deathtocapslock | (no subject)

ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com posting in

Am 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?

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Oldies. :P

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

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.

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

From:

aikaterini.livejournal.com

I agree with you in the sense that from what we see of Lily in her years at Hogwarts, she does seem to have it made. She's popular, pretty, a good student, and is a member of the middle-class. It's because of these circumstances that she seems to be more privileged than Snape, who is plain/ugly, bullied, and is a member of the lower-class.

/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.

From:

ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com

Maybe. *Shrugs* But in terms of Hogwarts and everything, she basically had it all. Plus...the whole Aesop about prejudice is so poorly executed anyway, if only because JKR doesn't go into why wizards may be prejudiced against Muggleborns: yes, it's stupid, but making one side out to be a strawman = not a very good method of skewering prejudice, methinks. :/

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. :)

From:

oryx_leucoryx

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. ;-).

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!

From:

oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

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.

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.