OOTP Chapter Twelve: "Professor Umbridge"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* “Does he think he’ll turn into a nutter if he stays in a room with me too long?” Given that you threatened to curse him yesterday, he probably thinks you’ve already turned into one.

* So having favoured Harry over Seamus, Ron’s now reluctant to keep his brothers in line. A prefect should really be more impartial.

* Nice to see Harry and Ron dismissing the prospect of uniting with the Slytherins out of hand like that. And to think that some people say Slytherins aren’t treated like proper members of the school!

* So Angelina’s only holding try-outs for Wood’s replacement, whereas Harry will make everybody try-out next year. Is this something that varies depending on who’s captain, or did JKR just make up the “everyone tries out” idea to add some Ron-related angst in Book 6?

* Note how Ron’s already decided that he won’t like Umbridge before having one lesson with her. As it is he’ll be proved right, but still, it’s not like they’re giving her much of a chance, is it?

* “‘Leave me out of it,’ said Ron hastily.” Nice to see him undermining the authority of his fellow-prefect like that, isn’t it?

* As if the prospect of taking exams which determine whether or not you stay at school isn’t stress enough, Fred and George go and give people boils. Charming.

* As an aside, how does the exam system in Hogwarts work? In some ways it seems like GCSEs/O-levels, but if this were the case we’d expect quite a few people to leave school after taking them and take up jobs, rather than study to NEWT level. Or is it more a case of them being necessary to progress to NEWT level, but otherwise not really affecting your final qualifications, a bit like some university exams?

* Poor Ron, wanting to be an Auror. He’s spent his entire school career being overshadowed by Harry, and now he’ll spend his entire professional career being overshadowed, too. What he really needs is some time working/travelling without Harry or Hermione, so that he can become more confident and discover that he can actually cope without them. I doubt JKR would give him that, though.

* Besides, Aurors are, like, the élite. You can’t be one of them unless you’re really good. Or unless you’re the Chosen One, in which case you are entitled to take up whatever job you want. And get your friends into the Aurors, too.

* Ugh, Hermione’s so easy to manipulate. “Oh, you’re so clever, please lend us your notes.” She really ought to stop helping them, or at least scale back her help to a level where she’s not practically doing their work for them.

* Although I am rather attracted to the idea that she’s subconsciously trying to make herself indispensible to the boys due to her deep-seated insecurity. Especially given what happened to her when she last seriously stood up to them, over the broom in POA.

* So Harry meets Cho, makes a complete faux pas and reminds her of her dead boyfriend. Ron quickly steers the conversation away onto something more happy, i.e., Quidditch, before Cho can get too upset. Nevertheless, Ron is apparently the insensitive jerk around here, not Harry.

* And Ron and Hermione keep bickering about it all the way to Potions class. I’ve heard of couples getting into friendly arguments, but really, this is just ridiculous.

* Snape has apparently come to expect a high pass level from his students, suggesting that he’s actually quite a good teacher, after all.

* No matter how “worthless” Harry’s potion is, Ron’s has to be even worse.

* For Divination, they work from The Dream Oracle, by Inigo Imago. Which makes me wonder: where do people get the time to research all this complicated magic stuff and write up books about it? Apart from teaching positions in Hogwarts, there don’t really seem to be any academic jobs in the WW, and there aren’t enough wizards to make writing books a viable way of making a living (which perhaps explains the lack of wizarding fiction – there just isn’t a big enough audience for such works to be profitable). But surely a regular day job wouldn’t leave much time for research, so perhaps there’s some form of Ministry grant to allow people to take time off work and research these topics, or the people who do so are all wealthy enough that they can afford not to work full-time.

* Keeping a dream diary doesn’t seem as onerous as Harry and Ron seem to make out. After all, it’s not like most people have many dreams, and I’d be surprised if they’d end up remembering more than one or two over that whole period.

* Professor Umbridge’s wand is “unusually short”. Freudian, anyone?

* Knowing the WW, those kids really need a Defence class involving some considerations of the ethics involved. Like Umbridge’s. Still, no wonder they don’t take to it. Ethics? Pah! What sort of cowardly thing is this?

* Picking a fight with a teacher like this seems a bit OOC for someone like Hermione. Maybe the real Hermione Granger’s been drugged and locked in a magical trunk with the real Ginny Weasley, and has now been taken over as JKR’s sock-puppet.

* At least Dean acknowledged that Moody “turned out to be a maniac”, but doesn’t seem to dwell on it too much because “we still learned loads”. Which seems… somewhat worrying, TBH. Sort of like a Muggle saying “Yes, well, I know Myra Hindley turned out to be a mass-murderer, but she taught me loads of great childcare tips.”

