![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In reading around different threads today I happened to come across a couple of random "People just need to accept canon..." and it made me think about The X-files. Specifically
Signs & Wonders was, I think, a 7th season ep which got a very passionate response on alt.tv.x-files.analysis. I was one of the most passionate.:-) But I think of it now with regards to some reactions to HP interpretations. This XF episode used the narrative trick of a reversal, where you go through the whole story thinking one guy's good and one guy's bad, but when the crime is solved the bad guy's innocent. Obviously I don't think this is literally what HP is doing with the, for instance, the Slytherins, but I do feel like sometimes the reactions of people to the *idea* that there could be *any* sort of revelation about Slytherin where we see *we* were wrong about them in any way are like reactions people have to these kinds of endings--particularly S&W.
In S&W, Mulder and Scully investigate the killing of a young man by a snake. He's part of a snake handling church in Tennessee run by a Rev. O'Connor. O'Connor's daughter, Gracie, has run away from him with her boyfriend and is now under the protection of a Rev. Mackey. O'Connor is a bigot, a sexist, a fundamentalist whose religion is all about evil and condemning others. Rev. Mackey represents a more modern and compassionate form of Christianity that preaches understanding even to people like O'Connor. The trick, of course, is that in the end Rev. O'Connor is innocent and Rev. Mackey's the devil. Well, this did not sit well with people, no sirree! Some posters seemed very offended at the writer making the statement that intolerant Fundamentalist religions were true and that more civilized versions of Christianity were the work of the devil. Personally, though, I didn't think this is what the ep was saying at all. I thought it just used people's aversion to the O'Connors of the world to lead them astray. We want to believe one person is guilty, but that doesn't mean they are. This is definitely something that's been used in HP.
What the episode really worked on--and I think this infuriated a lot of people--was the way people were so eager to believe in Mackey because he was "like them" that they slid right over stuff he was doing. For instance, the compassion Mackey preached towards O'Connor was always had a subtext of, "I have to have compassion for him because I'm a reverend but I wouldn't expect you to, really." While he was saying how we should feel sorry for him he was almost always at the same time dropping hints about the bad things Mackey was doing. Most of the bad stuff we knew about O'Connor we got from Mackey.
What was very interesting was how at the end of the ep many people were unwilling to let Mackey's lies go, so in discussions they would condemn O'Connor for things he hadn't done but Mackey said he had--this, naturally, is what I tend to notice so much in HP, because people will so often remember things the way they didn't happen, or assume characters have done things they actually haven't done. It makes me wonder why this so often happens, and why, if this is the correct way to see it, it wasn't written the way people remember it in the first place. In O'Connor's case, for instance, people would talk about how he "kicked Gracie out" for disobeying him, when in fact she had run away with her boyfriend. Or how he had murdered his wife when canonically all we knew was that his wife had died of a snake bite, which is the risk of being in a snake handler church. Mackey taunted O'Connor with the fact that he (Mackey) hadn't stolen Gracie, but that O'Connor had driven him away with his intolerance and O'Connor seemed to have to accept that, so the shortcomings of his own church were shown to help the devil too. But meanwhile the things that Mackey did--having people tortured and killed--was never remarked upon because I think people still didn't connect it to him. People still chalked up those crimes to O'Connor, as if Mackey was the good guy who was the victim of a badly-done plot twist--and I understand that feeling because sometimes plot twists like that are badly done. Only in this case it really wasn't because, as I said, the solid case against O'Connor was all non-canonical.
Gracie, too, was continually described as being pushed around and being weak because she believed ultimately that her father was telling the truth, which he was. The good guys were just as ready to speak for Gracie as her father was--particularly Scully. It also played to people's RL prejudices as well--people kept bringing in stuff that they knew was bad about these kinds of churches and Fundamentalism, but O'Connor's church was never shown to do some of the things associated with these churches, so if you just took the information you got in the episode without adding on stuff you knew about this kind of church, you got a very different idea. So again people kept claiming stuff happened that hadn't happened, like claiming O'Connor must have been sleeping with female parishners and making himself God when the ep showed him specifically not doing those things.
Anyway, I think this is something I'm just always interested in, the way people often find it hard to separate the different threads that make up a person that way, so that the person who's very nice but murdered someone really does deserve to go to jail over the really mean jerk that didn't kill anyone. I just remember being really struck by the way fans that usually go over things with a fine-tooth comb were much less interested in doing that with S&W. This sometimes happens in HP too, of course, where the person with the "straight" reading is also the one misrepresenting the text.
It's human nature to find information that validates our pre-existing views easier to believe than information tthat challenges them. Short aside here, but this is the problem with pretty much every attempt to talk about JKR that I've ever seen. Even people who start out being reasonable and positive about JKR--and there's plenty of things to be reasonable and positive about--seem to eventually just have to trash talk other fans based on their interests in the books. Really, when somebody has a problem you're trying to address, it kind of helps if you actually understand the problem they have and show minimum respect for it instead of coming up with a stupid problem the person doesn't have that makes them look bad and speak to that instead. Unfortunately, it does often wind up seeming to validate the criticism rather than defending against it, imo.
