![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
If we carry through on the racism/blood prejudice equivalency...
was James Potter a racist of the worst order?
Think back to the Snape's Worst Memory scene. Remember when Lily asks James just what Severus ever did to him? The reply from James was, "it's more the fact that he exists if you know what I mean. . ." Most people, IMO, interpret that to mean the bully's "natural" prey instinct had kicked in, but what if we are going to carry through on the claim that anti-Muggle and Muggleborn prejudice is equivalent to racism.
These boys were born in 1960, and it was not until 1967 that Loving v. Virginia struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the US. Ahhh, you say, stop trying to apply American standards and baggage to Brits. So let's look at Rowling's model: Anti-miscegenation laws were enforced in Nazi Germany. They were also enforced in South Africa between 1949 and 1985. So....was Snape's existence the result of a violation of the law? How many half-bloods did we see in the Marauder era? And even if it's not illegal, was it considered shameful by a large segment of the Wizarding population? No, it wasn't by Harry's time, but mores change. Is that part of what James meant when he said it was that Severus existed? He added "if you know what I mean", which is the nod-nod, wink-wink of a racist, roughly equivalent to the loaded statements characters in Seinfeld used to make about homosexuals, always followed up with the tag line: "Not that there's anything wrong with that." (nod, nod, wink, wink). It's also the shrug and eye-roll that accompanies many whites' comments about Native Americans, with the apparent idea that they can imply the most outrageously racist things, and it doesn't count because they trail off towards the end. But their buddies all know what they meant, so they're covered either way.
I can almost hear the howls of outrage. ;-) You idiot, they say, he was married to LILY, the ultimate poster child for Muggle-borns. But...
How many friends did James Potter have who were not pureblood? I mean friends, as opposed to hangers-on or sycophants. We know he was married to Lily, obviously. Which means that he made an exception for his own behavior, not uncommon at all for bigots. And yes, he "befriended" Lupin the werewolf in school. But how much did he do after school, when Lupin was not a dorm-mate and, later, a prefect in a position to choose between admiring them or blowing the whistle on Sirius and him? Rowling said in her interviews post-DH that James was independently wealthy, which allowed James and Sirius not to worry about having jobs, so they could "work" for the Order full-time. Note that she does not include Lupin in James' largesse, which according to her extended to James' wife and Sirius, who just happened to be pure-blooded.
These boys were born in 1960, and it was not until 1967 that Loving v. Virginia struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the US. Ahhh, you say, stop trying to apply American standards and baggage to Brits. So let's look at Rowling's model: Anti-miscegenation laws were enforced in Nazi Germany. They were also enforced in South Africa between 1949 and 1985. So....was Snape's existence the result of a violation of the law? How many half-bloods did we see in the Marauder era? And even if it's not illegal, was it considered shameful by a large segment of the Wizarding population? No, it wasn't by Harry's time, but mores change. Is that part of what James meant when he said it was that Severus existed? He added "if you know what I mean", which is the nod-nod, wink-wink of a racist, roughly equivalent to the loaded statements characters in Seinfeld used to make about homosexuals, always followed up with the tag line: "Not that there's anything wrong with that." (nod, nod, wink, wink). It's also the shrug and eye-roll that accompanies many whites' comments about Native Americans, with the apparent idea that they can imply the most outrageously racist things, and it doesn't count because they trail off towards the end. But their buddies all know what they meant, so they're covered either way.
I can almost hear the howls of outrage. ;-) You idiot, they say, he was married to LILY, the ultimate poster child for Muggle-borns. But...
How many friends did James Potter have who were not pureblood? I mean friends, as opposed to hangers-on or sycophants. We know he was married to Lily, obviously. Which means that he made an exception for his own behavior, not uncommon at all for bigots. And yes, he "befriended" Lupin the werewolf in school. But how much did he do after school, when Lupin was not a dorm-mate and, later, a prefect in a position to choose between admiring them or blowing the whistle on Sirius and him? Rowling said in her interviews post-DH that James was independently wealthy, which allowed James and Sirius not to worry about having jobs, so they could "work" for the Order full-time. Note that she does not include Lupin in James' largesse, which according to her extended to James' wife and Sirius, who just happened to be pure-blooded.
