death to capslock

This is an idea that came to me as I was tearing apart a children's book for another comm.

We all know that it's common in the Harry Potter fandom to portray Snape as mean, morally-degenerate, creepy, cowardly, and pretty much any other negative you can come up with. We on this comm have also spent large amounts of time debunking these assertions, insisting that actually, he's not as bad as he's commonly made out to be.

Here's the thing, though: even if you DID accept that Snape was just that nasty and evil and horrible, that's not his fault--it's the fault of the series. And it doesn't actually paint the series in an especially good light, because it implies that teachers who you don't get along with must automatically be evil or morally backwards. Remember: Harry takes an extreme dislike to Snape from their first meeting, just because Snape was generically snide and intimidating to him. It's one thing for Harry to dislike a teacher, because that happens to the best of us (particularly at the age Harry is). But to portray the teacher as evil because of it?

But that is pretty much the trend in the series. Teachers Harry likes, or who are nice to him, are generally portrayed as heroes or at least reasonably pleasant, whereas those Harry takes a disliking to are nearly always presented as villains: Lockhart, Umbridge, etc. And even when they're not (see, for instance, Trelawney and arguably Slughorn), they're generally treated as rather pathetic, so Harry doesn't have to take them very seriously. The overarching pattern this creates implies that if you don't get along with a teacher it's because that teacher is evil or morally weak-willed, or that it's generally all the teacher's fault that they're not bending over backwards to please you. And while you could argue that this is all the Harry filter, it's never really challenged at any point in the story.

Now, I am all for the notion that teachers should look after the well-being of their students; but the fact of the matter is, students can't always expect that to happen. It's great when it does, but sooner or later every student comes upon a teacher who for whatever reason doesn't click with them, either because that particular teaching style just doesn't work with that particular student, or the institution is corrupt, or the teacher is careless. I know it's happened to me a couple times over. Some of the teachers I've had bad experiences with were careless, but I wouldn't say I thought any of them were evil.

And remember: this is a series that targets children and young teenagers. It doesn't do them any favors to be presenting them with a narrative that states that any teacher they don't get along with is evil. The notion that Snape must be a horrible person suffering from trauma and acting out of some misplaced selfish desire is a testament to the story's inability to portray anything Harry doesn't like in a positive or even a neutral light, not a convincing portrayal of a disagreeable character (and I have many, MANY convincing potrayals of disagreeable characters that I could use as a baseline).

So I recently finished the 17th chapter of my parody of HBP, and I noticed a rather awkward sequence.

( Read my rant )

Did anyone else pick up on just how much Rowling's commentary about Draco seems to infantilize him? I'm totally serious--the way she writes about him he seems to be only slightly more mature and proactive than Harry! Look at the way she phrases things:

( Quoting liberally from the article on Draco... )

I just think it seems like a pattern, you know? Are there any other characters she does this to? Or is Draco a special case?

So I was perusing the intarwebz and I found this website with this article about heroes, victims, and self-sacrifice, which has some ideas that seemed relevant to what we discuss on this comm.

It's interesting because it occurs to me that Harry does seem to switch between playing the hero card and the victim card throughout the course of the books (particularly the last three), and so do most other characters we're supposed to admire, either on Harry's behalf or their own (such as Lily begging Voldemort to spare Harry's life to no avail). And the narrative never really attempts to reconcile the two sides of that coin at all--we're just kind-of supposed to think that Harry is so noble and virtuous that the decisions he makes are always right and when things go wrong he's never to blame and always deserving of all the sympathy.

Some of the quotes that most stood out to me are as follows:

"[a] person that chooses to play the hero should not simultaneously be allowed to receive the benefits of being seen as a victim. It needs to be one or the other. A victim is someone who is to be pitied because they didn't have a choice in the matter."

"When someone does choose to play the hero, we should not get outraged because they had to suffer for it. We should not rail against the obstacles that stand in their way, or suggest that the opposition that they were against should've made it easier for them.... An attitude of victimization just cheapens the value of being a hero and suggests that they weren't responsible for their own decisions. That adversity is the only thing that gives the word "hero" any value at all and stands to separate the real heroes from the wannabes."

I bring this up only because it provides an interesting counterpoint to the way that Harry, for all he suffers, doesn't actually have to face the consequences of his own actions unless it's convenient to the plot--it seems like always finds someone to rescue him whenever things get really bad, and reassure him that he's totally right about everything.

And finally:

"Of course there is a whole other category of people who are even less sincere and who try to look like they're playing the hero in order to put themselves into a victim position later. These people are called attention hogs, masochists and martyrs; but that's an entirely different topic."

As to whether that last one applies to Harry or anyone else...eh, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.