F**king Muggles (How do they work?)

[harpsi-fizz.livejournal.com]

I tried posting this in two different places and while I'm not looking to be agreed with per say, I should have known better than to post it in places where the two laws are "JoRo can do no wrong" and "If you say one word against JoRo, it means you hate her".




From the Harry Potter Riff Trax:
Hagrid: I suppose a great muggle like yourself's gonna stop him, are you?
Harry: Muggle?
Hagrid: *Snide* Non-magic folk.
Mike Nelson: *Riffing* You see, Harry, when a group of people is different, it helps to come up with a funny sounding word, or "slur", to describe them.

I've always really hated the term muggle. Use of it in the books aside, even the sound of the word itself is unappealing- almost an onomatopoeia for someone beig nauseated. You can't say "muggle" without the middle part kind of vomiting from your mouth.

People get bent out of shape over 'Mudblood' but I think Muggle is worse. If magic is so convenient, then not having it is a disadvantage. It's like calling someone out on their deficiency in a rude way.

A woman I know said "taking one characteristic and defining them by that characteristic".

Here's what I don't understand- why haven't the defenders of the term realized that the entire insult "mudblood" stems from a disdainful attitude for "muggles"? One argument I heard was "I think 'mudblood' is definitely worse - there's just something so vile about the concept of having dirty blood, I suppose."

But what is it that makes that blood "dirty"? Having it mix with "muggle" blood. It isn't that much of a jump to make, so why hasn't it been made?

On a side note, ever since I read book one, it always bothered me how quick Harry was to "other" non-magical people the moment he found out he was one of the "elite" people. Specifically, I mean his description of the Quidditch hoops looking like things "muggle children used to blow bubbles".

Honestly, sometimes the distinction between "muggle" things and "wizard" things just gets out of hand. "Muggle studies" couldn't be called something a little less dehumanizing? "Muggle culture" perhaps? Wizard rock- music is universal. It'd be one (more interesting) thing if Rowling had invented instruments that wizards play or if she said that there was a particular sound that came from water or fire when enchanted with a spell and that some wizards had talent for making music from it. Hell, even if she said that they recorded mermaid songs. As it is, "wrock" is just singing a song and replacing words with stereotypical wizard things.

Going to close this up with a quote from the always funny Mike Smith:

Before he can think of another way to find his train, Harry overhears other passengers approaching from elsewhere in the station, complaining about all the Muggles crowding up the joint. Gee, I'm sorry there's too many of us Muggles in the London Underground. You know, the one that was built by Muggles. Let's just shut down the main artery of commerce in the fifteenth largest city in the world, so you high-faluting assholes can use one platform on one train station twice a year to get your little brats to and from their jackoff school. Sheesh.

So the fact that the speaker used the term "Muggles" and carries on like a jerk immediately tips Harry off that they're wizards, and thus they can help him find his train.

- From Mike Smith's review of Chapter 6

Comments

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree with what you say about the implications of the term "Muggle". One other thing that you haven't mentioned: we see wizards' condescending attitudes having a practical effect on their treatment of Muggles (e.g., their willingness to mind-wipe them whenever it's convenient), but we never really see any examples of Muggleborns being treated differently (excluding Voldemort's "Muggleborn Registration Committee", which was obviously tacked on by Rowling because Nazis = evil, rather than rising organically out of the story/setting). Even Draco Malfoy does nothing more than call Hermione a "Mudblood"; we never see him bullying and Muggleborns because their parents were Muggles. All in all, it often seems as if the good guys are actually more prejudiced than the baddies, which seems a bit odd in a series supposedly arguing for tolerance.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Here's what I don't understand- why haven't the defenders of the term realized that the entire insult "mudblood" stems from a disdainful attitude for "muggles"? One argument I heard was "I think 'mudblood' is definitely worse - there's just something so vile about the concept of having dirty blood, I suppose."

But what is it that makes that blood "dirty"? Having it mix with "muggle" blood. It isn't that much of a jump to make, so why hasn't it been made?

Most definitely.

Anthropologists recognize that the respectful thing to do is to name groups of people by the name they call themselves. As a result tribes and nations that were not aware of there being other people around often end up being named what translates as 'people' in their own language. Following this the correct terminology should be 'people' for us. They can call themselves wizards if they want. And together the two groups (and whatever others that might exist) are humans.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you! This is one of the biggest problems with the series, IMO. Prejudice is ok if the Good Guys(TM) do it.

