DH as Christian Allegory

[nitalynx]

No: HPFGUIDX 173537

Anders:

> > How would you suggest she should have portrayed "the bad guys" to the
> > readers? She had to make some type of distinction to move the story
> > along. I didn't read her description of Bellatrix as a slur against
> > any particular ethnic group,


Nita:

Well, there's this radical idea... How about making the bad guys
distinguishable from the good guys by their - actions? If the
antagonist is a sadistic torturer / cruel bully / sociopathic
murderer, why is there a need to add more superficial negative
qualities to make the character *really* bad?



Sydney:

> It's very hard to express what I mean here.. of course there's no slur
> in the HP series against any particular ethnic group.  But Rowling
> borrows the language, she borrows the imagery, and she borrows the
> mindset, that in the past was constructed and used by actual bigots,
> and then she creates a group in her world and and applies it all to
> them.  That we are nice and they are bad;  they are animal-like,
> monkey-like, bat-like, troll-like;  it's okay when we do it;  those
> people ALWAYS do that.  She uses and she uses it, she uses it's power
> over the tribalism in the human soul, and in the end she validates it. 


Nita:

The similarities may be there simply because both real-life bigotry
and the authorial treatment of Slytherins include some intense, almost
over the top "othering". If you keep throwing every bad quality you
can think of into the characterization of the Other, the end result
will be pretty much the same no matter what the Other originally was
(within a given cultural context, obviously).

I still don't understand how she managed not to notice it, however.
It's not exactly subtle... But it might be like her fat jokes in the
books and anti-anorexia statements on her website, I suppose.


Nita