![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I originally f'locked this out of habit, but figured I might as well leave it open. We'll see how that goes...
I have read stuff since DH about how people liked the Malfoys in it because they were on their own side and not either side. It made me think about why I found this story disappointing.
It wasn't that I was disappointed that they weren't on the good side, I don't think. It was just that the story as told was imo too weak. It seemed like they skipped around from one emotional state to another as needed by the plot, for one thing. Their first scene is imo fantastic, but I think the set up of Lucius looking so wrecked and his family so terrorized kind of calls for them to either go down with Voldemort or do something decisive (and probably risky) to try to get out from under his thumb--not having them do six of one and half dozen of the other and muddling through. They start off in truly dire straights and I kept thinking they would just continue down that road, only to be faced with them looking a lot better later on. This is not the way JKR usually writes her characters throughout a book.
It's the muddling through that I realized was a problem for me. After the book I thought the Malfoys were characters who had the survival ability of cockroaches with absolutely zero survival instinct.
It's possible--very possible given Peter and other things--that JKR doesn't respect these kinds of survivors--rats and cockroaches, iow. I don't think it would be out of line to say that she seems to write Peter and the Malfoys as low-lifes, and she might associate them with the kind of animals that scavenge in garbage etc. and which are therefore less than noble (in the opinion of some--not me). I never get the feeling that she cheers on these kinds of people, so especially with the Malfoys she never makes them active. On the contrary, her version of a survivor (and here I'm not including survivors who are warriors who've lived through battles like Harry or Moody) is basically a coward, someone who's never confident enough to leave or defy anyone (unfortunately for plot purposes, they will sometimes actively make their own situation *worse*--just never better).
We first hear about Lucius in either book 1 or 2, and I think what we hear was probably the basis for the years of Cool!Lucius fics. Because we heard this is a guy who was one of LV's intimate circle, yet managed to get himself out of Azkaban by claming Imperius immediately after he disappeared. No wonder we thought he was possibly a badder dude than Voldemort--he was the kingmaker, the guy behind the throne who didn't go down with the ship, not bound by ideology. For some of us--me included--that's a cool thing to watch. The one time Draco really made me smile in DH was when he was fighting with the DE saying, "I'm Draco Malfoy! I'm on your side!" I cheered him on doing that--go get 'em, Draco! Naturally he gets punched for it. But that was the moment where I fleetingly thought I'd like to read about this character in a different universe.
I was watching a number of Film Noirs this weekend and in one Dana Andrews plays a detective who accidentally kills a guy he's interrogating. Even though it was a freak accident he knows he won't get away with it, so he tries to cover it up. He comes back to the apartment to find his partner searching the place, saying the guy must have gone out while Dana Andrews was "checking bars in the neighborhood." Now, another director might have let us know beforehand that the body was hidden in the closet all this time for suspense: Will the partner check the closet? Otto Preminger has Andrews check the closet himself so that we can see the body slumped inside. In the commentary, it's pointed out that this moment really puts us on Andrews' side *because he's so competent at covering himself*--he's taking this big risk, opening the closet while his partner is right there, and then he just says, "Nothing in there," shuts the door and gets away with it. It's great. It's different than making us identify with him because we fear he'll be discovered. We've crossed into admiring his skills in protecting himself and getting away with something.
With the Malfoys, we really never see that--and no, I don't consider Narcissa's one desperate lie about Harry being dead enough, though that's as close as we get. The Malfoys start the book on the chopping block--these slippery folks ought to be looking for an escape getting more and more desperate, imo. Instead, if we didn't know already, we see here more than ever that Slippery!Lucius never really existed. They can't act against Voldemort even to save themselves. They're not schemers or thinkers beyond "What will keep Voldemort happy in the short term?"
I do think that's Rowling's point, probably--many of Voldemort's followers are essentially people in an abusive relationship who can't leave--though she's not really getting into that psychology either. When the Trio shows up at the Manor Lucius and Narcissa are eager to turn them over to "please" Voldemort. But for me it's still a letdown that their imprisonment just kind of ends. Narcissa lies to Voldemort yeah, but frankly, imo, who cares? This is a story about kids so what the hell is up with somebody's mother making things better? It's fine for Harry's mum to save him when he's a baby but Draco spends a whole book in HBP sticking out a bad situation only to become more of a baby than ever in DH, and Narcissa's calculated moment of defiance isn't about survival so much as the short-sighted act of a desperate mother. (Short-sighted only because she just wants to get in to get to Draco; it's not a gambit for some wider agenda.) That seems to be all she stands for: Mother-love. There's nothing particularly Malfoy about it, imo.
