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

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Glad to oblige! And happy I actually can. The thread is on FictionAlley Park:

Here you go! (http://www.fictionalley.org/fictionalleypark/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71422)

Hopefully I didn't totally mis-remember the way it went!

[trazzie.livejournal.com]

sneaks in, briefly interupting this interesting discussion to say

Thanks for the birthday wishes, and that frog site is really cool!

sneaks back out...

:)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Nonsense, the birthday was the most important part!

And I think you would love the frogs. Really, how could anybody not love the frogs? The frogs rule.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

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.


It does actually surprise people when act like there couldn't be anything there. I mean, I don't think everybody should necessarily be interested in the character, but it surprises me that anyone could claim that a kid set up the way he is with the parents and upbringinghe has, has no potential for anything interesting. Obviously most fanfic authors zero right in on it.

Now that I think about it, it really makes an interesting contrast to Snape that I don't know if people have focused on that much. I love Snape/Draco (not talking slash here but just as a relationship, slash or not) and it's interesting how the one's poised to make the same mistake, and I suspect has many of the same repulsive qualities, yet is so different. Snape seems like he was nobody before the DEs, and they have such different personalities, yet I love the two of them as friends or just teacher and favorite pet.

And this just assumes there is such a thing as an objective, ‘definitive’ interpretation of canon, which is just absurd.

Right--and, I mean, any author can make a mistake and put something across the wrong way.

Re: forgot this

[malafede.livejournal.com]

I meant witnessing JKR saying Hr/D wouldn't happen. :)

And sorry, that was bad wording on my part. I meant that while some people maybe fire away criticism at JKR out of a sense of entitlement over characters ("She's writing Ginny wrong! She should be writing her like in my fic!") I think that's not the what happens in most of the cases. I think a lot of people just express their genuine dislike of a narrative tool/rhythm of a scene/moral implications etc etc. I mean, I know that's what I do, and if people want to answer to my criticism and debunk it, it's more than welcome. I just take issue with the position that criticism shouldn't be expressed at all, and when I said "conflating sense of entitlement on genuine commentary" I meant just that. :) That I disagree that criticism shouldn't be expressed because some people could be criticising her out of a sense of entitlement.

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[malafede.livejournal.com]

That thread was great because it summarised perfectly what I summarised above in a comment above, ahaha.

"Draco's not Harry's shadow, he'a completely insensitive unimportant racist bully THAT NOBODY SHOULD CARE ABOUT (hey hello monster shadow) and it's all because of the fanon anyway."

Mmmh, controversy.

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes! Again, it's like the Neville and Luna thing. If I said, "I think Neville is sort of a double for Harry," would somebody really want to jump in with, "Neville is not Harry's double. He's a completely timid, unimportant clumsy loser THAT NOBODY SHOULD CARE ABOUT and it's all because of fanon anyway."

Presumably my suggestion that Neville was a double would not be because I didn't see that he was often portrayed as being afraid of Snape or being clumsy, it would be because of just what the person starting that thread was about--how Neville was positioned in the story.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Recovering Lacanians--I'll be over here on the sidelines, cheering on recovery. :)

(It's probably for another time, place, and post, but my methodological bitch could go towards all psychoanalysis, for many reasons. Frederick Crews is my man.)

"Bring your own theory" is some of it, but that's mainly because it often implies the neglect of the systems that are behind a text, made explicit in parts of the text, leave their traces on the text. There's a statement you see made sometimes, of the sort "Everything makes sense for me when I use this theory!" That's when you-as-reader need to be careful--that can mean that the theory is well-suited to the material, or it can mean that the analyst has suceeded in forcing the material into a theoretical construct--especially one like a psychoanalytic one, which tends to be able to explain everything at all times and is thus absolutely useless.

I certainly do spend a lot of my time working with debates about the text, and it's not something to be neglected, but it's a worrying trend when academia finds itself to be an object of overwhelming fascination.

Music has an intimidation factor, but it's not that bad. :) What does get everyone's hackles up are the people who come and slum in the field but don't even bother to learn enough to be able to talk competently about it. And "what is the relationship between music and text" is the $64,000, 2000-year old question. In some ways it's actually more complex than film because of the nature of the object and the question of its ontology...

but this is more than hopelessly OT enough, right? :)

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

It strikes me that Draco *used* to (maybe) be readable Harry's shadow and rival, but there were always at least some strong suggestions that if Draco were a mirror image to anyone, it was more Ron. OotP seemed to reinforce that antagonism (Ron and Draco), to some degree...and then Harry completely brushes off Draco into a condition of unimportance at the end of the book.

