It sucks to be the Sorting Hat

[sistermagpie]

Super-Fandom-y pre-US-Election-Day post for flist variety.:-)

I've been thinking about this for a while...it's perhaps almost a rant, but maybe not. It's about this phenomenon that probably reflects the HP books but also makes fandom less pleasant sometimes, or at least keeps people from communicating. And it drives me crazy because I'm always getting accused of it.:-) Perhaps not unjustly so, for all I know, so I want to talk about it.



My favorite part of OotP was the Sorting Hat song. Finally, I thought, a good idea. It got ignored, yes, and I assumed the students would learn they were wrong about doing that. But being in fandom, I feel like you can really see how difficult that's going to be, because damn, people love to see Gryffindors and Slytherins fight. It seems sometimes like they exist on a see-saw where cutting one down automatically raises the other or vice versa. I've seen this go both ways, where, for instance, somebody says a Slytherin did something bad in a scene, and the response is, "But the Gryffindor was doing this bad thing!" Or, "Gryffindor sucks. He did X," responded to with, "How can you say he's worse than Slytherin! Slytherin did Y!" Sometimes it gets tangled up in motive as well-“Well, yes Slytherin did X, but he was responding to Gryffindor doing Y!" or vice versa. Which is weird to me because honestly, you'd think that it was unheard of to examine the actions of someone reacting to something else! I mean, even if you're talking about a literal self-defense situation, you can still examine the actions of what someone did. If I killed someone to stop them from killing me or someone else I might feel I did the right thing but I could still accept that I actually killed someone without pretending I did something else (like "counter-killed" them). It doesn't mean I'm denying that the other person was about to kill somebody.

Now, there are some situations where bringing in one house to talk about the other makes a point--for instance, if one is pointing out a specific double standard, explaining somebody's motives in a scene or how it would look to the other person. Or contrasting a character's stated moral belief and the one they live. The houses do obviously egg each other on and often bring out the worst in each other, so it's hard to keep them completely separate. But I feel like those valid connections seep into places where they don't belong in fandom, just like they do in the books.

This kind of see-saw effect just seems to be everywhere and when I think about canon it seems fundamentally off. Gryffindor and Slytherin are not natural opposites the way they're often portrayed in the collective fandom mind. They're both, imo, representing certain different outlooks on leadership that have existed in the world. So rather than look at the qualities the hat lays out in PS/SS that people usually use to describe what makes a Slytherin or a Gryffindor, I want to try to look at exactly what we see in canon and what that tells us about the flaws and strengths of each house.

It's hard to find a strength for Slytherin because let's face it, they haven't really been given any. We barely see them, so there's little we can really say about how they function. This is what we do see: They judge people based on their breeding. They're snobs. Purebloods are better than half-blood, who are better than Muggleborns. They move in a pack (or at least are described as being a gang from the outside) which is exclusionary. They make fun of people outside their gang. It's not quite correct to say they laugh at others' pain on principle, because they have of course been shown to get upset over other peoples' pain as long as that person is one of them. Usually we see them acting on their own personal desires and that's it. So it seems like what they represent is a system where all people are not created equal, where the world is a strict hierarchy. They tease, humiliate and insult those who show weakness. At their worst they become Death Eaters and decide people not like them don't have a right to live.

On the positive side, they probably do appreciate history, can have a healthy (as well as an unhealthy) respect for authority, they can be creative and fun. Perhaps most interestingly, there are two Slytherins who potentially made difficult moral choices even when it didn't benefit them personally: Snape and Regulus. Both of these characters believed in Pureblood Superiority but rejected its most extreme conclusions with Voldemort and so perhaps had to rethink the whole idea. This is probably yet another reason I despise the idea of the "good Slytherin" who unites the houses by never buying into this stuff or figuring out it's bad off-screen.

So basically, what we seem to be dealing with, with the Slytherins is a particular side of human nature, one that's brought us such charming but different things as slavery, imperialism, and genocide.

Then there's Gryffindor. Well, off the bat we've got more positive qualities. Many of these students have been shown to *want* to be good people and *want* to be unselfish, protect the weak, have humility. They like to have fun--often of the slap you on the back hard kind. They don't openly judge people based on their bloodline (though it would be inaccurate to suggest they are free of prejudice, of course).

Their danger lies more in self-righteousness and having the Slytherins as rivals obviously don't help them there, because they represent things that modern thinking considers so obviously bad that they have little reason to question whether they're right compared to the other house. They're not snobs, they're not prejudiced against Muggleborns. Unfortunately because they "know" they're right they rarely examine their own actions and they too have scenes where they take pleasure in the pain of other people because those people “deserve it.” Being against Voldemort covers just about everything they do. Hermione's justification for her Polyjuice plan is that "killing Muggleborns is worse than brewing a difficult Potion." On the surface she sounds right, but if you actually look at the facts, she's presenting what she's doing in a pretty dishonest way. And those things are important because they are exactly the type of things that cause big problems in the story.

