| A long retort to terri_testing |
[May. 6th, 2009|09:20 pm] |
Starting off with a related fic ... Eminence Grise/The Grey Rat
It's really too bad that nobody commented on this fic, as it's an interesting take, considering that Terri's usual one is that James and Sirius thought that hiding from Voldemort was a game. Setting aside the fact that it took me three reads to get that it's all Peter's voice, I would say that the main problem is that while it loses the "reckless and stupid" vibe, Terri can't help but replace it with the equally flat "foolish and easily manipulated" one.
James the Bully
The main problem here is that Terri is trying to defend a view that can only be seen by intentionally exaggerating and minimizing textual evidence while simultaneously ignoring the intent that comes through in the text. The conclusion of the essay is that each time we see James Potter in canon, he is paralleling the actions of a bully elsewhere in canon (and is therefore a bully), and that neither JKR nor the vast majority of fans see this.
1. James says, “Who’d want to be in Slytherin?” Like Draco Malfoy says about Hufflepuff.
Not wanting to be in a particular House is hardly limited to Draco. Neville is afraid of being Sorted there, and Hagrid calls them a load of duffers - and these are not "bad" characters.
2. James is obsessed by Lily Evans, who rejects him. Like Severus, acto Jo a bully.
(If someone could remind me of what "acto" means, I would be very happy. "According to", was it?) Yes, this reading is possible - if you reduce all details to the most basic. If you actually look at the real details: James openly is attracted to Lily and asks her out, Snape hides his attraction in order to be near her without being rejected; James and his friends hex other students, annoying Lily, Snape and his friends curse other students, disgusting Lily; James stops hexing other students and Lily accepts him, Snape continues hanging out with Death Eaters and Lily rejects him. The basic similarity is purposeful, highlighting the differences in the characters.
3. James attacks an individual while backed by a gang of three, the most sycophantic of whom is a rat-faced boy named Peter (Piers…) P. One of his cohorts holds the victim immobile while James presses the attack. Like Dudley Dursley.
First of all, the entire point of "Snape's Worst Memory" is that it makes Harry see James as a bully, as less than a perfect shining hero. He's supposed to look bad. You don't get points for pointing out how he's acting like Dudley. Second, the big difference between the two examples is that Snape is just as powerful as the Marauders when he has his wand, while Harry was totally outclassed in terms of physical strength. Snape also has no compunction about kicking the sorts of spells in play up a notch, which gives him a distinct advantage.
(Incidentally, on the truly horrific instance of Lily's mouth twitching for a half-second at Snape being held upside down that proves she's a shameless gold-digger - how much do you want to bet that that's not unrelated to her knowing that Snape had invented the spell?)
4. James uses Levicorpus to hurt and humiliate someone. Like the Death Eaters do at the Quidditch World cup.
Again, James is obviously supposed to look bad here. While that doesn't excuse him, it does mean that you don't get points for noticing it. And again, the difference is that Snape has the ability to retaliate and had the ability to defend himself at first and invented the spell; the Roberts (?) family had no clue about what was going on and no way of defending themselves. And what does it say about someone who invents a spell that we've only seen used to "hurt and humiliate" people?
5. And James as a father, presented at his most sympathetic (from the unsympathizing perspective of Tom Riddle) … is shown indulging his son, and trying, unarmed and unsuccessfully, to protect his wife and son from someone armed with magic he can’t possibly combat. Like Vernon Dursley confronting Hagrid.
Hagrid came in with no intentions to hurt anyone. Voldemort wanted to kill all three Potters in cold blood. The Dursleys give their son whatever he wants until he's a fat, spoiled bully. James makes smoke come out of his wand so a baby can grab at it. There is simply no comparison.
6. Then there’s one more parallel. James is described to us as a dark-haired, charming boy, “exceptionally bright”, attractive to both his contemporaries and his teachers, regarded with distrust by his Transfiguration teacher but generally receiving such acclaim he makes Head Boy. After years of his gang’s terrorizing other students, and after successfully covering up at least one overt crime he’s involved in—releasing a Dark creature on unsuspecting potential victims. And the headmaster never suspects him.
Like Tom Riddle.
As ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) lakme pointed out, Riddle didn't get into trouble. And McGonagall never worried that James was severely disturbed, the way Dumbledore watched Riddle. This is reaching so far that it's going to fall out of the window.
The problem is that Terri is unable to detach herself from the text. There is nothing wrong with the fact that people's individual experiences inform the way they react to a story - it's natural. But if one is going to analyze a text, one has to acknowledge and go beyond these initial reactions in order to produce a more than superficial analysis. Terri brings up the fact that her father killed himself when she was eleven, and then uses the way her community responded to prove that James wasn't actually a good man - since many people complimented her father and few people talked to Harry about James, this means ... well, this actually means precisely nothing. Aside from the fact that she's comparing two isolated incidents with no evidence that hers is the norm, these two incidents are not really comparable. She was eleven when her father died, and people spoke to her a year later; Harry was a baby and didn't see anyone until years later, when it was considered history by the general public. She lived in a small town (actually twice as big as the town I grew up in); Harry's world is possibly as small but is widely dispersed. There's no comparison, not to even bring in the fact that some people did talk to Harry about his parents - the Dursleys, who lied about them.