Draco could be taken a number of different directions, but I wouldn't hold my breath for his deep importance story-wise or thematically, and I don't see him any longer as a full-blown parallel to Harry (as I think those have been weakened).

I greatly enjoy structuralism in some limited applications, but I think OotP gave us the fragmentation of the Draco/Harry rival structure.

It reminds me a little bit of before OotP, where the serious argument was made many places that Draco's actions in GoF, such as at the World Cup, were actually intended to help Harry and company. Don't quite think that works anymore...

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

quick check on whose lj we are...ok, magpie will be amused but not mind :-)

i'm very much with you on the danger of everything making sense, everything falling into place.

otoh, i'm not sure that it is a bad thing to turn one's analytic lens on itself...after all, the first tenet of postmodern thought is the awareness that there is no ontological or epistemological certainty, that there are no privileged positions from which to tell meta narratives.

in fact, in the field that i do (fandom and fanfic studies), it is high time that someone looks toward the critics and the way we bring our own belief systems and make our observations fit that mould...

ha, i brought it back to ff...give me another paragraph and i'll be back to topic on hand :-)

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Feel free to hijack any thread over on my humble domain, s'il vous plait...

after all, the first tenet of postmodern thought is the awareness that there is no ontological or epistemological certainty, that there are no privileged positions from which to tell meta narratives.

This of course, as you likely know, can lead quickly into a bastard mutation of something like Russell's Paradox--that is, it's always fun to watch someone's ears bleed when you say "So, it's a universally true tenet that there are no universally true tenets?" (Okay, it's fun for me.)

Of course one needs to examine theories, and epistemological ideas, as facts generally do not speak for themselves (as my old archaeology prof was fond of saying--but that field's a little different in and of itself). What is so annoying to me about some strains of postmodernism is how they turn the lens upon everything else, but adopt a fairly worshipful attitude towards their theoretical giants. Take someone like Zizek (who has written about opera; it is idiocy with some startlingly good insights hidden in it), who will say thinks like "Of course, Lacan has shown that..." and proceed to quote, with a complete shut-down of the critical faculty, the assumption that Lacan has shown the way, and it is perfectly applicable in every case that Zizek wants to use it (and boy howdy does he ever, in every case).

It often seems to me like something of a slippery slope argument run wild, the impossibility of complete epistemological certaintly leading people into the argument that we should not even try, or that all interpretations are equally valid.

Crews and some of the other critics of psychoanalysis also advance a kind of empiricism; a reminder that one must always look at the evidence, and what we have, and be skeptical of fitting a theory onto texts. In music, that's one critique of some of the anti-analytical strains going around today; yes, it's a good reminder that music is more than notes, and there is a lot that one can say (and must say) about what music is and what it does without formalist analysis. But to deny the benefits of working through a piece of music is, in the Western tradition, to be anti-historical, and it also tends to reduce analysis to something hopelessly personalist.

(There was a strong personalist strain in musicology about mid-90's, which, thankfully, seems to have been gotten over--it's really more appropriate for criticism of a different vein than for scholarship. I mean, it's nice, but I don't really care what this piece makes you think of in your own life, I'd rather have some commentary on the reception history and tonal areas.)

Every critic of ff (although to be honest, I care far more about the orignals here than the ff) brings a set of presuppositions, some of them factual and some interpretational. Our problem is that in Mr. Work In Progress here, the line between fact and interpretation is ugly at best. I'm queasily confident that in many areas it will firm up, by the end, as our author seems to like Answers to Questions. And, to throw out a contentious example, iff'n'when we finally get a Grand Statement of Motivation from Snape, we may not like it, and we may argue about what it means, but hopefully, we'll have a fairly solid idea of what it is.

(but then I also think the fandom has massively elevated the level of complexity in places where it isn't, and a lot of things are going to be actually 'nope, that's it, yeah, not complicated, sorry'. having adapted to this, i probably won't be disappointed...no point in asking something to be what it's not...)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about having this conversation here--actually, I'm really enjoying it!