Sirius is not wrongly imprisoned on what one might call Slytherin principles. He's wrongly imprisoned on just these principles: we know we're right, we have to keep the bad guy from getting away. If we give him too many rights, he'll use them to trick us. So we'll only give those rights to the people we already think are good guys. That, I think, is where many readers wind up shaking their head, because you have characters who know they want fairness when it applies to themselves, but don't seem to realize this particular thing you don't get by destroying Voldemort. And that's another side of human nature that's brought us other charming but different things like imperialism, the crusades, and The Patriot Act. It's that line of thinking where questioning the mindset makes you the enemy. They risk throwing away a potentially fair system because they mistakenly think Voldemort and Slytherin embody every potential evil.

These two mindsets aren't completely different--obviously you can see parallels in both of them. Both sides cast people out for questioning the party line, and in OotP especially the reflections start coming more and more often. But while they echo each other, they're also two groups of people each moving on their own potential path of destruction. Sometimes they push each other further in a bad direction or a good one, but they aren't joined in terms of really causing each other's actions. One side may provide the thing the other is reacting to, but they don't choose their actions for them. Often in the same situation they would react differently. So they shouldn't be held accountable for the other side's actions, but they still can be held accountable for their own actions and the fact that they do have consequences. They might operate on different planes but neither one is free of potential danger or immorality. So pointing out that one side at least isn't the other side or finding ways in which something one side does is also done by the other has very limited usefulness, imo. You have to be able to take them both separately and not always leap for a comparison to the other side that makes them look better.

This, to me, is probably the one way that fandom makes me enjoy the books a lot less than I would if I weren't in the fandom. Because I can deal with the events that happen in the books, and the characters thinking this way. But when I see it translated into real life as if this is the way things should be, whichever side a person is on, makes me lose a little hope that we might straighten ourselves out. Sometimes it seems like the real danger/evil that Slytherin represents is the temptation to believe in evil as a tangible, outside force. By making Gryffindor often look good by comparison, they coax the characters into darker psychological places-and those places aren't bad in themselves. They may just be a place they need to be. What's scary isn't that they go there, but that they don't realize they've gone there because they've still got those evil Slytherins to compare themselves to and say, “Nope, I'm not them. I'm completely good and innocent.” That's a wonderfully freaky idea to me. While I doubt seriously it would happen, all the good guys could wind up having committed murder, torture and blackmail and be completely consumed by rage and despair while the “bad” kids die ignorant but innocent. Because already there have been times when actual actions of one side have been overlooked while potential actions in the other are bad enough. Or, on the other side, desires of one side are overlooked in order to condemn the actions of the other. Really you've just a bunch of really messed up people.

Obviously, this post is probably coming out amidst a flurry of election posts. On one hand the idea of a little distraction-I know I'm so afraid to think of what could potentially happen tomorrow I'd rather think of anything else. Otoh, though, while I'm usually a big believer in fantasy and imagination being a good thing, I will say that I hope the half of the population of my country that seems to be living in a fantasy world wakes up in reality tomorrow. I know it would be a nasty shock to admit, all at once, that the sunny heroic picture people seem to be fond of is all a lie, that the Bush administration isn't Dumbledore or Gandalf or Captain Kirk and that all those stories about deception and chaos and disaster in the world are not creations of the liberal media but the world they live in. I love searching for the reality within fiction; I prefer to vote against fiction in reality.

Comments

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

Love your last line.

I may say more about this once I can think again (it's been quite a weekend), but I just wanted to note that, from the little we see, Slytherins show an impressive amount of solidarity, especially for teenagers. This is primarily a side effect of being the enemy house for all three others, but it can give stability not usually found in most teens' social interactions. OTOH, the house isolation means that when there *are* in-group problems, the students have nowhere else to go, but that's the fault of the isolation of their house, not the students within it. Also, I can see it as motivation to solve those problems more quickly or avoid them in the first place.

I think you're right that their emphasis on family purity and such gives them a respect for history and culture completely lacking in most Gryffindors -- see, for instance, the ancient relics stocking 12 Grimmauld Place before the Order all but razes the place (can you tell I'm a history fan?). Finally, I could potentially see that snobbery going toward more meritocratic scales, such as Snape's complete disgust with students lousy at potions. This isn't really a *good* thing, and we don't see much of it, but it seems to fall in line with house values, and it does help tease apart the snobbery from the blood-based prejudices.

