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deathtocapslock* Jeans and a t-shirt seems like quite a scruffy combination for a hearing, even if they are freshly laundered. Doesn’t Harry have a suit or something he could wear?
* So why is it again that moving Harry to No. 12 required a small battalion of witches and wizards to keep him safe, but taking him to the Ministry requires just one middle-aged guy?
* Kudos to Mr. Weasley for getting excited about automatic ticket machines, instead of just assuming that they’re an inferior substitute for magic like everyone else does. Still, it does make one wonder why he hasn’t learnt more about Muggle technology.
* To enter the Ministry, type 62442. This is where the letters MAGIC are on a numberpad. Just thought I’d point that out.
* Nothing triumphalist about that Statue of Magical Harmony at all, is there? Still, it does make the pureblood supremacists look a bit less bad. Wizards clearly think that they’re better than sapient magical creatures; all Mr. Malfoy et al. want to do is add sapient non-magical creatures to the statue.
* So does St. Mungo’s rely on charity to keep itself afloat, then? ’Cause you’d have thought that the WW would be able to fund at least one hospital, especially if it’s literally the only hospital available to them. But then, why get people to donate to it at all, if you can just fund it out of general taxation? And why would people put coins in the well? After all, you never hear people saying “I think the NHS is such a good thing, I’m going to voluntary pay more tax to help fund it.”
* And do we ever see the Department for Experimental Breeding investigate Hagrid?
* An “Official Gobstones Club” just sounds silly to me. Yes, let’s have all these senior governmental officials using public office space to play a game which squirts foul-smelling liquid into your face! I mean, I get that the HP books have a lot of whimsy in them, but the series is supposed to be growing up at this point. Official Gobstones Clubs just don’t fit with the serious atmosphere JKR’s trying to create.
* Does a society as small as the WW really need such a big government? Or are they all just so stupid that they need two bureaucrats to every normal citizen to constantly tell them what to do?
* The fact that the Goblin Liaison Office is part of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magic Creatures should tell you all you need to know about the wizarding world’s mindset when it comes to other sentient beings.
* If it’s any consolation, though, the Goblins do control the WW’s only bank. I bet they laugh about the wizards whilst secretly holding the Minister to ransom by threatening to use their power to take down the entire wizarding economy.
* A bit like Jews in anti-Semitic literature, now that I come to think of it. Normally, I’d just brush this off as a coincidence, and say that anyone trying to compare Goblins and Jews is reading too much into the text. In light of the fact that Rowling constantly bludgeons us over the head with her heavy-handed Nazi analogies, though…
* Oh, and now they have a “Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee” as part of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Once again, “Muggle” is being used as a term of abuse, despite the fact that it’s the Wizarding World, not the Muggle, which is a corrupt, authoritarian, nepotistic dictatorship which breeds Dark Lords like a rotting log breeds toadstools.
* Once again, though, it makes the Pureblood Supremacists look a bit better. After all, if you were brought up to believe that Muggles were inherently stupid, wouldn’t you want to keep their (no doubt equally stupid) offspring at arm’s length?
* In fact, sod it – the Supremacists are actually better than mainstream society. At least their sense of superiority is consistent with their society’s views on Muggles – none of that hypocritical “Oh, Muggles are stupid and inferior – but whatever you do, don’t say so!” crap.
* And now I’m going to shut up on the topic for the rest of this chapter, lest my blood pressure climbs to unhealthy levels.
* Percy appears to have walked out of the photograph. So does this mean that magical photographs are able to know and react to events around them? But how would Photo!Percy have known about the argument? And isn’t there a scene later in the book when Moody shows Harry a picture of the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry thinks something along the lines of “They had no idea that they’d shortly be killed”? Probably Arthur’s removed his son himself.
* So why was the hearing time changed? Was it just to discredit Harry by making him look too arrogant to show up to his own hearing? But then, surely it would emerge that he was meant to turn up several hours later, thereby defeating the purpose of the change?
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 06:04 am (UTC)Yes!
That's one of the things that make me crazy in HP books.
The Supremacists are horrible bigots, racists and so on but the rest of the wizard world is almost the same (just not loud about it).
And Supremacists are feeling threatened in some ways by Muggles while the "good" wizards just see them as amusing and retarded pets.
I'm not happy about Tom's and DE's "kill and enslave the Muggles" attitude but the condescending attitude displayed by all wizards we are supposed to see as "good" is also horrible.
Plus, the "good side" is very casual about inflicting harm and mind damage on Muggles. :(
Percy appears to have walked out of the photograph. So does this mean that magical photographs are able to know and react to events around them? But how would Photo!Percy have known about the argument? And isn’t there a scene later in the book when Moody shows Harry a picture of the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry thinks something along the lines of “They had no idea that they’d shortly be killed”? Probably Arthur’s removed his son himself.
There are only two consistent things in the HP books :
1.Gryffindors in general and the trio in particular can do whatever they want with no consequences.
2.The working of anything magical can and will change from book to book with no regard to logic and common sense. Nothing will be ever properly explained so the author can use it as she see fit.
The mechanics of the wizarding photograph are definitively one of the thing covered by 2.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 08:32 am (UTC)Yeah. The thing is, it isn't Voldemort's kind of racism that the average reader of the books is more likely to confront in their real life (or I hope to God not). It's the kind of racism that we see exemplified by Arthur Weasley, Hagrid, and even Hermione. The "subtler" racism that occurs in people who believe they're good and tolerant people, but who look down on the Other and look the other way when the system mistreats or even abuses them.
