I'm always surprised by people who find it scary that people can argue the DE's case for them on the subject of Muggleborns or Muggles. Like if you're not just completely horrified by the word Mudblood you must be a Klansman or something.
The ability to look at an issue from all sides (or at least more than one) is sadly undervalued in vast areas of life, and in the HP books it doesn't seem to exist even as a concept. Sometimes, when I'm in one of my "try to make sense of it all" moods, I wonder if that inability is down to the kind of education wizards and witches receive, with apparently none of the liberal arts. All that Hogwarts seems to teach are practical courses. It almost seems deliberately geared towards suppressing anything that actually could make you question the dominant system, or just to think. There's no geography at all (which would teach them that not every place is like their own home); the History lessons are so boring everyone sleeps in them (because the past is a different country); literature and languages aren't taught at all; no music or arts; and so on. No wonder something is wrong with that society!
(I liked it very much that in the "Psychic Serpent" Trilogy, Moody made them read Shakespeare in DADA, in order to understand what made characters tick and what made them "go bad.")
Really the fact that the Muggleborns suffer so little prejudice in canon is just kind of weird--as is the fact that they never do anything to inspire prejudice, which would also happen.
As you've said before, and I happen to completely agree, the Mudblood thing doesn't actually make all that much sense. There isn't any sense that being a Muggle-born makes any difference for these people apart from random "evil" characters running around calling them "Mudbloods," and apparently trying to kill them (though we haven't seen much of that). There's no sense of the cultural clash that should be there, no cohesion among the Muggle-born as a group, no repression against them, no suspicion, nothing at all by way of real, meaningful differences. Which is very strange to me.
Mira recently put it perfectly by saying Harry honestly seems to think all good people should start whistling spaghetti western themes when he enters a room.
Yes, this sums it up perfectly - and it made me giggle for a few minutes like an idiot, imagining that happening in the books. Excuse me while I go off to giggle some more.
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Date: 2004-09-03 12:20 pm (UTC)The ability to look at an issue from all sides (or at least more than one) is sadly undervalued in vast areas of life, and in the HP books it doesn't seem to exist even as a concept. Sometimes, when I'm in one of my "try to make sense of it all" moods, I wonder if that inability is down to the kind of education wizards and witches receive, with apparently none of the liberal arts. All that Hogwarts seems to teach are practical courses. It almost seems deliberately geared towards suppressing anything that actually could make you question the dominant system, or just to think. There's no geography at all (which would teach them that not every place is like their own home); the History lessons are so boring everyone sleeps in them (because the past is a different country); literature and languages aren't taught at all; no music or arts; and so on. No wonder something is wrong with that society!
(I liked it very much that in the "Psychic Serpent" Trilogy, Moody made them read Shakespeare in DADA, in order to understand what made characters tick and what made them "go bad.")
Really the fact that the Muggleborns suffer so little prejudice in canon is just kind of weird--as is the fact that they never do anything to inspire prejudice, which would also happen.
As you've said before, and I happen to completely agree, the Mudblood thing doesn't actually make all that much sense. There isn't any sense that being a Muggle-born makes any difference for these people apart from random "evil" characters running around calling them "Mudbloods," and apparently trying to kill them (though we haven't seen much of that). There's no sense of the cultural clash that should be there, no cohesion among the Muggle-born as a group, no repression against them, no suspicion, nothing at all by way of real, meaningful differences. Which is very strange to me.
Mira recently put it perfectly by saying Harry honestly seems to think all good people should start whistling spaghetti western themes when he enters a room.
Yes, this sums it up perfectly - and it made me giggle for a few minutes like an idiot, imagining that happening in the books. Excuse me while I go off to giggle some more.