In other words, JKR shows us so little of most Slytherins that it's hard to find their good sides, but I think we can get enough from them to find a balance, such as we're already given for Gryffindor, without wandering into pure fanon. Of course, it would be really nice if we ever actually saw a Slytherin who was genuinely *ambitious* like the hat says they are, and hasn't merely pulled the power-hungry part of it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I've just been re-reading that attack on the house at Grimmauld Place and I feel your pain. Harry describes it as "waging war" on the house and that's just what it is, with the family's history being completely wiped out because it's been judged worthless. It's very chilling to me and it does, to me, seem to fit in with Slytherin in general, since Slytherin seems to somehow represent this primative past of the WW that many people want to get rid of to start again.

Slytherin is amazingly unified and while you could say part of it is due to Harry's always seeing them as a gang in his mind it still does seem to have some basis in fact. A lot of people seem to have jumped on JKR's descriptions of Nott to make him "the good Slytherin" who stands against Malfoy's gang, but what I found fascinating in OotP was that he didn't seem that way at all. He seemed like an independent with perfectly fine relations to Draco, someone whose place Draco respected, who was working *with* D/C/G when they had a common interest (The Quibbler report). This goes also into all the hints in canon that the Slytherins have clear ideas about public and private faces too. Draco gets yelled at by his captain in front of others, but that's not really a breakdown there since Flint has the authority to do that.

I guess that's why I never like stories that show Slytherin as this viper's nest of backstabbing where everybody seems so intent on getting at each other they'd make alliances with people from any house to do it.

Of course, it would be really nice if we ever actually saw a Slytherin who was genuinely *ambitious* like the hat says they are, and hasn't merely pulled the power-hungry part of it.

Yes, it's very hard to tell exactly what the hat means there by "ambition," given that some of the most ambitious characters seem to be Gryffindors. Though, of course, that's also because most of the most anything characters are Gryffindors because that's all we know. We're told the -est everything are Gryffindors. Smartest character? Hermione. Most loyal character? Ron. Most ambitious character? Percy. Most cunning? Hermione and Harry.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

Actually other than heidi there's a profusion of NaNo entries on my flist. It's disgusting really. ;)

As Terry Pratchett said, fantasy is alright provided you're escaping to instead of from. Always liked that quote.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh. I can't believe this is my second NaNo. Not as a participant, just as a spectator.

That's a great quote and exactly how I feel. I mean, I'm all for finding real life analogies in fantasy books but I've seen some ideas where people have it completely backwards, where people pretend their real life situation is anything like the fictional one when it's not. Very scary. I kind of wish they would just vote in that fantasy world and not the real one.:-)

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it seems like the real danger/evil that Slytherin represents is the temptation to believe in evil as a tangible, outside force. . . . they've still got those evil Slytherins to compare themselves to and say, “Nope, I'm not them."

A fascinating point, and I'm tempted to find a topical subtext to it pre-election day. Demonizing the Other has consequences for the person doing the demonizing; it's just not very good for anyone's intellectual acuity or moral well-being, is it? On the other hand this kind of prefabricated conflict is popular, as you say, both inside the world of the text and out of it --

Damn, people love to see Gryffindors and Slytherins fight. It seems sometimes like they exist on a see-saw where cutting one down automatically raises the other or vice versa.

Yes. Makes for a good source of plot tension -- whenever Harry is feeling too comfortable, a gang of Slytherins can come along and taunt him. I'm not saying I don't enjoy this -- of course I do; many people remember what it was like to face bullies, or apparent bullies, at school, and particularly for those of us who are nerds-in-recovery, one of the guilty pleasures of HP is seeing the bullies lose time and time again.

Still, I've often wondered how the books would be different if the main rivalry were not between Gryffindor and Slytherin, but between Gryffindor and one of the other Houses. If Gryffindor is defined primarily by being not-Slytherin, that is, as you say, an easy way for Gryffindor to claim the moral high ground. But the Gryffindor temperament and character is in some ways just as strongly opposed to that of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and one of the many things Rowling accomplishes by emphasizing Gryffindor vs. Slytherin is to distract us from potential rivalries, or at least disagreements, that would NOT make Gryffindor look quite so admirable to all readers. How would we see Harry, for example, if he were constantly sparring with some Ravenclaw? That seems unlikely, but is it really? Would Gryffindors be predisposed to see Ravenclaws as overly bookish and theoretical (and therefore at least faintly ridiculous) and Hufflepuffs as being, well, wimpy natural victims? I can imagine a version of HP in which some tension between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw might, for example, throw into stronger relief Gryffindor's anti-intellectual side, or in which tension between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff could make Gryffindor look a bit too, well, like boorish and inconsiderate jocks. Fortunately Slytherin is there, and so Gryffindor is primarily not-evil rather than not-smart or not-sweet. For that reason alone the Slytherins are awfully useful creatures to have around, and Hogwarts might be a much more uncomfortable -- or more morally ambiguous -- place without them.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Some of the most affecting stories I've heard in fandom are from people who were or know kids who do identify with the "bad kids" at Hogwarts for whatever reason. Like where they might feel exactly like Harry does about being bullied or picked on, but feel like within this world they would still be Slytherins. Not in a fake, romantic Goth way, but just a brutally realistic way. I do think it's part of the whole Gryff vs. Slyth thing in fandom, in fact, because both sides tend to identify themselves as the underdog. Slytherin makes it strangely easy to do that, because they really embody the worst, least attractive aspects of both the bullies and the victims.