* So Professor Umbridge states that Voldemort’s return is a lie, which seems to be the Ministry line. But never does anybody suggest that Harry killed Cedric himself, despite him having the means, motive and opportunity, and despite the fact that Cedric’s body doesn’t seem to bear animal attack marks on it. Perhaps it’d just be too difficult for Harry to rebut, and hence would get in the way of JKR’s planned storyline.

* “Well, I’m glad you listen to Hermione Granger, at any rate,” says Professor McGonagall, somewhat ironically, given that Hermione’s the one who started the trouble.

 

Comments

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

That would make a great fanfic. I can see Dumbledore as the plantation owner, Voldemort as the overseer, Lily as DD's daughter, James as her husband, and Severus as the loyal slave Lily played with when she was a girl. He loved her but couldn't have her because of the status differences. Remus and Sirius were James's friends who, along with James, got their kicks tormenting Severus, who was greasy because he spent so much time laboring instead of lounging around.

That actually makes the books even creepier when you look at it that way because it's not that far off the psychological reality of the series. Eeewww, indeed.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That is both a really cool idea and incredibly creepy. Is all fantasy this elitist? This might be why I have tried my hand at writing it myself, if just to fix some moral stuff about it that kind of icks me out.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I can't answer that because I haven't read much fantasy, not even LotR or Narnia. The Warriors books aren't like that, which is a major reason I like them so much. Neither are Mary Stanton's Unicorns of Balinor or Heavenly Horse books, or Mark Chadbourn's Age of Misrule series. A lot of it surely has to do with the author's own moral and ethical world views, which seep into their work unless they're deliberately trying to present a particular POV as an intellectual exercise. JKR's beliefs aren't particularly savory, even though she is apparently unaware of this, so that creepiness comes out in her work.

A lot of really cool ideas are also incredibly creepy. I think that's part of what makes them interesting. However, that's where the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality comes in. Something can make a really cool story that you would never want to happen in real life.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting. Just in curiosity, what sort of ideas do you consider to be both cool and creepy in fantasy?

Cool and creepy

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

A friend and I set ourselves a little challenge and we both did heroic vampiress fantasy stories as an exercise on fictionpress. My character was inspired both by her protagonist and by Elias, the creepy vampire boy from Let the Right One In.

My protagonist became attached to and adopted a mortal human child. Their relationship is meant to come across as either sweet or sinister depending on how innocent or filthy minded the reader is. A lot can be done with choice of wording or vague suggestion. My friend stated that she considers that under 18 sex should be a taboo even in fantasy because it is illegal where she is. But the age of consent does vary a lot in different cultures. I think therefore that it is alright to write about it in fantasy even though I would not approve in real life.

Obviously I would not want underage sex to happen in real life, nor do I think a single mother household is the best possible environment for a child to grow up in (that's just my view) and I would consider the whole idea of vampirism to be unsettling if it actually existed.

Re: Cool and creepy

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That's definitely an interesting concept. I can see your point, actually- there are a lot of fantasy concepts that I wouldn't really want to happen, especially if I was still a muggle and couldn't do much to defend myself. Still fun to read about though.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Is all fantasy this elitist?


Well, I don't know about kids fantasy but I've read a couple of really good adult fantasy series.

My favorite series is the Crown of stars series by Kate Elliott. The first book is called Kings Dragon. It's a way more complex story however and like many adult fantasy it's got major world building and complexity of character going on.

Another adult series that I've just gotten into is the Game of Thrones - this series is akin to Kate Elliott in it's style and I'm just on the 4th book now of the series.

Both these series are far and above JKR's series as far as complex themes and one really interesting thing in Martin's game of Thrones is that good guys don't always get a pass, you're likely to have a decent character do questionable stuff but also get killed. And the bad guys are not just carbon copy bad guys, they are complex and have their own stories that you can end up having empathy for.

So, there is other fantasy out there that is much more grown up and a much more involved read =)

Robin Hobb

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Have you read her Farseer and Liveship trilogies?

