Geeks vs. Geeks

[sistermagpie]

Happy birthday, trazzie--an house early!:-D

I think I may have achieved ultimate geekness today. I went to see the the frogs finally and it was great! Blue frogs, red frogs, yellow frogs, huge frogs. Poison frogs, sticky frogs, Jabba-the-Hutt frogs. I saw an African bullfrog eat a mouse (yipes!) and did a virtual frog dissection. Then I swung by the North American birds exhibit to make sure they had a magpie (she's in the case with the bald eagle in case you're looking). I stared longingly at a Zuni crow fetish for a long time before admitting I couldn't afford it. Then I bought a calendar filled with quirky science facts, which I'll probably be blurting out throughout the year. I think the only way I could get geekier is if I moved into my parents' basement. Other than that I've got it all covered.

And speaking of geeky, that leads into recent discussions about why people are in fandom, which connects with Aja's idol_reflection essay. What I have to say is actually pretty obvious, but I'm saying it anyway.

Aja starts her essay with the sentence, "Draco Malfoy is the most controversial character in the Harry Potter canon," which is, of course, controversial in itself. I know somebody commented, "Wouldn't that be Snape?" But I think I know what she means. Snape is probably the most interesting character in canon, the most complex. I suppose he's controversial if you consider it controversial that he used to be a DE. But his controversy is all within the text. What I think Aja meant is that while not everyone likes Snape as much as anyone else he doesn't seem to inspire the same kind of anger regarding his interpretation. Oh, people can fight about his interpretation--I don't want to dismiss the Snape/Sirius fan wars, for instance, and after OotP there's the whole, "Was Snape perpetually picked on or did he deserve what was done to him in the Pensieve?" (A concept which disturbs me as well--I think he gave as good as he got, myself, and still didn't "deserve" it.)

But I think the reason I think of Draco as controversial is that, let's face it, even the author seems to focus in on this character's fans as in need of re-education or at least explanation. JKR's bad boy comments about Snape are usually in the context of questions about his love life. With Draco the mere existence of fans seems to be enough. In fandom what always strikes me isn't that not everybody has the same reaction to the character but that very often it seems like this character makes people very emotional. It's not just that you might disagree about what he will get in canon, it's that for some people (me) the idea that he's a hate object there to show us that "some people are just bad" and so must be punished is really disturbing while for other people (and here I'm speaking of specific posts I've read that have basically said this) the idea that Draco should inspire compassion is just as disturbing and must be stopped or at least explained away as being fangirl fantasy.

Anyway, how this relates back to the other recent discussion is that that thread asked, "Why do you stay in the fandom if you don't like the source material?" and "don't like the material" seemed to include not liking the way the author handled certain things, or not trusting her to handle them in a way you won't find disturbing. The "real reason" behind this attitude was suggested to be that people liked their interpretation of canon better than canon itself. So if one didn't like how the MoM scene was handled it was perhaps because one's idea of Lucius as being competent and cool was wrong, or because one wanted Sirius to marry Remus instead of going through a veil. Draco fans, well we know we're screwed. Anything that doesn't involve leather trousers, a change of heart and an Order of Merlin First Class is going to set us wanking, right guys?

Right. But what's funny--and I suspect cathexys just wrote about this but I'm doing it anyway--what's funny is the insinuation that not liking the way something that happens in canon means you were wrong in the way you read canon before that. This, of course, surprises me because of course what else is an interpretation based on but canon? I know I, personally, like to base everything on canon. It wouldn't be fun at all if it wasn't based there. I get annoyed when I mess something up, a quote or something, and have to rethink when it doesn't back up what I'm saying. So I know that no matter what happens, these things won't go away, unless canon specifically gives me another explanation that speaks to exactly what I see.

