For purposes of this community, I'd say you already have consensus! My vote: I am happy to ignore Pottermore. However, if someone brings Pottermore into the discussion, I am going to take the information as it comes and let it stand on its merits.
For someone constructing pet theories outside this community (I guess about plot or theme), I'd say realistically whether or not Pottermore is canon is a matter of choice and depends.
* If I'm arguing canon with someone who is interested in Minerva McGonagall, that person may incorporate the Pottermore material as she chooses and will consider my argument invalid because I don't include Pottermore. If I disagree, I will spend all my time arguing about what is canon or the sliding scale of canon relevance.
* If I am reading fanfic by someone who incorporates the Pottermore material while she has McGonagall considering a "friends with benefits" relationship with Dumbledore, that person is presumably allowed to write her story by Rowling and anything goes in fanfic. If I say the story is non-canonical, I will just come off as mean-spirited.
For me, "canon" is always a moving target, something I take in context, something I usually view with an intellectual detachment (even if it's about Snape -- no, really), something subjective. For example, when the last movie came out, suddenly everyone became enraptured with Severus Snape. In some ways, the film version supplanted the book as canon. Interviews are as influential as films for most peoples' canon, and I suspect Pottermore will be even more influential for those who still care. Outside this community, I probably won't come down hard on someone who incorporates Pottermore information or someone who writes McGonagall/Dumbledore in a "no strings" scenario. Wait, Dumbledore was gay? Where was that in the books?
But to echo what others have said, it seems to me that notes allegedly made while planning a book should be less persuasive that material that did make it into the books. Anyone who's written tons of notes and discarded whole piles of them could probably testify that some material just doesn't fit, and some even contradicts the facts that the author decided to incorporate into the work or the tone of the work or the message. The notes might be interesting as an insight into the writer's intention or mindset while writing the books, sort of the stream-of-consciousness way of analyzing a work, but then again, there's the Death of the Author (http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf) or What Is an Author? (http://www.scholarcache.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Foucault-WHAT-IS-AN-AUTHOR.pdf) The latter is interpreted (http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60a/handouts/author.html) to say, "the author is not a source of infinite meaning, as we often like to imagine, but rather part of a larger system of beliefs that serve to limit and restrict meaning... [T]hink about how we might appeal to ideas of 'authorial intention' in order to limit what someone might say about a text, or mark some interpretations and commentaries as illegitimate."
The back stories -- are they are from notes made while the book was being written, or have they been written specifically for Pottermore? I'm not sure. In either case, Rowling has shown herself to be an unreliable source on facts. Ask her a question about McGonagall tomorrow, and odds are you will get new material that contradicts earlier information. Further, if she had minimal continuity or other editing for the books, she probably has less to none for Pottermore.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-09-25 09:06 pm (UTC)For someone constructing pet theories outside this community (I guess about plot or theme), I'd say realistically whether or not Pottermore is canon is a matter of choice and depends.
* If I'm arguing canon with someone who is interested in Minerva McGonagall, that person may incorporate the Pottermore material as she chooses and will consider my argument invalid because I don't include Pottermore. If I disagree, I will spend all my time arguing about what is canon or the sliding scale of canon relevance.
* If I am reading fanfic by someone who incorporates the Pottermore material while she has McGonagall considering a "friends with benefits" relationship with Dumbledore, that person is presumably allowed to write her story by Rowling and anything goes in fanfic. If I say the story is non-canonical, I will just come off as mean-spirited.
For me, "canon" is always a moving target, something I take in context, something I usually view with an intellectual detachment (even if it's about Snape -- no, really), something subjective. For example, when the last movie came out, suddenly everyone became enraptured with Severus Snape. In some ways, the film version supplanted the book as canon. Interviews are as influential as films for most peoples' canon, and I suspect Pottermore will be even more influential for those who still care. Outside this community, I probably won't come down hard on someone who incorporates Pottermore information or someone who writes McGonagall/Dumbledore in a "no strings" scenario. Wait, Dumbledore was gay? Where was that in the books?
But to echo what others have said, it seems to me that notes allegedly made while planning a book should be less persuasive that material that did make it into the books. Anyone who's written tons of notes and discarded whole piles of them could probably testify that some material just doesn't fit, and some even contradicts the facts that the author decided to incorporate into the work or the tone of the work or the message. The notes might be interesting as an insight into the writer's intention or mindset while writing the books, sort of the stream-of-consciousness way of analyzing a work, but then again, there's the Death of the Author (http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf) or What Is an Author? (http://www.scholarcache.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Foucault-WHAT-IS-AN-AUTHOR.pdf) The latter is interpreted (http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60a/handouts/author.html) to say, "the author is not a source of infinite meaning, as we often like to imagine, but rather part of a larger system of beliefs that serve to limit and restrict meaning... [T]hink about how we might appeal to ideas of 'authorial intention' in order to limit what someone might say about a text, or mark some interpretations and commentaries as illegitimate."
The back stories -- are they are from notes made while the book was being written, or have they been written specifically for Pottermore? I'm not sure. In either case, Rowling has shown herself to be an unreliable source on facts. Ask her a question about McGonagall tomorrow, and odds are you will get new material that contradicts earlier information. Further, if she had minimal continuity or other editing for the books, she probably has less to none for Pottermore.