And the official attitude towards Muggles, as indicated by the Ministry's policies and what Harry learns from his textbooks, has the same sort of irrationality to it that one sees in RL examples of demonized groups. Muggles are conceived of as being at once not only inconvenient to wizards (supposedly wanting them to do everything for them) but actually dangerous to wizards (Statute of Secrecy, obliviation squads, etc.), and yet also imbecilic, unobservant and harmless, far inferior to wizards (all the laughing at Muggles for not figuring out about wizards, the textbook's story of Wendelin the Weird). Compare this attitude to RL examples of antisemitism, for instance - Jews were supposed to be inferior and yet an ever-present threat. It's all a way of "justifying" any atrocities against the demonized group as "self-defense" without putting oneself in the position of actually *feeling* threatened by the supposedly threatening other, still upholding the comfortable fiction that the demonizing group is superior in all ways to the other. It's utter BS and it's sick to see that JKR *upholds* this vision RE her non-magic characters.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

I've always really hated the term muggle. Use of it in the books aside, even the sound itself sounds nasty. People get bent out of shape over 'Mudblood' but I think Muggle is worse.

Hear! Hear!

I so agree with you, so much so (not to pimp my own work) I actually devote a chapter to it in my fanfic...

To me the word "muggle" is worse than "mudblood", because the latter is meant as an insulting racial slur, while the former is considered an acceptable "polite" alternative.

But it is still a "slang" term used to lump a group of people together so that the person using the term can dismiss them from the speaker's own demographic group -- a verbal way of ghetto-izing another group of people.

Maybe because I'm American and most immigrants who came here worked with their hands and their backs "down in the dirt", but I actually wouldn't find being called "mudblood" insulting, I'd laugh at the person trying to insult me with that word: "Yeah, my ancestors worked in the mud as farmers and ditch diggers, what of it?"


It'd be one (more interesting) thing if Rowling had invented instruments that wizards play or if she said that there was a particular sound that came from water or fire when enchanted with a spell and that some wizards had talent for making music from it.

I think one of the major drawbacks of Rowling's universe is the decided lack of real CULTURE in wizarding society. As you point out, why aren't there magickal musical instruments? Magickal operas, where the scores are spells. Ditto theater, dance, literature, poetry, fine arts (and tacky moving paintings don't count)....

Hey, and wizards didn't get us to the moon, either! LOL

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

The Muggle thing bothered me too, even back when I used to love the series- I never had a problem with the term, but it would always strike me as a problem that there were all these things going on that Muggles apparently simply had to be protected from by Wizards....

And let's not forget that the Wizards treat everything Muggles invented to make their lives better as inferior substitutes for magic. You know, despite the fact that Muggles INVENTED things instead of just having all conveniences they could ask for handed to them on a silver platter?! All that technology requires a lot of intelligence and skill to produce, you know!

I think Rowling and possibly a few others have paid lip service to the idea that the Wizards are more arrogant than actually superior. The trouble is that there is never any evidence of this in the books! Not once do we see any Muggle actually face down a Wizard or complain about the treatment they receive; and the only Muggles we see with any regularity are the moronic, abusive Dursleys.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for posting this. The treatment of the muggles was actually what turned me from being an avid HP fan into a somewhat anti- even when I first read it as a kid the prejudice bothered me. On the plus side, it was probably also what drove me to start writing fantasy myself, if just to have a world in which non-magical people aren't treated like total idiots. ;-)

Why "Mudblood" is a compliment

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for posting this. I've always said "Muggle" is a much nastier term than "Mudblood," for two reasons.

1) "Muggle" is structurally identical to two real world slurs, "nigger" and "faggot." All three words are two syllables, with a short vowel in the first syllable, a double G in the middle, and a gutteral in the second syllable.

2) "Mudblood" is not just silly sounding (in fact, when I first read it, I thought, "What a dumb-sounding word! Am I actually supposed to consider that an insult?"); I can also think of several ways in which it qualifies as a compliment:

a) Little kids love to play with mud, including "eating" mud pies and modeling with clay.

b) "Muddy" blood has to be thicker and richer than ordinary blood, thus more capable of carrying nutrients to the body's cells.

c) Mud has been used since the beginning of civilization to create many necessary and beautiful things: bricks, adobe houses, clay pots, vases, eating dishes and utensils, and sculptures.

d) In mud (dirt mixed with water) grow almost all the plants on Earth: the trees that provide the oxygen we breathe, not to mention furniture and houses, and the crops people grow to eat, feed to their livestock, and make clothing. Without mud, most life on Earth would cease to exist. Certainly humans would die out. Magic's no good without food.

So when you call somebody a "Mudblood," you're telling them they have something in their blood that has been an essential component of all the civilizations in history, something necessary to human life itself. That's not an insult. It's the highest of compliments.