I have very little experience in academics but when I was in grad school I remember having a problem with what seemed to be the idea that you could take one way of looking at things and apply it to anything written. For instance, you took the principles of modern feminist reading and applied it to something written hundreds of years ago and called it analysis. To me that just seemed like twisting a text to fit whatever you wanted to say, even if the text didn't support it because that's not where the author was coming from and there were other reasons given by the text itself for whatever you were claiming was part of your theory. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

True--though I think what malafede meant (correct me if I'm wrong, M!) was that whether or not the character is a shadow has nothing to do with him being likable or a jerk. You have to look at his role, not his personality.

I think the point of the OP in that other thread was just that this was a character who had been introduced early and clearly, and given the mystery structure of the books that meant he probably shouldn't fade away to nothing because Harry lost interest, but fade away only to be important. I think she compared him that way to Peter who disappeared for Book V but will probably have some part to play--not in terms of becoming a major, complex character, but just that he's positioned to do something.

I think the beauty of most of the supporting characters in this universe is that they are simple but give you a lot to think about. Peter, for instance, isn't a complex character, but his story is affecting.

My own take on things like the GoF cup, for instance, is that I never bought the idea that Malfoy was trying to warn the trio, but it did seem like part of a pattern of Malfoy unintentionally helping them or giving them information because his motivations weren't quite what people tended to think. Iow, he's not a Death Eater whose goal is serving Voldemort. To me that's the potential of the character. I've no idea what this would mean in terms of what he will do, but I think he's been given a little more room to maneuver and surprise than he's given credit for. I think his more natural function in the books so far has not been as duelling opponent to Harry (which is the way a lot of people remember him in GoF) but the Trip-jinxer in OotP. Who he might trip up in his small way and why I don't know, but I think JKR's laid more groundwork than we might have noticed.

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm, post-workout egg-drop soup....

Okay--I see that first assertion, and agree with it. Personal likes and dislikes about characters have nothing to do with arguments about structural roles and function (as everyone in the endless Snape vs. Sirius arguments could stand to learn).

Let me disagree about Peter, in one aspect; I think Draco is a far more transparent character than Peter. We've seen Draco for five years, albeit through a lens, but we've still seen him, and he's evinced a certain consistency of behavior. Peter, in many ways, is a big honkin' wildcard. I'm one to be wary of taking the Pensieve scene as the model for all the schooldays relationships, to begin with. (The entire scene feels like a bit of a setup in a number of ways, although should that be wrong, I will of course gracefully concede.) Then there are the questions about how did he fool everyone, how did he blow up 12 Muggles, what the hell is he doing now. Mind you, I think it's more that Peter is unknown than complex. And I'd make the same argument for Snape.

To get at the last point through a slightly different angle; I never bought the assertion that Lucius Malfoy was not an ideologue. I think it's telling that Rowling uses him as an example of 'how a DE thinks' on her website, although yes, that's external-to-book. I think that OotP weakened the arguments against Lucius-as-true-believer, to some degree.

Given that, Draco's main narrative importance has always struck me as showing how someone raised by believers in the DE ideology behaves. He's our introduction to the term "Mudblood" and keeps that theme up through the books, he's clearly upset about his father in jail, and not because of what he was doing, but because of the indignity of it all. He's also got something of a sadistic streak building, given his eagerness to see Umbridge use the nasty curses.

Now, Draco could be on the ideological path to DE-dom and get a nasty little shock and go 'eh, not for me', and there are tons of possible scenarios--and it's certainly a possibility. But I'll go 70/30 on DE-in-Training!Draco.

I think we tend to perceive things as hints that perhaps aren't. There's a classic conspiracy theory on HPfGU based on the idea that Snape was actually acting in the Shrieking Shack, and there's 'tons' of evidence in little notes of behavior to support it. Same with the idea that Lupin is Ever-So-Evil. So hard to tell what little things are meaningful and what aren't. But at least I won't be surprised if Draco *does* have a different role to play.

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Let me disagree about Peter, in one aspect; I think Draco is a far more transparent character than Peter. We've seen Draco for five years, albeit through a lens, but we've still seen him, and he's evinced a certain consistency of behavior.

