Compassionate hero (WAS Re: Appeal of the story to the reader)

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 175957

> >>lizzyben:
> > <snip>
> > The good guys are just good, and so can do bad things to the bad 
> > guys. There's no sympathy or understanding for people w/different 
> > perspectives. You are either for Harry, or you are against him. 
> > Projection & scapegoating are practically encouraged. 

> >>Nora:
> This reminded me of one of my favorite of Pippin's posts...<snip> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/100012

> >>Pippin:
> > I'm not sure it's a question of JKR not understanding fans, or 
> > seeing only black-and-white versus seeing something good about 
> > Slytherin. Fan fiction and fanon often treat Slytherin House as   
> > not only redeemable but already redeemed or simply misunderstood. 
> > Racism gets downgraded (upgraded?) to pardonable ethnic pride,   
> > and Dark Arts fanatics are merely people who look good in black.
> 
> (By the way, Pippin, cheers on pegging so many of the issues so     
> early)
> <snip>
> I would have liked to have seen more in canon of the reckoning that
> needed to finally come on with Slytherin ideology, but JKR chose to
> focus more on the personal story than the larger social one, alas.

Betsy Hp:
I think it's more JKR chose to sidestep the more complex story and 
went with the boy kills guy who murdered parents thing. Harry's 
relationship with Slytherin was actually quite personal.  He wasn't 
Hermione, gazing at house-elfs from afar.  He was dreaming and 
obsessing about Slytherins from the first book onward.  It's hard to 
get more personal than that.  JKR had to work to de-personalize that 
relationship.

But two things stood out to me here:  First of all, Slytherin exists 
because they're allowed to exist.  Their house founder left the 
school and the house was kept around.  Why?  As was pointed out in 
another thread, Germany no longer has a Nazi party.  So why did 
Hogwarts keep their racist house?  Why do they encourage small 
children to embrace an ideology the school does not support?

Also, there are no such thing as Dark Arts.  JKR established that by 
making the use of them a non-issue.  So any attempt to judge someone 
by the magic they use has become an exercise in hypocrisy.

So basically it comes down to what Lizzyben was saying, our "good 
guys" need a bunch of teeth-picking racists around so they can look 
good in comparison.  Also, they need someone to beat up when they've 
had a bad day.  Which means (to get back to the title <g>) our hereos 
are not compassionate. 

Betsy Hp