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deathtocapslockSo… as I believe I have lovingly demonstrated, occasionally I’ll come across something on TV Tropes pertaining to Harry Potter that makes me want to kick babies. Case in point: I was reading reviews of a My Little Pony dark fic entitled “Cupcakes” when there was one author who threw in a casual mention about how Bellatrix was ultimate evil, and not worthy of any sort of Freudian excuse. So, to ease my troubled mind, I made this parody of their opinion of Bellatrix (for example). The rant below is technically taken from a series of rants by a fanfic author about characters who figure in her stories, but I’ve adapted it for my own purposes:
I truly hate this woman because...well, there's absolutely, positively nothing to like about her! She has no redeeming qualities, whatsoever!
First off, she tortures [Hermione]! Need I say more?! How can any [HP] fan like this psychopathic bitch or think she's just misunderstood?! There's nothing TO understand about her -- she's just an evil lunatic! \_/
There's absolutely NOTHING that can possibly be said to defend [Bitchytrix’s]* rotten behavior or explain why she's so detestable! I know a lot of people theorize that she was abused as a child or that somebody who was really close to her died and she just doesn't know how to express herself, but you know what? Those theories are pure speculation! There's NO evidence to back them up, which technically renders them invalid! (At least [Dudley], [James], and the like have actual proof, no matter how subtle or obscure, so that a case can be made in their favor, but with [Bellatrix] it's all "maybes" and "what ifs," and that just doesn't fly!) Besides, even if [Bellatrix] really is from an abusive family or if somebody close to her died, it DOESN'T excuse her from being so mean to [Harry, Ron, and Hermione]! Uh, [Harry] came from an abusive family, [his parents] died when [he] was a little [boy], and [he] was abandoned and tortured by [Muggles] for most of his life, but do you see [HIM] out [killing] and torturing people?! I don't think so – [Harry is] the sweetest, most loving character [in the book], despite all of the hardships [he’s] been through! This chick has serious problems! O_o
So once again, nuff said. [Bellatrix] isn't misunderstood at all -- some people are just evil, and she's one of them. She's a self-centered, psychotic bitch. Period. Paragraph. End of story.
Okay, I'm pretty much done playing lawyer for now. So to recap, [Harry, Ron, Hermione, and James Potter] = good. [Voldemort, Snape, and Bellatrix] = bad.
*XD
I truly hate this woman because...well, there's absolutely, positively nothing to like about her! She has no redeeming qualities, whatsoever!
First off, she tortures [Hermione]! Need I say more?! How can any [HP] fan like this psychopathic bitch or think she's just misunderstood?! There's nothing TO understand about her -- she's just an evil lunatic! \_/
There's absolutely NOTHING that can possibly be said to defend [Bitchytrix’s]* rotten behavior or explain why she's so detestable! I know a lot of people theorize that she was abused as a child or that somebody who was really close to her died and she just doesn't know how to express herself, but you know what? Those theories are pure speculation! There's NO evidence to back them up, which technically renders them invalid! (At least [Dudley], [James], and the like have actual proof, no matter how subtle or obscure, so that a case can be made in their favor, but with [Bellatrix] it's all "maybes" and "what ifs," and that just doesn't fly!) Besides, even if [Bellatrix] really is from an abusive family or if somebody close to her died, it DOESN'T excuse her from being so mean to [Harry, Ron, and Hermione]! Uh, [Harry] came from an abusive family, [his parents] died when [he] was a little [boy], and [he] was abandoned and tortured by [Muggles] for most of his life, but do you see [HIM] out [killing] and torturing people?! I don't think so – [Harry is] the sweetest, most loving character [in the book], despite all of the hardships [he’s] been through! This chick has serious problems! O_o
So once again, nuff said. [Bellatrix] isn't misunderstood at all -- some people are just evil, and she's one of them. She's a self-centered, psychotic bitch. Period. Paragraph. End of story.
Okay, I'm pretty much done playing lawyer for now. So to recap, [Harry, Ron, Hermione, and James Potter] = good. [Voldemort, Snape, and Bellatrix] = bad.
