[HPforGrownups] Re: Bathroom Scene - A Different Perspective.

[Marion Ros]

No: HPFGUIDX 165220

Carol:
>>The whole reason that civilized countries have copyright laws and
punishments for plagiarism is that intellectual dishonesty--taking
credit for someone else's work--is wrong. It's stealing ideas. Try
taking an essay from the Internet and presenting it to your English
professor as your own and see what happens.<<


Marion:

Even better: look at how the fans judge Lockhart. Look how Harry and Ron judge Lockhart.
Lockhart took the achievements of other wizards and presented them as his own for his own personal glory and financial gain (he published books and sold them in great quantities - especially since the students of Hogwarts had to buy at least five of his books each in the year he was teaching *ka-ching!*)
When a child (Ginny) is endangered and Lockhart has to chose being either unmasked as a cheat or overcoming his own foibles and trying to own up and help, he chooses to continue to cheat, trying to obliviate Harry and Ron. Alas for him, his spell backfires and he obliviates himself. Fandom went, "serves him right, that's what happens to lying cheats! If he had the courage to own up to his cheating, arose above his own limitations and tried to help Ginny we would forgive him for being a pompous cheat, but he cares more for his reputation than the life of a child, so serves him right, so there!"

And frankly, who would blame them for thinking so.

Harry, in HBP, took the achievements of the Halfblood Prince and presented them as his own for his own personal glory (well, the praise of his teacher) and personal gain (the Felix potion). When he harms another child (the child nearly dies) he is far more concerned with being unmasked as a cheat and losing his ill-got possesions than he is concerned with the fact that a child might have died as a result.
So, when he is unmasked as a cheat and a lying and gets punished for it, do (some) fans cry, as they did with Lockhart, "serves him right that he got detention, he cheated all year, won a prize for a potion he wouldn't have had the faintest notion how to make without cheating and when a child is harmed, he is more concerned with saving face and not losing his book with which he cheated than with the fact that he nearly killed another child"?

No, of course not. It's *Harry* doing the cheating, after all, and he's their *hero*.

Now, Bart said: >>Traditionally, a hero is not a person without flaws; it is a normally flawed human being who manages to, in spite of these flaws, accomplish great and good things <<

and he is right about this, of course. But alas for him, this sentiment misses the point where Harry is concerned.

Usually, in childrens' stories (and quite a few adult stories as well) the flawed hero does not even know he's flawed, until he finds the flaw in others, condemns it, recognises that he posesses the same flaw and does something about it. 
Harry condemns Lockhart for being the lying cheating son-of-a-witch that he is, yet when lies and cheats and tries to fob off other people's hard work as his own, *just as Lockhart did*, he does not even reflect on this.

This is worrying, to say the least.

Some of the fans on this list try to wiggle out of this uncomfortable dilemma by claiming that a goody two shoes of a hero is no fun hero, or that Harry was perfectly justified cheating because it was payback for having such a mean teacher all those years (and what would be the payback for the 'mean teacher' for having such a cheeky, always anwering back, always opnely challinging his authority student, I wonder?) or even that it was okay for Harry to use the Prince's notes because it's okay to use an advantage others don't have (it's just as okay for Lockhart to use other wizards accomplishments because Lockhart is very good at obliviating said wizards. Hey, if you've got a talent, it's okay to use it illegally for personal gain, right?)

Sorry, I don't buy that. There's a word for people who condemn a flaw in others whilst ignoring it or even nurtering it in themselves; those kind of people are called 'hypocrites'. 

I'm sorry, fans-who-believe-Harry's-flatulence-doesn't smell <gr>, but Harry might be a fascinating protagonist, but he's not in any way a hero as I interpret the term.


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