JKR added the racism angle to her books as a cheap way of making them feel significant, and it's a lot easier to write genocidal megalomaniacs than it is to explore subtle societal racism.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 03:15 pm (UTC)JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-20 05:37 pm (UTC)She definitely ranted to the effect that she believes homosexual men having sex is icky in one of her terrible interviews. Whether or not she is throwing stones while being in a glass house, that alone would exclude her from really having egalitarian views.
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-20 06:29 pm (UTC)But she thinks lesbians having sex is okay, then? ;-)
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-20 06:56 pm (UTC)Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-20 07:15 pm (UTC)Oh, definitely! I've had more than one heterosexual female friend and/or coworker state that they think two females getting it on is "beautiful", but that men "doing it" is disgusting.
As for me, gals just don't do it for me. I don't find it disgusting, just boring! LOL
OTOH, I've had gay male friends show me gay porn, and I actually found it quite, uh, arousing...some good looking guys in those things! :-o
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-20 11:05 pm (UTC)There is a interview where she implies that "homosexual men having sex is icky"? Hell, can that women be any more close minded and bigoted?
And I thought that all those "You shouldn't like Snape! Why do you like him? Oh, you're women and attracted to bad boys" interviews were intolerant and insulting. :/
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-20 11:53 pm (UTC)Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-23 11:38 pm (UTC)Anything could have worked. From your Deadalus Diggle & Sturgis Podmore example to saying that Professor Grubbly-Plank don't mind being a substitute teacher because that way she can spend more time with Professor Sinistra.
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-25 02:30 pm (UTC)Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-21 12:30 pm (UTC)That's what I've heard from a lot of disappointed fans. I've heard other fans claim that it wasn't necessary and that what was important that Dumbledore was a wizard who happened to be gay, not that Dumbledore was a gay man who happened to be a wizard.
But like others have said before, there were places in DH where JKR could have told us that Albus was gay. Why didn't she just have Rita Skeeter or Aberforth reveal that Dumbledore and Grindelwald were a couple and then have Dumbledore briefly confirm it in the King's Cross scene before moving on with the rest of his story? It wouldn't have been a big deal if the text didn't make it a big deal.
/There is a interview where she implies that "homosexual men having sex is icky"?/
Is that true? I've never heard that.
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-21 02:13 pm (UTC)I never automatically see homosexual in the word friend. Maybe I need to reread it to find it. JKR says in a responds to an interview question it's there...but really I think it's only there if you already had it in your mind that Dumbledore was gay. I don't think a reasonable person with no preconcieved ideas reading canon will automatically say, YEP, JKR meant this character to be gay, it's right there in black and white for all the world to see.
Dumbledore doesn't say he was in love with G. I'd have to go back again and review what words he did use in his kings cross confession but I honestly never got gay from the relationship. So it's almost like JKR is saying we who didn't see it are stupid, especially when she insists it's there in the story when it isn't.
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-21 08:58 pm (UTC)Why didn't she just have Rita Skeeter or Aberforth reveal that Dumbledore and Grindelwald were a couple and then have Dumbledore briefly confirm it in the King's Cross scene before moving on with the rest of his story? It wouldn't have been a big deal if the text didn't make it a big deal.
And that too.
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-23 11:25 pm (UTC)Is that true? I've never heard that.
I haven't heard it before. I'm only quoting urbanman1984's comment :
"She definitely ranted to the effect that she believes homosexual men having sex is icky in one of her terrible interviews. Whether or not she is throwing stones while being in a glass house, that alone would exclude her from really having egalitarian views."
And I agree that she could have had Dumbledore or any of the characters confirm they were a couple.
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-25 02:36 pm (UTC)Is that true? I've never heard that.
It depends on how much subtext you see - she says something about how the general homophobic rationale is a fear of men* loving each other and how it's not really about the sex. This is, as I think most people would agree, nonsense, and it may betray her own discomfort with the idea of male/male sex and her desire to convince herself that no, that's not real homophobia and she has nothing in common with homophobes, no, not at all.
*Apparently there's no homophobia aimed at lesbians in her world?
Re: JKR and hypocrisy
Date: 2011-03-20 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 04:16 am (UTC)Some of the inadvertent bigotry in the books is no doubt due to the fact that JKR's writing runs on tropes, and stereotypes are one subcategory of tropes. I don't think JKR is particularly egalitarian, but I think that a lot of what we see is just sheer laziness. Or that and the fact that tropes (including stereotypes) resonate with people easily (no matter how icky that fact is), which also goes back to laziness.
It wouldn't entirely surprise me if the reason why JKR is comfortable branding so many of her characters as entirely and intrinsically evil and/or inferior is because she really does see most of them as cardboard cutouts, even in her authorial mind, because she was too lazy to flesh them out.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 01:30 pm (UTC)If that is the case then the ministry is a supporter of the Nazi principle, it routenly goes out and mentally abuses muggles by altering their memory.
I didn't see DH part one the movie, but I have seen some clips online of Snape walking into Malfoy manor. I don't think the movie did it the same way as the book did they?
I'm guessing from the brief clips I've seen that one arm salute isn't in the movie. But then again, maybe someone who has seen it can update me if it is or isn't.
I guess I can give the movie people some credit if they changed that and cut it out.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 02:39 pm (UTC)Honestly, no one performed Nazi salutes to get through the Dark Mark-sensing force field blocking off the Astronomy tower in HBP so it's not like it's necessary to pass through the gate. Stupid hack.