As for Severus—for two years Snape DIDN’T throw the despised James in Harry’s face, whatever he might have felt. The first time Snape mentioned James to Harry was when Severus caught Harry returning from a forbidden, hazardous excursion (which the boy had indulged in only for his own entertainment), lying about it, and reveling in having frightened and assaulted a fellow student.
The other problem is the over-the-top interpretations. It does not make Snape angelic or even anything more than "rational" to have not confronted a child with his issues with James Potter. The rest of this quote is simply unfathomable. The first two examples are exaggerated by the choice of phrasing ("lying about it" makes it sound as though he did it for kicks instead of to protect himself against a teacher with a grudge, etc.), but the last is just ridiculous. Assault? Throwing mud is assault?
There is a clear motive for essays like Terri's, which is exemplified best with: Hoo boy. Does JKR have ANY idea what she wrote? In writing such meta, the author can proclaim their superiority to the creator and get agreement.
The Children of Privilege
On the one hand, I'm tempted to let the vast amounts of personal evidence ("I usually think—a lot—about things before I do them ...") slide because what she's doing is explaining why she feels a certain way about the characters, and not attacking them; on the other, it still comes off as though she's condemning them, and I don't believe that it's unintentional. Also, I don't believe most of it.
As Lupin apparently was in retrospect. I would have felt, each time afterwards that I let out the wolf, that I was playing Russian roulette—at best, one round closer to an inevitable disaster. Keep playing long enough, and disaster WILL occur.
Perhaps it's just my own personality, but I have a hard time believing that anyone would feel that way. Each time you distracted the wolf or otherwise saved the possible victim, it would be proof that you were clever or strong enough and that the wolf was weak or stupid enough. How could it be anything else? It has nothing to do with privilege.
And with a mother like Walburga Black, I have a hard time believing that Sirius "spent his childhood being sheltered from the consequences of mistakes he made." His childhood was screwed up enough to have him choose to be in Gryffindor. I would not be surprised if there were reasonably serious physical abuse involved - for one thing, physical injury is a much lesser deal in the Potterverse than in our world.
As I pointed out in another post, it’s actually worse from the point of the view of the victim to be tortured by a common household spell than by the Dark Arts: if one is to suffer torture flashbacks, which is worse: having the trigger being someone yelling “Crucio” or someone saying “Scourgify”? [...] But Sirius (and James) really seem to think that THEY’RE not using Dark Magic, they’re not INTENDING evil, therefore it’s impossible that evil results will occur.
This is rather a nitpick in the scheme of things, but it's this sort of thing that really detracts from the essay. Cleaning out Snape's mouth with soap is jerkish and nasty - but it used to be a common punishment for swearing. The practice is awful, but does that make it torture? No, not really, and I doubt it would cause flashbacks. I'm not going to speculate on Terri's intent, but comparing the Cruciatus and Scourgify here serves to make a spell of torture (and only torture, one that requires a desire to hurt) seem equivalent to a cleaning charm.
Once again, Terri_Testing displays her inability to distance herself from the text. What it comes down to (aside from wiping off all of Snape's flaws to keep him squeaky-clean) is that her mother was an alcoholic who would mistreat her and then protest that she "didn't mean it" the next morning; her argument is that Sirius and James's intent (their not meaning it) is the same thing. These two things are nothing alike. The defense of Sirius and James does not rest on only their intent mattering, but on the fact that the goodness of their intent must factor in. A drunk person might, say, hit you or call you worthless and then say they didn't mean it the next morning, but what she's comparing that to is someone making a stupid decision from a good motive that turns out badly. What good motive is there in slapping a child? None. What good motive is there in letting a werewolf out to run around in the woods? It makes him feel less like a monster the next morning, and keeps him from tearing himself apart. And yes, it was fun for them as well.
I have just two more quotes to refute.
Even years later, in dragging his feet in taking the Wolfsbane that night, Lupin didn’t mean to almost kill three kids, to allow Pettigrew to go free, and to condemn Sirius to remaining a fugitive; he just wanted to wind Snape up a little.
This line irritates me more than even the claim that Sirius had an idyllic childhood, or the complete dismissal of Sirius's years in Azkaban. (I'm never sure whether I'm more of a Siriuswife or Remuswife.) Remus "forgot to take [his] potion tonight, so [Snape] brought a gobletful along" to his office - this could be read as Remus actually not thinking about it, or (more sense-makingly) as Remus intending to go get the potion, then catching sight of the Map and running off. Why would he try to wind Snape up? That's not even a possibility just going from personality - Remus would have been far more likely to get there early so Snape couldn't complain that he wasn't taking it seriously. It is ridiculous to claim that all of that was Remus's fault - if Snape hadn't held them up and refused to listen, they might have gotten back earlier, before the moon rose. Snape, who intended to give both of them to the Dementors. Unhinged Snape.
I, after watching (and enduring) the damage my alcoholic (but charming and attractive) mother inflicted, find it HARDER to forgive someone who “meant no harm”—but did it, repeatedly, anyhow, and used the pristine innocence of their intentions to insist they should be let off the hook to do harm AGAIN—than to forgive someone who DID mean harm, but who subsequently repented and tried their hardest to make amends.
This does make me feel sorry for her, but it's nevertheless wrong at bottom. I discussed the difference in motive above; it's the last bit that gets to me now. Snape meant harm, repented partially for selfish reasons, and continued to mean harm. He did attempt to make amends, but mostly for those selfish reasons. It's good of him, but not better. |
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