*XD
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Date: 2011-10-30 03:50 am (UTC)Understanding how these things come to be has nothing to do with excusing those horrible actions. Such understanding is an essential step towards preventing or stopping other people from following a similar path. Refusing to look for explanations by slapping the 'evil' tag on these people and looking no further is not helpful in this regard. It also prevents one from seeing the continuity between people who are still within the norms of society and the 'evil' ones.
In literature we don't always get a full explanation of how a character ended up where it was when we met it, but if the story is to be read in any way realistically one must assume that path was there in the background. Readers who want a story that is realistic psychologically will fill in missing backstory. It's just making sense.
As for Bellatrix herself, following Terri's last essay I wonder if a young Bellatrix who was as idealistic and self-righteous as Hermione works as a backstory. I doubt Rowling intended it that way. I doubt she thought it out. On first read she reminded me of the women who participated in terrorist cells that committed the aircraft hijackings in the 1970s. Passengers often reported the one woman among the terrorists was the worse of them. And I'm sure those women (like their male comrades) had reasons for their actions and followed some kind of developmental path that brought them where they ended up.
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Date: 2011-10-30 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 07:14 pm (UTC)Even Obi-Wan thinks Rowling's Doing It Wrong.
Date: 2011-11-01 04:44 pm (UTC)(Ditto for Bellatrix. Although carving "Mudblood" on Hermione's arm was only in the movies)
* And another thing: doesn't that bit in DEATHLY HALLOWS defeat the purpose of "The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters", or am I overanalyzing?
Re: Even Obi-Wan thinks Rowling's Doing It Wrong.
Date: 2011-11-01 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 08:22 am (UTC)That was awesome. Seriously. XD
(Even if the rant really did feel like HIGHLIGHTS -- you know, What's Wrong With This Picture? But I think it was intentional. :) And you did beautifully. :) #Sorry if I'm not making sense, BTW; I'm low on sleep.
And yeah, what oryx_leucoryx said. Seriously. I think Bellatrix had reasons for her actions, twisted as they may be -- because honestly, I don't care what Rowling says, no one just wakes up in the morning and decides, a la Dr. Evil, "You know what I'm going to do today? Do something evil!" (Insert your own evil act here, like drinking the tears of orphans, pulling the tag off a mattress, etc. Although maybe the mattress thing isn't perfect; I think some non-evil people in real life might do that out of boredom. They'd probably get caught though. #Correct me if I'm wrong) That and...there has to be some reason that the Death Eaters follow Voldemort. Not because they're pure evil, because, really, that's not how it works. Take Nazi Germany for instance -- Germany itself was still suffering from defeat in the First World War, and, of course, how the US mistreated them regarding the Treaty of Versailles. Enter Hitler, who promises them that they can have it all back if they want -- that, and giving them an easy target for blame in the process. If Rowling had written something like that for Voldemort, I think that her villains would actually come off as realistic and thus, more frightening -- not strawmen. And that's what really gets on my nerves regarding the HP series -- too many Designated Heroes and Villains. Rowling assumes that we're just going to take her word for it, but in truth, you can't. The experience goes two ways -- the author writes the story, and the audience interprets it. Unfortunately, I doubt Rowling really "got it", TBH.
Again, great rant. :)
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Date: 2011-10-30 02:08 pm (UTC)But I do agree- the Death Eaters would work better as Nazi analogs if there was some logic to what they do, but there just isn't. As I've said before, it's as though Rowling was worried that her villains weren't evil enough so she threw in the Nazi references to make them seem more evil.
