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NM (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} narcissam) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif){kind=small} fandom_wank,@ 2009-04-27 10:14:00 |
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Cry the Beloved Slytherins
I thought I'd pop in and see what HP fandom is up to this day. And, whatdayaknow? My favourite Slytherfen are still around. angakkuq posted about this here for the_hms_stfu
The title Rehumanizing the Slytherins: How Fandom Gave Humanity Back to a Quarter of the Wizarding World" made me weepy, albeit because I was laughing so hard. The linked essay is only a precis of the 20 page "academic presentation" sagedarkwoods gave. It's pretty standard pretentious fan meta, with headings such as "Queering the Slytherin Identity". (To her credit, there's no argument being made that being a Slytherin is just like being gay, only that some fans see it that way.)
The comments, on the other hand.... I'll just excerpt my favourite:
losyark:The essay is about stereotyping in literature and the dangers it presents for those readers who cannot find a self-representative character within the 'hero' cadre, and so ends up identifying with the periphery characters. For those readers, it is dangerous because if they're not abnormally intelligent or pretty, or heroic and action-based, then there is nobody among the heroes for them to equate themselves with. This causes self-esteem issues and mental health problems. Yes, it's easy to put the book down and go read another, but the fact is that what began as a simple child's books where the Slytherins were the opposition to the heros but by no means the villians (which meade it safe for them to identify with), then grew into a flawed adult novel that relied heavily on ham-fisted stereotyping to define the sides in a war.
This meant that people first identified with Slythering house and THEN were slapped in the face with its label.
This is like a black person reading a novel where all the blacks are called filthy niggers and they're gansters who rape and steal and there's no positive characters with which the black reader to identify. What does a book like that do to your self-image?
The OTHER point of this essay, the main thrust, is that the endangered readers are REJECTING this label. They are doing so by, as I did above, anylizing character motivation and realizing that while those evil/Death Eater Characters were in Slytherin, that doesn't make the house (and presumably 25% of the British Wizarding poulation) evil. They are reminding themselves, like you say, that before Riddle Slytherins were Ambitious and Clever and the Sorting Hat never once called them Self-Serving or Evil. They are accounting for the evil in their house by pointing out how it was FAMILIES who were Death Eaters, not HOUSES, and children grew up into regimes and beleifs that they didn't realize at the time were socially wrong - like the children of Nazi Germany. They are accounting for evil in their midst in a very human and compassionate way. They are, like gay people and the terms "faggot" and "queer", repossesing a previously negative slur and turning it positive.
ETA: Bonus Wank:How Would Harry Potter Judge Susan Boyle? in which it is revealed that Snape is just like Susan Boyle, and Harry is Simon Cowell, but meaner. On the other hand, JKR is Simon Cowell, because JKR has had makeovers, and Cowell arranges makeovers. (Hat tip to
mariem_1 for links in her own post.)
