Harry Potter and the Death Cult

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So recently I was reading this (actually really excellent) Pokemon fanfic, which appears to have been an attempt to iron out a rather confusing Pokedex entry. Basically, the fanfic revolves around the idea that a certain species of Pokemon has a custom that all young male members of the community must kill their own mothers as a rite of passage. Anyone who can’t do it is disgraced and treated as vermin for the rest of his life- failure to kill your own mother is considered a sign of despicable cowardice. The more I thought about this fic, the more I realized that there’s a similar parallel in Harry Potter- except that instead of the message being, “If you’re truly a real man and worthy of belonging, you’ll kill your own family on instruction,” it’s “If you’re truly brave, a true Gryffindor, you’ll kill yourself on instruction.”
 
In Harry Potter we see characters committing ritual suicide on just about any pretext. We see people kill themselves to protect their family (Lily and James), to escape a bad boss (Regulus), as a strategic ploy (Dumbledore), and even to vanquish their enemies (Harry). Granted, it’s quite possible that these people were better off dead than otherwise, given the circumstances; but still, it does seem to be a pattern.
 
Consider the fate of Lily Potter nee Evans. She dies to protect her son, and in doing so, grants him special love protection. Now, it’s stressed again and again that Lily’s sacrifice was so noble and granted Harry the protection specifically because Voldemort offered her a choice about whether or not to live. And it was noble of her to die for her child- but it also established a pattern that the books’ attitudes towards death reinforce: if you’re in big enough trouble, trouble you can’t escape from any other way, die. Preferably as prettily and dramatically as you can manage.
 
Then there’s Regulus. There was another essay on here in which someone, I think it was Terri Testing, puts it out there that Regulus’s search for Slytherin’s locket was not to have the locket destroyed, but to, effectively, commit ritual suicide rather than serve Voldemort any longer. And for this the heroes emphatically reward him.
 
Now consider Peter Pettigrew. Peter Pettigrew is easily one of the most confusing characters Harry Potter ever gave us. He’s pretty much the only Gryffindor who’s never presented in a remotely positive light (at least not once his identity becomes known). The main reason given for this (both by the author and her fans) is that he’s a coward who betrayed Lily and James rather than be killed by Voldemort (granted, we don’t actually know how much of this is true, since the evidence of his cowardice is rather conflicting and since we never get his side of the story- just the main characters’ assumptions). Tellingly, when Sirius confronts him, he specifically goes out of his ways to say that, had Sirius been in his situation, he would have willingly died rather than betray his friends (the fact that Peter easily would have been better off dead than with Voldemort is largely beside the point here, since it’s only DE’s, and never anyone who could be counted among the “good guys” who serve Voldemort out of fear).
 
And then there’s Phineas Nigellus, who makes the statement about Slytherins choosing to save their own necks. This in and of itself is taken as reason to regard Slytherins as contemptible cravens- they won’t kill themselves for any greater good they can come up with (and you could argue that one of the downsides of “ambition” is that you’re motivated to stay around and wait for things to turn in your favor, rather than the Gryffindorish “bravery” of permanently ending your problems through death).
 
To return to the fanfic I read earlier, like most pieces of media dealing with death cults from the inside, the fanfic mostly just illustrates how things are done- it doesn’t take a stance on the morality of the characters’ actions, and the narrator is genuinely conflicted about killing someone he loves so much- but not enough to stop himself from doing it. What makes Harry Potter’s death cult so freaky is that it really does seem as though suicide is treated, not merely as a cornerstone of wizarding culture but *objectively good and righteous.* Throughout the series we meet literally no suicide bombers among the villains (despite the fact that the DE’s are terrorists, and terrorists in the modern world are notorious for suicide bombing). No, the only suicide bomber we meet (so to speak) is Harry Potter- who’s supposed to be the hero we’re meant to admire!
 
So, yeah.

Comments

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Was this RL mother you're talking about married to an anime voice actor by any chance? Because that sounds like something I read in the news awhile back.

What makes this whole Dumbledore-explains-Voldy/Merope deal even worse is the fact that Dumbledore villifies Merope in such a way that it makes Voldy look sympathetic to Harry and then he turns around and tells Harry that he still shouldn't feel sorry for Voldemort after all! It's like he's deliberately trying to stamp out Harry's compassionate impulses by villifying everyone Harry isn't supposed to like (and ironically, every character Rowling doesn't like gets the exact same treatment in her interviews).

Honestly, the more I look at Harry Potter discussions by Rowling and others like her the more I feel as though I'm reading a fanbrat's post about how you shouldn't bother with a backstory for villains who don't get one in canon because they're too evil to deserve to possibly be seen from a sympathetic viewpoint.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

It's like he's deliberately trying to stamp out Harry's compassionate impulses ...

Word. That's one of the things that creeps me out most about these books and Dumbledore in particular. Despite the surface message of tolerance blah blah blah, both books and Dumbles are actually quite hard-hearted and militate against showing true compassion. The bit in Ghostly King's Cross where Dumbles *again* tells Harry not to bother feeling moved by the screaming baby or try to do anything to help just made me go ICK ICK ICK WTF? the moment I read it. Not to mention the bit where he tells Harry that wanting to kill someone out of a desire for revenge is a sign of his True Pure Lovingness. I mean, WTFIDEKBBQ???

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

It's like he's deliberately trying to stamp out Harry's compassionate impulses by villifying everyone Harry isn't supposed to like (and ironically, every character Rowling doesn't like gets the exact same treatment in her interviews).

Well, sure he is! Harry won't be willing to see the bad guys as pure evil who need to be ruthlessly stamped out otherwise. Besides, DD is a psychopath, so he doesn't have any compassionate impulses to stamp out. As for Rowling, don't forget DD is one of her self-inserts (not that she's a psychopath, just very messed up), so whatever DD says comes straight from on high.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Sheesh! How many self inserts does the woman have? Most authors have the decency to keep to one or two.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Well, having multiple self-inserts (Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore) does accord with marionros's contention that JKR is a narcissist and the books are what a narcissistic thinks an ideal world should be like: All the most important and wonderful people are not just like me, they are me, and the entire universe revolves around their feelings, opinions, needs, and desires.

I really feel kind of sorry for Rowling. Anybody who wrote such a messed-up bunch of books must be in a lot of pain. It's too bad she's not using any of that money to hire a good shrink and work on her issues.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I can definitely see that. Of course, I don't think any of us really can know if she has or hasn't!

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

Yes, Dan Green's wife. My heart breaks for her.

DOn't get me started on how Harry and JKR view Percy, whose only mistake was not worshipping Harry and not wanting to be poor.

No one feels sorry for a kid who is bullied, because he deserves it.

And Voldie, born of rape and a selfish mother, he can't have sympathy.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/What makes this whole Dumbledore-explains-Voldy/Merope deal even worse is the fact that Dumbledore villifies Merope in such a way that it makes Voldy look sympathetic to Harry and then he turns around and tells Harry that he still shouldn't feel sorry for Voldemort after all! It's like he's deliberately trying to stamp out Harry's compassionate impulses by villifying everyone Harry isn't supposed to like/

That's right. As soon as Harry asks why Merope couldn't stay alive for her son (a question which is both critical of Merope and sympathetic toward Tom), Dumbledore raises his eyebrows and asks, "Are you possibly feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?"

You know, just in case Harry forgot that Tom Riddle grew up to be Lord Voldemort. But it seems to me that Dumbledore was trying to make Harry forget that Lord Voldemort was once a little boy named Tom Riddle. You know, Albus, Harry's not going become a Voldemort fanboy any time soon just because he spends ten seconds feeling sorry for him. You can feel sorry for the person that somebody once was and not condone their present actions.

But this just goes back to the whole black/white moral dichotomy that Harry and Dumbledore have. If you feel sorry for someone, you're automatically on their side, no matter what the circumstances. Harry only feels the "tiniest drops of pity" for Draco at the end of HBP, because if he had actually stopped to think and empathize with Draco, he'd be a Death Eater-sympathizer/Slytherin-lover/on the Dark Side/etc.

/I feel as though I'm reading a fanbrat's post about how you shouldn't bother with a backstory for villains who don't get one in canon because they're too evil to deserve to possibly be seen from a sympathetic viewpoint./

Oh, yes, you don't know how many tiresome posts I've read where fans complained that their fandom's villain getting a sympathetic back-story or becoming more emotionally complex made them "soft" and "cliched" and "wimpy." Yeah, because nothing says original like a bad guy who is Evil solely to be Evil and if a bad guy actually starts to look human, he automatically becomes "wimpy." It's more important for a villain to be tough and edgy with zero personality and motivation than to be even the tiniest bit sympathetic. *rolls eyes*

I mean, even in this fandom, when Draco got actual conflict and struggle in HBP, there were fans out there who complained that this Draco was "OOC" and "wimpy." Oh, yes, he's so much worse than the basic cardboard-cut out of a bully that we got in 1-5 who only exists to antagonize Harry. Draco having motivations and goals that have nothing to do with Harry and being actually stressed-out about them and not being sneering or swaggering for once? Blasphemy!

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

"Oh, yes, you don't know how many tiresome posts I've read where fans complained that their fandom's villain getting a sympathetic back-story or becoming more emotionally complex made them "soft" and "cliched" and "wimpy." Yeah, because nothing says original like a bad guy who is Evil solely to be Evil and if a bad guy actually starts to look human, he automatically becomes "wimpy.""

Tell me about it. The Pokemon fandom has this too and it's so, so irritating! In the first generation of games, the villain was a fairly run-of-the-mill mob boss who had a high position in society while covertly performing illegal acts to increase his fortune and killing Pokemon for no clear reason. Generation Four gave us a very different villain- he was a broken man who was driven insane by his abusive, loveless parents and sometime later decided that it was in the world's best interest to destroy it and rebuild it again without any emotions so that there could be no conflict. Guess which villain is treated as an angsty emo loser and which is treated as the most badass and awesome thing ever to happen to the franchise?

