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It's really hard to spend an intense long weekend listening to meta meta meta and come back and write about it. I don't even know where to start, except to say that PR was my first conference and I think I was spoiled by it. It was *really* well run. My biggest complaint was--and this is so cheesy and cliché--that I wish I had a Time Turner so I could have gone to more stuff that were at the same time. (And that's just the programming, of course--not even getting into just having a good time outside of the programming walking around and eating and drinking and talking and wtf flamingo? and yay!)
I will shamelessly say that my own paper was the most fun ever for me.:-) Especially because everybody started talking afterwards so it was just like having a great lj conversation but better because there were people there in person and Aja brought her Draco doll and let me have him on the stage with me.
I can't wait until they put the thing out with all the papers I didn't get to read and panels I didn't get to go to. It's still all sort of processing in my brain. Oh--and the Snape panel was also really fun. I admit I love the whole Snape=Anubis theory and was glad it was represented. Also, interestingly, the last question the Borders mod asked was whether we thought Snape would live or die. The three of us on Snape=Friend said he would die; the three on Snape=Foe said he would live.
For my first little blip of response to an actual paper, I saw a really cool one on PoA as a Gothic novel that
...got me thinking about Sirius' death.
The paper concentrated solely on PoA and showed how it followed the tropes and themes of the Gothic novel, including its anxiety about the failure of the patriarchal line (that's ultimately conquered when Harry learns it was he and not James that chased away the Dementors). Hearing about PoA discussed in terms of the Gothic makes me think how funny it was that at the time it came out, and even afterwards in GoF, we saw Sirius as a character presented as a man on his own who was part of *Harry's* family as one of the Marauders. He was like an uncle, along with Remus and even Peter. Harry saw him as family and a connection to his father.
But then in OotP it turns out Sirius actually exists in the context of this big, clanking Gothic structure of his own: the Black family. And that's what got me thinking about his death. One of the things that seems kind of important about the Black family is it's so deeply connected to Slytherin and Purebloods. Like, if ultimately Slytherin has to be integrated into the school, how does JKR go about attacking its problems? The obvious solution seems to be that she went Gothic, creating this family with a house full of secrets that is being destroyed. Sirius' father isn't really shown, but the mere fact that his mother is mad and screaming kind of indicates a failure there. Sirius and Regulus both failed in different ways as adults.
So why did Sirius have to die, besides Harry going on alone? Honestly, I think it may be important for Sirius to have died because Harry is his heir. In inheriting the Black House, which of course symbolizes all the secrets and tragedies of the Black family (literally and figuratively) Harry has become an Heir to the Black family in Sirius' place. Just as PoA gave us the Shrieking Shack that held the Potter family secrets Harry has now inherited and taken ownership of the even more insane Black family secrets--secrets it's going to be harder for him to uncover on his own.
I was reminded of this the other day talking to someone who was saying they felt it was a little OOC the way Ron and Hermione didn't back Harry up on his Malfoy obsession in HBP the way they'd always been by his side before. But I thought this was explained on both the superficial and deeper level. Superficially, HBP is the first time Harry himself really isn't being targeted, so that gives Ron and Hermione a reason that they can be interested in their own things. In the past they haven't just been interested in the mystery because Harry was interested in it; there was a shared sense of threat that isn't there in HBP. Harry is the only one who senses the threat in HBP, I think because it goes beyond just someone trying to kill someone for him.
In the PoA paper the writer (Brandy Ball Blake) talked about the Gothic's obsession with horror and terror, with horror being more like revulsion (decaying bodies and gore--like Dementor's hands) and terror, which is connected to the sublime and obscurity of potentially horrible events. I think one could make a case for some of the anxiety Harry feels about Malfoy being connected to terror--meaning that although everyone keeps telling him there's no rational thing to fear, Harry doesn’t quite fear something rational. After all, he's not literally worried about people dying or a specific person dying. He just really has a feeling that something dreadful is going to happen because of Malfoy--and he's right. (I may have totally gotten the whole idea of terror wrong there, btw--would appreciate corrections if Harry's fear of what's going to happen via Malfoy doesn't fit the terror definition at all.)
On a deeper level, it's important Ron and Hermione don't feel that sense of threat, because HBP has Harry alone dipping into Slytherin. He does it symbolically in all sorts of ways--submersing himself in Slytherin memories, watching Slytherins while immobilized more than once, taking shortcuts in class, using cunning to get the memory (while Ron and Hermione first assume Dumbledore will be teaching him more battle skills), watching Slytherins on the map, trying to get into the room that holds the Draco and his secret (which turns out to be, wonderfully, the room for hiding things).
