sistermagpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sistermagpie) wrote2004-11-01 03:47 pm
sistermagpie) wrote2004-11-01 03:47 pm
It sucks to be the Sorting Hat
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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
no subject
no subject
(Anonymous) 2004-11-02 06:46 am (UTC)(link)no subject
no subject
OTOH, where, then, would she fall on the "social" scale, which is just as important to teenagers? Maybe she'd become friends with Ravenclaws, maybe not. Maybe she'd buddy up with Neville, maybe not. She probably wouldn't spend time with Lavender or Parvati, because they seem like giggly, "glossy magazine" girls, if you know what I mean, while I don't think anything will make Hermione completely stop being bookish, clever, and even political.
no subject
no subject
no subject
http://elkins.theennead.com/hp/archives/000129.html#top
http://www.livejournal.com/users/roxannelinton/26521.html?thread=425625#t425625
Neville is a Tool of the Man, as Malafede puts it ;)
no subject
As I'm sure I mentioned at the time, I hated Neville's "heroic" scene in OotP when he launched himself at Draco when he wasn't even speaking to him, and I do think it sadly fits in with exactly what Elkins is talking about. Does Neville at that point know Harry knows about his home situation? I'm not sure. Anyway, it was so pointless and I thought wtf? Why is Neville attacking somebody for making a joke about Harry--not even crazy people? Surely he knows he's not being picked on; he's not stupid. He's been trying to hide his parents' situation so why reveal it here? Has that plant gotten to him and made him stupid?
But I think it was, sadly, just proof that Neville was finally becoming a hero in reacting so stupidly to a non-event.
no subject
Oh, I loathed that.
I respect Neville's bravery, even though I think his portrayal is unsubtle and I don't put anywhere near the amount of faith in bravery that JKR obviously does; (I love that with all the fantastic characteristics of four houses - brains, bravery, ambition, loyalty; there's no mention of compassion whatsoever. WW is a scary place!) because he doesn't pity himself (*coughs in Harry's direction*) and because he's capable of admitting his mistakes (*coughs even louder at the Trio*) but he's just being an ass in that particular scene.
There's nothing particularly brave in being willing to fight physically, although from PS it's been presented as such (not just with Neville vs Crabbe and Goyle, but Ron and Harry being 'bravely' willing to fight the same boys on the train.)
Neville's form of emotional courage wasn't valued in Gryffindor; hence he changes for them, and lo and behold in OotP, once he masters hexing and fighting and laughing at others; everyone's happy to pair up with him and be his buddy. *vomits*
Neville/Harry reminds me of nothing more than Harry/Ginny - he has this more prominent role (although Neville's was foreshadowed a helluva lot better than Miss Weasley's) and so now he's 'worthy' in a way he presumably wasn't before.
Harry wasn't impressed with Ginny's personality before, so she changed it and now he pays more attention. How romantic. What a beautiful lesson.
And yeah, in that scene, Draco has no idea about Neville's parents, so fighting him over it is lame. And I'm sorry, but wildly over-sensitive.
I mean, I can understand how one would think deorgatory comments about the mentally ill are in bad taste; but really, are you gonna fight everyone in the world who's ever made a stupid remark about say, 'looney bins'?
Cause that includes an awful lot of people.
And again, the joke was aimed at Harry, and there's something repellent about how quickly all the Gryffindors 'rise as one' to defend each other.
I mean, Crabbe and Goyle are treated with contempt for being 'bodyguards' and the rare instances we've seen of physical violence from them (twice, just like Neville ;) - fighting back when Neville starts in PS and throwing a bludger, which is no worse than Fred throwing a bat, albeit in a game, at Flint's face, imho) leads to them being described as bullies.
Same old, same old; I guess - defending a friend by accusing enemies of anything you feel like, then attacking them physically (while outnumbered, or while unawares - I love that people justify the OotP train hexings with 'OMG, teh Slytherin trio totally outnumbered Harry, hence it's perfectly fine for six people to attack them at once!) is the mark of true loyalty; whereas cracking your knuckles means that a) you're an evil tormentor of everyone around you and b) you sekritly loathe said friend and resent them.
no subject
Oh yes. They recognise their own bad behaviour (sort of. In that they seem to have this attitude of 'Dude, I am getting away with nasty shit here!' as opposed to 'What? Me? Bully? Just because five of us hexed them at once?'. Obviously they have as far as the Gryffindors to go in a) learning not to be assholes in the first place and b) recognising that people other than them and theirs deserve respect.)
I find it much more reassuring, this attitude of 'I'm misbehaving and I love it' than the idea of people who have no idea that they're doing anything wrong whatsoever; but I think that a lot of people have this idea that if a person doesn't recognise something in themselves, it simply doesn't exist.
So you get arguments along the line of 'Fred and George can't be bullies, they don't believe they mean any harm!' or 'Harry can't be arrogant, because he dismisses that possibility!' (or the often argued 'Harry is just liek Snape in the Pensieve scene modern parallel, because...um...he thinks so?'
I'm willing to bet the Slytherins would be much more popular both within the books and in the fandom, if they were more self-righteous; but I suppose that would bring up the possibility that they had a point. (Like, in POA, I always thought Draco should whine more, not because OMG TEH WHINING IS TEH KEWLIEST or POOR BABY DIDN'T GET TO ENUFF!11 but simply because he focussed way too much on 'Hahaha, the groundskeeper's going down!' and completely failed to mention half the time that since the creature did attack him, that he could be viewed as the victim here. (Of course, one could go on for great psychological reams here about how perhaps his mindset is more similiar to Harry's than suspected, and he'd rather make someone else the victim of the situation than be pitied for it himself, if he couldn't get some immediate benefit (such as Pansy!sympathy ;) from it.))
And of course, when the Slytherins are victims, they're unattractive ones - both physically (Harry gets dramatic fainting fits and broken limbs, Crabbe gets tentacles. Harry heroically catches the Snitch on said broken arm, Draco gets turned into a squeaking rodent and bounced. George fights through a split lip, Draco whimpers) and emotionally (they snivel, they run, we haven't seen many cry but I wouldn't rule it out in the next two books ((don't get me started on crying in the HP!verse!)), they whine, they exaggerate. In contrast, the Gryffindors suffer silently, or they get angry. This kind of reminds me of your post about 'losers' and how people can sympathise with cruel actions much more than they can stupid ones - wonder if that explains the rise in post OotP!Neville fandom, now that he's more talented and less wimpy.)