Victory for TEWWW EWWW

[lizzyben04]

No: HPFGUIDX 173188

 
> houyhnhnm:
> > This quote might make a little more sense in context 
> (I can't seem to find it).  Right now it has me a little
> confused about Rowling's moral philosophy.  If a hero 
> is someone who acts out of principle rather than personal 
> concerns, who is a hero in Rowling's books?
> 
> Not even Harry (although I liked Harry better in DH than 
> in any book since PS).  When Dumbledore lauded him for 
> never being tempted by the Dark Arts, his response was, 
> "Of course I haven't.  He killed my mom and dad."
> 
> Harry is motivated by vengeance for his parents.  
> Neville is motivated by vengeance for his parents.  
> (Hermione's actions towards her parents is the ultimate 
> EWWWW for me.)  I can't think of a single character 
> for whom the driving force was not personal affection 
> for a child, a friend, a spouse, or a benefactor. Who, 
> in all the seven books, is motivated by principle?
> 
> Rowling has made it abundantly clear that for her, 
> loyalty and affection at the merely personal level 
> are the highest good.   So why, even now, does she 
> withold her full approbation from the character who 
> embodies her values more than any other?  Because 
> Snape is the Other.  He was born to be The Other 
> and nothing he could have done would have changed that.
> Rowling, in the end, is unable to do without an Other
> to devalue and stigmatize.  
> 
> EWWWW is right!
>

lizzyben:

I think JKR has a secret that she is desperately worried that readers
will figure out; so worried that she has to tear down Snape at every
possible opportunity, loudly proclaim how *horrible* he is, how his
sacrifices & actions are never heroic, how he's unloveable, how he's
against everything she values & believes in. The secret is, JKR is
Snape. And she knows it. She's just worried we'll realize it too. Oh,
I'm onto you, JKR. 

For all her talk about how she values Gryffindor qualities of courage,
bravery, etc., deep down, JKR is worried that she's a Slytherin at
heart. So she takes all her worst qualities, assigns them to a house
of evil, and rejects them as evil & unredeemable. She tries to
distance herself from this "evil", claiming it's totally opposite to
who she is, wanting only to quietly cut this house off as the
projected "other" that represents everything wrong, everything she
hates in herself. 

Snape, as head of Slytherin, is the ultimate representative of those
qualities, so she hates him the most. JKR has stated that Hermione &
Dumbledore come from herself, and qualities she herself has.
Well, so does Snape. He, like JKR, worked as a school teacher for many
years. He, like JKR, is surrounded by children every day, and spends
his days cooking, teaching, guarding. Except Snape gets to
express all the horrible things JKR would think, but could never say
aloud. His impatience, his temper, his bitterness at wasting his
creativity & brilliance at a job teaching incompetents, his anger &
deep hatreds, his smothered pathetic longing for love & affection, his
resentments & cruelty - that's all JKR; it's all of her worst
qualities united in one character. Snape is everything she hates about
herself. No wonder she rejects him. How could anyone value, love or
accept those qualities?

It's classic shadow projection. Snape's her shadow. And JKR's ego
can't handle acknowledging or integrating those facets of herself, so
she projects them onto another, a scapegoat, that she can distance
from herself & destroy. Now, a courageous novelist would have found a
way to integrate & accept this shadow figure into the work. (I.E.,
Harry & Snape collaborating, Draco helping the Trio, Slytherins
working w/the other houses to stop the Death Eaters.) But JKR does
not. Instead, she finally manages to shut Snape up, & allows her
idealized heroes to take the forefront. She lets Snape die horribly
w/o ever confronting or communicating w/Harry. She lets the Slytherins
run away before the last battle w/o ever integrating w/the rest of the
school. And then ends the novel with a lame platitude about how
Slytherins aren't all bad (except they are). It is a pretty good
novel, but JKR so bungled the ending that it practically ruins the
whole thing. It's like she was simply afraid to go there, afraid to
risk her ego to get some emotional truth. 

And the implications of JKR's world-view are pretty bleak. She really
was interested in creating stereotypes, not overcoming them; in
dehumanizing the "other", not accepting it. And when I think of how
many horrible things have come from dehumanizing the other, it makes
this series seem almost malicious. Because in her novels, some people
*are* considered "less human" than others, simply because of a
convenient label, and this means that anything the hero does to the
"less human" group is A-OK. 

And that's just scary. Because this is the same kind of mindset
that leads to genocides or persecution of minority groups in real
life. JKR condemns this mindset when it comes to Muggles, yet tacitly
supports it for Slyths. So torturing Slyths is totally justified! JKR
condemns the "Muggle-born Registration Commission", but she'd probably
be OK w/a "Slytherin-born Registration Commission" & not even see the
irony. I've lost so much respect for JKR after this novel.
She'll preach superficial lessons in tolerance & understanding, but
when it comes to really understanding & integrating differences, she
refuses. She would rather cut off & attempt to destroy those qualities
in herself, and attempt to cut off a whole segment of the population
as less human. And that's beyond scary. 

lizzyben


    "We still attribute to the other fellow all the evil and inferior
qualities that we do not like to recognize in ourselves, and therefore
have to criticize and attack him, when all that has happened is that
an inferior "soul" has emigrated from one person to another. The world
is still full of betes noires and scapegoats, just as it formerly
teemed with witches and werewolves" 

C. G. Jung