It's hard, because obviously the writer can do whatever she wants, and presumably she *wanted* to have the Malfoys reduced to this, wanted them to survive without picking a side except each other, thought this was somehow enough of a "collusion" with Harry to let them wander off as confused about their position as anyone else. I know the obvious answer to anybody who thinks they should have been acting more in their own defense is that they were confused by fanfic and wanted them to be cooler than they ever really were. (And I'm sure there are many who will claim it was absolutely brilliant of JKR to do it this way and anything else would be painfully "unrealistic.")
But I assume these people (like all JKR's characters) are doing what they do, are being who they are. They started the series having slithered out of destruction, they end it the same way. Ever "slippery," they switched sides at the last moment. Only given the way it happens, it leaves me thinking: How do these people continue to survive? It's apparently not because they have any particular skill or cleverness for survival (on the contrary, they're kinda bad at this stuff), it's more just that they seem to have some sort of magical protection from the god of their universe--even if that god is never going to let them learn from their near-misses ever.
Somehow I keep thinking of that scene b/w Dumbledore and Snape about Draco's killing him, and Snape says "Why don't you just let him do it, then?" and Dumbledore twinkles and says something like, "Oh, I don't think his soul is quite so damaged yet" or something like that. I wind up thinking that's the answer to their whole storyline, that the author!god just twinkled and said, "Oh, I don't think their soul is so damaged--it amuses me to let them live." It's like we wind up with a story that to me seems like it could have been an actually compelling subplot and instead it's purposefully not.
I have read stuff since DH about how people liked the Malfoys in it because they were on their own side and not either side. It made me think about why I found this story disappointing.
It wasn't that I was disappointed that they weren't on the good side, I don't think. It was just that the story as told was imo too weak. It seemed like they skipped around from one emotional state to another as needed by the plot, for one thing. Their first scene is imo fantastic, but I think the set up of Lucius looking so wrecked and his family so terrorized kind of calls for them to either go down with Voldemort or do something decisive (and probably risky) to try to get out from under his thumb--not having them do six of one and half dozen of the other and muddling through. They start off in truly dire straights and I kept thinking they would just continue down that road, only to be faced with them looking a lot better later on. This is not the way JKR usually writes her characters throughout a book.
It's the muddling through that I realized was a problem for me. After the book I thought the Malfoys were characters who had the survival ability of cockroaches with absolutely zero survival instinct.
It's possible--very possible given Peter and other things--that JKR doesn't respect these kinds of survivors--rats and cockroaches, iow. I don't think it would be out of line to say that she seems to write Peter and the Malfoys as low-lifes, and she might associate them with the kind of animals that scavenge in garbage etc. and which are therefore less than noble (in the opinion of some--not me). I never get the feeling that she cheers on these kinds of people, so especially with the Malfoys she never makes them active. On the contrary, her version of a survivor (and here I'm not including survivors who are warriors who've lived through battles like Harry or Moody) is basically a coward, someone who's never confident enough to leave or defy anyone (unfortunately for plot purposes, they will sometimes actively make their own situation *worse*--just never better).
We first hear about Lucius in either book 1 or 2, and I think what we hear was probably the basis for the years of Cool!Lucius fics. Because we heard this is a guy who was one of LV's intimate circle, yet managed to get himself out of Azkaban by claming Imperius immediately after he disappeared. No wonder we thought he was possibly a badder dude than Voldemort--he was the kingmaker, the guy behind the throne who didn't go down with the ship, not bound by ideology. For some of us--me included--that's a cool thing to watch. The one time Draco really made me smile in DH was when he was fighting with the DE saying, "I'm Draco Malfoy! I'm on your side!" I cheered him on doing that--go get 'em, Draco! Naturally he gets punched for it. But that was the moment where I fleetingly thought I'd like to read about this character in a different universe.
I was watching a number of Film Noirs this weekend and in one Dana Andrews plays a detective who accidentally kills a guy he's interrogating. Even though it was a freak accident he knows he won't get away with it, so he tries to cover it up. He comes back to the apartment to find his partner searching the place, saying the guy must have gone out while Dana Andrews was "checking bars in the neighborhood." Now, another director might have let us know beforehand that the body was hidden in the closet all this time for suspense: Will the partner check the closet? Otto Preminger has Andrews check the closet himself so that we can see the body slumped inside. In the commentary, it's pointed out that this moment really puts us on Andrews' side *because he's so competent at covering himself*--he's taking this big risk, opening the closet while his partner is right there, and then he just says, "Nothing in there," shuts the door and gets away with it. It's great. It's different than making us identify with him because we fear he'll be discovered. We've crossed into admiring his skills in protecting himself and getting away with something.