Thinking about Gryffindor vs. other houses is really interesting for me because pre-OotP I remember always having this vague impression that if you were going to break down alliances between houses there was the everybody-against-Slytherin one, then the Gryff/Slyth rivalry vs. Huff/Claw as the two "recessive" houses, and then Gryff/Huff vs. Slyth/Claw. It wasn't anything I could really point to, I just felt like there was this subtextual thing where Hufflepuff was like Gryffindor Junior because it was based more on emotion. I just got the feeling Ravenclaw's "intelligence" was closer to Slytherin's "cunning" and so was a bit more suspicious because it put head over heart. It seemed like fanfic often picked up on that, having Ravenclaw students more apt to be friendly with Slytherins than Hufflepuff or Gryffindor. In the books Ravenclaw was the house we knew the least about, next to Slytherin. Hufflepuff had more character, somehow. Even now there's more house character, imo, to the three other houses. Ravenclaw's like a wild card, a school in itself with many different kinds of kids.

So in OotP we met Luna, but she was an outcast in Ravenclaw waiting to be adopted by those bully-protectors in Gryffindor. And I just felt like it made sense that the "mole" within the DA was a Ravenclaw. It happened much the way I just always had a feeling the books felt it would: the Ravenclaw was untrustworthy. She doubted the cause. She saw the other side's pov. Cho tried to explain her actions to Harry instead of dropping her like a traitor. Meanwhile as I was reading I thought from day 1 I couldn't last in that group and knew just how Marietta was feeling.

Maybe it's because I identify with that house after always getting put there in quizzes, or just because to me being thinking-based rather than driven by your heart or your gut (which is not to say smarter; you can be ruled by head/thinking without being bright) makes being part of anything like the DA a problem. Thinking too much just seemed sort of suspicious, which is why the allegedly intellectual Gryffindor specifically puts down "books and cleverness" in favor of "courage," and whose intellectual curiosity is all in the service of a cause. Hermione's yet to let research change her mind about anything that I can remember. Part of her smoothing over ethical questions is the way she doesn't go into any study objectively.

To bring it back to the real world, Hermione would get none of the criticism levelled at John Kerry. He's always accused of not being decisive and "arguing with himself," imo because he approaches complexes problems from all sides. Hermione, while smart, finds a sound bite and sticks to it.

[saturniia.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I think this is one of your first posts that I've responded to directly. Where to start, where to start...

Let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to...
*shuts off little voice in head that sounds suspiciously like Julie Andrews*

PS/SS, though, is probably the easiest place to begin. What we have before the sorting ceremony is, in the most basic narrative terms, just enough back story to determine that Harry's home life (the story's representative of the Muggle world) is worse than most, Professor Dumbledore sends guardians who are usually truthful in addition to being infinately preferable to the company of the Dursleys, Harry's parents were in fact not killed in a car crash, Draco Malfoy (the first Slytherin or Slytherinesque character Harry encounters) is a spoiled brat, and the Weasleys are nice because their mother, a former Gryffindor, is still alive and she helped Harry get onto platform 9 3/4.

What we don't see until later is that Dumbledore is in effect engineering a Gryffindor. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly colors the situation. What would happen if Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were a bit nicer? What would happen if Harry had discovered his letters' content on his own? What would happen if Draco wasn't quite such a brat? Or if Harry's guardian had been brusque Prof. McGonogal, cold Prof. Snape, diminuative Prof. Flitwick, or kindly Prof. Sprout? Or Madame Hooch? Or Prof Vector or one of the other professors we rarely (if ever) see? What if the only place for Harry to sit had been with a group of students destined for one of the other houses?

No... Harry the Gryffindor was made, not born. Change one of the variables mentioned above, and Harry would seem to have a different personality. Change two, and he could very well have chosen to be in Slytherin.

That's probably why he's actually scary, most times. He embodies the best of Gryffindor in many ways, but the worst of Slytherin in many others. Looking at him without Gryffindor goggles, we can see his elitist attitude and his self-centeredness most easily.

