[the_old_crowd] Lupin and Sirius WAS Re: Some questions

[Eileen Rebstock]

Pippin:
> No trauma. Those who are young enough to think it's all real won't
process
> the
> betrayal, at least they don't with Star Wars. Children under six or so
> don't
> grasp that Darth Vader and Luke's heroic father are the same person.

Your experiences in that regard are very different from mine! I haven't
noticed children of the age to follow the story at all have had any
difficulty in identifying Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. I was about
eight I think when I first saw Star Wars, so I can't give my own
perspective, my younger siblings and my childhood friends' younger
siblings certainly understood. My brother Nick is five and does too. 

Anyway, I don't think you need to believe it's real (and I have to say
I've never met a kid who thought Star Wars or Harry Potter *was* real)
to be traumatized. Nor I am talking about kids under six who probably
haven't even read Harry Potter for the most part.

When I was trying to think of any literary or film analogue to Ever So
Evil Lupin, the closest I could come was the fate of Susan Pevensie in
the Narnia books, which *did* traumatize me at an age older than six.
It's not a real analogue, though, because Lewis doesn't go so far as to
say that Susan ALWAYS didn't care about Narnia. I think it's very bad
writing to have a character change off-screen so drastically, but that's
a different issue than the proposed Lupin evilness, in which we'd
re-interpret on-screen actions in light of a revelation. The only reason
I bring it up is that it's an example of a book where I felt as an
older, clear-eyed, rational kid that the author had betrayed the
characters. 

Anyway, 'The Last Battle' was bad enough for me, but 'Ever So Evil'
Lupin would frankly turn me off HP if I were a child reader. 

Nora:
> But JKR has still presented Lupin as an overall
> positive figure, I think.  He's the Good Teacher to Snape's Bad
> Teacher in PoA, he's abused by life but not a jerk, he and Tonks have
> talked about relationships and may well be an item at the end of the
> book.  Lupin isn't the saint that some of fandom would make him into,
> but he seems to be pretty firmly in the 'positive' category.

Exactly. Being told that someone the author lead you to like and respect
through four books is actually the villain all along. That's pretty
heart-breaking. 

All these concerns don't bar JKR from doing this, though I'll note she's
notoriously soft-hearted. For example, her idea of a lot of deaths is
not the gore-fest we used to imagine post-GOF.

It's just - as I've said before - the fact that I cannot think of ONE
fictional example of a likeable character turning out to have always
been evil  after the first installment of their appearance.

Pippin: 
> If we're talking about whether adults will find it credible, there's
> nothing very radical about an appealing second-string character
> who turns out to be the villain. Christie is full of them. And
> we know who reads Christie, don't we.

Christie does not reveal that the regulars have always been villains. An
appealing second-string character like Roger Ackroyd can turn out to be
bad at the end of the book, just like Tom Riddle in CoS. Or people can
change over the course of the series, according to the circumstances.
Witness 'Final Curtain' where Poirot commits murder (though a lot of
people were rather annoyed even at *that*). There is no denoument where
Poirot realizes that Hastings has *always* been a sociopathic murderer.
Or where Miss Marple realizes Griselda has been slowly poisoning the
Vicar since Book 1.  

> And of course, none of us old fogie knew for sure that Vader was
> Luke's daddy until part way through Return of the Jedi, *years* after
> A New Hope.

Nah, according to that standard of evidence, we *still* don't know. In
fact, in my more excitable moments I can argue lengthily that there are
a great many reasons not to believe Darth Vader in the original trilogy
is actually Anakin Skywalker. Mostly because I can't see that whiny brat
in the prequels as an effective second in command of the galaxy. 

But I presume Lucas intended the issue to be closed. ;-)

Eileen