With the Malfoys, we really never see that--and no, I don't consider Narcissa's one desperate lie about Harry being dead enough, though that's as close as we get. The Malfoys start the book on the chopping block--these slippery folks ought to be looking for an escape getting more and more desperate, imo. Instead, if we didn't know already, we see here more than ever that Slippery!Lucius never really existed. They can't act against Voldemort even to save themselves. They're not schemers or thinkers beyond "What will keep Voldemort happy in the short term?"
I do think that's Rowling's point, probably--many of Voldemort's followers are essentially people in an abusive relationship who can't leave--though she's not really getting into that psychology either. When the Trio shows up at the Manor Lucius and Narcissa are eager to turn them over to "please" Voldemort. But for me it's still a letdown that their imprisonment just kind of ends. Narcissa lies to Voldemort yeah, but frankly, imo, who cares? This is a story about kids so what the hell is up with somebody's mother making things better? It's fine for Harry's mum to save him when he's a baby but Draco spends a whole book in HBP sticking out a bad situation only to become more of a baby than ever in DH, and Narcissa's calculated moment of defiance isn't about survival so much as the short-sighted act of a desperate mother. (Short-sighted only because she just wants to get in to get to Draco; it's not a gambit for some wider agenda.) That seems to be all she stands for: Mother-love. There's nothing particularly Malfoy about it, imo.
It's hard, because obviously the writer can do whatever she wants, and presumably she *wanted* to have the Malfoys reduced to this, wanted them to survive without picking a side except each other, thought this was somehow enough of a "collusion" with Harry to let them wander off as confused about their position as anyone else. I know the obvious answer to anybody who thinks they should have been acting more in their own defense is that they were confused by fanfic and wanted them to be cooler than they ever really were. (And I'm sure there are many who will claim it was absolutely brilliant of JKR to do it this way and anything else would be painfully "unrealistic.")
But I assume these people (like all JKR's characters) are doing what they do, are being who they are. They started the series having slithered out of destruction, they end it the same way. Ever "slippery," they switched sides at the last moment. Only given the way it happens, it leaves me thinking: How do these people continue to survive? It's apparently not because they have any particular skill or cleverness for survival (on the contrary, they're kinda bad at this stuff), it's more just that they seem to have some sort of magical protection from the god of their universe--even if that god is never going to let them learn from their near-misses ever.
Somehow I keep thinking of that scene b/w Dumbledore and Snape about Draco's killing him, and Snape says "Why don't you just let him do it, then?" and Dumbledore twinkles and says something like, "Oh, I don't think his soul is quite so damaged yet" or something like that. I wind up thinking that's the answer to their whole storyline, that the author!god just twinkled and said, "Oh, I don't think their soul is so damaged--it amuses me to let them live." It's like we wind up with a story that to me seems like it could have been an actually compelling subplot and instead it's purposefully not.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Draco was disappointing, insofar as I really wanted there to be something more dramatic/decisive... but in the end book 6 is the anomaly. I still thought he was cute, though, and had his moment when he said he wasn't sure he recognized Harry & Ron and Hermione (where I was happily surprised), and where he kept trying to trip up and follow Harry around to the bitter end. :D Aww, pointing his wand between Crabbe and Goyle and trying for some bravado. Even though it's not a logical follow-up to HBP characterization-wise, I didn't really expect one anymore than we had a fully logical follow-up to OoTP except in spots. Though I also think there's no way Dumbly would let a student commit murder-- it just seems obvious; Snape can do it 'cause Snape is his ex-DE errand boy, always expiating and never fulfilling his end of the bargain. Snape is there for the dirty jobs; a student is under Dumbles' protection, I guess, so far as that goes. I really do think it's about him being just a boy... even Harry worries about him in book 7! Draco's just sort of a maiden to be rescued :)) ahahahlfskjas
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I'm not sure what you mean. I mean, he's a character that has small things that go through all the books. I never thought in any of the other books that he was only a plot device, which he seemed like here.
I still thought he was cute, though, and had his moment when he said he wasn't sure he recognized Harry & Ron and Hermione (where I was happily surprised), and where he kept trying to trip up and follow Harry around to the bitter end.
Except that those two things totally contradict each other, and he wasn't following Harry around and trying to trip him up at all in DH, except in that moment where suddenly JKR wanted these three to briefly be in Harry's way.
Even though it's not a logical follow-up to HBP characterization-wise, I didn't really expect one anymore than we had a fully logical follow-up to OoTP except in spots.
You mean with Draco or with other people? Because, I mean saying that something isn't a logical follow-up seems to say that it's bad--things should feel like a logical follow-up. Though I agree she's never been followed up everything--there are always these character jumps where we're just told how things are now and this is how they'll go on. (For instance, "We will not be mourning Sirius in this book. Carry on.") My trouble in DH with the Malfoys is I didn't think that happened either. It wasn't like just saying, "Oh, they're this now" and starting on the story from that point. They just seemed all over the place and not adding up to anything within this one book--that's even beyond it not seeming like a correct follow-up from HBP. (For Draco at least I think HBP makes for a far more logical follow for him.)