And don't get me started on how they treat the anti-villain antagonist in Generation Five!

[detritius.livejournal.com]

I actually found Draco much more sympathetic than Harry in HPB, partly because he actually had a conflict other than wether the girl he liked would go out with him and if her brother would object, but partly because he had to struggle with things that Harry never did. Harry never had to question his own motivations or those of his friends and allies, because no matter what he did, Harry was constantly portrayed as being Right, and if he ever had any doubt about that, he always had someone to back him up and tell him how good and noble he was. This was a series that seemed like it was desperately crying out for a real, throughly explored moral dilemma, and it seems like that what Draco's story could have been, if it had been developed more. I had really hoped that there would be some resolution to that in DH, but no, we got Harry obsessing over something Dumbledore did like a hundred years ago.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/This was a series that seemed like it was desperately crying out for a real, throughly explored moral dilemma, and it seems like that what Draco's story could have been, if it had been developed more. I had really hoped that there would be some resolution to that in DH, but no, we got Harry obsessing over something Dumbledore did like a hundred years ago./

A lot of people were expecting Harry and Draco to meet again in DH and for something to happen between them (and I'm not just talking about H/D shippers). People thought, "Oh, well, Harry's not going back to school next year, Draco's *certainly* not going to go back to school next year, what with him being a Death Eater and a fugitive and all that. Maybe the two of them will run into each other and get to reconcile after the Sectumsempra incident. Maybe they'll work together to defeat Voldemort. Maybe..." and so on and so forth.

Of course, none of those things happened. Draco inexplicably *did* go back to school, despite what happened at the end of HBP. He and Harry only met for five seconds in Malfoy Manor when Harry "disarmed" him and thus started off the whole wandlore baloney and then for ten minutes in the Room of Requirement when he and Harry briefly exchanged words before Harry saved him and then never thought about him again, save for when Ron punched Draco in the face. All of that build-up in HBP, all that character development and the potential for Draco and Harry to reconcile or grudgingly help each other out or anything...and Harry ended up spending more time with Draco's wand than with Draco himself.

[detritius.livejournal.com]

It saddens me so much that after being in all the books and posing as Harry's peer antagonist and even getting a storyline of his own in HBP, Draco's ultimate purpose was to move a piece of wood across a room. Honestly, the whole stupid wand mastery plot in DH is the worse instance of an author treating her characters as chess pieces that I can think of.

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

I so didn't care about Harry, his chest monster and the annoying redhead
But nobody gave me the story of Draco and the vanishing cabinet to read.
And that was cruel and unusual punishment. No wonder I ended up with reading to much fanfic...

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

I so didn't care about Harry, his chest monster and the annoying redhead

Which annoying redhead? There are so many in the books I don't know where to start. I suppose I could work chronologically from the Marauders Era forward though....

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry. I meant the Quidditch star our hero gets to feel up, after almost killing another boy in a bathroom.
But there is the other one that annoys us from the grave through Slughorn, so I really should have made that clear. Especially since Twinkles could count as an ex-redhead too and there are the other Weasleys.
Has Rowling a fetish, or something?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured you meant Ginny, sorry. I was being sardonic given the preponderance of annoying characters who are also redheads.

Good catch about the Twinkly One!

I really don't know what to make of the redhead thing, no.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Well there's always the HBP movie for the vanishing-cabinet subplot:)

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Great work that. Apple goes in. Apple goes out.
With the added bonus of Alan Rickman as stoic, aging drag queen, who plays angsty ON THE INSIDE, to quote Emily Waters hilarious crackfic about that movie, twice;)

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, you don't know how many tiresome posts I've read where fans complained that their fandom's villain getting a sympathetic back-story or becoming more emotionally complex made them "soft" and "cliched" and "wimpy." Yeah, because nothing says original like a bad guy who is Evil solely to be Evil and if a bad guy actually starts to look human, he automatically becomes "wimpy." It's more important for a villain to be tough and edgy with zero personality and motivation than to be even the tiniest bit sympathetic. *rolls eyes*

I really loved it in Warriors when we got more of arch-villain Tigerclaw's backstory in Bluestar's Prophecy. We found out that his father, the clan leader, got tired of being in charge and left the clan to become a (gasp!) kittypet (domestic pet cat)! So dad not only abandoned his family, clan, and duties, he did it in a way that was particularly shaming for his little son. Although it's never been stated outright, after reading that, I was able to imagine how Tigerclaw could have developed an obsession with becoming a Super Badass Clan Cat to overcompensate for the shame his father had brought on the family. Combine that with his naturally brash personality and a mentor (surrogate parent/trainer) who was hyper-aggressive and encouraged the worst aspects of Tigerclaw's personality, and it's easy to see how he developed into the ruthless tyrant he became.