His snobbery, though not related to bloodline, tends to exclude any non-Gryffindors who aren't Quidditch players, many Quidditch players who are non-Gryffindors, the Creevys, Percy Weasley... basically, anyone who isn't a Gryffindor he likes. Professors are exempt from this because he doesn't have to like them to respect them, or respect them to like them. (How many times has he gone against what Hagrid suggested, even though the half-giant seems to be his favorite adult on campus?)

Also, we've seen him operating on his own desires more than once: personal curiosity in PS/SS, wanting to clear his own name in CoS, selfish anger when he blew Aunt Marge up in PoA, school pride, among other things, in GoF, and the selfish desire to save his godfather in OotP. For these desires, he risks his friends' lives and reputations. For these desires, he risks exposing magic to the Muggle world. Sometimes, like at the end of GoF, things are out of his control, but when he could stop the process (like when Hermione brewed the Polyjuice Potion), he didn't really want to stop. In fact, it seems like the only time he even questions his own actions is when he's feeling guilty. Sounds pretty Slytherin to me.

What makes this dangerous, like you said, is the fact that Harry seems to justify all this by saying to himself "I'm not in Slytherin. If I were truly Slytherin, regardless of my desires, it would have put me there. Therefore, in this society, I'm better than Slytherin," or something along those lines. He recognizes he makes mistakes, but he doesn't take responsibility for them. It's like that Dashboard Confessional song:
Vindicated
I am selfish
I am wrong
I am right
I swear I'm right
Swear I knew it all along

Harry knows what he does is wrong, but he doesn't care, either because he can justify his motives to himself, or because he has acted to avenge a wrong he's seen done to him. It seems, though, that sometimes he picks the smallest issues to get righteous about, and fails to see his own shortcomings or mental (as well as physical) myopia.

[biichan.livejournal.com]

What makes this dangerous, like you said, is the fact that Harry seems to justify all this by saying to himself "I'm not in Slytherin. If I were truly Slytherin, regardless of my desires, it would have put me there. Therefore, in this society, I'm better than Slytherin," or something along those lines.

And who taught him that logic? Dumbledore. That man scares the piss out of me.

Hell, if you want to take paranoia to Moody-levels, you could always say that isn't it funny that Dumbledore's helpful Weasleys were just there when he needed them...

(Actually, on your line of thought about the logic of Harry being a Gryffindor or not, Kiri (ataniell93) and I sometimes RP back-and-forth this little Slyth!Harry timeline where Draco, who was horsing around going back and forth through the platform barrier, saw Harry again before the Weasleys could and--figuring he was Our Sort from the tailored robes at Malkins--helped him through instead. Kiri has a snippet of it, actually, in her journal somewhere.)

[cs-luis.livejournal.com]

No... Harry the Gryffindor was made, not born. Change one of the variables mentioned above, and Harry would seem to have a different personality. Change two, and he could very well have chosen to be in Slytherin.

Absolutely. I agree 100% with everything you've said - Harry is being programmed to turn into the kind of wizard Dumbledore wants and needs him to be. It's quite frightening.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is so true. It's always surprised me that people don't see this about Harry's upbringing--Dumbledore's explanations for why he was with the Dursleys were always so frightening to me: he thought he would get a swelled head if he was raised in the WW? Huh? That's ridiculous. Imagine if Harry had been raised knowing who he was but by perfectly responsible parents who taught him to value other things. Instead it seems like Dumbledore made sure he grew up ready to cling to the person who "rescued" him from the Dursleys. So now he's in the crazy positions of loving Dumbledore for not being the Dursleys and never seeming to make the connection that Dumbledore placed him there and kept him there and continues to keep him there for his own purposes.

It's influenced so much about him. Even his first meeting with Draco, for instance, is influenced by his upbringing. Had he grown up in the WW Draco might have come across as a kid trying to hard with flaws but not someone who made Harry so angry. Instead he hates him first for having parents who buy him things like Dudley, for making Harry feel silly for not knowing about the WW and for being harsh about Hagrid. Had Harry grown up in the WW he probably would have wound up talking about Quidditch and Draco might not have been so offensive so soon!

And yeah, I totally agree on how Harry's learned so far. He learns lessons that don't really challenge him. Dumbledore is a master at this too. He seems to be able to disavow responsibility for just about anything that makes him look bad. Harry's furious all summer at the Dursleys and at the end of OotP Dumbledore describes 11-year-old Harry as simply a little underfed and asks for sympathy.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Interesting thoughts. This reminds me of a post-OotP essay on Harry. There were lots of debates over it.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/vesania_aeterno/21378.html

[lingzer0.livejournal.com]

Really, as much as I like Headmaster Dumbledore, he seems a little too favorable toward Gryffindors. He makes sure that they win the House Cup Harry's first year and he is always on Harry's side. Always. It's never him handing out punishment, one would notice.