Racism, power, sexuality (1/2)
Sunny playground, middle of the day, a rich White boy decides it's time (yet again) to grab the attention of a pretty (and moderately wealthy) Black girl that he has wanted to shag for a while. So he decides to show her how manly and powerful he is -- by grabbing a working-class biracial kid that grew up in her neighborhood, who just happened to be walking by, and attacking him with a White friend of his, completely out of the blue. The kid is beaten and tied up, with foaming soap water poured down his throat, by the time the pretty princess shows up at the scene... Whereupon Rich White Boy tells her his action is entirely justified because the very existence of this ugly boy in the midst of his vision is grounds enough for his righteous punishment. For some unfathomable reason, Pretty Black Girl doesn't retort in fury (indeed according to JKR she's getting slightly turned on by the whole scene) but just chastises him with "you think you're funny" and "you're just a common bully." She continues to bicker with Rich Boy while not making a single move to help the boy on the ground out of his ropes -- which would only take a flick of her wrist, seeing as she's got a knife in her pocket. Then White Boy tells Black Girl to go on a date with him if she wants him to stop hurting her biracial friend, which she refuses, and then he and his White Friend hang Biracial Boy upside down, revealing his skinny legs and graying underwear. Middle-class Black Girl suppresses a smile. She and Rich Boy bicker some more, and finally he lets Biracial Boy go, telling him it's only thanks to the prettiness of his neighborhood friend that he didn't get lynched into a bloody mess. Biracial Kid snaps back, calling White Boy out on his racial kink, and in doing so uses the N word to describe Lily. At Privileged White Boy's indignant accusation of racism, Lily rightfully says he himself is just as bad... Which at this point in time she seems to understand, yet for some reason she forgets this side of James somewhere down the line, and decides to marry Rich White Boy to live Happily Ever After in a totally White society. Oh, but not for the money, of course! Nor for her fear of more of her neighborhood friends getting lynched by the boy and his righteous gang if she refused. She just came to her senses, you see, and realized that that was the Right Thing To Do, to chose the Side of the Light over the Cult of Darkness.
Racism, power, sexuality (2/2)
Sorry for my rantish tone. It's just, it always makes me seethe when people are clueless enough to say "But James can't be racist at all. Look, he fell in love with Lily and married her!" Oh yes, and we know exactly how many rich Caucasian men marry girls from Asia, Russia, Western Europe, etc. precisely *because* they are racist and not in spite of it. (Many men, of course, intermarry without being motivated by racism. Hell, I have a racial kink of my own and wouldn't dream of castrating myself by categorically calling such desire racist by definition. I'm just saying that an ugly potential for a power component to this kink is *there*, even if most guys who revel on it likes to pretend there's no racist bone in their bodies... Pardon the pun.)
Speaking of kinks, is it just me, or does Sirius with his poster of Naughty Muggle Girls (who are helplessly immobile, unlike their wizarding counterparts) on his wall smack even more clearly of a privileged-race boy getting off on the racial power play? It also makes him seem like a hopeless case of a gay homophobe trying to channel his lust for a friend into a desire to emulate him... But if he were completely heterosexual I as a Muggle woman would never want to date him, his beautiful face be damned.
Re: Racism, power, sexuality (2/2)
People do not want to see it, which is why they will not do so.
Sorry for my rantish tone.
Heh. I'm in no position to talk, given what I'm about to say...
The thing is that when Rowling, et al, shoved the Nazi Germany racist parallel crap down our throats, they don't get to stop half-way through. And so we have to look at what came before, and how Gryffindors like Dumbledore, the Potters, etc., reinforced a society built on prejudice. Similarly, you know, the Nazis did not seize power in a vacuum. The reason they were so successful is that they built upon the prejudices and bigotries widespread not only throughout Germany, but also the rest of Europe and North America . (Consider that famous Niebuhr quote about nobody being left to speak out by the time they came for him.) Very few people get off blamelessly in that one.
And so, if we are to follow the parallel Rowling set us upon, Dumbledore, the Potters, etc., step into the shoes of the powerful, influential and, above all, establishment people of the 1920's and 30's, like Joseph Kennedy, who made his fortune and then spoke admiringly of Hitler and wanted to appease the Nazis so he could keep his position comfortable.
And thus, if people really do want us to talk about Voldemort and the Death Eaters as the Nazis, we must consider the people who paved the way for them: Dumbledore and the Gryffindors as the ones who reinforced a calcifying society built on racism, bigotry, and social inequality, and completely incapable of handling the economic and social stresses of the time.
And then we can also look at how Rowling turned Hermione Granger into the "good Muggle-born". But having her treat her parents like cattle by uprooting them from their livelihoods and home, and depositing them half-way across the world without any recognition that they were human beings with the right of self-determination, all to suit her sense of entitlement to convenience as a Witch. And then to have her subsume all her ambitions into that of her pure-blood husband, to the point of ignoring the way he hexes a muggle because he's too lazy to look in a mirror... It just makes me say: Ick, ick, ick.
does Sirius with his poster of Naughty Muggle Girls (who are helplessly immobile, unlike their wizarding counterparts) on his wall smack even more clearly of a privileged-race boy getting off on the racial power play?
Well, I see what you mean. But Rowling thinks that is "dead sexy", which really makes me rather ill to think that she's going around telling boys how they are supposed to act.
Re: Racism, power, sexuality (2/2)
(In evaluating the W. Black we know and love from the Grimmauld Place portrait, I think one needs to remember the old saying: "Insanity is hereditary. You catch it from your kids.")
(A facetious comment to some very serious views, sorry!)
Correct and incorrect race/gender configurations
You have a point, probably that's the only thing JKR intended with that scene. Who knows, maybe to her even a mental picture of a wealthy White English boy from a purist family jerking off to a poster for Black P*ssy Quarterly (or whatever those mags are called) doesn't push any squick buttons.
I do find it interesting that Sirius never actually finds a Muggle girlfriend -- or if he has, at some point, we never get to hear him brag about him, never mind see him married to her. As someone mentioned somewhere up the threads, that's the one taboo of the Potterian racial dating field, it seems, that wizards can always marry Muggleborn witches and produce Wonderful Children, while witches marrying true-blue Muggle men are also very prominent in this story since it produced Mr. Evilness Incarnate and Mr. Eternal Misery, and yet somehow we never see any Muggle woman getting a "nasty shock" when she finds out her husband has way more power over her than the physical power she already knew about. I mean, why do we get to learn of Merope raping Tom (which had absolutely zero relevance to Harry's horcrux quest by the way) but we're never given even a hint of a wizard taking advantage of a poor powerless Muggle girl, ever? Is that too ugly for JKR to visualize because it hits too close to home, or -- horror of horrors -- is it really true that "Muggleborn" and "Muggle" should make no difference in her magical world? I.e., is it her message that, when Superior Race Man falls in love with Inferior Race Woman and coerces her into marrying him it's totally natural and there's nothing manipulative about the process, since that's an "equal" couple as couples should be, whereas Superior Race Women lusting after Inferior Race Men are categorically unnatural and wrong, since there will then be a power imbalance, and marriages borne out of such unions are a recipe for marital dysfunction -- wherein somehow the wife still ends up being the one to suffer the most unhappiness, bullied and cowering or despairing, starving and dying?
typo
"we never get to hear him brag about
himher," obviously.)Re: typo
Good gay subtext and disallowed gay subtext
Anyway, yeah, I agree that scene seems a pretty blatant attempt on JKR's part to hetero-wash her "cute and cool" characters. And, see, this is where I can't help but get pissed off at her hypocrisy. I mean, it must have been a pretty desperate need of hers, this need to heterosexualize Sirius, if it made this author who has vocally taken a stance against the sexual objectification of the female body (or is it just the *thin* female body that she doesn't like objectifying? -- oh wait, she doesn't mind if it's *her* body at a podium on Harvard campus!) to plant the imagery of bikini-clad girls "smiling" with "glazed eyes" in the bedroom of her heroic male character. This is a children's book for God's sake, and even if boys and girls have been "snogging" random partners everywhere on screen since OotP, the overall pretense of the series has still been that there is no such thing as sex or sexual bodies for teenagers, and that the only thing that happens between boys and girls are "love," "unidentified belly monster," and "unity between two sets of lips." And yet, she had to have those half-naked ladies on Sirius' wall.
