[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry Potter, REALLY for Grown-Ups (well, PG-13 anyway)

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 164496

On 1 Feb 2007 at 23:01, horridporrid03 wrote:

> I don't begrudge JKR totally avoiding the subject (or mostly
> avoiding 
> it anyway) but it does mean there's a disconnect, IMO, between 
> Potterverse teenagers and real world teenagers.

*Some* real world teenagers perhaps - but certainly not all, and that's the point that I think 
may be being missed by some people here.

It seems to me that some people seem to be acting on an assumption that the way *they* 
acted as teenagers, or that *they* see the teenagers around them acting is somehow the 
'right' way for teenagers to act in that it is the way that all teenagers act.

That simply isn't necessarily the case.

It is certainly a *valid* way for teenagers to act, in terms that there are teenagers who act like 
that. It is a part of the continuum of 'normal behaviour' for teens. But it is one point on that 
continuum and you'll have some in act in ways on either sides of that continuum.

I attended a boarding school in the 1990s and as I've said in a previous message, sexual 
behaviour (well at least sexual behaviour involving *other* people) really was not at all 
common. Very few people engaged in it. And we weren't odd. And we weren't abnormal. And 
we weren't failing to be normal teenagers. It's just that in our cultural environment, and our 
school environment, that type of behaviour wasn't a big deal. People *could* have had sex or 
sexual contact with others - there was opportunity. But it was rare because it didn't fit into the 
cultural context we lived in.

Hogwarts may simply have that same type of cultural context operating. I'm not saying that it 
necessarily *has* to have that type of cultural context - merely that it is realistic that it *might* 
have that type of cultural context. And so I think it's unwise for people to dismiss Hogwarts as 
unrealistic simply because it doesn't represent the teen culture they are aware of - and I must 
say, especially so, when people are coming at it from quite a different cultural context.

To *me* (and like anyone else, this may be partly because of the cultural environment I 
experienced as a teen) what I see as operating at Hogwarts seems entirely realistic. Sexual 
contact isn't non-existent (the scenes with the bushes at the Yule Ball) but it isn't all that 
common either. Less dramatic forms of romantic expression like kissing are a bit more 
common, but even those are nowhere near universal, nor are they automatically expected.

All that, to me, seems entirely realistic, because it's what I lived with when I was a teen (-8

And I'm not going to claim it's the only way things *should* be, or even that it's necessarily 
common - but I certainly do believe it's every bit as 'normal' and 'realistic' as if they were 
going at it like rabbits.

I actually had another point in writing this though - and that concerns Harry specifically. And 
the way he sees things like this and the idea that perhaps he's even 'advanced' in these 
areas than the norm. I think that is quite plausible and without going into details, I think I can 
maybe illustrate the way Harry *may* feel - by talking about the way *I* felt at his age. 
Personally I was a little 'slow' compared to my age peers in these things (although juding 
from what some people seem to expect us to have been doing, we were all slow!) and that 
happened for two reasons. The first is that I found it very hard to trust people as fully as I 
could have, because of abuse I'd suffered at the hands of other people. When that has 
happened to you, often it becomes much harder to open yourself to romantic contact with 
others, with the trust that that involves. And Harry - well, Harry, seems to have suffered worse 
than I did. So that wouldn't surprise me much at all.

The other reason... I felt like there were more important things for me to be worried about 
that getting involved with girls. For me, the issue was my schoolwork and pressures on me to 
do well. And that had an effect.

Again, though, the pressure Harry has to deal with, and the things *he* is expected to do 
make what I dealt with pale into comparison. This is a kid with the weight of his entire culture 
resting on his shoulders, who has had to repeatedly face the risk of death and to struggle to 
stay alive. Would it be all that surprising if maybe, just maybe, other things in his life seem a 
little less important to him?

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia