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Mar. 4th, 2011 12:36 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockAm I the only one a little bothered by Dumbledore? Not only with the fact he could end up in the Guinness Book Of World Records for "Most Incompetent Headmaster of All Time" (though I'm sure there's worse. :P), but also because...he just bugs me. I know JKR was trying to write him as the "flawed Yoda", so to speak (and to be fair, he's nowhere near Yoda. XD), but it's also how...preachy he gets. Towards Fudge, for example. You know, in Goblet of Fire, with, "You place too much importance on purity of blood, yadda yadda et cetera et cetera" -- which considering how he treated Tom Riddle and the Slytherins is...slightly hypocritical isn't it? Probably bad writing on JKR's part, though. :/
Anyways, sorry 'bout the rambling. Thoughts?
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Date: 2011-03-06 03:34 pm (UTC)I don't think that the point that the author was trying to make about Lily being a minority was because of her real-life race (being a white English girl), but because she's Muggle-born. The argument pretty much says, "Imagine if Lily were Jewish/black/Hispanic, etc., and Snape had called her a real-life, corresponding racial epithet, Would you side with him then?" Basically, Muggle-borns represent minorities in the real world, and the budding Death Eaters are stand-ins for real-life supremacist groups like Neo-Nazis and the KKK, etc. So, in this view, not understanding why Snape was a bigot and Lily was right to reject him for being a bigot is equivalent to not understanding why a black girl rejects the friend who calls her the N-word.
I don't agree that all criticism of Lily is caused by misogyny. I do think that Severus was wrong to call her a Mudblood and I do think that it was ultimately his choice to join the Death Eaters. But I don't think that pointing out Lily's flaws is sexist. She *was* a bad friend. How exactly can someone who stands by the sidelines and tries not to smile while a supposed friend of theirs is being bullied be considered a "good friend?" How exactly is someone who ignores their best friend, to the point where people can't even definitively *tell* that they're best friends in OotP (I certainly couldn't), a nice person? Was Snape wrong to ally himself with people who considered his best friend to be trash? Yes, and so was Lily, since she practically did the same thing.
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Date: 2011-03-07 04:28 am (UTC)And criticizing Lily on specific points of behavior is I agree in no way necessarily sexist. In fact, putting women on pedestals and saying they are perfect (and by implication expecting them to be perfect) is IMHO just a subtler form of misogyny. It's still denying the fact that women are real, living individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses, equal with men. To me Lily may not be more likeable as a character with such definite flaws, but she is far more human and therefore easier to relate to than the perfect idol we were given before. And more interesting.
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Date: 2011-03-07 05:19 pm (UTC)*Claps*
Well-said, my friend. Well-said. :)
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Date: 2011-03-07 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-07 05:34 pm (UTC)Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 1
Date: 2011-03-08 06:50 am (UTC)Oh, yeah, I get all that, and I think it makes sense--as far as it goes. The problem is, that parallel requires the reader to import a lot of background from RL that doesn't fit Lily's particular situation.
For example, a RL minority person belongs to that group their whole life. They learn their inferior position in society very young and have to deal with it their entire lives, in nearly every context and nearly all the time. Lily didn't even know she was a witch until she was 9 and didn't know she belonged to a supposedly-despised minority until she got to Hogwarts. She never suffered any oppression for being a witch that we see, and the only magical people who regard her as inferior are clearly jerks whose opinion doesn't matter anyway. Eventually things heat up to where her life is threatened because of her ethnic group, but--and this is a BIG but--that doesn't happen until just a few years before her death. Having a few jerks think you suck for a few years of your life is entirely different from having all of society beat down and/or threaten you your whole life for belonging to the "wrong" ethnic group.
Furthermore, the population of magicals in England is tiny in comparison to the general population, about 5,000 vs. 56 million in the 1970s, and both populations were over 90% white. My main point is that Lily was an oppressed minority only as long as she stayed in the wizarding world. As soon as she left Hogwarts for Harrod's or Heathrow, nobody would see a Mudblood magic-stealer. They'd see a pretty young white woman, with all the privileges that go along with her race and looks. Unlike a real minority person, whose oppression is permanent and inescapable, she could not only leave her oppression and bigotry behind, but also join the ruling class, any time she wanted, just by leaving the magicals and going to the Muggles. Yes, that would require her to deny a part of herself, at least in public, but she was clearly prepared to do that anyway, or she would not have abandoned her family of origin for the wizarding world. Belonging to the ruling ethnic group from birth would have conferred on her a bone-deep confidence in the rightness of her existence that a few years of occasional mean remarks by a fringe group could not do much to undermine.
