Slytherins are (*not* ) bad (was:Re: Severus as friend)

[lealess]

No: HPFGUIDX 183352

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
>
> Pippin:
<SNIP>
> 
> JKR does say that she believes people are innately good unless 
> they're very damaged. It's probably true that damaged people are 
> more welcome in Slytherin. But even that wouldn't make it true that 
> all Slytherins are damaged. 

Does JKR really say this? I wouldn't say that damaged people are
primarily sorted into Slytherin, or that they are even more welcome
there. Harry was almost sorted there only because of the piece of VM
in his head. Neville was a Gryffindor. I'm not even sure what
"damaged" has to do with the discussion, frankly.

> "Bad Guy" is a stereotype. But canon isn't divided into good people
> and Slytherins, it is at every moment divided into people who are
> choosing what is right and people who are choosing what is easy. JKR
> believes, and the books show, that it's easier to make that choice 
> if you're brave. 

JKR has warned female fans against falling for "bad boys," meaning
certain Slytherins, but let's not think she is stereotyping.

I agree that the good are not obviously good to you and me, but I
still think canon divides people into (1) "not a saint" but good and
(2) Slytherin. Most of the heroes are Gryffindor, the ones who save
the day. The Slytherins slither away, or fight alongside Voldemort.
Presumably, at any given moment, people choose, but their choices show
who they innately are. Narcissa betrays Voldemort, but only for her
son, not for the Greater Good. Snape devotes his life to Dumbledore's
cause, but only for his Lily, not for Dumbledore's Greater Good. Harry
and company, meanwhile, follow Dumbledore all the way. They might
get angry, but in the end, they remain true, and thus good.

> But she also shows that no House has a patent on bravery. Gryffindor
> believed that he should choose the bravest people for his house, and
> the hat tries to do this. But that doesn't stop other people from
> being brave.

Being brave does not make one good. It is recognizing and following
Good that makes one good.  Slytherins don't do this. Slytherins follow
personal ambition.  No House follows Good as well as Gryffindor.  It
seems to be an innate quality for them, the supposed noble chivalry,
lion-hearted thing.

> Anyway, the part of the brave is not to make everyone
> else as brave as they are (how could they?) but to use their courage
> to protect others, as the Cloak does.

Being brave does not lead to protecting others.  James faced Voldemort
wandless.  He was brave, but useless.  Harry said Voldemort's name and
landed the Trio in captivity.  He was brave, but careless.  Harry used
the cloak to undertake great mischief, often thinking he was doing
good.  He was brave, but he was pursuing his own obsessions, not
protecting others per se.  I can only imagine what James Potter used
the cloak for.

But even with the contradictions of how Gryffindors actually
behaved, I think the viewpoint of the books is that Gryffindors were
innately good. They were worthy to accompany Harry on his quest and to
stand by Harry in his "last moments" in the forest, after all. They
were good because they followed Dumbledore and understood the concept
of the Greater Good.

> > Magpie:
> > Why wouldn't the Hat be able look into your head and tell whether
> you have Pureblood? 
> 
> Pippin:
> There's not supposed to be any detectable physical or magical
> difference between people from all-magical families and everyone
> else. If there were, discrimination on that basis wouldn't be
> automatically be racist. It would be perfectly valid to have a House
> reserved for the different needs or abilities of those students, 
> IMO. 

I agree that bloodism is irrational. It is a made-up prejudice,
similar to real-life prejudices based on nothing but imagined
differences, designed to make one group feel superior to another. It
is made up of fear and lies, and justified by bogus fantasies.

> But bloodism in the WW is a bogus concept based on outmoded science,
> like phlogiston, or aether, or the Aryan bloodism which it parodies.
> If no one imagines there's a difference between the blood status of
> one wizard and another, it ought to be impossible for the hat to 
> pick the purebloods out, and Slytherin House will no longer be 
> swayed by that ideology. I understood that's what JKR meant by 
> saying that the pureblood influence was going to be diluted. 

The hat picks out people for whom blood purity is an important
concept, a defining ideal, not people who *are* purebloods because, as
you say, there may be no purebloods in reality.  There are only those
who define themselves as purebloods or aspire to purebloodedness, like
the Malfoys and Blacks, or those who have at a minimum a strong
anti-Muggle prejudice, like Tom Riddle and Snape.  If the person is
ambitious or cunning or inclined to break the rules by studying Dark
Magic, then the person goes to Slytherin.  If the person is bigoted,
but not as a predominant trait, the person could conceivably go to
another house.  Few are actually free of prejudice in the Wizarding
World, it seems.

Pureblood prejudice has nothing to do with actual blood and everything
to do with self-identification and the objectification of others.
Self-identification as special and objectification of others as lesser
were not eliminated in the Wizarding World of the epilogue. Far from
it.  Separation of houses still exists, prejudice based on house
selection still exists, the attitude of superiority to Muggles still
exists -- and in our lauded Gryffindors, no less. The prejudice
against Slytherin House, defined even at the end as the House of the
pureblood, seems not to have been diluted.  

I don't know what JKR meant when she said pureblood *influence* was
going to be diluted.  Maybe the pureblood myth will have less appeal
for the populace after Voldemort's violence.  Maybe it was discredited
as Aryan supremacy was discredited after World War II.  This doesn't
mean the Slytherins are better as a group, or that pureblood prejudice
has disappeared.

> Magpie"
> I think Alla's point still stands that saying "My school is going to
> be very academically challenging so you have to be a certain
> intellectual level to get in" is different than saying "No Jews." 

> Pippin:
> Not in the way you think <g>. You're not supposed to be able to
> increase your IQ by studying, OTOH anybody can become a 
> Jew-by-choice. But I personally as a Jew don't have a problem with a 
> school that excludes Jews because its mission is to teach members of 
> another faith, as long as the intent or the result isn't that Jews  
> receive an inferior education. That's not the case at Hogwarts. No 
> one is saying that Muggleborns at Hogwarts don't get the finest 
> magical education there is.
>
> Pippin
>

You can't change your IQ, perhaps, but you can be identified as having
a lower IQ by being a member of a certain group. Slytherins at
Hogwarts are identified as the house where everyone has the potential
to go bad. Because of that, Slytherins aren't offered the DADA
training that Harry gives to selected students, nor are any Slytherins
we know of offered membership in the Order of the Phoenix -- with the
notable exception of Snape, who nobody but Dumbledore trusted, and
only as far as he could keep Snape under his thumb and in the dark
about what was really going on.  Slytherins have to find other means
to respectability.  Pureblood ideology is a made-up means to achieve it.

I personally think Snape had great potential to be a good person, as
Draco may have had, but how do you explain why they went bad if not
for the fact that the hat recognized bigotry combined with ambition in
them and sorted them into Slytherin House?  I don't agree with the
Slytherin-everyone else divide in HP, but it persisted to the end of
the book, along with its continued pernicious effects.  Why, if the
author didn't think the model had some validity?

lealess