HP as escapist children's literature (was Harry's DADA skill)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 182733

Jerri:
> My question (to Julie or to anyone who can help) is how do you get 
> yourself to do this?  Ever since DH, when I found my expectations of 
> the HP series as a whole were destroyed, I have been trying to
regain  my delight in the HP series as the children's story which I
have  decided it actually was.  I have been struggling with this.  I
miss my  delight and enthusiasm.
<snip>
> 
> It seems to me that JKR had some areas in which she did think things 
> through, plan things, intend to have deep meanings, etc.  But lots of 
> other areas she just did what seemed like a good idea at the time. 
> And I can't get the two areas sorted out in my mind.
> 

Pippin:
I can only speak for myself, but I think we adult readers are meant to
become disenchanted, not just with the Potterverse but with what we
might call the consensus  universe of modern fantasy:  archaic social
structures,  one-dimensional characters and most of all the escape
from moral complexity. No Tolkien characters  ever had to look at what
they'd done and ask if they were  any better than Sauron --  either
they are, or they no longer care. 

Now, JKR isn't saying that escapism is wrong, IMO, but at least I
think she'd like her adult readers to understand that it *is* escapism
-- that life in such a place would not be nearly as nice as we like to
imagine it would be, not if the populace  bore any resemblance to
actual human beings. 

I think that like Terry Pratchett JKR has taken the world of magical
heroes and tried to imagine how it would work if it were populated by
real people instead of one-dimensional archetypes. 

But JKR takes it further. Pratchett heroes can be Machiavellian,
cowardly, manipulative, clueless, close-minded etc, but always for
comic effect, never to the point where the reader starts to lose
respect for them.

 JKR dared to cross that line, and so we have  choices: 

a)We can lose our respect for the heroes, and with it all delight in
their victory and the world they saved.

b)We can read with the innocent heart of a child, making no more
demands  than a child would make. To a child, IMO, Harry's crucio is
Harry's crucio -- it's neither a commentary on the permissibility of
torture in the real world, nor an unforgivable thing for which there
has to be some consequence. To the child, IMO, the story does not need
to say whether Harry made a mistake and learned better, or whether he
was right in the first place. Harry came out all right, and so he must
have made whatever the child thinks the right choices would be,
because that's the way it works in stories.

c) We can put moral blinkers on and overlook  behavior that would
otherwise be egregious (and it's scary how easily we adults can do
this when it's a character we want to admire.) Children, of course,
are notoriously less willing to pretend that the emperor's not naked.

Or, and this is what I believe what JKR is hoping we will do

d)We can forgive. 

 We have the opportunity to be like Dumbledore and hand out second
chances knowing full well that our mercy might be abused, knowing that
we might be fools, not even knowing whether there's any chance of
repentance or remorse. That's not easy.

But that's the way it is for grownups. Children in their innocence
believe that  doing the right thing is easy for good people, and only
hard for bad ones.  Adults understand that to be good often requires
doing what is hard, and that sometimes despite our best intentions, we
may fail. But for the adult, IMO, that doesn't make us bad -- it only
makes us human.

Pippin