TBC
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 1
Date: 2011-03-08 02:47 pm (UTC)/Unlike a real minority person, whose oppression is permanent and inescapable, she could not only leave her oppression and bigotry behind, but also join the ruling class, any time she wanted, just by leaving the magicals and going to the Muggles. Yes, that would require her to deny a part of herself, at least in public, but she was clearly prepared to do that anyway, or she would not have abandoned her family of origin for the wizarding world./
However, this part made me a little uncomfortable because it made me think of the different circumstances that gays and lesbians face. Unlike racial minorities, their minority status isn't extremely noticeable because it can't be ascertained from appearance alone. So, homosexuals do have the option of "denying a part" of themselves by pretending to be straight, which is a painful experience in itself. Those who are targeted for their religious beliefs also have an option that racial minorities don't have, since they can pretend to disavow their religion.
I don't mean to equate the struggle of LGBTs and religious believers to hide themselves in order to avoid persecution to Lily's simple option of pretending to be a Muggle, since I know that one is real while the other is fictional. It's just that I'm not sure if Lily's option would be so simple. Magic is an intrinsic part of her and I'm not sure that it would be so easy for her to live in a world where she'd be forced to deny who she is just to hide from people who are prejudiced against her.
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 1
Date: 2011-03-08 02:52 pm (UTC)That, and the fact that you get the feeling of a Double Standard in JKR's books. You know the "all animals are equal but some more equal than others" thing in ANIMAL FARM? That's what I'm talking about. The Slytherins never get the chance to redeem themselves -- or at least the dignity of getting to redeem themselves on screen (so to speak. ;-). And finally, basing your villains off the Nazis is just...stupid. (Some have done it right. Rowling isn't one of these people)
Still a very good point, BTW. :)
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 1
Date: 2011-03-09 05:02 am (UTC)Not only that: It is OK in Rowlingverse to be prejudiced against giants, werewolves, goblins and many other groups - as long as you aren't a Slytherin. Or perhaps as long as you are a Gryffindor. And more than anything, it is OK to be prejudiced against Muggles (as long as you are from the appropriate House). Because some animals are more equal than others - it's the truth, you know!
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 1
Date: 2011-03-11 03:21 am (UTC)I'm not suggesting she would need to deny who she is all the time. She could be like Samantha on Bewitched and use her magic at home. And as I said, she's perfectly willing to abandon her non-magical family of origin for a cushy life in the wizarding world, so if she can deny that part of herself without apparent undue distress, I find it hard to believe she'd suffer much by not using her magic in public.
As for non-magical people's being prejudiced against her, we see no evidence of that in canon. It's asserted all the time that using magic in front of non-magical people is dangerous, but we never see any magicals suffering adverse consequences for publicly using their powers (which may make this the biggest example of Rowling's habit of telling rather than showing). In fact, when Severus meets Lily, she's using her magic right in the middle of a public playground! Since Petunia tells Lily to watch herself, we can safely assume Lily's done that before--and apparently nobody's ever threatened or attacked her for it, or she wouldn't still be flaunting her powers in public. Nowadays, if a person saw a someone using magic in public, the witness would probably just think they were seeing things or imagining it. They'd be unlikely to talk about it, if only because they wouldn't want to be regarded as delusional. So I just can't see that Lily would lose much by abandoning the wizarding world for normal society.
Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-08 06:51 am (UTC)The "racism" in HP is more like going to a college with a few thousand students where a certain social group or club bullies you. If you don't want to put up with their garbage, just go to another school. You can easily leave the bigotry behind by disappearing into the larger population of non-magicals, so do that. Given how ludicrously low-tech the WW is, they'd never be able to find anyone who truly wanted to escape them.
That's another example of Rowling's logic fail. She takes the internecine squabble of a tiny population that killed a few dozen people in a single country and equates it with the biggest war in history, one that involved 5 continents and killed over 50 million people. I kept thinking how silly that was while reading DH.
