Villain!Dumbledore (was: re:HatingDH/Dementors/...Draco/.../KeepSlytherin Ho

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 177785

 
> Prep0strus:
> It's fine, I guess, for you to lump characters, readers, and the
> author all together as if they all have the same moral grounding.  And
> once JKR has put these books out into the world, people can read them
> however they want (and we certainly do). But I think it's a little
> silly to simply dismiss what she meant or was trying to do.  My
> original point, many days and posts ago, was that I felt JKR was using
> Slytherin to represent what she thought was wrong in the world.  And
> that while some characters in Slytherin have depth and have incurred
> sympathy, I don't think it rose to the level where we were supposed to
> think Slytherin was actually equal or good.  Therefore, it is not
> bigoted to look down on Slytherin, because you are only looking down
> on these wrong ideas.  Has she done this very well? I think not. I
> think there are many flaws.

zgirnius:
Rowling has spoken extensively on her intentions regarding Slytherin 
House, and her statements seem inconsistent with your theory on what 
she intends. Personally, I prefer to read a book, see what it says, and 
decide what it means without either peculating what the author 
intended, or relying on her statements to decide what the book means. 

However, if we are going to speculate on what she intends, I'd say what 
she claims to intend is a good place to start. Here's an excerpt from 
an interview she gave in 2005 (ES=Emerson Spartz).

> ES: Why is Slytherin house still –

> JKR: Still allowed!

> [All laugh]

> ES: Yes! I mean, it's such a stigma.

> JKR: But they're not all bad. They literally are not all bad. 
[Pause.] 

zgirnius:
"They are literally not all bad". In other words, in Rowling's mind 
there exists a Slytherin who is not bad. It follows that the opinion 
that this Slytherin character is bad because s/he is a Slytherin, is 
therefore both incorrect and based on prejudice.

Resuming where I so rudely interrupted our esteemed author...

> JKR: Well, the deeper answer, the non-flippant answer, would be that 
you have to embrace all of a person, you have to take them with their 
flaws, and everyone's got them. It's the same way with the student 
body. If only they could achieve perfect unity, you would have an 
absolute unstoppable force, and I suppose it's that craving for unity 
and wholeness that means that they keep that quarter of the school that 
maybe does not encapsulate the most generous and noble qualities, in 
the hope, in the very Dumbledore-esque hope that they will achieve 
union, and they will achieve harmony. Harmony is the word.

> ES: Couldn't —

> JKR: Couldn't they just shoot them all? NO, Emerson, they really 
couldn't!

> [All laugh]

> ES: Couldn't they just put them into the other three houses, and 
maybe it wouldn't be a perfect fit for all of them, but a close enough 
fit that they would get by and wouldn't be in such a negative 
environment?

> JKR: They could. But you must remember, I have thought about this —

> ES: Even their common room is a gloomy dark room—

> JKR: Well, I don't know, because I think the Slytherin common room 
has a spooky beauty.

> ES: It's gotta be a bad idea to stick all the Death Eaters' kids 
together in one place.

> [All crack up again ]

> JKR: But they're not all — don't think I don't take your point, but — 
we, the reader, and I as the writer, because I'm leading you all there —
 you are seeing Slytherin house always from the perspective of Death 
Eaters' children. They are a small fraction of the total Slytherin 
population. I'm not saying all the other Slytherins are adorable, but 
they're certainly not Draco, they're certainly not, you know, Crabbe 
and Goyle. They're not all like that, that would be too brutal for 
words, wouldn't it?

> ES: But there aren't a lot of Death Eater children in the other 
houses, are there?

> JKR: You will have people connected with Death Eaters in the other 
houses, yeah, absolutely.

> ES: Just in lesser numbers.

> JKR: Probably. I hear you. It is the tradition to have four houses, 
but in this case, I wanted them to correspond roughly to the four 
elements. So Gryffindor is fire, Ravenclaw is air, Hufflepuff is earth, 
and Slytherin is water, hence the fact that their common room is under 
the lake. So again, it was this idea of harmony and balance, that you 
had four necessary components and by integrating them you would make a 
very strong place. But they remain fragmented, as we know.

zgirnius:
The idea that Slytherin has something positive to contribute 
is "Dumbledoresque". Whatever one may think of the character post-DH, 
pre-DH this is the character she called an "epitome of good". So it 
seems to me she is endorsing this position regarding the houses as 
morally correct (if idealistic). And, returning to the books, which is 
what interests me, this is what I see in DH. Evidence, long kept from 
us, of the *correctness* of the view that Slytherin, too, has much we 
can value, through showing us more about the usual Slytherin suspects 
and revealing their strenghts along with the flaws that have been 
showcased all along.

Pureblood supremacy was championed by Salazar Slytherin, and more 
recently by Tom Riddle and his followers. It is not, however, a 
selection criterion for Slytherin House, unless the Hat has 
consistently forgotten to mention this fact in all its songs. It is 
just an idea with some support in wizarding society broadly, which has 
historically received more support and emphasis in that house. Looking 
down on all members of the house is not the same as repudiating the 
pureblood ideology, any more than looking down on white Southerners in 
the US would have been a repudiation of racism after the Civil War.