Presumably so had Peter--and James would have seen more of him being his friend. But still I do agree that we've seen nothing in Draco to lead us to believe he has any greater power to reveal, like Peter being able to kill 12 Muggles. I don't want to say that Draco=Peter, exactly, though I am willing to take the Pensieve scene as being fairly standard in terms of their dynamic even if this incident wasn't normal.

He's also got something of a sadistic streak building, given his eagerness to see Umbridge use the nasty curses.

Actually-ever since I noticed this I can't help but flag it every time it comes up, we don't actually see Draco's reaction to Umbridge using a nasty curse. He just looks hungry at the idea of Harry being punished. Which isn't to say he doesn't have a sadistic streak building or already there. Personally, I find most characters in this series to have a sadistic streak including Malfoy, it just shows up in different people in different ways.

I wonder with Lucius it may be a case of what I think an ideologue should be like is just different from what the author thinks he's like. Events in GoF do, imo, suggest that Lucius would be ready to abandon Voldemort for his own well-being, and perhaps Phineas' line about Slytherins always choosing to save their own skin goes along with that too. Though I think he can feel that way and also truly believe in Pureblood superiority and wanting to get rid of Muggleborns, and I assume his son believes that too. That kind of thinking also seems very well-represented in different forms throughout the series--not anti-Muggleborn prejudice but confident ideas about different groups etc. So I think I agree that suggestions that Lucius doesn't really believe this Pureblood superiority idea are unfounded.

Now, Draco could be on the ideological path to DE-dom and get a nasty little shock and go 'eh, not for me', and there are tons of possible scenarios--and it's certainly a possibility. But I'll go 70/30 on DE-in-Training!Draco.

But "in training" covers just about anything, is just how I see it. This should actually probably be another post maybe I'll write now, but to me it's not so much "Wethink Draco's just nasty but he's not" or "We think Draco supports his father's thinking and he doesn't" but that the role we slot open for Draco while believing his father's thinking or being nasty may not be what we expect it to be.

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the link! : ) That was very interesting.

I tend to wobble a bit about how important I believe Draco will become (as opposed to what I *want*), but those posts made me remember what usually strikes me when I reread the books; what a raw deal Draco gets because of the books' POV. Ron's prejudices, for example, are glossed over compared to Draco's because we think Ron is a good guy. In PoA Ron greets Lupin, who he has known, liked and trusted for a year with "get away from me, werewolf!" when he finds out. Changes to most people's views on Ron: none. In CoS Draco calls Hermione, with whom he has an established rival relationship, "Mudblood", in retaliation when she suggests that he has bought his way into the quidditch team in front of his new team mates (which I don't think he did, we know that he flies well). Changes to most people's views on Draco: he's a horrible racist who bought his way into the team.

And it's all because of the POV, we're tricked into using different scales - as one does do with friends - when listening to Ron's prejudices and sadistic streaks, but when Harry compares himself to Draco, and, as you pointed out in that thread, defines himself and his own actions and thoughts as "not Malfoy", it could just as easily have been "not Ron".

Lots of people have pointed out that Draco is a bit downplayed in the OotP, but then so is Ron. I often get the feeling that those two, as representatives for their fathers, and families, are of equal importance in the series. Sure, Ron gets more time and is closer to Harry, but the Weasleys and the Malfoys seem to be bound to each other in some way (to be revealed at a later stage?) and Harry is in contrast to both families in similar ways.

Well, I shan't go on and on OT, but thanks again for the link!

- Clara

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Yay, onward goes the arcane discussions of method. :)

That's some of what I was thinking about, yes. The best example of that I can think of is a little too arcane and musical, though...but here goes. There's a powerful (as in, very useful) and widespread kind of musical analysis called Schenkerian analysis, developed out of common practice harmony and a specific repertoire of music, with a lot of assumptions potentially (or not) built in, but a basic theory of how music works assumed. Some people have tried to apply it onto Renaissance music, which predates common practice, and just doesn't work the same way. If you treat the early music as just notes, you can apply the theory to it--but it's manifestly ignoring the inner logic and structure of the music as well as our historically informed knowledge. It's a little like modern readers reading the Antigone--they usually just don't understand the way that the world works in that work, the ground rules of the tragic universe where human actions directly cause disturbances in nature, and inevitably end up with large parts of the text that they just can't explain and don't understand. (The part where Antigone says she wouldn't do what she was doing for anyone but her brother is a great case in point--drives modern interpreters crazy, makes sense (yet doesn't lose some of its disturbing overtones) from a contemporary standpoint.)

