My Most Annoying Character

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 180108

 
> > JKR:
> > "Well, they're not all bad. I know I've said this before, I think 
I
> > said it to Emerson. Well, far from it, as we know, at the end, 
they
> > may have a slightly more highly developed sense of self-
preservation
> > than other people. A part of the final battle that made me smile 
was
> > Slughorn galloping back with the Slytherins, but they'd gone off 
to
> > get reinforcements first. You know what I'm saying, so yes, they 
came
> > back, they came back to fight. I'm sure many people would say, 
well
> > that's common sense isn't it, isn't that smart, to get help, get 
more
> > people and come back?"
> > 
> > Slughorn *galloping back with the Slytherins*? When did this 
happen?
> > 
Irene:
> That woman could make some psychoanalyst very happy. A rare case of 
> conscious and subconscious in essence divided. :-) In the context 
of her 
> novels it made a perfect sense to have Slytherins the convenient 
evil, 
> so nothing on page points to any of the Slytherins coming back. But 
when 
> she has a chance to reconsider, the conscious mind takes over.

Magpie:
You know, I try to stay away from any psychoanalyzing and I still 
don't have anything to say about JKR as a person, but these 
interviews really do make the world crumble even more to pieces or 
show big holes in it--at least to me. There is no fricken' moment of 
Slughorn galumphing back with any Slytherins. The Slytherins just 
leave in the book. And if they were supposed to have a triumphant 
return it would have to be there. Instead we got 7 books of the 
opposite and no moment where the narrator or Harry says, "Hey, look! 
The Slytherins didn't leave at all! They just went to get other 
people!" 

And the same with the thing Lizzyben just quoted about Hufflepuff the 
planatation owner: "It was a thousand years ago, blah blah blah..." 
This isn't our world, you can't just fall back on the idea that the 
WW had the same kind of history with civil rights as our own did in 
some vague way, especially when in the world you've actually created 
still has slavery not only going strong but reinforced as the only 
humane way for House Elves to live. 

It's just weird to me that, as you say, she seems to have no problem 
*in the book* of taking the strong position that Slytherins are 
genuinely inferior people who are untrustworthy and House Elves are 
inferior beings who enjoy being enslaved by superior wizards...but 
when that's put to her in an interview she's got another way to put 
it--not a way that holds up or is coherent really, imo, but just 
something that's a little mushier because the statements the books 
make sound kind of harsh. Surely she didn't just write a quarter of 
the school as really evil and not deserving of being there, or say 
that a whole race should be enslaved? Yeah, she did. Very 
straightforwardly. 

-m