DH reread CH 12 -- Cracking a Few Eggs.

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 186461

Magpie:
> . That's obvious throughout the books, like where fair numbers of readers will find something a character did repulsive and in interviews JKR will reveal she was enjoying the character's actions vicariously.
> > 
> 
> Pippin:
> The two aren't mutually exclusive. Draco  enjoys performing the cruciatus curse on Rowle enough to be able to do it, and yet he  is also repulsed by what he's doing, so much that Voldemort has to threaten him to make him continue. 
> 
>  I can perfectly well understand that Rowling can make a character do something that she knows is repulsive, and at the same time, enjoy her power to inflict a vicarious punishment. 

Magpie:
I meant that she doesn't seem to have put it in to repulse people on the fictional level. I mean, there are plenty of things JKR has her characters do, things that she laughs at or expresses satisfaction about in interviews, that I would never think she'd do in real life. I'm not worried about her doing any of this stuff or encouraging people to actually do them. I just meant that there are times where readers' reactions to things are obviously different from her own as she describes them when talking about the incident. When readers pick up on something she was trying to put across she's often not shy of saying so. I don't think she's really predicted all the possible reactions to the things she writes. On the contrary, I think one of the things that holds the books together is a rather consistent pov about the world. I think some reader's reactions to her fictional scenes are a genuine surprise to her.

So what I mean is just that I think she sets up plenty of situations that are guaranteed to get different reactions from people--it's why there are so many different opinions on the characters as well--even though I don't think she always writes them in order to create disagreement. She's not writing a philosophical meditation, after all, she's writing a plot where things often happen to get them to the next point. I'm sure there are places where she thinks she wrote in a realistic reaction or fallout to something that leaves some readers scratching their heads. 

Luckily she has a strong narrative voice that figuratively takes you by the arm and sort of frogmarches you through the book--at least that's how it feels to me. So sometimes it's only when the whole thing's over that you start questioning somebody's reaction or the way things panned out. I think that would be related to what Hitchcock called "icebox logic."

> Magpie:
> > Personally, I take the scene as just an action movie moment not unlike the "Not my daughter, you bitch!" moment. I think it's a moment we're supposed to cheer. 
> 
> Pippin:
> But you're not cheering. And children do not cheer this moment, AFAIK.  They're shocked, and they don't need any one to tell them they should be shocked. And I suspect they're shocked when Molly swears, also.

Magpie:
Some children are, I know. And yet McGonagall, the character that JKR has in the scene with him, calls his action gallant. And in an interview JKR reacts to children's shock with "Well, he's never been a saint." I just don't see this scene written at all as intending to shock anybody with Harry's sadism and cruelty. The book's YA at this point even. 

Pippin: 
> The people who do cheer are almost always careful to say they wouldn't cheer if it was real life. They enjoy the thrill of being able to indulge the human bias towards overkill without worrying about the consequences. But the way that JKR's world is set up, we can tell that consequences would happen, just as we know that Snape's body is going to rot where it lies unless somebody arranges a burial.

Magpie:
Not always, actually. There have been discussions on this list about how it was fine or even good what Harry did. As I think there would be in real life.

I do agree with you, though, that since it's fiction it really is more about indulging in overkill in a safe setting. Nobody's really getting tortured here. This isn't about a reader's reaction to actual torture, it's the reaction to this scene in a story. I just think the scene is more written as a safe indulgence rather than with an intent to trouble us about that indulgence later. If there's anything darker I tend to feel it's more what Steve described, that we're seeing here that Harry's an adult now, and war is hell, and he can perform these curses now--but only does it in extreme situations like this. We can trust Harry won't go overboard because he uses his power to punish bullies.

Pippin: 
> Nobody is sorry when Bella dies. But if Molly went around zapping everyone, would that be a good thing? We already know she's not always just in her anger.

Magpie:
I was only drawing a comparison with the Molly moment being an action movie cheer moment. I don't think her actions in that scene are troubling. That really is an example of her jumping into a fight to protect her child who's endangered by a killer.

-m