Slytherins as jews WAS: Re: DH as Christian Allegory/I am about to rant

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 173560

> Alla:
> 
> Here, I guess I misunderstood in part. I totally keep hearing that 
> Slytherins are being prejudiced again and this is how bigotry works 
> from this thread in general.

Magpie:
I know some people are feeling that Slytherins are prejudiced 
against, but I think what Sydney said about it was that she *thought* 
this storyline would end with some real education for the heroes 
where they saw they had contributed to the problem through 
misunderstanding etc. But that's not what happened, so the feelings 
about the house didn't say anything about how bigotry works. It more 
said: this is what bad people look like.

Alla: 
> But no, I see Slytherins as close to Natzis, as possibly could be. 
I 
> mean, they are not real, obviously, but Muggle born registration 
> commission gives me very real metaphors.
> 
> So, I guess it all boils down to this - what antisemitic 
stereotypes 
> you see depicted in Slytherins besides Snape hooked nose?

Magpie:
I think Sydney summed them up well in her original post:

Sydney:
a population characterized by 'ambition' and
'cunning', they are often described as having 'greedy' expressions.
They always seem to be in positions of power and have more money than
seems right. They're not admitted into certain clubs and quite right
too. They can't be trusted-- their loyalties are not those of the rest
of society. In a war they will probably run or switch sides or try to
profit from the suffering of others. They manipulate the government
from behind the scenes to their own purposes, using money and mesmeric
powers. They keep themselves to themselves and never fit in; who they
are seems to be partly by birth-- established by nasty inbreeding--,
partly by belief, and partly by some invisible taint.

They killed Harry Potter and refused to accept his Salvation.

What does a House like this sound like to you? A House associated with
reptiles and ghettoes like Nocturn Alley? A House whose Founder has a
'monkey-like' face and a name that's suspiciously foreign? A House
with sinister ties to Eastern Europe? Whose Head-- redeemed only by a
passion, presented as kind of creepy and wrong, for a woman on the
'pure' side-- has greasy black hair and a freakin' *hooked nose*??!

Magpie:
It's not a description of Jews, but it is rather a mish-mosh of the 
stereotypes. I admit, the moment Pansy stood up and fingered Harry, I 
thought that was the nail in the coffin (and things are supposed to 
get better after this series? Yipes!). It's not even a coherent 
pattern of stereotypical traits. There's a mixture of things that are 
probably from different time periods, but they all work because 
they're all about an enemy within.


Alla:> 
> I mean, I think I also misunderstood something else - I thought 
> Sydney was making a point that not only Slytherins are being 
> portrayed as antiJewish stereotypes, BUT what Potterverse heroes 
> **do** to them can be seen as what was done to Jews. If I imagined 
> that part of the argument, sorry about that, because that I am 
> having even bigger problems seeing than Slytherins being 
> stereotypically portrayed.

Magpie:
I'm not sure she meant that. It seemed like she was ultimately 
disappointed that this wasn't the case at all, that the view we had 
of the Slytherins was completely correct and the heroes didn't need 
to ally with them. They just have to treat them magnanimously while 
they have to deal with them.

> Alla:
> 
> Yes, again I get that this is not the accusation of Rowling being 
> antisemitic, I do. I guess I do not see the problem of depicting 
> *Evil* as other, you know? True evil, I mean, not people who are 
> really not. Wait, wait I think I got it, my another problem, I mean.

Magpie:
I don't think the problem is making Evil the other, it's making Evil 
the other by making people the other. As someone else said, other 
fantasy sometimes gets around this by using monsters. Here it's a 
group of people. (People that the author will even happily say are 
like those you will meet in real life so here's how to deal with 
them. But even without that I wouldn't like that set up.)

Alla: 
> You are saying that you are thinking that in her story Slytherins 
> are playing same role as stereotypical Jews could have been playing 
> in the medieval story, yes?
> 
> I suppose the reason why I am not seeing the **parallels** is 
> because to me as a person it is clear now that the role that those 
> jews characters, steretypical or not were supposed to portray was 
> incorrect, you know?
> 
> Does it make sense or am I totally confused you?

Magpie:
It seems like you're saying that even if the Slytherins are playing 
the same role as the Jews might have played if this were a medieval 
story, that it doesn't matter because Slytherins are totally 
fictional and so have no real-life counterparts that would suffer for 
it? 

Alla: 
> Like despite the assertions that it is so, Jews were not eating 
> christian babies for dinner and all that crap, Slytherins on the 
> hand **ARE** doing everything they had been accused of. Slytherins 
> DE I mean, but it seems that Slytherins and DE are pretty much the 
> same, no? That part I do find unfortunate, but it is different from 
> your POV, no?

Magpie:
Yes, I think the difference we have is that we both agree that 
Slytherins (who are totally fictional) turn out to really be doing 
this stuff while Jews (who are real) most certainly were not doing 
those things. For me I don't like the role in itself whether the 
characters are based on real people or not. I think either way it 
says something ugly about the world and supports doing it to real 
people more than another premise might. Of course I'm not claiming 
that Rowling is making people run out and treat anyone badly, but she 
is putting across a story of good and evil and this helps me see it 
as being a good story about that idea. She's not saying anything 
against the idea of identifying the Slytherins in your world. 

Alla: 
> Like if you are saying that you are seeing stereotypes in 
> Slytherins, my question is how they can be stereotypes if 
> stereotypes are usually do not come true? Or am I totally confused 
> myself?

Magpie:
I think the stereotypes have a life of their own. But regardless, my 
problem isn't just places where things might happen to reflect other 
stereotypes but the whole way it's set up. It all seems to be saying 
stuff about good and evil I find icky. I find it easiest to talk 
about it in terms of the real life ideas that it reminds me of, but I 
just didn't like it in the story. I didn't like the ending 
configuration we wound up with. The stereotype connection gives an 
idea of why this kind of scenario isn't great, imo, but I don't like 
it on its own.

-m