Gryffindor & Slytherin roles (was Villain!Dumbledore)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 177746

> > 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.  

Magpie:
I assure you I didn't mean anybody who didn't see it couldn't 
understand it--those are two different things. I understand the 
objections of people who wanted more mourning, I just didn't see the 
same problem. But to me it's not pseudo-psychological or Freudian or 
laid onto the text. It is the text. I don't need to look to Freud or 
symbolism or subtext when it looks like text to me. I can't read 
this set up with the Slytherins and not see it as this because 
that's just what I've seen happening all along and still do--it's 
just a question of whether or not it's going to be acknowledged or 
not, and it's not. I see this huge society that's got 
institutionalized elitism from top to bottom, permeating everything, 
and fighting with Slytherin just reads like a ritual to me more than 
any honest tackling of the problem of bigotry. (And no, I don't put 
Slytherin on the "have not" side of elitism--they're wizards. 
They're part of the elite.)

Jen: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:
That makes it rude for me to talk about what I see in the books, 
unfortunately, because saying what I honestly see becomes telling 
strangers something about their own self-awareness and bigotry, of 
which I know nothing. It's still what I honestly see. I wish it 
didn't translate into a personal insult, or calling other people 
racists, or challenging anyone's personal claim of never being 
racist at all. But I find it impossible to talk about this aspect of 
the book without doing that apparently. That's what I see in the 
text. I am not speculating on why some other reader I don't know 
sees it or not. Because they can't see their own prejudices? I don't 
know--prejudices against who, since everybody in this book is 
fictional? 

It doesn't seem to me to have to do with not realizing anything, but 
just flatly disagreeing. But that's still the way I see the text. 
And I don't know how to get around it since this has been stated out 
as the wider difference of opinon about the world as well. When I 
talk about bigotry, I think it's part of being a regular person in a 
society with inequalities. Especially if you're part of the dominant 
group and so don't have to think about race. 

 
> 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. 

Magpie:
I didn't say they were forced into their place by anybody but the 
author who created them as actual bigots and then created a house 
where these characters were correctly and enthusiastically Sorted. 
I'm not painting the Slytherins as maligned victims, but I am saying 
that yeah, to me they're a handy scapegoat for this fictional 
society that they need. (They seem to totally ENJOY being this 
scapegoat as well. The way they're seen by others is exactly the way 
they are. If Slytherins were real people I would absolutely suspect 
that I wasn't getting the real story, but they're not real. They're 
entirely made up to be exactly this. Why would anyone want to be in 
Slytherin? It's a mystery to me. Don't ask me to fathom how a 
Slytherin's mind works.)

Other people don't discriminate against Slytherins--they're right to 
think about Slytherins the way they do. They correctly see what's 
wrong with them. They spend no time at all thinking about what's 
wrong in themselves (and get a lot of spontaneous outside validation 
that they're exceptionally great just as they are). They're not 
bigots at all, because they're not Death Eaters. Many of the things 
that look like examples of bigotry to me, albeit a less violent 
kind, don't seem to count. 

I can't read the book from the pov of somebody secure in not being 
bigoted at all, because I'm not secure in that. When I'm reading 
along in a book that holds up bigotry as the central issue of evil, 
I'm on the lookout for it. And in years in the HP fandom--strictly 
anecdotal here of course--but I've read far more defenses of what I 
consider bigotry (albeit a milder, less deadly kind) inspired by 
this series--not one of the things I appreciate the books for. They 
don't deal much with the whys of bigotry since most of the normal 
characters in the book don't struggle with it. The people they look 
down on (and "looking down on" doesn't have to imply being mean to, 
harassing or killing) they do correctly or with noblesse oblige. 
Reading about the Slytherins doesn't give me much to go on in terms 
of the psycholgy of bigotry, since their inner lives and thoughts 
aren't much gone into, and their bigotry almost gets lost in their 
overall badness besides. And also in my experience in fandom--again 
totally anecdotally, but I've certainly read this argument many 
times--if a reader likes a particular Slytherin, their bigotry often 
becomes not really bigotry in their eyes.

I've still no idea of the historical background about how Wizards 
feel about Muggle-borns, or any real sense of how they're viewed by 
anybody but psychotic DEs. It makes sense they would frighten them: 
Wizards base their entire identities on having magic so have good 
reason to be terrified of anything that reminds them how close they 
are to Muggles, imo. Yet even when the WW is finally taken over by 
LV I didn't have a sense of it--the anti-Muggle-born stuff didn't 
build on anything we'd heard from Draco (our mouthpiece for the 
Pureblood view) and introduced an entirely new and fantastic (even 
by WW standards) idea of a Muggle being able to "steal" a Wizard's 
magic. Did anyone really believe that? It sounded like something the 
MoM came up with at the last minute because they had to say 
something. Anti-Muggle-born or anti-Slytherin prejudice (if one 
thinks there is such a thing) is still in-fighting within the same 
group. These are all kids who are Wizards and go to Hogwarts. 

In the end, to paraphrase Dan Hemmings, I don't think the fictional 
world is used here to explore bigotry much at all, but rather 
bigotry is used to explore the world. I know the word "Mudblood" is 
bad because it's like calling somebody a racial slur in the real 
world, and I relied on the real world to explain why things were 
happening in the WW more and more in DH. I don't get it from the 
context of the story--it just is.

Jen:
> 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. 

Magpie:
Actually, buying into the pureblood supremacy idea doesn't mean 
joining with Voldemort. We've seen some examples of Slytherins who 
buy into Pureblood supremacy but don't join Voldemort. But still as 
usual, the best Slytherins are almost always dead or not appearing 
as such.

Jen:
> 
> 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.  

Magpie:
No, my assumption is that people fighting against something 
prejudicial and wrong will surely think bad things and do wrong 
things. What I don't see is any acknowledgement that they are really 
doing or thinking anything very wrong. Their view of the situation 
seems to me to be totally correct with any slip ups fairly 
inconsequential or the natural mistake of someone on the right path. 
They're just not very self-reflective at all, and are never much 
challenged with different povs. In the end they're pretty much 
right. They also don't seem built to be defended from this kind of 
scutiny rather than invite it. 

This doesn't at all mean that they have to act a certain way to 
stand up against evil actions. It means that *I* am less interested 
in heroes that don't have to learn anything or grow (especially when 
I see places where they could), and also that I still don't consider 
this story to say much about bigotry. I think the Slytherins and Tom 
Riddle could have been slapped with a completely different center of 
evil and the story would work the same way, and while this specific 
group of tyrants have been defeated, I don't see much in the way of 
a greater victory for the world.

Jen: 
> 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! 

Magpie:
Actually I do think something like Marietta says a lot more about 
how evil evolves than Draco's father approving the attempted torture 
and murder of a 14 year old in a graveyard, at least to me. The 
latter is more evil, but I'm not seeing it evolving at all. By 
contrast, I saw how the Marietta thing happened and understood 
Hermione's mindset. I saw how Hermione and her friends reacted to 
it. Lucius is already an extreme bad guy, and his actions aren't 
presented as a good thing. Perhaps if I'd seen him back in his fifth 
year I'd see more danger signs that would show which way he was 
going--or else he'd be telegraphing it already like his other house 
members.


-m