That's some of what's going on...perhaps the other thing we tend to do is confuse working through how something works (analysis) with our commentary upon the mechanisms of a universe (usually criticism). I think I've lost the train of my own thought now, though.

The idea that the author is dead has fallen something out of favor, and the intentional fallacy has taken a beating over the past 50 years. I think it does matter to deal on some level with ideas of what the author intended, the situation that the author is coming from, the ideas possibly being embedded in the text...because in this case, I generally find that to ignore the author's stated intentions is to generally end up excising some features of the text. I don't think it's a particularly 'difficult' (in the sense of resistant to analysis) text--I think its WIP-ness has made it seem more like that than it is.

Could be wrong. :)

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

But as well, Ron is able to get over his prejudices--he reacts kneejerk to Lupin-as-werewolf, but gets over it (see also the amusing comment in his copy of 'Fantastic Beasts'). In addition, prejudice against werewolves is something that seems to be fairly universal within the WW, while that against Muggleborns is a little more localized--it tells us something about a person and the ideology that they follow when they use the word 'Mudblood'. In short, almost everyone fears werewolves, but not everyone hates Muggleborns.

Draco doesn't seem to get over his attitude that Mudbloods are inferior, despite however many years of going to school and having to deal with them. It's one thing to spout that kind of rhetoric as a second year, certainly having grown up with it (although note the reaction of many people around him--they know that it's nasty language and not to use it), and another entirely to keep on with those attitudes as a fifth year, having had time to grow (presumably the ability to think critically) and develop.

We are tricked to some degree, but it's also something of a slippery slope argument to treat them as identical in weight. Ron is a dynamic character, while Draco doesn't seem to be. One may not like it, but it's the way things have gone so far...

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

though I am willing to take the Pensieve scene as being fairly standard in terms of their dynamic even if this incident wasn't normal.

To stick on Peter a little bit, though--the problem with the clean extrapolations of the Pensieve dynamic is that that dynamic is also made to cover the post-school days, when people are in the OotP. It makes the group relationship static, and that doesn't make sense. What's eminently possible is all kinds of stuff happened then that we currently have no idea about, in those 3-5 years. Too many holes to deal with.

I think Lucius had possible ideas of ditching the boss, but that's all gone now that he's back. But then I generally think our ideas about Lucius massively inflate his importance and skill. I think Lucius joined up in the first place because he believed in the ideas and saw it as a route to power, and I don't see any evidence that he's stopped believing in the ideas. Seems to be a classic Slytherin conflict: we're told Slytherin was not averse to bending the rules (thinking flexibly), but he ended up leaving the school (and leaving a deadly snake behind) over not getting his complete way in student admissions. Salazar is a big question mark. I think it was a bit of a nasty surprise to some of the fandom to find out that some variation of the blood ideology was always at the root of Slytherin House.

There may yet be something surprising planned for Draco--but I'll go, again, 70/30 against anything but Draco following in Daddy's footsteps and looking to join up with Voldemort. That way, should I be wrong, it will be very nice and I will be pleasantly surprised. :)

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It makes the group relationship static, and that doesn't make sense. What's eminently possible is all kinds of stuff happened then that we currently have no idea about, in those 3-5 years. Too many holes to deal with.

But should we assume it couldn't be static? I mean, it could be that as unsatisfying an explanation as it is, we're supposed to believe that Peter simply gravitated to powerful people and thought Voldemort could protect him more than James could without ever changes the way he interacted with them at all. Obviously there's got to be some more interesting story in Peter, but I'm not sure we're supposed to see him as complex as we do. I'm more confident we're get an understanding of Snape's change of heart more than Peter's. But I could be wrong.

It's funny--somebody mentioned their friend saying that the Sorting Hat in OotP basically outed Slytherin as a racist bastard and so put the nail in the coffin of Slytherin there...I always assumed a Pureblood bias was part of the house since the founding, somehow. I loved the introduction of Pureblood feuds and family ties--it's great!