What makes this dangerous, like you said, is the fact that Harry seems to justify all this by saying to himself "I'm not in Slytherin. If I were truly Slytherin, regardless of my desires, it would have put me there. Therefore, in this society, I'm better than Slytherin," or something along those lines. He recognizes he makes mistakes, but he doesn't take responsibility for them.

This is true, and what I find interesting is that Slytherin is villainized from square one. Hagrid tells Harry that all the bad witches and wizards were in Slytherin, Ron tells him that it's bad (I think), Draco, Crabbe, Goyle, Lucius, etc are all mean - isn't there a good side to the house? Being ambitious and cunning can actually be useful if you were, say, an entrepeneur.

Another thing that gets me is that some people will just say "they're evil!" as a motivation. Yes, they want to kill Muggles and Muggleborns. But why? What makes them want to? Why are they mean? And on the other side, the randomly nice [insert Slytherin here]. People like Draco and Prof. Snape are, in canon, not nice or fond of Gryffindors, our Hero and co., or anyone else, really.

[sine-que-non767.livejournal.com]

I'm loving this post. Something I always need to 'shake off' the bad parts of fandom in the same way - that Gryffindor and Slytherin are not equal opposites, they are just different. Different bad, different good. I've often seen Gryffindors as not having the 'nous' to appreciate what is handed down in Slytherin - boorish jocks come in every house (looks at Flint and Fred and George), but Gryffindor's self-righteous tendency and back-slapping, practical-joke playing could create more of them.

if you were going to break down alliances between houses there was the everybody-against-Slytherin one, then the Gryff/Slyth rivalry vs. Huff/Claw as the two "recessive" houses, and then Gryff/Huff vs. Slyth/Claw. It wasn't anything I could really point to, I just felt like there was this subtextual thing where Hufflepuff was like Gryffindor Junior because it was based more on emotion. I just got the feeling Ravenclaw's "intelligence" was closer to Slytherin's "cunning" and so was a bit more suspicious because it put head over heart.

Absolutely. I came to the same conclusion.

Thinking too much just seemed sort of suspicious, which is why the allegedly intellectual Gryffindor specifically puts down "books and cleverness" in favor of "courage," and whose intellectual curiosity is all in the service of a cause. Hermione's yet to let research change her mind about anything that I can remember. Part of her smoothing over ethical questions is the way she doesn't go into any study objectively.

This pinpoints exactly why I'm always suspicious of Gryffindor - it seems more about the grunts and the agreement with mass opinion, than the individualism and ambitious striving of Slytherin. I know you could probably make a case for the other way round (Crabbe and Goyle classic grunts, DEs only want mass opinion) but OTOH you could differentiate between classic Slytherin thinking as embodied by Salazar and Phineas Nigellus, and wack-job extremist thinking a la Voldemort, who twisted and stretched pureblood thinking to its logical extreme. Which is not to say that Slytherin thinking is bad - like you say, it's a style of leadership with its good and bad points. Logical extremes, OTOH, are always bad by definition.

(OT: Phineas always reminds me of Blackadder telling off Pitt the Even Younger for spouting off teenaged agonised poetry to him (3rd series), with this line:
'He is planning something to do with me, then?' said Harry swiftly.
'Did I say that?' said Phineas Nigellus, idly examining his silk gloves. 'Now, if you will excuse me, I have better things to do than listen to adolescent agonising . . . good-day to you.' *g*)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

OMG, I LOVE Phineas as Blackadder especially in that episode. That really is one of the things I loved about him, that he realized that a big part of being a teenager is being an idiot. ("I've written a poem about it..." says Pitt the Younger.)

I love the idea of being able to see different versions of the same types in the different houses instead of having this idea that one house contains all the bad stereotypes. Slytherin really does have the makings of individualism along with their DE heritage. It's one of those times when fandom conventions offer great insight, imo. There's a reason Slytherin is often imagined as seeming like the 18th century French Court.

I remember pre-OotP also really wanting to challenge the widely held assumption that the Trio's style of friendship was, for example, what "true friendship" was about while Draco's group clearly wasn't really friends. I mean, leaving the individual personalities aside there seemed to be this idea that the Trio were real friends because they were "all equal" while the fact that the Slytherins obviously had Draco as a leader and C&G following (with Pansy then becoming basically Draco's girl whether platonically or romantically) was somehow bad. But really, they're both simply different ways of arranging a group, both of which have strengths and weaknesses. At times the "equality" (which sometimes isn't really) of the Trio makes them less stable while the Slytherin's hierarchy makes them more stable. That's not to say the Slytherins are better, just that we shouldn't pretend that there's one model of friendship to strive for.

