I recently read a book called Murder Most Foul which was about the tension between society seeing the murderer as a member of the community who illustrated the fallen nature of humanity, and society seeing the murderer as the Other, as a monster, as unfathomable. The book concentrated mostly on the American experience but it's not like JK Rowling wouldn't be influenced by some of the same currents of thought. Certainly it seems like the difference between those two views (and even more so, which view gets applied to which character, since nearly everyone is informed by both views on some level) is what's driving a lot of the arguments in fandom.
What's interesting to me is that right now, both of those models are losing explanatory power (and have been since World War One, honestly) and no clear consensus has arisen as to a third model, hence the endless arguments about the nature of evil.
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Date: 2006-05-15 03:15 pm (UTC)What's interesting to me is that right now, both of those models are losing explanatory power (and have been since World War One, honestly) and no clear consensus has arisen as to a third model, hence the endless arguments about the nature of evil.