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Date: 2011-10-30 02:17 pm (UTC)And thank you. :)
And I agree. Completely. Like Film Brain said in his review of ULTRAVIOLET, "When you need to add substance to your shitty movie (or book, or whatever), just add Nazis!" Which is just insulting to those who died in the Holocaust, IMHO -- because the Holocaust, ultimately, is something we can't entirely grasp. The carnage that went on, the atrocities, why people did what they did, etc. etc. Or at the very least, we think we can just toss it into our stories, like Insta-Evil Just Add Nazis (or "Everything's Worse With Nazis", or whatever), when in fact, that's not how it works. It's not just offensive, it's bad writing. You have to actually work at developing your villains' motivations, building the tension, etc. etc., otherwise, you're pretty much doomed. Honestly, the DELTORA QUEST series -- I think Emily Rodda did much better with her villains than Rowling did with hers, because she actually took time to develop their menace: from the Tragic Monster types like Fardeep and Soldeen to creatures like the Shadowlord, etc. etc. (I think she's just a better writer than Rowling overall, but...I think I've rambled enough)
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Date: 2011-10-30 02:31 pm (UTC)What makes the Nazi parallels worse is the fact that, as has already been stated, the bad guys may be discriminating against Muggleborns but we see the HEROES treating anyone who isn't a wizard with dismissive contempt, and that's apparently supposed to be okay. I remember when I was much younger I read a series of fantasy books about talking owls, in which the main villain was a Nazi owl- and the series faced the same problem because the heroic owls constantly made fun of or looked down on any birds who weren't other owls because they didn't regurgitate pellets (or something). Admittedly I never finished the series so I don't know if that was ever addressed, but even this series did better than Rowling simply because the Nazi parallels actually had some buildup (however minimal), rather than just feeling tacked on to increase the villains' evilness.
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Date: 2011-10-30 05:01 pm (UTC)Quite possibly, though as an American, that particular idea pisses me off, so the conditioning doesn't get us all. Though I know my school was unusual in trying to teach us subtleties and making sure we understood what the Milgram experiment meant and things like that. But I think the idea that someone who's really nice at the neighborhood barbecue and loves his kids could then go make lampshades out of human skin is just too horrifying for a lot of us to handle (not to mention the idea that something we do in ignorance or without intending anything bad could end up having horrible consequences), so we'd rather pretend that Evil comes in specially marked packages with skulls and crossbones on them so no one could get mixed up.
There's also the cultural baggage of the whole Native American genocide the US perpetrated over centuries: try to talk to people about that, and you'll get, "But they must not have known they were moving onto Indian land," and "But they must not have known any Indians, so all they knew was they were getting attacked and really believed the Indians were all just cruel and inhuman," and any number of ways to avoid having to think that those nice, brave pioneers and manly cowboys and Union soldiers did know what they were doing. (It's really hard to justify soldiers mowing down women and children and making necklaces out of human ears, so most school history books leave those bits out.) A whole lot of energy goes into maintaining the national myths that make our ancestors look less bad (at least they've stopped trying to justify slavery as far as I know, but still aren't very good at addressing how Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Patrick Henry could be slaveowners), and I can't help but think that these kinds of stories are an outgrowth of that. Not that other countries wouldn't have their own reasons for similar stories - the British Empire comes to mind. And then there's personal narcissism, but I think the larger cultural mythology is needed for the popularity of the stories.
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Date: 2011-10-30 05:10 pm (UTC)It's the same logic that drives the failure of Captain Planet- all the villains were jerkasses who polluted for fun, which defeated its whole purpose by suggesting that only certain, obviously-evil people could possibly be part of the problem.
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Date: 2011-10-30 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 12:54 am (UTC)Not that I will probably publish it or anything. In fact, I sometimes wish that I could hit up a better writer to write it for me because I feel like my characters deserve better.
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Date: 2011-11-02 12:59 am (UTC)And yeah...stuff like that *can* break a man. It truly can.
And I'm sure you're a pretty good writer. Don't worry. *Hugs*
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Date: 2011-11-02 01:05 am (UTC)I feel pretty bad for my protagonist at this point- he's silly and arrogant but not a bad person. Still, if this doesn't make sort of a hero out of him then nothing will.
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Date: 2011-11-02 01:10 am (UTC)Honestly, from the description of your protagonist, I'm hooked already. :)
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Date: 2011-10-30 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 06:56 pm (UTC)And yes, eugenics was quite a popular idea in the US for decades. Victoria Woodhull, a labor and women's rights activist who ran for president, was also a eugenics advocate. The latter probably had to do with her developmentally delayed son she had in her teens, whose condition she blamed on her abusive husband being alcoholic (which, given the effects of tons of alcohol on sperm, might actually have been true, but we'll never know for sure). It isn't hard to see how she jumped to the conclusion that her husband shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. So, it was an idea supported by plenty of non-Nazis who were trying to do other, good things (like fighting for the right to divorce abusive husbands) and who really weren't intending all the brutal consequences which, true, they should have foreseen, but the fact that well-intentioned people could support it just makes it even scarier and should inspire us to think more carefully about the possible consequences of the things we do and support. But then we'd maybe have to admit to being wrong.