And then that brings it into the even wider idea that something going one way or another in canon *definitely* won't change the way things really are in life, which also seems to be a question. I mean, at this point I think the books could go either way on this issue and still be consistent. A lot of us are probably preparing ourselves for things to go in a way we're not going to like...perhaps this makes me secretly hope they do go in a way I'll enjoy, not even just because I would like it but because it would freak people out who are possibly even less prepared than I am on this. I mean, sometimes when people say people questioning the books moral position are claiming to be morally superior it does just seem like just a disagreement about moral values. After all, everybody considers their own moral judgment "superior" in terms of being correct. If we didn't think something was right we wouldn't consider it moral. I admit I have had some conversations where this was just laid out, where the very things I thought were ethically bad news were defended, and it usually left me disliking the books more than I did when I started because it scared me.:-)
Anyway, I think it just always comes down to this idea in fandom--all fandoms--that the ultimate thing everyone wants to have is objectivity. That's fandom gold. It's just more valid if you can say, "it's just canon" as opposed to, "this is something I want to see" or "this is what I believe." Everybody wants to remove themselves as much as possible that way. I'm not sure why. On one hand I guess it's part of the whole thing where fans call other fans geeks, you know? "Maybe you personally invest in ships or characters, but I just read what's there and appreciate it in an intellectual way." But maybe it's also about the relief of having something about your worldview validated, even if it's only fictionally: See, I told you these two were meant to be together. Of course I'm really better than those mean kids at school. Evil exists and it uses ethnic slurs...or whatever. Oversimplifying there, obviously. But you know what I mean? That's my big problem with the theory of fans being disappointed because they love their own speculations more than the real thing. Not that that doesn't ever happen, because it does, but because it can also be an easy and dishonest dismissal or real criticism. There's a lot of problems a reader can have that aren't the author's fault (for instance, it's not a flaw in the writing that the couple you like doesn't wind up together), but in general the author's going to have more responsibility about these things, like it or not. If you start blaming too many things on the readers...well, then you're Anne Rice writing insane things on Amazon.com where you claim everybody's reading wrong and the author can never make a mistake or handle anything badly.

Comments

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Eh, I think mostly Draco fans seem to think she doesn't like him given to the criticism of him and of his fans she's often done in interviews. Please don't take this the wrong way, I think she can criticise away to her content. It just seems fairly obvious that if she takes a public position about Draco fans Draco fans are going to absorb input and feedback. I confess to laughing when she said "Don't go for the bad guy," and I don't think she has an agenda, I just think she seems to think of people in terms of clichès for whatever reason.

I also think this is the controversy SM was talking about in her post. I don't doubt any character has fans or antifans; fandoms are brought together by interest in a source that's made of many elements, and some of us are going to like element A and dislike element B which happens to be the one another fan likes, so discussion ensues. But in the case of Draco it's not the typical controversy his character and textual story raises that's being discussed here, it's the one created by the huge fan response he got and the questioning of that fan response as disproportioned. I personally wandered off HPfGU after a thread about the evils of Ron, but neither Ron's status in the books neither his fanbase were being questioned. It was the text that was debated, not the ethical or social or political implications of his having a fanbase. So while I'll give it to you that Snape's a more ambiguous character (textual quality) I think Draco is a more controversial one (meta quality).

[malafede.livejournal.com]

People who dislike Tonks all have issues? :/ That's like saying that everyone who dislikes Draco never got over their bitterness at being bullied.

That aside, I don't think "controversial" is being used here to indicate any character who has both fans and detractors, because then it would become a meaningless word since every character has both. I think it's being used to indicate the controversy around the simple fact that Draco has a fandom and whether "people like him" "deserve" one.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

Why is it I'm unshocked by Umbridge and Vernon fans but the idea of someone liking Grawp chills me to the bone? ;)

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

Actually, what's really interesting about JKR's interviews is that she often answers questions with answers that have nothing to do with the original query.
For instance, the D/Hr question was in response to a general question about Malfoy: Do you have any future plans in particular for him?
Similiarly the response that got covered quite a lot in livejournal, when she mentioned girls preferring Tom Felton to Daniel Radcliffe and how she'd learnt to go for 'the good guy' was answering a question about about Snape.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

I think if there's any sign of controversy that's it. Why do people (JKR included) always manage to read any neutral mention of Draco as the old tired stereotype that all Draco fans are sexually attracted to him and think he's a misunderstood little angel? And why do them also link questions completely unrelated to the Draco phenomenon to it if they weren't as big on their mind as it is for Draco fans? This is controversy; it doesn't matter if it's the Draco fans's fault for making it a bigger issue than it should have been in the first place, it is big enough now that everyone and their dog has an opinion on it and is invested enough to project it all over discussions that have nothing to do with it.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. There's a dozen reasons to dislike the idea, but using non-existent psychological credentials (amazing how many people have those, isn't it? ;) Maybe they all got online degrees?) isn't really a great one.

