[HPforGrownups] Dark Magic WAS: Re:help with JKR quote/ Children's reactions

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 176802

lizzyben:
<snipped excellent Dark House depiction>

Which is the real house of "Dark Magic" here? House A or House B?
<grin>

Debbie:
Thanks for a delightfully entertaining picture of "House B." ;-)  What it
illustrates so well, and what JKR's comments about Slytherin seem not to
acknowledge, is that there are at least two sides to every story.  It's not
hard to view the Gryffindors as a bunch of arrogant hex-loving bullies whose
transgressions have the tacit, if not express, approval of the headmaster,
if one spends a few moments in Slytherin shoes.  Which is very easy to do
when she sorts into Slytherin a poorly dressed but brilliant outcast lacking
in social graces who is seeking the house of brains.

 Mike:
Sure, go ahead and write an alternate story too. As long as it's fair
game to remove all context from canon, we might as well argue that
Tom Riddle perceived a Dark Wizard was born to two of your former
House B students and attempted to save the world from his pre-
ordained reign of terror. Nice idea, why don't you write it? In the
meantime, I'll continue to debate the books JKR wrote. <evil grin>

Debbie:
But it's not an alternative story.  It's the same story, but from the POV of
a character who is not the author's POV character.  An author can't force a
reader to limit him/herself to the "official" POV.  If characters are well
drawn, readers are going to be sympathetic to different points of view.
Just because Harry doesn't see something in a certain way doesn't mean the
reader can't appreciate that POV.

JRK may have intended us to identify with the Gryffindors and to accept that
the Slytherins are and have always been the Bad House, but JKR has a talent
for making her punching bags into sympathetic characters.  They are not
cartoon cutouts who can be steamrollered and emerge unscathed a moment
later.  It's all too easy step outside of her POV box and step into the box
of the Other.

Perhaps I'm reading HP subversively by stepping out of the intended POV, but
her treatment of the residents of the supposedly evil house of Slytherin
seems to encourage me to do so.  And in the real world, being able to see
the other side's POV is a necessary first step in healing divisions.

lizzyben:
Knockturn Alley seems to have various "dark items", though this isn't
defined most of the time. It's probably the same kind of stuff they
found in the Black House. What I can't understand is what a "Dark
Wizard" actually *does* all day. For example, Orion Black, Sirius'
father is a "dark wizard". So... what? Does he go around all day using
jinxes & curses against people? I don't think so. What makes a dark
wizard dark? I don't think we ever get a real explanation.

Debbie:
I was wondering that myself.  The best I can come up with is that a dark
wizard either (a) spends his spare time dabbling in the darker forms of dark
magic (i.e., not practicing his Leg-Locker Curses or Bat-Bogey Hexes but
developing curses that cause harm that can't be remedied, or even worse,
that tamper with one's soul) or (b) don't believe in civil rights and are
willing to use Dark Magic to enforce their own views, or (c)supports wizards
who engage in (a) or (b).

Or, another explanation is that to James (and Sirius), Dark Wizard and
Slytherin are more or less synonymous.

Or,


lizzyben:
What IS consistent, IMO, is that jinxes,
hexes, & curses have always been presented as dark magic (both on her
website & in canon). Which fits in nicely w/a general scheme of "dark
magic" as violent, offensive or combative spells. And this means that
the good guys use dark magic often throughout the series.

Debbie:
Agreed.  And, moreover, it is expected that most, if not all wizards will
employ hexes, curses and the like at some point in their lives.  The WW is
presented as a more violent place than our world, perhaps because of the
ease with which the damage (if any) done by mild forms of dark magic can be
repaired.  A Jelly-Legs Curse is easily rectified by a counter-spell, and no
lasting harm is done.  Madam Pomfrey can mend many others in a trice.
Indeed, I would argue that one function of the DADA class is to train young
witches and wizards to handle and counteract such tomfoolery, because it
happens all the time.

To go back to the prior question, maybe the Gryffindors think that someone
is not a Dark Wizard unless they use powerful curses that have no antidote
and therefore have lasting effects (unless you are near Severus Snape, of
course).  Sectumsempra is one such curse, as is AK (which is kind of
permanent, yes?), as well as whatever curses were put on the Peverell ring
and the opal necklace.  Also, hexes or curses that cause insanity or purple
postules which Madam Pomfrey cannot fix.

 Perhaps one reason so many of us like Snape is that he was right all along
about Potter.  The fact that Potter's ultimate goal is the defeat of a Dark
Lord who warrants comparison with Adolf Hitler does not excuse him or his
gang from practicing dark magic.
  Prep0strus:
The founder placed a monster to kill people. The ghost is
a former murderer. The head of house is a nasty, angry man working
through his own repentance. Its most famous graduate is a monster
himself, as well as an attempted genocide. Its graduates that we have
met are participants in this movement. Its current students are
bullies and DE neophytes.

Perhaps there is a symbolic idea of repentance for Slytherin house,
but then it seems that no one else needs repentance, just Slytherins.
The Baron might be repentant, and therefore in some theological
views in moral equivalence with non-murderers, but from a story point
of view, JKR made the Slytherin ghost a murderer, finding another
opportunity to show us that Slytherins, from old to new, are worse
than everyone else.

Debbie:
But Christianity (at least my tradition) teaches that no one is worthy. The
faithful are not devoid of sin, but fail to meet expectations every day.
Perhaps that was JKR's point in making Harry use the Cruciatus Curse.  He is
not the Jesus of the Potterverse.  Harry is a human being with human
temptations, to which he sometimes succumbs.

In other words, everyone needs repentance.  Slytherins have more
temptations, but everyone is tempted.

Prep0strus:
I still think that Slytherins are the whipping boys for JKR, and for
the reader, but not necessarily for the Griffindors. She clearly
hasn't done a good enough job in showing what she expects us to
believe, but I think it's clear that the Slytherins DO deserve
whatever they get, and probably more. She scatters just enough
moments through the series to remind you that Draco takes something
away from helpless Neville, is plotting to kill the headmaster, etc.,
while the Griffindors act more in a more retaliatory manner, which
gives it the feel of being acceptable.

Debbie: Whether you think the Slytherins deserve what they get depends on
your views on vengeance and vigilante justice.  In my code of justice, we
don't hex people because they're bad people, for the same reason that our
justice system doesn't incarcerate people because they're bad and they're
going to harm us if we don't.

Slytherins have a bad rap as a group, so I'm not surprised their motto seems
to be that the best defense is a good offense.  In the long run, though,
this will just beget more violence, which is exactly what we saw in the
books.  Draco Malfoy went from trying to get the Trio punished in PS/SS for
being out of bounds to ethnic slurs in CoS to bearing false witness against
Buckbeak in PoA and eventually to scheming to kill the Headmaster in HBP.
And in between we had episodes like the train stomp in GoF.  Not even an eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but a stomp for a threat.

In the end, I don't think the Gryffindors are better than the Slytherins.
It's their circumstances that are different.

Debbie
who doesn't want to get started on how the cultish personal loyalties of
each group to their founders have skewed their judgment, but notes how the
Gryffindors were lucky in this regard


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