Thoughts on Hermione and Bias
Feb. 7th, 2014 10:07 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockOneandthetruth’s sporking of DH 23, specifically the detailed comparison of how Jo described Hermione’s torture to how the author had earlier treated Xeno’s, made me realize that Jo had used the exact same technique, with similar effect, in earlier books.
Specifically, in the parallel scenes of body-part enlargement featuring Hermione (B4) versus the Slytherin children (B2), Aunt Marge (B3), and Dudley (earlier B4).
In the last scene, every minute indication of distress (emotional only, in Hermione’s case) is dwelt on lovingly and individually by the narrator and given great significance and indignant attention by the POV characters. In the others, we’re given enough information to register (if we stop to think, instead of just laughing along with Harry) that the victims must be shocked, frightened, hurt, and humiliated, but the narrative voice acts to distance us from the reality of their sufferings, and the POV characters are either silent about, or actively entertained by, the victims’ reactions.
The same narrative techniques, moreover, are used to achieve the effect; aggregate descriptions rather than individual details, dehumanizing language, etc. So I started to write up a meta about this.
Only it didn’t want to turn into meta complete with table; it wanted to turn into a fiction. In fact, it wanted to turn into a fiction told as firmly from (a) Slytherin’s POV—possibly unfairly—as Jo always wrote from the Gryff’s.
Maybe someone else will take on the meta and table?
But there’s one final technique Jo used that I just now noticed: the question of timing. The fact that its happening to Hermione was the last scene in canon. In both the protracted torture and the body-enlarging, first it happened to enemies, and Harry and Ron reacted callously.
Then it happened to Hermione, and seeing it happen to someone one cared for made it not-funny, and not-unimportant.
Contrast the treatment of Levicorpus. Hermione explicitly made the argument that it (and the Prince) should be considered “dodgy” rather than funny, because the Trio had previously witnessed a similar spell being used by Death Eaters to terrorize the Roberts family.
And that reflection actually made Harry feel bad for a moment.
But of course, as Ron helpfully pointed out, Fred and George, those lovable scamps, would totally think Levicorpus a hoot. Moreover, Harry had actually witnessed his own dad use it on Snivellus. So, as Ron (again) explained, “They [the Death Eaters] were abusing it. Harry and his dad were just having a laugh.”
Now that we’ve got that straight….
But still. It requires an effort to dismiss something as funny or harmless after you’ve actually seen it used to frighten and hurt someone you sympathize with.
(Indeed, Harry’s initial negative reaction to SWM was firmly predicated on the fact that he’d previously known a four-on-one, utterly unprovoked, violent assault, to have “frightened and hurt” someone Harry could sympathize with to the nth degree—to whit, himself, as Dudley’s gang’s victim.)
Further, the text ultimately showed that Hermione was right, and Harry and Ron wrong, about whether trying out the Prince’s handwritten spells on people just to see their effects was a harmless way of kidding around.
So the Weasley kids all “exploding” with laughter about the twins mutilating and terrifying Dudley would have looked much nastier if that scene had come after we readers had been encouraged to sympathize with Hermione’s panic and mortification about being hit with Densaugeo….
But it didn’t. It came first.
Only, an author who claimed not to reread her own work probably didn’t expect us to, either.
Specifically, in the parallel scenes of body-part enlargement featuring Hermione (B4) versus the Slytherin children (B2), Aunt Marge (B3), and Dudley (earlier B4).
In the last scene, every minute indication of distress (emotional only, in Hermione’s case) is dwelt on lovingly and individually by the narrator and given great significance and indignant attention by the POV characters. In the others, we’re given enough information to register (if we stop to think, instead of just laughing along with Harry) that the victims must be shocked, frightened, hurt, and humiliated, but the narrative voice acts to distance us from the reality of their sufferings, and the POV characters are either silent about, or actively entertained by, the victims’ reactions.
The same narrative techniques, moreover, are used to achieve the effect; aggregate descriptions rather than individual details, dehumanizing language, etc. So I started to write up a meta about this.
Only it didn’t want to turn into meta complete with table; it wanted to turn into a fiction. In fact, it wanted to turn into a fiction told as firmly from (a) Slytherin’s POV—possibly unfairly—as Jo always wrote from the Gryff’s.
Maybe someone else will take on the meta and table?
But there’s one final technique Jo used that I just now noticed: the question of timing. The fact that its happening to Hermione was the last scene in canon. In both the protracted torture and the body-enlarging, first it happened to enemies, and Harry and Ron reacted callously.
Then it happened to Hermione, and seeing it happen to someone one cared for made it not-funny, and not-unimportant.
Contrast the treatment of Levicorpus. Hermione explicitly made the argument that it (and the Prince) should be considered “dodgy” rather than funny, because the Trio had previously witnessed a similar spell being used by Death Eaters to terrorize the Roberts family.
And that reflection actually made Harry feel bad for a moment.
But of course, as Ron helpfully pointed out, Fred and George, those lovable scamps, would totally think Levicorpus a hoot. Moreover, Harry had actually witnessed his own dad use it on Snivellus. So, as Ron (again) explained, “They [the Death Eaters] were abusing it. Harry and his dad were just having a laugh.”
Now that we’ve got that straight….
But still. It requires an effort to dismiss something as funny or harmless after you’ve actually seen it used to frighten and hurt someone you sympathize with.
(Indeed, Harry’s initial negative reaction to SWM was firmly predicated on the fact that he’d previously known a four-on-one, utterly unprovoked, violent assault, to have “frightened and hurt” someone Harry could sympathize with to the nth degree—to whit, himself, as Dudley’s gang’s victim.)
Further, the text ultimately showed that Hermione was right, and Harry and Ron wrong, about whether trying out the Prince’s handwritten spells on people just to see their effects was a harmless way of kidding around.
So the Weasley kids all “exploding” with laughter about the twins mutilating and terrifying Dudley would have looked much nastier if that scene had come after we readers had been encouraged to sympathize with Hermione’s panic and mortification about being hit with Densaugeo….
But it didn’t. It came first.
Only, an author who claimed not to reread her own work probably didn’t expect us to, either.
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Date: 2014-02-10 06:49 am (UTC)(5 pt font... ouch.)
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Date: 2014-02-10 03:37 pm (UTC)(and then change it back when I finish posting; as a work-around, it flies.)