spare_change used to say Harry is the fictional version of an abused kid (very much like Cinderella; he has few difficulties forming relationships, he doesn't feel he deserved it or any kind of connection with his abusers, he doesn't replicate similiar situations with the other people in his life, he doesn't appear to have any kind of self-esteem problems.) whereas Draco is more the reality of an abused child (which is not to say he canonically must be, but more that the circumstances Harry was raised in would likely realistically result in a child more like Draco. Or possibly Angry!Harry from the beginning.) - angry, difficult, abrasive, and yeah, as you mentioned, constantly referring to how much his parents adore him; and appearing to seek abuse.
It's just this horrible idea that difficult children aren't worth the trouble and the only ones that should be coddled and treated well are the ones who 'earn it' by being adorable orphaned moppets who just want love.
Abused people abuse others, and they're not easy to deal with and you can't solve all their problems by buying them photograph albums or broomsticks.
I don't expect psychological realism from a children's fantasy book, but if Harry, the titular character who's POV we're reading from isn't realistic; why should anyone else be?

forgot this

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Because it's consider a negative thing by many (not me). People get so offended by JKR whenever she voice her opinions on anything as they take it as her "rejecting their interpretations",

This is a bit of of slippery slope. SM shouldn't call things the way she see them because some fans have a sense of entitlement and her description of an event the way she witnessed it (very accurate, btw, as D/Hr won't happen = rejection of the Hermione interpretation that allows her to sleep with Draco) could give them more ammo? Don't conflate commentary of JKR's behaviour with the sense of entitlement of some that makes them equal rejection of their theory with sucky writing. The same way I could say that you shouldn't say bad things about some Draco based on your observation of their real behaviour because that could be misconstrued as an argument against Draco fans who don't behave that way.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

And the author does know more things about the characters--the reader can be wrong about their interpretation of a character. If somebody continued to insist that Peter was innocent and Sirius was the betrayer, for instance, that would be incorrect.

see, i actually totally disagree with you here. while it is certainly possible that readers are wrong about interpretations (and i always need to mention my student here who argued that williams's the red wheelburrow was about aliens), i don't think the author knows *more* about the characters. she has her own version of the characters but often what she thinks does not end up on the page, so in effect, she may actually be a horrible reader of her own work! [i have this entire traumatic story about octavia butler refuting an essay i wrote on her in one off-handed sentence...and i still think the text supports *me* :-)]

you may have bunches of back story, but unless it's in the text or deducible from the text, it's irrelevant.

Example: i've been mentally playing around in a friend's OC slash universe. In it, the characters have contraceptive implants. i was thinking about getting one of the characters to impregnate someone and conjectured that he just needed to have sex with a woman who'd gotten a reproduction permit and was cheating on her partner. she then immediately said...no, the guys have the implants too. which is *nowhere* in the text. so she had to admit that while in her mind the world had that feature, in her story it didn't! [of course i wouldn't put it beyond her to go back and add in a line :-)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

oh, i'm glad you mentioned that...what a bitchy thing to do!

one of the things i hate most about lj is that the owner of the post can completely control it. i often write longish comments and it's very frustrating to see entire discussions disappear b/c someone starts a discussion she's not really interested in after all..bah.

sorry, sistermagpie..utterly OT, but i just hopped over there, b/c there was some great stuff that i actually wanted to use for my paper and it's all gone!!!

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

omg...i just had this epiphany. isn't that the bush/kerry problem? certainty in one's beliefs and pride in one's steadfastness vs analytic approach where new information or contemplation may change one's beliefs or opinions? [and i was polite and checked your lj first to make sure i wasn't inadvertendly flaming a bush supporter *g*]

then again, i've long thought that there was a connection between american education (esp. lack of teaching critical thinking skills) and politics. alaura kipnis made a wonderful argument here]

sistermagpie, sorry to go so totally and utterly OT here :-)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh I totally agree there--it has to be in the text. That's why I also don't really understand taking interviews as canon. Best example with JKR being, perhaps, Hermione's non-existant sister. Maybe she thought about it at one time but it's not in the text, so it didn't happen. Theodore Nott's backstory and Dean's also aren't canon.

But, I mean, if somebody had their own backstory for Snape that didn't include him being a DE I don't think there's much point in arguing that this is canon. Sure you could come up with your own reasons why he has this mark and says he's a DE--you could come up with an elaborate way around that where he was lying and this was all part of a plan...I don't know where to draw the line of what's real analysis and what's intentionally getting around what's in the text, you know? What do you think about that kind of thing?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Gone and replaced with a summary that doesn't really accurately represent what was there either, imo!

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

*cries*

this was so perfect for my argument!!!

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

To continue the OT-ness--well, it ain't exactly a completely NEW thing, although I'm not going to assign its nature to one wing or the other, as its an attitude that can, sadly, flourish on either--just in particularly different mutated forms in different contexts.

Classic work: 1963, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter. If you haven't read it, not a bad place to start.

Me, I'm coming from a POV heavily (currently) biased towards analysis and not caring much for criticism or meta-analysis, as I think there are very few works that the latter is really a deeply useful way to go.