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Date: 2011-10-30 05:04 pm (UTC)Mostly, though, what originally drove me away from the series was the fact that the author got many facts dead wrong, e.g., burrowing owls rarely dig unless they have to, many of the birds that the protagonists chide for not being able to regurgitate pellets actually can, Boreal owls are not bigger than Barn owls, etc.- not to mention how ridiculously anthropomorphic the owls are (and this from an author who wanted to discuss owl natural history, too!).
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Date: 2011-10-31 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 09:15 pm (UTC)OTOH, I've read many true crime books, including several by John Douglas and Robert Ressler, legendary heads of the FBI's profiling unit. In none of those books have I read an account of a violent criminal, particularly a serial killer, who did not come from a very violent, abusive, and neglectful background (where the criminal's background was discussed at all). Fortunately for society, the vast majority a people who suffer like that do not become violent criminals, but the fact remains that childhood abuse often translates into adult violence. Oryx is right. It's important to study people like Bellatrix and Voldemort to try to figure out why they went bad when other people from similar backgrounds did not. Only then can we prevent people from turning out like that in the future.
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Date: 2011-10-30 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 11:59 pm (UTC)Fanfic
Date: 2011-10-31 01:58 am (UTC)Harry was sympathetic enough in chapter 2 of PS, if not quite Jane Eyre....
(Which, when you think of it, is actually a more interesting study--how does someone deprived and abused become strong enough to choose what is right...?)
Re: Fanfic
Date: 2011-10-31 03:24 am (UTC)I suppose Harry could have made better choices if he had had a positive role-model growing up, but he kind-of didn't. And when he got to the Wizarding World, what he saw only reinforced the bullying and similar he had faced in the Muggle world (and no real vantage point to ever think bullying and violence were wrong or abnormal, since he never shows any compassion to any other abuse victims, ever, not even teenage Snape, whom he explicitly identifies with on one occasion), but then he also acquired an inferiority complex from all the disproportionate hype placed on his head. Potentially, he resents his Muggle teachers because they let him get abused and didn't do anything, and he resents Snape because he reminds him of his sensible Muggle teachers who failed to save him (it probably doesn't help that Snape is rude for his own reasons). So the only person we ever see trying to instill some sort of conscientiousness or good sense he ends up turning into his own bitter enemy.
Re: Fanfic
Date: 2011-11-01 01:19 pm (UTC)Normally, this duty to explain that just because someone wasn't strong enough or brave enough to stand up for you in a tough spot doesn't mean they're a terrible person would fall to a child's parents or guardians. Petunia and Vernon, however, would never have bothered themselves that closely with Harry's social situation, and if they did, they might even have thought this the preferred outcome since it helped 'beat the magic out of him.' Without any older siblings/relatives he could rely on for help, the only other people in a position to straighten out his thinking was his teachers. Except from the background we're given, his teachers never saw Dudley and his gang behaving badly enough that they had to be reigned in (and you know Harry would have reveled in such a memory), and they don't seem to have seen any reason to intervene on Harry's end either.
End result? Harry never had anyone to knock him out of the (reasonable for a child) thinking of 'You didn't stand up to the big bad bully for me when he was beating me senseless?! FINE! I guess you were never a REAL friend ANYWAY!!!' This sense of hurt rejection would only have been exacerbated if *Harry* had tried standing up for his 'friends' against Dudley the way he expected them to do for him. And it is canon that Harry will put himself in a fight against bad odds for someone he considers a friend: witness the initial confrontation between him and Ron versus Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle, which he seriously thought might turn into a fist fight against at least two boys who handily out-massed him, among other incidents.