Though I also think there's no way Dumbly would let a student commit murder-- it just seems obvious; Snape can do it 'cause Snape is his ex-DE errand boy, always expiating and never fulfilling his end of the bargain.
Yeah, but "obviousness" just makes it meaningless. There was no actual reason for Dumbledore to not let Draco commit murder, as it seemed in HBP (think of how much Dumbledore sacrificed and the very specific way he handles the situation beyond just not letting Draco commit murder). Not letting Draco commit murder was no more significant than not making him Prefect until he was a fifth year.
From:
no subject
It's true that the 'not recognizing' & following + being in a way seem contradictory, but at the same time he's always had flashes of... something like decency/goodwill/something in the midst of typical 'tricksy wabbit' type behavior. Um... treating book 6 as an anomaly (that's what I meant). I feel like the incident at Malfoy Manor could have led to more, or he could have, I guess, snapped back to 'normal' under greater pressure-- which is what did happen. Besides, he couldn't have followed Harry before he was in Hogwarts (which is apparently where Draco was). He'd have needed quite the resources to follow Harry around otherwise when even Voldy wasn't sure where they are. So I can see how it's both-- both that JKR just wanted them to provide drama/be in the way, but also that this completes the H/D arc (Harry goes from pity to more mature/impersonal concern/rescuing Malfoy) and reflects their past a bit in a circle-- from following to taunting with wands to broomsticks to Harry seeing Malfoy as someone who needs his help. Or at least there seems more there than just being in the way insofar as their dynamic acquired a final new element, I guess; not what I was hoping for, but still some small progress.
Anyway, yeah it does say it's bad-- I do criticize HP too, y'know, haha, especially in my bitterness that HBP wasn't what I wanted for Harry even though it was for Draco. Character jumps, yeah. I know what you mean about the muddiness-- like some final element that'd bring it all together is missing-- but at the same time, perhaps from a distance squinting(?), it does make sense to me at least with Draco (I'm hopeless with his mum & dad, sorry Draco). A lot of times I was wondering what was going on with him and why he reacted like this all of a sudden-- but then I felt like, 'oops, expectations interfering' and restarted-- and realized it was just that he wasn't going where I wanted him to go rather than not making sense, per se. So in that sense there wasn't really a dramatic direction, especially not like in HBP-- only meandering with highlights, almost like JKR was purposefully trying not to do anything else with Draco 'cause he was to stay the way he was. Perhaps this is subconcious, because she wrote herself into a corner with him-- in JKR's world, no one transforms, only becomes more of themselves, right, so in that sense book 6 was a red herring, an anomaly for Draco, or perhaps this means that in terms of Authorial Intent, HBP should be seen in terms of book 7..?? I see what you mean, anyway. I agree that for Draco, OoTP-->HBP was an awesome follow-up (an anomaly in that sense too, heh).
From:
no subject
Well, the 'actual reason' is his patronage of his students...? That's a reason, no? To me, 'obvious' speaks to my understanding of how things work in terms of what the characters are 'supposed to' do/believe whether or not they act it out correctly, I guess. I'm not as good at expressing it as I could be, so I resort to words like 'ridiculous' and 'obvious' a lot; you're right they're not exactly what a person would use with intent to explain or debate for that matter. ^^;; Hm. I think there was a reason to not let Draco kill, for Dumbledore, taking Dumbledore's characterization and function as Headmaster and someone who tries to be the "good guy" as the starting point, is what I was talking about; here I'm doing the opposite of how I am with Lucius & Narcissa (ie, it's easy enough for me to talk about his motivations beyond what's directly stated in canon).
He was already dying anyway, and Draco was a student-- and I really believe it's enough that he's 'a student', though his being Draco Malfoy made it more convoluted especially with the Oath. Dumbledore was dying and it was already Snape's responsibility to protect Draco, and Dumbledore was trying to play his fishing for time & new developments game again; if this were not the case, I believe Dumbledore would have just stopped the whole plot in its tracks by confronting Draco and/or just not letting himself be killed (were he not at death's door, there's no way in hell he couldn't defend himself from Draco even without a wand, anyway). Plus it would be unfair to 'let' Draco kill him basically for no good reason (he's dying anyway, yes, but this is murder! he probably cares about sending someone in his school to Azkaban if he can help it, where Snape is an exception). It's convoluted 'cause there are a lot of both motivational & plot threads in this, though. ^^;