To use a fandom example, though, look at information we get from Sirius. He says at one point that Snape went around with a gang of Slytherins and was always trying to hex James in the halls and knew tons of dark curses even as a first year. But after the Pensieve scene, this came into question--why should we trust Sirius' version of Snape when he doesn't like him, particularly when it contradicts what we saw in the Pensieve? Personally, I believe Sirius' words here because I don't see any real reason for him to lie about those facts. It also makes sense given what we know of Snape's eventually joining the DEs, not to mention Sirius' later line to Snape's face about being Lucius' lapdog and Snape's own bullying behavior in canon. So while wouldn't trust Sirius' interpretation of Snape's actions, I see no reason to doubt these particular facts.
Sirius also introduces Phineas as the most-hated Headmaster Hogwarts. This seems often taken at face value. That is, I've seen people trying to figure out how to reconcile Phineas' likable portrait persona with his being so hated without questioning the reliability of Sirius here. But Sirius wasn't at school when Phineas was headmaster. As a Gryffindor he has reason to see the Slytherin head as hated. As somebody who hates his family he has reason to demean him. So why take Sirius' word about that?
Sometimes, admittedly, this is difficult in HP because there are reliable characters we're expected to believe in a meta-way. But other times what we're told contradicts what we see. I often feel uneasy about not knowing whether I should believe what I'm shown, or what I've been told. Not believing what I'm told is natural, especially when I'm shown something else, but the opposite can be harder, depending on the circumstances. I guess I can only hold out till the end and see if we get any surprises. Because if JKR isn't planning the tiniest whiff of a S&W reversal (which, remember, does not entail somebody suddenly turning good but just readers being led astray in assigning guilt for specific crimes) she's certainly done a damn good job setting up for one.
I don't mean to imply that anybody who has a problem with these kinds of endings just doesn't like to be wrong-there are other reasons they can not work. Sometimes they're not set up well, sometimes they're contrived or didactic. But still you have to admit that they work because writers intentionally depend on readers' bias and that can be a humbling experience. Often they telegraph the truth early on and people continue to defend the guilty party long after they've been outed. When that happens to me I usually want to look at back and figure out why I have trouble believing the lie rather than the truth. The other weird thing is, it's not like authors are immune to this either. They can miss stuff and be led astray by bias as much as the rest of us can.
*points to icon and squees*
Signs & Wonders was, I think, a 7th season ep which got a very passionate response on alt.tv.x-files.analysis. I was one of the most passionate.:-) But I think of it now with regards to some reactions to HP interpretations. This XF episode used the narrative trick of a reversal, where you go through the whole story thinking one guy's good and one guy's bad, but when the crime is solved the bad guy's innocent. Obviously I don't think this is literally what HP is doing with the, for instance, the Slytherins, but I do feel like sometimes the reactions of people to the *idea* that there could be *any* sort of revelation about Slytherin where we see *we* were wrong about them in any way are like reactions people have to these kinds of endings--particularly S&W.
In S&W, Mulder and Scully investigate the killing of a young man by a snake. He's part of a snake handling church in Tennessee run by a Rev. O'Connor. O'Connor's daughter, Gracie, has run away from him with her boyfriend and is now under the protection of a Rev. Mackey. O'Connor is a bigot, a sexist, a fundamentalist whose religion is all about evil and condemning others. Rev. Mackey represents a more modern and compassionate form of Christianity that preaches understanding even to people like O'Connor. The trick, of course, is that in the end Rev. O'Connor is innocent and Rev. Mackey's the devil. Well, this did not sit well with people, no sirree! Some posters seemed very offended at the writer making the statement that intolerant Fundamentalist religions were true and that more civilized versions of Christianity were the work of the devil. Personally, though, I didn't think this is what the ep was saying at all. I thought it just used people's aversion to the O'Connors of the world to lead them astray. We want to believe one person is guilty, but that doesn't mean they are. This is definitely something that's been used in HP.
What the episode really worked on--and I think this infuriated a lot of people--was the way people were so eager to believe in Mackey because he was "like them" that they slid right over stuff he was doing. For instance, the compassion Mackey preached towards O'Connor was always had a subtext of, "I have to have compassion for him because I'm a reverend but I wouldn't expect you to, really." While he was saying how we should feel sorry for him he was almost always at the same time dropping hints about the bad things Mackey was doing. Most of the bad stuff we knew about O'Connor we got from Mackey.
