Backlash?

[Megan]

No: HPFGUIDX 163423

Megan:
Like I said, it's possible that this point of view comes from the fact that I attended a high school in which being white was looked down upon by the largely black student body. Every time in history class when slavery was discussed, black students would point at me and smirk and imply that I'd buy them as slaves in a second if given the chance. Worst of all was when my 11th grade history teacher singled me out as the only student in the room whose genetic profile would have been acceptable to the Nazis. I'm not saying that violent anti-DE action would enhance the books per se, but rather that it would sadly make a lot of sense.

> SSSusan:
> Hmmmm.  How 'bout the way that Herself portrayed the Gaunt family?
> They sure seemed the height (or would that be depths?) of the
> stereotypical inbred, pureblood freaks to me.  They were dirty,
> had eyes that went the wrong direction and seemed at *least* three
> bricks shy of a load... each!
>
> I know this doesn't address your main question, about why there
> hasn't been any backlash from any of *characters* themselves, but it
> did strike me as awfully over-the-top of JKR to have portrayed the
> Gaunts as she did.

Megan:
Yeah, I managed to overlook that. I remember someone (I believe it
was the creator of the Potterpuffs) saying something about how "[the
Gaunts'] chapter needed the banjo music from 'Deliverance' in the
background."

Also, Merope always seemed to me kind of a pastiche of the character
of Fantine in "Les Miserables". Yeah, Fantine is usually portrayed
as being glowing and beautiful and sad in the musical, but in the
book, while she's still pretty, she's also quite scummy and
uneducated and becomes a tubercular, drunken prostitute out of
desperation. (For Fantine's plot in the novel details, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables because I'm too
lazy to recount the whole thing here.)