And to consider: This is coming from a woman who blazenly says (in the face of hundreds of Christian fundamentalists who she *knows* are trying to ban her books from school libraries) that she has always thought of Dumbledore as gay, and that her description of the Dumbledore-Grindelwald friendship has been intended as a barely consealed (or not at all consealed) depiction of a homosexual relationship. So she *says* she feels totally cool about her characters being read as subtextually gay. No, she says she even *intends* them that way, when they happen to *be* gay. Which they can be.
Yes, they can be. When the gay love in question (and the only gay potential to ever grace the unkindly character's long, solitary life) is unequivocally the love of an innately good guy falling victim to the allure of an unquestionably evil man (who somehow always happen to be physically beautiful). Yet apparently, the subtextual potential of gayness can absolutely, positively not be permitted when the character is one of the good guys who guides and befriends our hero boy, and has been in a very close textual friendship with his father and another of Harry's good father figures. Why?
Why would that be a problem for JKR, who according to her own claim is the paragon of anti-homophobia, who "doesn't care" if one of her characters just so happens to be gay and thinks it's completely okay for Dumbledore to be both gay and Headmaster of Goodness? Why try to heterosexualize Sirius in such a blatant way when she has not even tried to hide Dumbledore's gayness, when she in fact went out of her way to mention it in a Q/A session where her questioner didn't even mention the issue of sexuality?
And yet there are those who agree with JKR's claim that she's *color-blind* towards sexual diversity, and believe that the one character whose homosexual subtext she has decided against eliminating just *happens* to be a once-burned-and-now-unfriendly eunuch...
Re: Good gay subtext and disallowed gay subtext
It all reeks of a reaction to the criticism she had faced in her tour to that point, and a clear attempt to inoculate herself. So now, if you are a critic and can "prove" you are not a religious nut who thinks she's promoting witchcraft, well then, you must be a homophobe! Don't forget that Rowling has repeatedly admitted to browsing to web to read about herself and the books. And before her big announcement about Dumbles, there was quite a bit of chatter that she was going to be surprised because quite a few non-hyper-religious people were finding lots of reasons to dislike Book 7 other than the tired old "promotes witchcraft" canard. Of course, that all took a nosedive after the announcement, IMO because few people wanted to be accused of anti-gay bigotry.
And in the meantime, she's covered herself by taking the most sexless character available and proclaiming them gay, all the while she has determinedly "rescued" Sirius Black from the slashers. Personally, I'm not gay and I don't care if her characters are. It's the hypocrisy and cold calculation about politics and her book sales that I find so distasteful.
Re: Correct and incorrect race/gender configurations
There's always Arsinoe de Blassenville's analysis in her fiction "The Golden Age", that there are no genetically-Muggle-born witches and wizards: all "Muggleborn" magic kids are bastards born of rape or seduction, and it's the bastardy and potential for involuntary incest that make them "filthy".
Just looking at the power imbalance in James and Lily's marriage rather confirms it: they live in his house, see only his friends, only his best friend is at Harry's christianing and will be their secret-keeper.... The definitiion of a perfect marriage: the man is thoroughly on top, and that's the way she likes it.
As to Sirius, I'm afraid the only way I could imagine him with a Muggle girl is in an Arnold-Schwartzenegger-type orgy: you know, one female off in the corner to prove they're not really gay while the guys all stand around posing at each other. As to whether the girl would have been magically coerced.... Ugh.
Re: Correct and incorrect race/gender configurations
*nods* It gives new meaning to the criticisms that the books are anti-feminst, doesn't it? It's way beyond that.
Re: Racism, power, sexuality (1/2)
Re: Racism, power, sexuality (1/2)
Re: Racism, power, sexuality (1/2)
And about Sirius and his pictures just made me think he was trying to hide something.