But more importantly, his obsession with Malfoy entangles Harry alone in his new family. He calls on Kreacher, the Black slave he's inherited, instead of Dobby, to spy on Draco who is himself a Black. Kreacher specifically brings up to Harry when he gives him his task, so underlining that he knows Harry is using him to spy on "family." (Dobby, meanwhile, frantically insists that Draco is just a very bad boy--as if afraid of Harry's interest, and particularly not liking Harry's getting his information through Kreacher.)
One of the first reasons Harry is suspicious of Draco in HBP is that he thinks he's "taken his father's place" while Ron and Hermione, like most others, think Draco's age and general Draco-ness make him not a threat. The one time previously in canon that Harry and Draco had a brief meeting of the minds that shut out other people a bit was in PoA where Draco told Harry that if it were his family, he would want revenge on Sirius Black. Harry, iirc, is a bit unnerved by this and says "Malfoy knows..." Ron and Hermione think he's crazy for listening to Draco, who's just trying to make him do something stupid, but it's a little bit more than that. In HBP we see Draco really wasn't kidding when he faces his own anxieties about the failure of the patriarchy and tries to take it over himself and protect his mother. In both PoA and HBP the one boy is just a little more subtly tuned in to the other's family anxiety than other people. Iirc, one of the first things Harry says upon looking at the Black Tapestry is, unsurprisingly, to say, "You're related to the Malfoys!"
So how great is it that they are now essentially part of the same family? I feel like Harry is the heir on the patrilineal side, having inherited the house from Sirius, to whom he was first connected through his own father and his friends. Regulus was, of course, Sirius' only sibling and younger brother. The only Black woman in the Black house in Harry's experience has been Mrs. Black, who is mad and dead. The Order spends most of its time shutting her behind her curtains, trying to not listen to her, and also not listening to Kreacher loudly adoring her.
Draco, then, inherits from the distaff side as the child of Narcissa, herself one of three sisters. Andromeda also has a child--a girl. She's been disinherited but also forces herself into Harry's male line via Lupin even when he's trying to shut her out. Bellatrix is obviously also female and it is she Snape thinks has been teaching Draco Occlumency.
Sirius and the other Marauders were all in the Fire House, the house of Will. Draco, his mother, his aunt--and even Snape who seems to fit in here somewhere--is in the Water house of Emotion. To go further into the female stuff, Slytherin is also the house with the chamber (rather than the Tower), the locket and ring (rather than the sword).
Don't know where all this is going, of course. I just love Harry almost unwittingly being drawn into the drama of the family he inherited.
I will shamelessly say that my own paper was the most fun ever for me.:-) Especially because everybody started talking afterwards so it was just like having a great lj conversation but better because there were people there in person and Aja brought her Draco doll and let me have him on the stage with me.
I can't wait until they put the thing out with all the papers I didn't get to read and panels I didn't get to go to. It's still all sort of processing in my brain. Oh--and the Snape panel was also really fun. I admit I love the whole Snape=Anubis theory and was glad it was represented. Also, interestingly, the last question the Borders mod asked was whether we thought Snape would live or die. The three of us on Snape=Friend said he would die; the three on Snape=Foe said he would live.
For my first little blip of response to an actual paper, I saw a really cool one on PoA as a Gothic novel that
...got me thinking about Sirius' death.
The paper concentrated solely on PoA and showed how it followed the tropes and themes of the Gothic novel, including its anxiety about the failure of the patriarchal line (that's ultimately conquered when Harry learns it was he and not James that chased away the Dementors). Hearing about PoA discussed in terms of the Gothic makes me think how funny it was that at the time it came out, and even afterwards in GoF, we saw Sirius as a character presented as a man on his own who was part of *Harry's* family as one of the Marauders. He was like an uncle, along with Remus and even Peter. Harry saw him as family and a connection to his father.
But then in OotP it turns out Sirius actually exists in the context of this big, clanking Gothic structure of his own: the Black family. And that's what got me thinking about his death. One of the things that seems kind of important about the Black family is it's so deeply connected to Slytherin and Purebloods. Like, if ultimately Slytherin has to be integrated into the school, how does JKR go about attacking its problems? The obvious solution seems to be that she went Gothic, creating this family with a house full of secrets that is being destroyed. Sirius' father isn't really shown, but the mere fact that his mother is mad and screaming kind of indicates a failure there. Sirius and Regulus both failed in different ways as adults.