The funny thing was I never wound up writing about that because in OotP Harry's group shifted a lot. Harry became more of a leader in ways he hadn't been before (and in the past I thought his not taking the lead might have sometimes caused tension), Hermione was more obviously supporting him and Ron sometimes really had to take a backseat. Unfortunately I feel like this might be another time where rather than consider the idea that the Trio dynamic became anything like the Slytherin one, people might instinctively just explain how that didn't happen because Harry being a leader is different than a Slytherin being a leader etc.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

We don't actually canonically know that Regulus was a Slytherin, do we? (But it seems logical to assume that, based on JKR's "Slytherin=bad" bias.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Whoops--good point! It seems almost like a given because of his buying into the Black=royalty idea and all that, but I suppose we shouldn't assume. Also in OotP the hat seems to suggest that being in a Pureblood family like the Blacks is a big part of the definition of Slytherin.

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

Doesn't Sirius say somewhere that all his family were Slytherin exept himself? I was sure I'd read that....

[katarik.livejournal.com]

Dude. Posts like this are why I read your journal.
I attend a Catholic school in Alabama. I am one of close to ten non-Bush supporters. People ask me why I don't support Bush, and I'm never sure quite how to word it so I don't sound all sanctimonious. You've given me some really good ideas as to why I think what I do. Thanks so much. *hug*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Really? Thanks! I feel completely inarticulate about it too. I have to stop myself from saying something stupid like, ARE YOU INSANE???

*hugs you back!!*

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

*gobsmacked*

Their danger lies more in self-righteousness and having the Slytherins as rivals obviously don't help them there, because they represent things that modern thinking considers so obviously bad that they have little reason to question whether they're right compared to the other house.

Of course!

*smacks self on forehead*

This makes so much sense, but, as usual, I'm too tired to go fully into it now. But suddenly I understand that...it's the source of all these weird discrepancies and...ack, how to explain this.

And I keep thinking about how Harry could be going either way - how he spared Peter, but at the same time cast that Cruciatus....

I think I also get now why all these people(you too, if I'm not misinterpreting?) are so wary of JKR, because she never exactly makes clear whether she *realizes* that her Gryffindorish characters think this way, or whether she, too, thinks that Slytherins represent All What is Evil and should be accordingly punished. But she should be pushing towards that end of overall unity...that unused Sorting Hat song, Dumbledore's little rant about the treatment of creatures...


Umbridge was totally a Gryffindor.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Gobsmacked? Go me!:-)

I think I also get now why all these people(you too, if I'm not misinterpreting?) are so wary of JKR, because she never exactly makes clear whether she *realizes* that her Gryffindorish characters think this way, or whether she, too, thinks that Slytherins represent All What is Evil and should be accordingly punished.

Yes, I think that's a great way of putting it. I can't say how JKR really feels about it at this point or anything. In the books right now it seems like there's been plenty of groundwork laid to push everyone to overall unity etc. (which would not only involve the Gryffindors looking at themselves but the Slytherins having to do that as well). But other times it does sound like it's just Slytherin (or the ones we know) are everything evil and must be punished and that, to me, is no kind of happy ending or victory because of course that's not the way it works. It doesn't even get rid of the bad qualities Slytherin has because there will just be some other group to rise up and get persecuted. The idea that the bigotted kids couldn't possibly learn their beliefs are wrong logically and become better people is pretty hopeless. If we have to wipe them out you really are just edging closer to Voldemort's ideology.

Then there's also the question in our wider world, I think, where because Slytherins are so often connected to racism it's difficult for people to discuss. If you don't just label it evil you run the risk of possibly being considered racist yourself etc. Many people don't seem to want to look at exactly why bigotry is bad and where it comes from and why people have beliefs like that. You're just supposed to consider it bad and impossible for good people to understand and having nothing to do with you.

I'm sure at other periods in history there were other belief systems that were just the same, ones that today we might consider good. That's why I think I've said in the past that one of the weird things about the Slytherins is while there are some things about them that are obviously supposed to flash NAZI there are plenty of other things that seem to flash JEWS, or certainly would if they were in a 13th century text or thereabouts.

[trobadora]

I love your description of the "see-saw effect" - this is something I've been grappling with for a while.

If I killed someone to stop them from killing me or someone else I might feel I did the right thing but I could still accept that I actually killed someone without pretending I did something else (like "counter-killed" them). It doesn't mean I'm denying that the other person was about to kill somebody.

There seems to be this weird idea that what the good guys do and what the bad guys to can never, under no circumstances, be in any way considered to be the same. Hence the need for terms like "counter-jinx", because heaven forfend the good guys should be caught using the same tools as the bad... It's this whole essentialist idea that these two groups are so completely different that even if what they do looks the same to an outsider, it must still be different because, y'know, they are the good guys, and the others are the bad guys...

Hermione's justification for her Polyjuice plan is that "killing Muggleborns is worse than brewing a difficult Potion."