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Terry Pratchett avoids this sort of thing, and one of his recurring heroes often bitterly complains about the human tendency to have a king-shaped hole in their worldviews (humans have a "tendency to bend at the knees"). Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books are good as well - the protagonist is a human assassin/crime boss in the capital city of the Dragaeran (think elves) empire, and it deals with how this not-very-nice person reconciles his general hatred of Dragaerans for how they treat the human minority with the fact that all his closest friends are Dragaeran, and later on there are human and Dragaeran peasant Marxists (in a setting where the imperial status quo is literally enforced by the gods and fate itself). Also, the plots are intricate and clever, and the characters are entertaining (if somewhat callous - the Mafia-like organisation Vlad belongs to is one of the noble Houses of the empire, and two of his friends are from the warlike House). Guy Gavriel Kay writes excellent fantasy in settings based on real-world historical periods with very small amounts of magic, so any elitism is distinctly product of the cultures involved rather than the overriding rules of the stories. China Mieville is a Marxist and the Bas-lag Cycle is written primarily from that perspective. And while Tolkien is guilty of using the "kings make everything better" trope, the Appendices, the Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales make it quite clear that just because the Numenoreans were physically superior to normal humans doesn't make them any better, and let's not even get started on the Elves. He did make the Orcs evil and corrupted, but he put a great deal of effort into trying to reconcile with his beliefs that every sapient being had capacity for goodness (not that he ever really managed it, but at least he recognised the problem). Oh, and then there's Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy. It's set in an alternate-modern-day world where the British Empire still rules thanks to the government consisting of magicians. Sufficiently-educated humans can summon and enslave spirits from another dimension, and the protagonists are a young prodigy magician, the millennia-old djinni he summons, and a resistance fighter. Unlike Rowling, Stroud actually addresses the fact that magical society is based on slavery of commoners and spirits, Nathaniel's corruption by magical society is explicitly clear, and all the protagonists are actually capable of heroism (also, Nathaniel and Kitty's ambitions aren't presented as evil - Nathaniel starts off with idealistic dreams which then get corrupted into supporting the existing power structures, but it's presented as a fault in the system rather than the inevitable result of ambition; and Kitty's ambition is to bring down the magical empire that's ruled much of the world for two hundred years).

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Ooh, some of these books sound really interesting. I will have to put them on my reading list!

[sunnyskywalker]

China Mieville also wrote a YA fantasy called Un Lun Dun, in which the Chosen One gets clonked on the head early on so her best friend decides to take up the quest instead despite having no obligation to do so. And then she skips a bunch of steps the book of prophecy lists because they're stupid. It was very nice to have an UnChosen One who went on a quest because it was the right thing, not because Fate said she was the awesomest Just Because. (Which kind of describes Frodo, despite a few vague hints about fate, since it's apparently a pretty weak fate if it's there and no guarantee of anything.)

Nnedi Okorafor's Zahrah the Windseeker has a protagonist who goes on a quest to save her friend, and who is also just basically a nicer person than Harry. Even when a bunch of people react to her coming back successful not with admiration but with, "You're so badly dressed and wild looking after running around in the jungle!" she doesn't start hating them more than anyone she's ever hated before or rant about the unfairness of the universe for making her so Alone and Alienated By Fate or some such Harry-like reaction. (Another of her books, The Shadow Speaker, has a protagonist who takes not being a violent bully seriously to the point of pacifism. Scary haunted sandstorm trying to kill you? Talk to it and see why it's so angry. Harry can't even manage that with human beings. She doesn't think killing the Big Bad is an optimal solution either and, though she wants to stop him, also wants to stop her sort-of mentor from killing him.)

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>Is all fantasy this elitist?<

Trying to define "fantasy" is like trying to define "fiction". And about as helpful, for the same reasons. The category is too wide open. There are a swarm of different sub-genres of fantasy, and it doesn't clarify things that YA all by itself is one of them (it's also an independant sub-genre of other major genre classifications as well).

The kind of conflict that tends to be at the center of most fantasy stories does tend to lend itself to some degree of an overt class system in the fictional society. In this, it bears a more than slight resemblance to traditional "peasant tales" which most writers of modern fantasy tend to mimic. But I'm not convinced that that alone constitutes "elitist". I mean, you don't get much more elitist than Robert Heinlein, and he wrote SF.

But then humans are hard-wired to build heirarchies in whatever society they are set down into, and the lack of a titled aristocracy does not stop them. So trying to limit the phenomenon to fantasy doesn't go very far.

However, the protagonists of most fantasy stories are usually assumed to be set up to succeed within whatever their society is set up as, and having a well-delineated social structure as a backdrop does tend to make it easy to see how far the viewpoint character has come from where they started, without needing to interupt the narriative to *explain* why having this item or that office is such a big deal whereas having a different one is not.

Genre ficton, in general, tends to carom off various well-defined "cushions" along it's path which facilitate the reader's moving through the plot unimpeded.It can be done with a great deal more style and subtlety than Rowling was managing by this point in the series, however. Even she did better earlier on.