Assistant Shopkeeper at Flourish and Blotts
Posts: 1,595
Joined: 4:38pm June 27, 2005
|
Wicked Boy - in which ways did JKR stereotype males.
QUOTE(wickedboy @ May 12 2009, 02:23 AM)  Your interpretation is exaggerative to me - that is why I still hold the same opinion.
Of course it is! Though not any more of an exaggeration than your impression of Severus Snape. James doing things behind Lily’s back that he had led on that he gave up so as to get her indicates a lack of sincerity, honesty or fidelity – take your pick. James likes admiration, getting his ego stroked, and risk taking. In real life, men like that may appear to be good husbands and fathers and then the scandal breaks. I think that any woman deserves a man she can trust.
You have seen the politicians come out to give a statement to reporters with their humiliated wife standing beside them trying to smile as if the whole thing doesn’t bother them. I am not saying that James ever got around to doing anything that Lily would find humiliating – just that men with those qualities usually end up making their wives cry. Also James has a mean streak which concerns me a bit and I can’t write off completely.
Note the only thing that James has in common with PB really is the ability to put out the respectable image. PB did, before the truth broke, look like the kind of man a grandmother would try to set her granddaughter up with – good job, respectable looking, middle class manners (which is why it took so long for him to be caught). However, this goes back to why Tom Riddle remained free while Hagrid, Morfinn, Hokey and others paid for his crimes – he was able to present a respectable image and they, for whatever reason, couldn’t. (And this goes way back to the beginning of the first thread when we were talking about respectability and corruption when it came to wizards in HP). I was trying to leave out the other thing since murder (which I mentioned) was enough for the example – which was to focus on appearance versus reality (or change compared to the illusion of change).
There is the impression that Ginny is like James, in a way, that she seems to change just before she gets the one she wants. In another way, Ginny is like Snape in that she fixates on one person and seems to imprint to that person for life – like a baby bird thinking the first thing they see after they hatch is their mother (which is why they will follow the researcher around the room). There is a bit of "justification" for Snape being bullied because he later turned out to be a DE rather than a healer or a minister or a goblin rights activist - as if James took all this into account before he decided to bully him.
QUOTE(wickedboy @ May 12 2009, 02:23 AM) I won't hold it against Harry that he recklessly used Sectumsempra (in the world of magic) and nearly killed a boy - or that he grew Filch's toenails for fun
Harry did not know what sempra would do – which makes his folly trying a spell which he knew nothing about. Note that sempra was supposed to be a silent spell (meaning that saying it would tend to make it more potent) and whether it scarred or caused massive blood loss depended mainly on the strength behind it. In its mildest form, sempra would be similar to the “sneak” jinx that Hermione put on Marietta – something that not only labels her but impacted her looks. It was actually Crabbe he did the toenail thing on (a spell I can see a witch doing on herself if it works for fingernails) – could not remember whether it was Crabbe or Goyle so looked it up. The Filch thing JKR probably got from the peanut butter skits on Sesame Street:
p. 224 (HBP 12) – “There had been a hex that cause toenails to grow alarmingly fast (he had tried this one on Crabbe in the corridor, with very entertaining results); …”
p. 224 (HBP 12) – “… a jinx that glued the tongue to the roof of the mouth (which he had twice used, to general applause, on an unsuspecting Argus Filch); …”
QUOTE(wickedboy @ May 12 2009, 02:23 AM) or that he thought Draco being turned into a ferret was the best of humor and laughed in the crowd at him.
Actually, Ron laughed, Hermione was disturbed by it and we don’t get Harry’s reaction to it. (I should note that, while Buckbeak was facing trial, Hagrid was feeding him ferrets – while Black later fed Buckbeak something more reminiscent of Peter Pettigrew.) It was the same dynamic between the two discussing what happened to Montague (we later learn that it almost resulted in his death). Except when it comes to love (or some other similar “higher purpose”), Hermione tends to have the idea that something is bad no matter who the victim is. Ron, on the other hand, seems to figure that the wrongness of an action depends on whether it is his mates or his opponent’s mates (which seems to be the usual way of looking at things). Note that some of these house rivalries have gone on for generations – making them worse than most sports rivalries.
QUOTE(wickedboy @ May 12 2009, 02:23 AM) You don't walk around casting dark curses, trying to have people expelled and uttering bigoted phrases and hope to be liked.
James and Black walked around hexing people for the fun of it and were considered cool because of it. Same with the twins. It seems that being the House bullies did make you cool in Hogwarts (unless you belonged to a different house). Snape was in competition with James for Lily and was trying to out James James – why would he want to be impressive when the only person he really wanted to impress was Lily! Snape could not have been any more politically aware than Kreacher if he figured that becoming a DE would impress Lily! And take Regulus, he may have been racist without even thinking about it, but he was probably one of the nicer characters of the book.
When Lily blinked, I knew it was shock – though I could not tell whether Lily was really shocked or engaging in sort of a phoney shock that some popular girls tend to engage in to pretend (or get across) that this is behaviour that they are highly unaccustomed to – it turned out to be the former. Before this incident, Lily only blamed Snape for his choice of friends but after this incident, Lily blamed Snape for his own behaviour and made an accusation which Snape did not really understand completely. I wonder if Lily, when talking to her friends about what Snape called her told her that he had used the word before. I also wonder if James used the word before himself because he almost said it when he said (pp) “I would not call you a –” - it would have been game over if he used it in Lily's presence.
p. 571 (OOTP 28) – ‘There you go,’ he said, as Snape struggled to his feet. ‘You’re lucky Evans was here, Snivellus –’ ‘I don’t need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!’ Lily blinked.”
