justification but because it becomes a different thing?

Just to be clear, I think I understand how this works in the story as 
fiction. I just think that it does kind of say something disturbing 
if you think you're supposed to take the characters as the kind of 
role models the genre suggests they're going to be. This wasn't a big 
sticking point for me, but I can understand why other people, 
especially since the way the UFs were dealt with before I think 
people had a reason to take them as standing for something specific 
via the rules of this fantasy universe.

-m