Now, about Draco joining the DEs, the thing is it's not that I expect any big surprise about where his loyalties lie (though I think Snape could realistically be some kind of influence). OotP gave Draco reason to want to join Voldemort now that with Lucius is imprisoned--though I admit with this character I find that hard to imagine because he's so childish and, well, afraid of Voldemort. By the time he graduates, presumably there will be no DEs. He could always try to help Voldemort in his own way that's separate from the overaching Harry vs. Voldemort conflict.

We'll have to see the end and then see what it means. But I'm just saying that as of now I think just as he could become a DE and people could say, "See, he's been announcing he's a little DE since his first scene!" we could just as easily come to the end and say, "See, he was never actually been involved in the Voldemort storyline in any book." So far one of Draco's main uses has been to provide secondary conflict that tided us over until Voldemort showed up or provided distraction. OotP also gave us the Pureblood loyalty to family that believed in Pureblood superiority but didn't have to be marked. So in a way, now that I've thought about it, I think part of the thing is that DEs may be vibrant characters in fanfic but in canon they so far aren't so much. Perhaps in the next book a massive recruitment will start, but the Order at least seemed to see seventh years as kids. I assume Draco's storyline will have something to do with the dark side that Harry's fighting, I just don't know if the standard, "He's going to join Voldemort as a DE," is necessarily the way canon will play it out. Because even that only says he has a tattoo on his arm. It doesn't tell us exactly what he'll do that Harry will have to deal with.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ah! Yes, I think I do see what you mean.

I tend to instinctively lean towards the "Author is Dead" idea, I think, in terms of not really wanting to read interviews and such. I think if the author has to explain something then it's not in the text and the text has to stand on its own. And really once the HP books are done I doubt anyone will have any need for the interviews because they're more just hints of things that will presumably be explained. I suspect at the end of the series everything will stand on its own. Perhaps it might not always read the same way, but it will make sense.

At the same time, though, I think knowing something about where the author is coming from is important in the ways you explained. JKR is a contemporary writer who's writing fantasy, but also spoofing her own society and drawing on particularly literary traditions. There's a lot of things future readers should understand about that background when reading the books (people should understand a lot of it now, too).

It reminds me, for instance, of things I've spoken to teachers about re: Shakespeare and updating his plays. I had one teacher who said she usually hated modernized Shakespeare because people often thought you could literally turn the characters into modern people when you can't. Whenever the plays are allegedly set they depend on certain Elizabethan assumptions that make them work and if you ignore them the play doesn't work the right way. Perhaps, sometimes there can just be a disconnect when things the author assumes everyone agrees on aren't actually agreed on.

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

::delurks shyly::

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.

::sigh::

Yeah. And you know, in some ways, that dynamic really did reduce my enjoyment of reading OotP? Rather than just being able to feel pleased over the Sorting Hat song--to take just one example--instead there was this awful gloating part of my mind doing the Simpsons "hah hah!" at people who I knew would be made unhappy by that outcome. These were people who had spent an awful lot of verbiage telling me all about what a bad reader I was, and how my feelings about the House System were "inappropriate" and "reading the wrong books" and other such nonsense, so on some level I did feel that they had started it, but...well...

Well, it wasn't a very nice feeling. I don't approve of Just Deserts gloating in the least, and "he started it!" is a totally pathetic excuse for ill feeling, and it just all felt, oh, nasty and unpleasant. And also somewhat ideologically inconsistent. After all, I've always been the one arguing that reader response to the text as it currently exists are not and should not be contingent upon what might or might not happen later on in the canon, right? So where did I get off feeling all gloaty when the author happened to agree with some of my readings? How hypocritical could I get?

And, well...then I started thinking far too much about all that sort of thing, and while I wouldn't say that it ruined the book for me, it did seriously detract from my reader enjoyment.

It's late, and this is sort of incoherent, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes even when the author does end up supporting much of your reading, fandom's pathological emphasis on authorial intent can still end up getting up your nose and in the way of your fun.

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

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?

I think that on some level, you've always got to at least pretend to take the sincerity of other people's readings on faith, if for no other reason than to avoid the "MY interpretation is natural and normal; YOUR interpretation is over-rationated and must have some slimy agenda" problem. If you think someone's really just doing an end-run around the canon, then it's still probably best to frame your objections to their theory as an attack on the theory itself, rather than on the sincerity of the analysis.

