Wands and Wizards...Again

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 183648

> > Magpie:
> > But Luke clearly recognizes exactly what you're talking about 
where 
> > Harry doesn't.
> 
> Pippin:
> 
> 
>  What about the crowd pleaser moments that came before, when Luke 
used
> Vader's signature move to break into Jabba's Palace, and  when he 
blew
> up the sail-barge even though Jabba was already dead? There were a
> bunch of slaves, dancers and musicians who may not have wanted to be
> there any more than Han did. What did they ever do? But hey, I 
cheered
> as loud as anybody.

Magpie:
That's what I said, that the Crucio was a cheering moment. 

But if we're talking about the scene with Vader, that's all about 
building to whether Luke is going to go over to the Dark Side by 
killing Vader because he's angry and hates him.  SW hammers this idea 
for its hero, HP doesn't. I'm absolutely fine saying that Harry's 
Crucioing Amycus is like Luke blowing up the barge (of course as a 
Jedi he wouldn't torture--that's why people are always stuck on that 
Crucio, because it's the torture curse). But then compare it to that 
scene. It doesn't match up with the scene with Vader. Going over to 
the Dark Side isn't a theme for Harry the way it is for Luke. HP 
doesn't encompass SW (and SW doesn't encompass HP). 

Pippin: 
> Maybe I'm the only one who thought about that sometime after I'd 
left
> the theater, and maybe I'm not,  but it doesn't change the moral
> lesson one bit.  What Luke needed to learn was not that he shouldn't
> kill  unless he had to. He knew that. What he had to learn was that 
if
> he let his mind fill with anger and fear, he'd kill whether he had 
to
> or not.  

Magpie:
And Harry learned other stuff. Harry's mind filling with anger and 
fear and making him kill whether he wants to or not and basically 
becoming Voldemort is not really a danger. 

HP and SW have very opposing views on anger and vengeance, after all. 
They also lead to the opposite ending--Luke can feel the good in 
Vader, calls to him as his father and saves Anakin. Riddle's a 
psychopath and all the taunting to feel some remorse isn't going to 
make him feel it.

Pippin: 
> When Snape shouts at Lily "in his humiliation and his fury, the
> unforgivable word" that's the same lesson, IMO. We know Harry gets 
it,
> because he changes his analysis of what happens. He no longer 
believes
> that Snape called Lily a mudblood because he hated her.

Magpie:
How does Snape calling Lily a slur that he calls all other 
Muggleborns teach Harry that he himself is in danger of being filled 
with anger or fear or he'll become evil? Harry figured out that Snape 
didn't call Lily a Mudblood because he hated her because he found out 
Snape adored her and was her friend and lost her because he got into 
DE stuff. (Harry would never call Hermione a Mudblood.) When Harry 
saw the memory the first time he had no reason to think Snape really 
hated Lily personally, just that he was a Pureblood supremist so 
hated any Muggleborn. Snape was eaten up by his hatred but Harry 
wasn't. Harry saw an object lesson in somebody else. (I mean, of 
course Snape was eaten up by hatred. He was Snape. That was clear in 
the first book. Peter was eaten up by cowardice.) Harry was never 
going to become a DE. Luke might have become a Sith Lord. 

Pippin:
> The adjective throws us back to Harry's unforgivable curse. Maybe 
> McGonagall did think Harry was being gallant in an unironic sense,
> though the italics make me doubt it. But it doesn't matter.   
> 
> Whether the reader sees it in this example or not, the larger lesson
> is this, as Yoda might put it: Rage and humiliation not make one 
gallant. 

Magpie:
If Luke had used the Force to torture Yoda would have stopped him and 
said "NO" and taken it very seriously since it's laid out as a huge 
danger. Why would the message of a reliable, good character saying 
something is gallant (even if she's still shocked by it and has more 
to say before Dirty Harry cuts her off) be that Harry's just done 
something extremely ungallant?

 
> > Magpie:
> > These sound like very reasonable things for JKR to think, but I
> don't  see where she's dramatizing these things in the scenes we're
> talking  about. You still seem to be saying that by showing Harry
> looking cool  using the torture curse, or by happily enjoying his
> slave labor who  loves him, JKR is giving us reasons to be against
> torture or slavery  in those scenes. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Harry is a happy slave-owner whose non-human slave feels greatly
> honored to serve him. That has little to do with human slavery as we
> know it, because most human slaves don't see slavery as a great
> honor. The hypothetical slave-owner reading the books is in a
> better position than we to know that. 
 
>  It's like if you were to dramatize your opposition to capital
> punishment by showing a parade of prisoners tearfully confessing,
> saying how honored they are to pay the price for their crimes, and
> happily throwing themselves into the noose.

Magpie:
I thought you were saying that JKR was making a statement against 
slavery with the elves. Or were you just saying that JKR in real life 
wants us to dislike slavery but isn't making that point in the books 
with the house elves?

I don't have a problem with JKR creating this situation with non-
humans for whatever reason. I just think that's what it is--slavery 
with a lot of the things that make people uncomfortable removed a lot 
of the time, and the last shot of it we see is fairly positive. It 
conforms to some of the arguments for human slavery that were lies. 
(I think if this were read by a 19th century slaveowner they'd 
probably take the House Elves as fine stand-ins for human slaves.) I 
still don't think JKR supports human slavery. (I also don't think 
that slavery becomes okay if the slave thinks it's an honor--not that 
all the house elves we see in canon always do think it's an honor.)

Montavilla47:
I'm hard pressed to find an enemy to prove that Harry would have
saved an enemy's life before he saves Draco from the fire. But
I don't think that proves that he wouldn't have.

Magpie:
He saves Dudley at the beginning of OotP after he's just been 
fighting with him.

-m