My realization, trying to fall asleep last night, was that so many of the things mentioned upthread in topics going on at HP4GU (where I am known to hang my hat) are actually not even interpretive--they're speculative. There should be a point where some debate is finally able to be settled, or at least restricted in its potential range.

I'm something of a pragmatist, here (a rambly one, too), more interested in figuring out what's going on and how it fits together than critiquing the system such as it is. That's more fun after it's done. And some of the current project involves revising one's expectations. I don't find much point in asking a work to be something that it's not, which is (in my perception, not necessarily actually) what some of the fandom is asking of it. For example, the adults are less the focus of things than the kids. Expecting everything to pin on the adults, when you know this, is a little like going to a Handel opera and being disappointed that there's no big aria for the tenor...

(ends rambling now; feels mildly better; not feeling too good today; blames the cough medicine)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

yes, anti-intellectualism and pigheadedness can obviously come from both sides, but the constant attacks of kerry's inability to take a stand when most issues aren't just that simple and bush's insistence that any decision madfe at some point was a good one even with new intel...just sounded a lot like that thread did...

i lost you on the analysis but not meta analysis part...aren't we always doing that to some extent? (or maybe my reception aesthetic bias makes me look toward a text's readership immediately...or maybe it was that felman essay turning the screw of interpretation that initiated me into deconstruction and lacanian thought at the same time see, i only mentioned that so i could use my icon</small)...) hope you're feeling better...sending healthy thoughts your way :-)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I love your OTs! And I think you might be onto something with American education. I didn't notice it when I was there but I've come to believe that I had a relatively unique experience going to a college that always stressed being able to support your own opinion. I remember, for instance, doing this one paper where I got a good grade and the professor said she didn't really agree with my argument but I had argued it well. I wonder how often that happens to most kids.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

I will simply state now that I loathe Lacan with a firey and methodologically-based passion, especially the small yet particularly idiotic body of works he has inspired in my own field, one particularly (it seems) vulnerable to passionate yet poorly-informed dabblers.

[lacanthropy, n. The transformation, under the influence of the full moon, of a dubious psychological theory into a dubious social theory via a dubious linguistic theory.] =)

By analysis and not meta-analysis, I think I mean trying to figure out how something works on its own terms, first. The work I was thinking of not being amenable to meta is Wagner's Ring Cycle. It has a metaphysics and a cosmology, the 'way the world works', built in--and if you ignore and disregard that, you start ending up with entirely too many things in the text that don't make sense. [BTW, you get the same things in Greek tragedies--start from modern cosmologies, where the human/natural/divine spheres aren't directly interconnected, and you end up going 'buh?' at things, or trying to reduce them out of existence. The history of Western criticism on the Antigone is a very good example. Almost everyone who played with it in the 19th century, especially Goethe and Hegel, ended up having to try to dismiss or cut out key lines, because they couldn't make them work. And they couldn't make them work because of their modern ideas...]

A work that is amenable to more meta-analysis is Vergil's Georgics, because the work is about the cosmological traditions of the ancient world, and fragments continually without any assistance from the reader.

When it comes to Rowling's works, her metaphysics are mildly obscure at present, but I think they are the Big Questions we're going to get answered--why didn't Voldemort die, why did Harry live, etc. And if you want to really deal with her world and get into other interesting questions of character motivation etc., you do (IMO) kinda have to take her presentation of 'how this world works' as given--her system of magic especially, the ethics moderately less so, but that's more complicated as I think part of the story is the invitation to the reader to become a cultural critic. It's there. You can not like it, of course, and critique it--but then you've hopped outside the analytic frame into the critical one.

Here's an example. I'm a raving agnostic. Don't believe in any spirituality at all, really. But we are informed in PoA that Dementors take out and destroy the souls of those they Kiss. Ergo, the soul has some reality in the Potterverse. Doesn't sit with my personal beliefs about the world, but in this fictional universe, it's true and I have to take it into account when trying to work things out.

Reception history is fun. I do quite a bit of it. It's a level of remove, though, and with what I work with, it's always best to have dug in and tried your own analysis first, to better understand the other critics and analysts. Sometimes you can peg an analysis as just plain wrong--and sometimes the insanely wrong ones are the most interesting...