So why did Sirius have to die, besides Harry going on alone? Honestly, I think it may be important for Sirius to have died because Harry is his heir. In inheriting the Black House, which of course symbolizes all the secrets and tragedies of the Black family (literally and figuratively) Harry has become an Heir to the Black family in Sirius' place. Just as PoA gave us the Shrieking Shack that held the Potter family secrets Harry has now inherited and taken ownership of the even more insane Black family secrets--secrets it's going to be harder for him to uncover on his own.
I was reminded of this the other day talking to someone who was saying they felt it was a little OOC the way Ron and Hermione didn't back Harry up on his Malfoy obsession in HBP the way they'd always been by his side before. But I thought this was explained on both the superficial and deeper level. Superficially, HBP is the first time Harry himself really isn't being targeted, so that gives Ron and Hermione a reason that they can be interested in their own things. In the past they haven't just been interested in the mystery because Harry was interested in it; there was a shared sense of threat that isn't there in HBP. Harry is the only one who senses the threat in HBP, I think because it goes beyond just someone trying to kill someone for him.
In the PoA paper the writer (Brandy Ball Blake) talked about the Gothic's obsession with horror and terror, with horror being more like revulsion (decaying bodies and gore--like Dementor's hands) and terror, which is connected to the sublime and obscurity of potentially horrible events. I think one could make a case for some of the anxiety Harry feels about Malfoy being connected to terror--meaning that although everyone keeps telling him there's no rational thing to fear, Harry doesn’t quite fear something rational. After all, he's not literally worried about people dying or a specific person dying. He just really has a feeling that something dreadful is going to happen because of Malfoy--and he's right. (I may have totally gotten the whole idea of terror wrong there, btw--would appreciate corrections if Harry's fear of what's going to happen via Malfoy doesn't fit the terror definition at all.)
On a deeper level, it's important Ron and Hermione don't feel that sense of threat, because HBP has Harry alone dipping into Slytherin. He does it symbolically in all sorts of ways--submersing himself in Slytherin memories, watching Slytherins while immobilized more than once, taking shortcuts in class, using cunning to get the memory (while Ron and Hermione first assume Dumbledore will be teaching him more battle skills), watching Slytherins on the map, trying to get into the room that holds the Draco and his secret (which turns out to be, wonderfully, the room for hiding things).
But more importantly, his obsession with Malfoy entangles Harry alone in his new family. He calls on Kreacher, the Black slave he's inherited, instead of Dobby, to spy on Draco who is himself a Black. Kreacher specifically brings up to Harry when he gives him his task, so underlining that he knows Harry is using him to spy on "family." (Dobby, meanwhile, frantically insists that Draco is just a very bad boy--as if afraid of Harry's interest, and particularly not liking Harry's getting his information through Kreacher.)
One of the first reasons Harry is suspicious of Draco in HBP is that he thinks he's "taken his father's place" while Ron and Hermione, like most others, think Draco's age and general Draco-ness make him not a threat. The one time previously in canon that Harry and Draco had a brief meeting of the minds that shut out other people a bit was in PoA where Draco told Harry that if it were his family, he would want revenge on Sirius Black. Harry, iirc, is a bit unnerved by this and says "Malfoy knows..." Ron and Hermione think he's crazy for listening to Draco, who's just trying to make him do something stupid, but it's a little bit more than that. In HBP we see Draco really wasn't kidding when he faces his own anxieties about the failure of the patriarchy and tries to take it over himself and protect his mother. In both PoA and HBP the one boy is just a little more subtly tuned in to the other's family anxiety than other people. Iirc, one of the first things Harry says upon looking at the Black Tapestry is, unsurprisingly, to say, "You're related to the Malfoys!"
So how great is it that they are now essentially part of the same family? I feel like Harry is the heir on the patrilineal side, having inherited the house from Sirius, to whom he was first connected through his own father and his friends. Regulus was, of course, Sirius' only sibling and younger brother. The only Black woman in the Black house in Harry's experience has been Mrs. Black, who is mad and dead. The Order spends most of its time shutting her behind her curtains, trying to not listen to her, and also not listening to Kreacher loudly adoring her.
Draco, then, inherits from the distaff side as the child of Narcissa, herself one of three sisters. Andromeda also has a child--a girl. She's been disinherited but also forces herself into Harry's male line via Lupin even when he's trying to shut her out. Bellatrix is obviously also female and it is she Snape thinks has been teaching Draco Occlumency.
Sirius and the other Marauders were all in the Fire House, the house of Will. Draco, his mother, his aunt--and even Snape who seems to fit in here somewhere--is in the Water house of Emotion. To go further into the female stuff, Slytherin is also the house with the chamber (rather than the Tower), the locket and ring (rather than the sword).
Don't know where all this is going, of course. I just love Harry almost unwittingly being drawn into the drama of the family he inherited.