That said, though, I tend to feel that any speculation worth its salt ought to provide something positive in its defense, rather than just negatives. In other words, if the only reason given for a hypothesis is "but there's nothing to say that it couldn't be true!" then I usually just don't find that very compelling.

Well. Not as a canon analysis, at any rate. I judge fanfic on completely different criteria, and so would be perfectly happy with it as a fic premise.

Re: "HP Structure Demands More Draco"

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

But should we assume it couldn't be static? I mean, it could be that as unsatisfying an explanation as it is, we're supposed to believe that Peter simply gravitated to powerful people and thought Voldemort could protect him more than James could without ever changes the way he interacted with them at all.

It's hard to completely replicate the patterns of behavior that we see in the Pensieve scene when you're not in boarding school, I think. If the four of them have all 'moved out' in a sense, even though all are Order members, they are necessarily going to be interacting in different ways, and probably enough different that the larger dynamic changes, as well. I'm being a little nitpicky, but functional changes in environment can change things enough that I don't want to be reductionist and say "Oh, their relationships were just the same", when they may be similar, but similar is not same (and there was a great religious war over that argument).

Not enough information to tell, really...

I always saw some of the theme of OotP was that one could be an assistant to Voldemort without being officially signed up; confirmation that Voldemort is, in many ways, not an anomalous creation of the prejudices of wizarding society, but a natural extension and embodiment of the attitudes of certain pureblood families. He's a blend of about half Kantian radical evil (and the ethic of force, the basis of the Dark Arts) and half the extensive ideological societal support that he has. So I'm willing to tag Mrs. Black, who believed in the ideology but didn't support Voldemort directly, as complicit in enabling his rise--it's a little like saying "Well, I taught my children to hate those filthy Mudbloods, but I never thought they'd go out and DO anything about it!" But that's my own hang-up (hence the fascism essay), and I can see Draco easily going the 'help Voldemort any way I can' route.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

I use the interviews as regulation upon speculation. I don't think she lies to us. For instance, there is a cottage industry amongst some (some, not all) fans of Snape to deny the "horrible person" comments, and many others (especially the "sadistic teacher"). I take the latter, especially, as a "Don't expect any exculpatory reasons for his behavior to pop up" (he doesn't actually mean it, it's an act, etc.), which is a favorite theory of some. I think the interviews will be largely useless when all is said and done, because I think we're about to get some very solid information on some big things, especially the metaphysics. And the metaphysical revelations are going to permanently piss some fans off.

A good antidote to "author is dead" is (especially in my field) to stop pretending that music comes out fully-formed in nice packaged Collected Works editions, and go to a manuscript library and look at originals. Both the New Critical and the deconstructionist approach that tend to just look at text forget about things like bibliographic codes and context. When you note the careful arrangement of a manuscript book of Lieder or the marks in the composer's hand on a proof, making corrections and changing things, or even a whole 'nother version of a song, the author starts to come back to life as a controlling figure in the creation of a work. I'm working on Marenzio's Ninth Book right now, and there is no doubt that the order of the madrigals and selection of poetry is completely determined and meaningful...and so a little bit of Marenzio himself as an artistic personality comes to life there. When you actually have real hard data about a composer's life, there can be careful yet incredibly illuminating connections to make (like with my main man, Richard Strauss). (And revisions can tell you a massive amount about a work. Same thing goes in literature).

Rowling's work needs to be read in context, with an awareness of the genres that she is spoofing or playing off of. On the other hand, I don't find too much value in the deep mythological hunts that some engage in and consider definitive, because she takes things and twists them, and only the way that she twists them is particularly applicable. (I feel differently about Wagner's relationship to myth, but that's different time, different place, and very different treatment). I have a strong suspicion that her Christian ethos is going to be important to the denoument, too.

The eternal question of balance between the local and that which is good for all times; there's often a significant loss in modernization, but I feel like sometimes one can go through and peg exactly what is being lost, and decide how much that matters. Alas, all my good examples are musical, but here goes: Don Giovanni gets staged any number of ways. Everyone misunderstands Don Ottavio, because our ideas of masculinity are so radically different than the late 18th century. You can *do* it, but anyone who knows more of the context notes what gets lost, and how it doesn't sit with the rest of the text. All opera seria is much the same way; wild mythological settings are all about the 18th century, and even that far back is unrecoverable for an audience not willing to do their homework. Much the same problem as with Shakespeare, I think.