What was very interesting was how at the end of the ep many people were unwilling to let Mackey's lies go, so in discussions they would condemn O'Connor for things he hadn't done but Mackey said he had--this, naturally, is what I tend to notice so much in HP, because people will so often remember things the way they didn't happen, or assume characters have done things they actually haven't done. It makes me wonder why this so often happens, and why, if this is the correct way to see it, it wasn't written the way people remember it in the first place. In O'Connor's case, for instance, people would talk about how he "kicked Gracie out" for disobeying him, when in fact she had run away with her boyfriend. Or how he had murdered his wife when canonically all we knew was that his wife had died of a snake bite, which is the risk of being in a snake handler church. Mackey taunted O'Connor with the fact that he (Mackey) hadn't stolen Gracie, but that O'Connor had driven him away with his intolerance and O'Connor seemed to have to accept that, so the shortcomings of his own church were shown to help the devil too. But meanwhile the things that Mackey did--having people tortured and killed--was never remarked upon because I think people still didn't connect it to him. People still chalked up those crimes to O'Connor, as if Mackey was the good guy who was the victim of a badly-done plot twist--and I understand that feeling because sometimes plot twists like that are badly done. Only in this case it really wasn't because, as I said, the solid case against O'Connor was all non-canonical.
Gracie, too, was continually described as being pushed around and being weak because she believed ultimately that her father was telling the truth, which he was. The good guys were just as ready to speak for Gracie as her father was--particularly Scully. It also played to people's RL prejudices as well--people kept bringing in stuff that they knew was bad about these kinds of churches and Fundamentalism, but O'Connor's church was never shown to do some of the things associated with these churches, so if you just took the information you got in the episode without adding on stuff you knew about this kind of church, you got a very different idea. So again people kept claiming stuff happened that hadn't happened, like claiming O'Connor must have been sleeping with female parishners and making himself God when the ep showed him specifically not doing those things.
Anyway, I think this is something I'm just always interested in, the way people often find it hard to separate the different threads that make up a person that way, so that the person who's very nice but murdered someone really does deserve to go to jail over the really mean jerk that didn't kill anyone. I just remember being really struck by the way fans that usually go over things with a fine-tooth comb were much less interested in doing that with S&W. This sometimes happens in HP too, of course, where the person with the "straight" reading is also the one misrepresenting the text.
It's human nature to find information that validates our pre-existing views easier to believe than information tthat challenges them. Short aside here, but this is the problem with pretty much every attempt to talk about JKR that I've ever seen. Even people who start out being reasonable and positive about JKR--and there's plenty of things to be reasonable and positive about--seem to eventually just have to trash talk other fans based on their interests in the books. Really, when somebody has a problem you're trying to address, it kind of helps if you actually understand the problem they have and show minimum respect for it instead of coming up with a stupid problem the person doesn't have that makes them look bad and speak to that instead. Unfortunately, it does often wind up seeming to validate the criticism rather than defending against it, imo.
To use a fandom example, though, look at information we get from Sirius. He says at one point that Snape went around with a gang of Slytherins and was always trying to hex James in the halls and knew tons of dark curses even as a first year. But after the Pensieve scene, this came into question--why should we trust Sirius' version of Snape when he doesn't like him, particularly when it contradicts what we saw in the Pensieve? Personally, I believe Sirius' words here because I don't see any real reason for him to lie about those facts. It also makes sense given what we know of Snape's eventually joining the DEs, not to mention Sirius' later line to Snape's face about being Lucius' lapdog and Snape's own bullying behavior in canon. So while wouldn't trust Sirius' interpretation of Snape's actions, I see no reason to doubt these particular facts.
Sirius also introduces Phineas as the most-hated Headmaster Hogwarts. This seems often taken at face value. That is, I've seen people trying to figure out how to reconcile Phineas' likable portrait persona with his being so hated without questioning the reliability of Sirius here. But Sirius wasn't at school when Phineas was headmaster. As a Gryffindor he has reason to see the Slytherin head as hated. As somebody who hates his family he has reason to demean him. So why take Sirius' word about that?
Sometimes, admittedly, this is difficult in HP because there are reliable characters we're expected to believe in a meta-way. But other times what we're told contradicts what we see. I often feel uneasy about not knowing whether I should believe what I'm shown, or what I've been told. Not believing what I'm told is natural, especially when I'm shown something else, but the opposite can be harder, depending on the circumstances. I guess I can only hold out till the end and see if we get any surprises. Because if JKR isn't planning the tiniest whiff of a S&W reversal (which, remember, does not entail somebody suddenly turning good but just readers being led astray in assigning guilt for specific crimes) she's certainly done a damn good job setting up for one.
I don't mean to imply that anybody who has a problem with these kinds of endings just doesn't like to be wrong-there are other reasons they can not work. Sometimes they're not set up well, sometimes they're contrived or didactic. But still you have to admit that they work because writers intentionally depend on readers' bias and that can be a humbling experience. Often they telegraph the truth early on and people continue to defend the guilty party long after they've been outed. When that happens to me I usually want to look at back and figure out why I have trouble believing the lie rather than the truth. The other weird thing is, it's not like authors are immune to this either. They can miss stuff and be led astray by bias as much as the rest of us can.
*points to icon and squees*
