Gryffindor & Slytherin roles (was Villain!Dumbledore)

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 177744

> Magpie:
> I think the misunderstanding here is that it's kind of slippery, 
> sometimes being meta and outside the text, but reflecting inside
> the text as well. 

Jen: It's not that I don't understand the argument, it's that I don't 
buy it!  It reads to me now as a pseudo-psychological Freudian thing 
laid over the text, requiring outside source material to grasp the 
argument when really the complexity is found in the source material 
itself or the in the arguments about religion, psychology or race 
relations.  It grows in the retelling, excluding more and more of the 
actual text, until two months post-DH the argument doesn't even 
include much from the story anymore except in a very removed way.  
That's how it reads to me now.  The core the argument is pretty 
simple as far as I can tell: Slytherins are really the inferior ones, 
scapegoated by the dominant superior class and allowed to stick 
around so others have a whipping boy.  Only no one realizes this 
because they can't see their own prejudices.

Magpie:
> Within the text, it's not that the good guys are being mean to 
> Slytherin, it's that they've got this weird scapegoat class--and 
> within the reality of this universe, the scapegoating actually
> works (supposedly) and is true. The Slytherins are different from 
> they are, they (Slytherin) are the ones who are bigoted. You attack
> bigotry by attacking the bigots (those other people, not us), not 
> by looking at the bigotry within yourself. It's a total disconnect,
> and for many of us looks like projection.

Jen:  This is something that doesn't really hold up the argument for 
me.  The idea is inferior kids are tracked into Slytherin house, 
segregated, and then become the source of bigotry and hatred the rest 
of the school.  And yet, there's really no definable way for how this 
plays out, how they are forced into their place.  There are counter-
examples that this occurs in fact.  It also strikes me as a dominant-
group argument:  'If you people would only look at yourselves and how 
you've wronged us from the start by segregating us and forcing us to 
be bad people (when those of us with purebloodist leanings actually 
chose Slytherin house to begin with because we think it superior or 
our parents told us we'd be in it from birth), then we wouldn't have 
to torture and kill you.'  

It's also plainly not true that all Slytherins buy into pureblood 
supremacy.  There are main characters as well as background 
characters who don't live this out, including the obvious omission 
that Voldemort would have a huge army if every Slytherin leaving 
school since he first rose to power believed in his agenda.  

The assumption I hear in the argument is that those who are fighting 
against something prejudicial and wrong should never think bad 
thoughts or do wrong things or feel self-righteous indignation or any 
human behavior that's an honest negative expression of what such a 
situation engenders.  It reads that way even if it's not intended and 
I find it a troubling view, that victims have to walk and talk and 
act a certain way in order to be somehow worthy of rising up against 
evil actions.  

Because evil actions do abound in the story that are a lot more 
bothersome than Marietta or Draco on the train for me, yet incidents 
like that seem to be thrust in the forefront as if they actually tell 
me more about how evil evolves more than the rather horrifying idea 
of a classmate's father approving of the attempted torture and murder 
of a 14 yr. old in a graveyard!  It's like apples and oranges, and no 
amount of sophisticated exposition has proven otherwise to me.   

I knew Draco wasn't really *bad*; he jeers, he heckles, he taunts, he 
schemes...but in the end, when he has a chance to really hurt Harry 
or do something twisted and evil to Harry on the train, he stomps on 
his face and hand and leaves him on the train to go back to London.  
It's something I bought into while reading the story so I could enjoy 
finding out how his trajectory would end in Harry's eyes, and I 
wasn't disappointed by DH - Draco and Harry aren't the same two boys 
who met in Madame Malkins *to me*, and that's all I can say with 
certainty.

Jen