Speaking of WWII, if anybody from the Rowling nether kiss forums sees my remarks and is offended by them, I can do no better than to quote FDR: "They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred!"
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-08 01:27 pm (UTC)Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-08 02:56 pm (UTC)Yes, but the problem is that Lily and Severus literally can't go to another school. As far as we know, Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in Britain. If they wanted to go somewhere else to learn magic, they'd have to go abroad. So, Snape doesn't have a way out to escape the bullying at school and Lily can't go to another school where blood purity isn't an issue.
But you are right; Severus seems much more trapped than Lily does.
/She takes the internecine squabble of a tiny population that killed a few dozen people in a single country and equates it with the biggest war in history, one that involved 5 continents and killed over 50 million people./
I agree. That's why Grindelwald's reign of terror seemed much more massive and bore more of a resemblance to WWII, since it involved more of Europe. England was familiar with him, but so was Viktor Krum and his family, as well as Gellert's home country of Germany. I used to wonder why only Britain (not even Britain - mostly England) was affected by Voldemort. The Bulgarian prime minister knew who Voldemort and Harry Potter were at the Quidditch World Cup, but did that mean that Voldemort's influence had spread to Bulgaria during the First War?
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-08 02:58 pm (UTC)By contrast, Voldemort seemed to be more of a dick. True, he did evil things, but he seemed more like a plot device than a villain in his own right. In short, a dick. :/
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-11 03:44 am (UTC)But you are right; Severus seems much more trapped than Lily does.
I'm not talking about Hogwarts specifically, but the wizarding world as a whole. I used the simile of a school and bullying because the total number of magicals in Britain is about the same as the number of students at a medium-sized college or university, and the small number of bad guys resembles a group of bullies or a particularly hateful fraternity rather than a real-life terrorist group. When I said, "Leave the school if you don't like the bullying," I meant "Leave wizarding society behind if you feel they're threatening you." Lily can do that after graduating Hogwarts.
And much as I like Snape, I didn't mention him or the Slytherins in either of my posts.
My overarching point about Lily is that she's a white Baby Boomer, and so am I. I'm really tired of people who aren't either of those things telling me they understand her character better than I do, or holding her up as some kind of heroine of the struggle for minority rights when the only thing she seems to have struggled for was to get herself the cushiest life possible ASAP. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make her a brave warrior for minority rights, either.
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-11 08:20 pm (UTC)But it doesn't seem like she faced a whole lot of prejudice from what we know, being popular and in Slughorn's special club and marrying into a rich old family and everything. So she is not a good representative of disadvantaged minorities as written. If JKR had said Lily was denied jobs at the Ministry and everywhere after graduation, and was horribly bullied in school rather than being popular, that would be another story, but she didn't.
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-11 08:49 pm (UTC)Going to college in another anglophone country might be best, because that cultural difference would help hide the WW-related differences. Then, once you have college behind you, you've got enough history in the Muggle world to proceed from there. This is something that Hermione the education-obsessed might have done... if she still valued anything Muggle after seven years in the WW.
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-11 09:58 pm (UTC)Tell me about it. Besides the rampant discrimination against non-magics, this is probably my biggest beef with the series. How she thinks she's showing the horrors of World War II in a dinky fantasy series with a plot-device villain and a bunch of children I have no idea. But here's the thing: World War II, the Holocaust, and related subjects were such horrible and influential events in the history of the world that they can't BE duplicated in a fantasy setting, especially not one as childish as Rowling's. I am Jewish, I've studied the Holocaust on and off for several years, and to say that the situation Rowling's set up is in any way equivalent to the Nazi war crimes is just plain insulting.
Re: Why Lily Was Not an Oppressed Minority, Part 2
Date: 2011-03-11 10:06 pm (UTC)And even worse, she never really explains why the Death Eaters join Voldemort. Regarding Hitler, the reason he managed to win Germany to his cause -- when the sane response should have been, "Cart the crazy man off to a mental institution, plzthx?" -- was that Germany was bitter, down on their luck, and in a really bad economic depression. In a way, they saw Hitler as the only person who could really save them (and you know how the rest went. :/).
If Rowling had at least given the Death Eaters motivations -- which is good no matter what the circumstances -- if the whole Nazi comparison had a goddamn *point*...maybe it wouldn't have been so bad. (YMMV)