[the_old_crowd] Re: Peter betrayed & the lost world of theorising

[Mike & Susan Gray]

Quoth Carolyn:

> Mike, in the kindest possible sense, your Peter FAQ was one 
> of the starting points for the catalogue. It did not (IMO of 
> course), even begin to encapsulate the reasons Peter betrayed 
> his friends (if he did), but merely reiterated the 
> Faith-reading that if a character acts like a rat, quacks 
> like a rat, he must be...a rat. 

There is a difference, you know, between a farfetched reading and a
sophisticated one. Not that the books haven't taken the far road less
fetched now and again - the Polyjuice!Moody ending to GoF comes to mind -
but these HP books have never given me the feeling of being the sort of
stories that are fueled by plot twists which confound perceptions about
major characters created by a simple reading of the text.

BTW, I say "confound" and not "challenged." I'd say that HBP "challenges"
the perception of Draco created by a simple reading of the earlier books and
sets the stage for just about anything to happen with him in the final book.
"Confounded" would have if we had discovered at the end of HBP that Draco
had actually been an agent of the Order of Phoenix all along.
"Requested-removal-of-Rowling-to-St-Mungos" would have been if Draco had
turned out to be an Auror on ployjuice.

> Not that there aren't plenty of knee-jerk posts 
> supporting you, people shrieking that Peter is the most 
> horrible character in the book etc.

Geeze. Did I ever say stuff like that - or even say stuff that would be
supported by stuff like that? I really ought to see if I can find that old
FAQ somewhere. I have this odd recollection of thinking that Pete can't be
all bad - while at the same time (assuming he's a Gryffindor) kind of
wishing he *is* just to give the Sorting Hat one in the eye. I certainly
seem to remember assuming that Pete'll end up redeeming himself and make a
sort of tragic hero of himself in the process. But perhaps the ravages or
age have been gnawing on my synapses again.

* * * * 

Anyway, two (rather tangential) thoughts:

(1) I think it's important to distinguich between a *critique* and an
*interpretation.* It's one thing to argue that the text doesn't do a
psychologically convincing job of portraying Peter as a traitor, or
Dumbledore as a wise man, or Ron and Hermione as (potentially happy) lovers.
It's an entirely different thing to argue that the text actually *doesn't*
portray Peter as a traitor, Dumbledore as a wise man or R&H as lovers
because it does not do so in a psychologically convincing manner. 

Earlier on, of course, it was easier to argue that these psychological gaps
(assuming their existence, of course) were either intentional or
unintentional clues of future plot developments. This is an option that we
don't usually have when we read stories, but since the series was (and is
still) incomplete, some of us readers have used those gaps to build some
rather amazing constructions. Now that the series is winding down, however,
a lot of the gaps look they aren't clues at all, and the plot contructions
built over them are teetering on the edge of a critical abyss. As they fall,
the old interpretations become new critiques. 

One reason I've never been able to work up much enthusiasism for a lot of
the theorizing in the fandom is that I've generally assumed that the gaps in
question were simply lacunae and accepted them as critiques. (And I've often
felt that they expect a sort of psychological realism I would never dream of
finding in these texts - but that's another story, for another day.)

(2) The one other thing: the way the word "theory" is used around here. When
people in my lagoon of the fandom (just another sort of gap, I suppose) talk
about theories, they seem to mean something like a scientific hypothesis.
"Theory" has to do producing prediction about the plot based on textual
evidence of some kind; theories may or may not hold, as more evidence comes
into view. Years ago I actually planned to set up a web site (called the
Goat's Den) where people could advance theories and place (pretend) bets on
them. Whoever ended up winning the most money at the end of the series would
have bagged the biggest pot in fandom. Since I'm pants at html I never got
going - and anyway, nowdays you can place real bets on the HP books ...

In my other life (as a theologian with a specialization in hermeneutics)
theory means something completely different: it has to do with interpretive
approaches to texts. "New hermeneutics" or "psychoanalytic theory" or
"reader response theory" or "aesthetics of reception" or "marxist theory" or
"feminist theory" are all theories about the way texts do their thing. They
are very interesting theories, too - most of them, anyway. They're very hard
to prove wrong - partly because they're just tools for looking at texts,
partly because people use so many incomprehensible words about them that no
one knows what they're talking about anyway and hence can't disprove them.
Just figuring out what the theory *is* is half the fun.

I actually think both sorts of theory are fun. And the nice thing about the
latter sort is that you can keep on squabbling about it for practically
forever. Having the books finished certainly won't hurt any. Perhaps we fans
can discover the joys of the latter sort of theory once the earlier sort has
been swallowed up by _Harry Potter and the Tragic End of Life as We Know
It_.

Baaaaa,

Mike (who has to get to a meeting as has no time to reread or spell check,
so sorry!)