Which is no justification at all. And there seems to be no concept that just because one side does something bad, the other can still do something bad as well. Reacting to something bad doesn't make what you do in reaction a good thing - often it isn't. That's what we call escalation. It happens all the time in the real world, unfortunately. And just because someone thinks that all in all, Harry perhaps shouldn't have done X, doesn't mean they are saying he's no better than Voldemort. Just because something could be worse doesn't mean we should stop criticising.

[funwithrage.livejournal.com]

It's a weird dichotomy here. On one hand, I'm much more canon-POV-sympathetic in that I *don't* have a problem with a lot of the Trio's behavior and do, in many cases, think that Draco/Umbridge/Dudley/etc bring it on themselves. (It's not unreasonable to give someone a black eye for saying, essentially, "I'm glad your friend is dead and you'll be next," and given the WW magical medicine available, the hexes at the end of GoF seem very much like that; if you go around saying "Whee, I'm glad the Heir of Slytherin has let out this monster that's killing everyone," you're letting yourself in for a certain amount of suspicion, thanks...)


On the other hand, the counter-jinx sort of thing takes away from what I see as the point of the first perspective, that most acts aren't in and of themselves evil but depend very much on circumstance. Yes, Draco may have deserved his end-of-GoF fate, but...an offensive spell is still an offensive spell, whether or not you're using it justly.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Which is no justification at all. And there seems to be no concept that just because one side does something bad, the other can still do something bad as well.

Yes--I mean, when I think about that line it's just so almost chilling because it sounds so reasonable. I mean, first of all, who's killing Muggleborns here? Not the kids who are getting spied on at all, but Ginny. And while Draco might have brought suspicion on himself with his crowing about the Dark Lord, so did Harry by speaking Parseltongue...would he be okay with somebody knocking out Ron and Hermione to spy on him? With Hermione's justification you have to assume guilt to justify your methods of proving guilt and everybody can probably understand wanting to do that but there's a reason we don't allow it.

Also, even referring to the problem as "brewing a difficult Potion" (I think that's what she says) is a rationalization. Surely Polyjuice isn't off limits because it's too difficult but because it's a violation of rights. I would imagine getting caught stealing another student's body would get you in huge trouble. Harry even learns this the next year when somebody gets into his confidence and turns out to be a villain. The weird thing isn't that the Trio decide to go through with this plan but also that the implications never even cross anyone's mind: is it wrong to knock these two boys out who don't seem to be bothering us at all? Should we feel badly about basically peeping on them and seeing them naked? Does their being innocent change anything? Were we wrong to throw that firecracker and steal from Snape? Everything's just good good good because they're fighting Voldemort, and when it turns out they're actually just harassing students they don't like well, that's close enough!

[violet-muse.livejournal.com]

Isn't the Sorting Hat basically just sorting the kids into their cliques tho?

Slytherins --> cool kids
Ravenclaws --> nerds
Hufflepuffs --> geeks
Gryffindors --> jocks

Yes, the lines are a bit more blurred than that... Take the Gryffindors, for example. Neville is arguably a geek--but when push comes to shove, he stands up and fights. Hermione could be called a nerd, but she's also shown an overwhelming tendency to take physical action when she believes in something. Physical is the operative word, I think, when it comes to Gryffindors.

But I think the lines are blurred because that's the point JKR is trying to make--as kids in school we tend to set ourselves up into certain groups, and the lines never really get crossed. But the truth is that we all have traits in common, and most of us could fit into any of those cliques if the circumstances were right (just as the Hat implied that Harry could have fit into any of the houses, back when he got Sorted). It isn't until we grow up and become adults that we stop looking at each other as stereotypes and start looking at people as unique individuals.

If we grow up, that is...some never really do. *wry grin*

I think the whole point of defining the houses is to make a point about school cliques and stereotypes. Rather than the kids sorting these things out for themselves, the Hat does it for them really. As the HP kids get older, JKR seems to be dropping some of the boundaries between the houses--in OotP Harry spent a lot more time interacting with Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws than he had in the previous books I think.

I suppose I've sortof come at the topic sideways, but then I do that sometimes... *grin*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

This may be an ignorant question, but aren't "cliques" more of an American obsession? I mean, obviously English kids form groups of friends just like American ones do, but it seems like nerds, cool kids, geeks and jocks are more part of the American cafeteria idea--and they don't really fit the houses at Hogwarts. Slytherins aren't really described as the cool kids. Draco and Pansy arguably are, but Millicent Bulstrode doesn't really. Cedric Diggory isn't a geek and Cho isn't a nerd.

Not that I'm completely disagreeing because the houses obviously do sort people into natural groups that the kids then have to really work to break down--and then only if they choose to. I just don't know if they're based around stereotypes we'd remember from high school, exactly.