James and Sirius - "Coolness"

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182781

Niru wrote:
> 
> I agree with Mike. "Coolness" as percieved by the average teenager 
> does appear to require some arrogance. 

Carol responds:
"Perceived as." Right. My point, which was lost in the snipping, was
that *Harry's* perception of "coolness" changes as the series
progresses. And he's under no delusion that James's and Sirius's
behavior in SWM is cool. He's deeply distressed by his father's
behavior, even when he sees it for the second time in "The Prince's Tale."

Niru:
My belief is that James and Sirius *were* actually percieved as "cool"
by a majority of the student population (not everybody mind you). 

Carol:
I don't think that we can determine whether it was a majority. I think
we're safe to say that they were generally popular with the
Gryffindors and unpopular with the Slytherins, but James's popularity
with Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws probably fluctuated with the Quidditch
season, much as Harry's does (when the Prophet isn't shaping the
public view of him). As for Sirius, handsome is as handsome does. He
doesn't seem to have any friends outside his little circle or to pay
any attention to anyone except James. He's even rude to Remus, not
wanting to bother to help him study Transfiguration because *he* knows
that subject already. (Remus, OTOH, hasn't studied to become an
Animagus, so he doesn't share that advantage.)

Reasons: 
> (1) They were intelligent. Lupin says in PoA that they were probably
the most intelligent students in the school. They did manage an 
Animagus transformation on their own and probably contributed at 
least half of the efforts that went into making the Marauder's map.

Carol responds:
No one is questioning their abilities, especially in Transfiguration.
But I'm not sure that we can fully trust Lupin's less than objective
judgment here, especially since he's trying to justify James's conduct
in the SWM to Harry. were they really the most intelligent students in
the school? I think they had a pretty close contender in Severus
Snape, who certainly outperformed them in Potions. And no one,
teachers or students, knew that MWPP were working on the Marauder's
Map or that three of them had become Animagi, so that couldn't be a
factor in their perceived "coolness." James's prowess at Quidditch, in
contrast, was highly visible, as was his high opinion of himself.
Ditto for Sirius's good looks and haughty disdain for everyone,
including Wormtail and sometimes Remus, who wasn't James.

Besides, intelligence is not always a route to popularity, as both
Severus and Hermione illustrate. 

Niru:
> (2) James was good at Quidditch
> (3) Sirius was handsome (and believe me looks will excuse a lot from
many members of the female population - at least the teenage  variety).

Carol:
Exactly. Of course, being good at Quidditch isn't going to make you
popular with students from Houses whose team you've recently beaten.
Even Cedric, who is handsome and talented and a Prefect yet kind and
generally liked (not admired from a distance or perceived as "cool"
but liked) undergoes brief spells of unpopularity (a pretty boy
without a brain) when Quidditch comes into the picture.

Niru:
> (4) They probably played some pranks and provided people with a 
laugh (although the targets of the pranks probably weren't laughing 
unless they had a very good sense of humour and the prank wasn't 
terribly degrading).

Carol:
Probably played some pranks? SWM aside, they were by Sirius's own
confession frequently in detention for such amusing stunts as doubling
the size of Bertram Aubrey's head, as the boxes of old detention cards
that Harry has to sort through in HBP testify, and I don't think we're
supposed to doubt Lily's accusation that James hexes people who annoy
him in the corridors, as opposed to occasional duels with enemies in
the corridors like Harry and Draco--interestingly, Harry starts acting
like James in HBP when he gets hold of Snape's old Potions book (not
knowing, of course, that it's Snape's, but thinking that it might be
his father's), hexing the Squib Filch with Langlock, hitting Crabbe
with the toenail hex just because he's Crabbe ("because he exists"?),
and contemplating using an unknown spell labeled "for enemies" on
McLaggen.

Niru: 
> I'm not excusing the behavior seen in SWM (and for that matter Harry
himself doesn't) but somehow I don't think they were running around 
bullying everybody left, right, and center all the time.

Carol responds:
Then Lily, who likes James, is falsely accusing him in public of
hexing anyone who annoys him just because he can? (Other people,
probably the majority of students in his year including Lily herself,
can but don't.) When Lily yells at him to leave Severus alone, he
says, "Ah, Evans, don't make me hex you." And why would Lily agree
with Severus in "the Prince's Tale" that James was "an arrogant
bullying toerag" if he wasn't? The very first thing that James does at
age eleven on the Hogwarts Express is judge a fellow eleven-year-old
by the House he wants to get into, insult that House in words echoed a
generation later by Draco Malfoy regarding Hufflepuff ("I'd go home,
wouldn't you?") and trip him as he leaves the train compartment.

"The height of cool"? Not by my standards, and not by Harry's, either.

Niru:
<snip> She ended 
> up marrying the "arrogant toerag" because -
> (1) he changed. James did deflate his head a bit (as Sirius and 
Remus say in OotP). I read this as "he mellowed and became a bit less
arrogant and flamboyant". And he probably did this *because* of 
> Lily's strictures. He probably realised that if he wanted Lily, he 
> needed to change, to "grow up" if you want to see it that way. <snip>
> (2) she saw beyond the "arrogant toerag" thing and realised that 
James wasn't quite so bad after all. This probably happened after he
changed though. <snip>

Carol:
Or maybe James learned what Lily already knew, that being "an arrogant
little toerag" is not "the height of cool." And he did stop hexing
people, other than Severus Snape, who gave as good as he got. So, yes,
he grew up and his head deflated. He seems to have realized that
bullying others is neither admirable nor amusing. And, of course,
marriage and fatherhood taught him the meaning of responsibility.
(whether he deserved his appointment as Head Boy, over the head of the
ineffectual Gryffindor Prefect Remus Lupin, we don't know. Perhaps
working with Lily in a position of responsibility and trying to
impress her by doing a good job in that position, helped him to get
his priorities straight.

BTW, I think I oversnipped. You said something about popular or "cool"
kids running around with others like themselves, but James and Sirius
run around with Remus and Peter, in part, I suppose, because they're
all dormmates. It's "cool" to have a werewolf as a roommate, and
Peter, the drooling hanger-on, is safer as part of the group than as
an outsider.

If James and Sirius really wanted to run around with someone as clever
as themselves, they should have befriended Severus Snape instead of
making an enemy of him before they even got to know him. He may not
have been handsome or athletic, but he was their match in intelligence
and inventiveness, as they would have known had they ever seen his
Potions book.

Carol, who does not think that bullying or arrogance is "cool,"
whether the arrogant bully is James Potter or Draco Malfoy