Earlier, it was brought up that Molly used the “B” word to describe Bellatrix – which is a gender slur rather than a racial slur. Why are gender slurs considered more acceptable than racial slurs – why is insulting a person based on their gender or more acceptable than insulting them based on their ethnicity. If using a racial slur makes one a racist, doesn’t uttering a gender slur make one sexist?
It is pretty easy to utter a racial slur, I remember my friend visiting from the US and hanging around my highschool with me. There was a phrase that a teen from a popular TV show depicting the 50’s used to describe a cute guy which turns out also to be a racial slur against a certain ethnic group more common in North of the border than in North Dakota where she was from – so basically my friend was insulting all the cute guys in my highschool! I didn’t know why the guys were so offended because I wasn’t very up on racial slurs at the time (word in question not important). What I am trying to say is that, to be a racist, it is not just important that you use the word, but why you use the word.
Words such as goblin, squib and mule are not offensive in and of themselves but only in how they are used. Goblin becomes a racial slur only if one calls a house elf one and mule becomes a racial slur only when one calls a centaur that – because they are defined, by their very use as an insult as an inferior being. Likewise, Gaunt calls his daughter a “squib” – which is the same as calling her an inferior witch – though I think that JKR was using “squib” instead of more offensive gender slurs – since though Marvolo was portrayed as blatantly misogynist, it was even more important to highlight his racism.
p. 90 – (GOF 8) – ‘…Dobby. He is getting up to all sorts of high jinks, sir, what is unbecoming to a house-elf. You goes racketing around like this, Dobby, I says, and next thing I hear you’s up in front of the Department fo the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, like some common goblin.’
p. 199 (HBP 10) - ‘You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor!’ roared Gaunt, losing control, his hands closed around his daughter’s throat.”
p. 187 (PS/SS 15) – ‘Firenze!’ Bane thundered. ‘What are you doing? You have a human on your back! Have you no shame? Are you a common mule?’
p. 395 (DH 24) – ‘ We protest! And I’m hunted quite as much as any goblin or elf, Griphook! I’m a Mudblood!’ / ‘Mudblood, and proud of it! …’
Hermione finally decides that it is just as offensive to consider the word “Mudblood” offensive as it is to use the word as an insult (though she always seemed slightly uncomfortable with Ron defending her honour every time it was used against her). In other words, that by being offended by the word, Hermione is perpetuating the pureblood structure which considers witches and wizards like her second class. In other words, if the word mudblood is considered offensive then being a mudblood is considered inferior. This goes back to what Jean-Jacques Rousseau says about women in his ideal world being subjected to man’s judgement (ie having their value and worth determined by a man). New Woman magazine did a similar thing with the word that Molly used against Bellatrix (and Marge used against Lily) by turning it into an anagram for Brains Integrity Tenacity Courage and Happiness.
Back to the point – it does matter whether one used “Mudblood” to refer to all muggle-borns or divided muggle-borns into those whom one insulted with that word and those whom one didn’t. Not much of a difference, but a bit of one. These things come in degrees. Words are all about power – including the power to offend and insult.
QUOTE(wickedboy @ May 12 2009, 02:23 AM) She didn't stand there and take it, she bullied back, because standing up for yourself was all right with her.
There is a difference between standing up for yourself and bullying someone. Standing up for oneself means deciding what you will put up with or not put up with. Bullying someone means deciding what you will subject someone else to. There is a difference between defending oneself or ones friends when they are under attack and picking on someone just because you do not like them. If one has not been powerful enough to have their boundaries respected (ie young and inexperienced magically) and then one suddenly has the power to have their boundaries respected then they are apt to cross the line sometimes. Maturity means not crossing that line. Oh, if Lily would have approved of James’s behaviour, then why wasn’t James more open about it! And Lily is so used to being popular, that she doesn’t hex someone she is pissed off with – she shuns them (ie turns her back on them).
QUOTE(wickedboy @ May 12 2009, 02:23 AM) Is Dean the objectified male who is there in the shadows kissing Ginny and making faces and noises to indicate embarassment, indignation, or whatever else is needed to perform his role as the "last suitor" in the Harry-Ginny tale - and otherwise really nobody in his own right?
Do you get my drift here? Ginny was given the same treatment as others (with a little more info and page time due to being Harry's love interest).
Dean’s role got cut way back – he was originally supposed to find out what happened to his father and why his father left the family. I guess Dean exists mainly as Seamus’s friend (an echo of James and Black), a person who is a good drawer, a person who helps hold back (was it Ron or Neville) when they were going to fight Draco and to give his opinion on witches. Dean and Seamus say that the Patils are the best looking witches in their year, we later see Dean with Parvati for a fraction of a second, then Dean moves onto Ginny and holds hands with Luna. But then again, we see Dean on the run as a muggle-born hiding out and his argument with Seamus concerning Cedric’s death.
Ginny was the major part of COS and HBP – she took up a lot of ink in both – she wasn’t a peripheral character in the sense of someone you don’t see very much. Being an object was not due to a small peripheral role but to the way she was portrayed.
|
May 10 2009, 08:10 AM