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Happened to me, but I know I went to a particularly unique and insane place. Seems to happen where I am now, and that's my goal for when I get my hands on the little sprogs next year. Good argument is rewarded, remaining at the level of "oh, that sounds nice" is not.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Good question...I know sometimes one thing that makes me turn against a theory more than I might have is when it starts to be taken as canon. Maybe in this case it's that it's such an easy fix, such a heavy-handed way of getting sympathy for the character (though those over-the-top abuse fics almost always also make Draco into a much sweeter victim than he would be if this were true in canon) that it's overused and gets associated with that. I mean, I think at this point if JKR wanted to there would be nothing strange about her showing a scene where Lucius smacked Draco in front of Harry in a way that made you go--whoa! I'm not saying this is going to happen or anything, but I would trust if she was going to add an element like that it wouldn't play out like those abuse fics because she would keep Draco as the same nasty kid he always was.

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

Perhaps because while Vernon and Umbridge are not nice, or likeable, they have enough depth to make them interesting. I am not a Vernon nor an Umbridge fan, but they're well-enough drawn that I can wonder what makes them tick.

Grawp, OTOH, is just annoying. There's nothing about him to fascinate or appeal. He's just a pain in the butt - the ONE character I wish was not in the books. (And generally I dislike complaints about content.)

[ishtar79.livejournal.com]

I’m getting into this late commenting habit. It’s very impolite. ;)

it's that for some people (me) the idea that he's a hate object there to show us that "some people are just bad" and so must be punished is really disturbing

Right ,this, this is a large part of the reason I like Draco. Beyond the character traits that make him attractive to me (like his habit of saying what everyone’s thinking, but doesn’t dare voice), and the potential for growth the character has (in fanfic at least), a great part of it is me rebelling against his one-dimentionnal portrayal, and the way people are so quick to dismiss him.

The "real reason" behind this attitude was suggested to be that people liked their interpretation of canon better than canon itself.

And this just assumes there is such a thing as an objective, ‘definitive’ interpretation of canon, which is just absurd. Leaving issues of personnal interpretation aside (which of course color everyone’s perception of the text), the fact remains that we as readers perceive everything from Harry’s POV (with Harry’s opinions and biases), and are not subject to other characters’ thoughts, or any info Harry doesn’t know. So, prior to OotP, saying Harry secretely loves the Dursleys would contradict canon; saying Lucius was smooth and efficient in battle wouldn’t.

Anyway, excellent post.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

oops...i was so careful with the politics and then just walked right in it with the theory, didn't i :-)

i give you that there are some pretty bad lacan-inspired theories out there, but as a heavy duty recovering lacanian, i have to stand by "the master" :-)

oh...i understand what you meannow, but i wouldn't have called that meta necessarily...more like, bring your own theory and fit the text to it versus a text-intrinsic and even historically contextualized reading, maybe???

and yes, reception aesthetics, of course, needs to start at the level of the text...but i think a lot of times the debates *about* the text are at least as interesting and quite telling a lot of times. i especially love it when they mimic/reflect themes/dynamics within the text...

i'm not sure it's easier in literature than in your field b/c it's both words??? then again, we do it with film just as easily, so maybe not (music just intimidates me to no end, so...see me being intimidated :-)

Re: forgot this

[jillojillo.livejournal.com]

Witness? We don't even know what the real motivation of the questioner for asking about it, she could have no interpretation of Hermione what so ever and just want the two to get it on because she thinks they look hot together.

Don't conflate commentary of JKR's behaviour with the sense of entitlement of some that makes them equal rejection of their theory with sucky writing.

Where did I say that in my replies to SM?

[jillojillo.livejournal.com]

It just seems fairly obvious that if she takes a public position about Draco fans Draco fans are going to absorb input and feedback

Yes of course, I never said Draco fans (or any fan) has no right to show any reactions at all. That's what I said you're entitle to read her words in as negatively as you want ("you" as in universal you, people, anyone), you can take her words and interpret her intentions in the most negative light (ex: she loathes Draco with fiery passion, agenda to destroy Draco fandom) or not negative way (ex: she's doing a surprise twist with the character, prepare fans from expectation so they won't get too disappointed).

You have a good point with Draco being a contoversial one in that aspect. I'm not going to argue who's more controversial since it varies in different part of the fandom, JKR and legions of fans did express pretty much same negative reactions to Snape's popularity/size of fanbase as well.

"HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[(Anonymous)]

I must confess to getting a bit giggly at some of the discussion above, but what I really would like to ask is, have you still got a link to the FAP post "HP Structure Demands More Draco"? I'd really like to read that one, and having spent over ten minutes to even remember what FAP stands for, I don't quite trust myself to be able to find it...

BTW, I'm quite with you on the "controversy" issue. Somebody summarized it very nicely above in that Snape is already controversial within the text itself, whereas Draco is more controversial in a meta-setting.

- Clara