So Harry turned his back on the kids who had 'betrayed' him and refused to interact with the fakers even when he wasn't being actively targeted by Dudley (which, given Harry was a preferred target and Dudley et al. seemed to have a knack for avoiding the teachers, probably wasn't as often as Harry wished). If the teachers then saw Harry rejecting company without knowing Harry's perspective, or even how bad Dudley's bullying was, they probably, and reasonably, would have assumed the issue was Harry's alone. Harry, in the meantime, forced to choose being deciding everyone else in his year was a complete jackass, and just blaming Dudley for the situation, went with the (only slightly) more reasonable course of just blaming one person instead of everyone. Blaming his aunt and uncle for his teachers' view of him would then be a less reasonable outgrowth of that decision.
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Date: 2011-10-31 12:33 am (UTC)IOW, we know she participated in torturing the Longbottoms, so that shows that at least at that moment in time she wasn't a very nice person. But the reader of the Potter stories needs to keep in mind that the contemporary Bellatrix shown in the narrative is not only a product of her time as a DE, but as a prisoner of the state subject to torture by Dementors.
Nothing is ever mentioned regarding Bellatrix as a child; she may have pulled wings off of flies and set fire to owls when she was eight, or she may have been a dutiful daughter and concientious nanny to her younger sisters. We just don't know.
Interestingly enough, just yesterday I watched a documentary about the Green River Killer, who has the dubious distinction of being the most prolific serial killer in the United States.
The guy was seemingly as normal as normal could be, and those close to him -- including his wife and stepdaughters -- thought he was a wonderful, gentle, conscientious man. The cops who eventually arrested him were amazed that such a schmuck could actually be so evil.
And in the documentary there was much discussion over the "nature-versus-nurture" argument as to how and why someone like the killer ended up being so evil. The guy DID have strange parents, a mother who was sexually provocative if not outright sexually abusive, and a father who was at the very least a strict physical disciplinarian, but again perhaps not outright or overtly physically abusive.
But the killer was the middle child of a family that included five boys (and an unmentioned number of sisters)...IOW, there were quite a few siblings who grew up in the same environment, but none of them became killers.
So obviously "nurture" (or lack thereof) isn't the whole story...but neither can "nature", e.g. the argument that there is a certain gene or combination of DNA that predisposes someone to evil. Perhaps it is a little of both...two children are born into an abusive family, but only one has the "evil gene". That sibling will be more likely to grow up to do evil deeds, while the other sibling will not.
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Date: 2011-10-31 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 01:35 am (UTC)It sounds like the Biblical concept of original sin repackaged with pseudo-scientific jargon and rationalizations. If people were naturally evil and dangerous, the violent crime rates would be a lot higher than they are. Most people would be attacking and attempting to kill each other. As it stands now, most of us are not doing that. It's important to remember that people are herd animals. Because our survival is dependent on each other, we're naturally inclined to care for and support each other as a means of keeping our species alive, if for no other reason.
That's not even to consider the mounting body of scientific research that shows many if not most of the higher mammals show empathy and consideration, not just for members of their own species, but other species as well. Empathy and compassion would not be so prevalent across species if they did not have survival advantages. I tend to agree with Oryx that this person has become jaded from his/her experiences with dangerous people. It sounds like he/she has fallen into that abyss Nietzsche talked about.
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Date: 2011-10-31 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 07:00 pm (UTC)I'm a MLP collector so I know what kinda evil awaits you there.
And as a MLP collector I disagree with Snape being put into Voldemort and Bellatrix grouping of bad. And James Potter is a dickhead, I question the term 'good' being used in reference to James Potter. His character is at best a sperm donor.
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Date: 2011-11-01 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:23 pm (UTC)Here is a link to an old photo of my collection. It's actually grown since this photo was taken, that said there is well over 900 ponies when this was taken.
One day I will do another Lego Snape episode but over the course of the last couple years I've had a lot of things going on. I build a craftroom that isn't totally finished yet so all my legos have been moved. In the process of moving Lego Hogwarts had an accident (LOL) really it was mostly Dumbledore's office that got kinda destroyed. Muwhaha (okay so it wasn't on purpose but it is kinda funny) Either way most of my lego's are kinda packed up in plastic crates.
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Date: 2011-11-04 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 01:53 am (UTC)That's kinda the point of my rant, though. This is what the Harry Potter fanbrats think, regardless of how much sense it makes in light of the text:P
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:26 pm (UTC)I do agree that ponies are cute ;) Nobody can withstand the power of MLP!
I've actually been a collector since 1983.