|
Author
|
Comment
|
Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(8/11/04 10:00 am)
|
Re: Back to school...
Actually, what I always found amusing was the fact that, by unbiased standards, the only good parents in the book are ... the Malfoys! Oh, not in terms of the views that they pass on to their only chik and child, but ... the Durseleys are wretches. The Grangers are ciphers. The Weasely's ... well, let's see. Mr. Weasely breaks the law on a regular basis (the car, throwing the first punch in the fight), making him a little less than a good role model. Lucius Malfoy seems to be the only one encouraging his kid to study, attending parent-teacher conferences, concerned if his kid gets hurt at school ... Interesting message re: good parenting ... Leave them alone to attain independence at all costs, apparently. Otherwise, they could be ferrets (sorta like They Might be Giants, but less melodic).
|
Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(8/11/04 12:26 pm)
|
Re: Back to school...
Quote:
Mr. Weasely breaks the law on a regular basis (the car, throwing the first punch in the fight), making him a little less than a good role model.
See, I don't equate breaking the law with automatic badness. Too many stupid laws around, too many people who need hitting...
|
Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(8/12/04 5:00 pm)
|
Re: Back to school...
Agreed ... I just mean that, in terms of messages that you might not want to pass on to hot-headed children with a propensity for life-threatening actions? Mr. Weasley might be heading the list ...
|
Anansia
Registered User
(8/16/04 9:28 pm)
|
Re: Back to school...
Well, I tend to agree with Veronica that all the scary stuff is for the sake of an interesting story, but as for the reality of what happens in boarding school, I think JKR is closer to hitting the nail on the head (however fantastically) than a lot of the boarding school fiction writers of previous generations, who painted very rosy pictures of the lifestyle.
Bullying, fagging, sexual abuse by older students & also by teachers & other staff would have to be more common than midnight picnics in the dorm! Okay, okay, I know they aren't all like that, and I don't suppose JKR was writing metaphorically. And actually, kids tend not to tell when the nasty stuff is happening, or often aren't believed if they do, so that pretty much fits the picture with Hogwarts students too. Or maybe a magical life is just like that everywhere?
I know it's already been discussed, so this is really a rhetorical question, but WHY do the HP books generate so much analysis? Is it just because so many people have read them? Maybe in 100 years someone will shed light on the phenomenon.
|
Black
Sheep
Registered User
(8/17/04 4:37 am)
|
Re: Back to school...
Quote:
do you think that adults who read children's lit are indulging in regression, or are you mainly doubtful because of how you perceive the quality of the books?
Hi Erica,
Sorry I haven't replied to your interesting query before now but I don't have a phone line at home so I don't use the net more than about once a week.
I have no problems with adults reading literature designed for children.
Books designed for kids can be of _at least_ equivalent literary,
emotional, mental, &/or spiritual value (and in the case of
Potter 5/Phoenix also physical fitness/weight lifting value! ) to
books intended exclusively for adults (I already gave an honourable
mention to Pratchett's "Wee
Free Men"). I have a specific problem with adults reading
Potter because it seems to me that the books are designed for the
literary, emotional, & mental, range of an average twelve year
old boy with no adult subtext unlike, for example, Shrek.
I personally don't understand why any adult would choose to spend
irreplaceable hours of their lives living in the emotionally &
mentally limited world of Harry Potter when other, IMO more entertaining
&/or edifying, material is available for us to bathe our minds
in? As I said they are _my_ doubts and therefore not necessarily
relevant to other people but I fear that many adults don't "regress"
to Harry Potter because many adults have never stretched their minds
beyond the emotional, mental, etc. range of a twelve year old boy.
|
Black
Sheep
Registered User
(8/17/04 5:23 am)
|
Re: Back to school...
Hi Anansia,
I agree with you about traditional boarding school life including
all the usual physical, mental and emotional violence which human
beings choose to inflict on each other but I'm not aware of these
aspects having been left out of the English/Scottish boarding school
literature. AFAIK it all began with "Tom
Brown's School Days" which includes some nasty stuff as
does "Nicholas
Nickleby" and... I could go on... but as I've already cited
Molesworth (and by implication St. Trinian's) I think I've pretty
much made this point.
The original point I was trying to make was that although Potter is a fairy tale, which many of you have proved by being able to analyse the cultural mores of the story in terms of your own cultures and then project your analyses onto Rowling/English culture as if your analyses are universally applicable, any cultural analyses should also attempt to include the literary contexts which are "boarding school" as well as "fantasy".
English culture has much the same ideas of "otherness" as any human culture: gender/sex, social status, appearance/"race"*.
But the primary otherness in the boarding school context is "class" or, if you prefer, social status. The only legal segregation in English history was segregation by class. Non-white pupils have been attending English/Scottish boarding schools since at least the 1700s although it is often difficult to be definitive because historically in England people have been legally recorded by their name, sex, age, occupation etc. but not by their appearence/race so unless someone is called Scipio Africanus or Rajiv Singh it's often difficult or impossible to know what they looked like! (Note: the same is true for marriage. The earliest recorded marriages between "black" "Africans" and "white" "English" people begin, if we exclude Roman times, in the 1500s. Hence Othello!).
Females have only been partially admitted to some "boy's" boarding schools in the second half of the twentieth century.
Working class children have been admitted to "posh" boarding schools precisely never! The very few scholarships inevitably go to bright upper or middle class kids whose parents can afford to pay for special scholarship exam tuition.
I have no doubt that the "white-washed" upper and middle class pupils at Hogwarts represent a wider social mix than at real English boarding schools.
Arthur Weasley the _ministry civil servant_ (upper middle class)
with six children and a non-earning wife is "poor"? Yeah
right!
There, I couldn't keep my mouth shut about the Potter class diacultures
after all.
*I personally am suspicious of ideas of "race" based on
skin colour. Why not eye colour? Or height? Or hair type? I have
straight brown hair so why would I have more in common a member
of my species who has red curly hair than nappy black hair? Or blonde
hair? I'm pink with brown freckles so... well I hope you get the
picture.
The only people on our planet who remained "racially pure" (washes mouth out with soap) for any significant length of time were Australian aborigines who chose to see themselves in terms of many tribes _not_ one "race".
|
Anansia
Registered User
(8/17/04 8:29 pm)
|
Re: Back to school...
Quote:
I'm not aware of these aspects having been left out of the English/Scottish boarding school literature.
I have no doubt you know more about this subject than I do, Black
Sheep. I was thinking of the pretty low brow "Abbey girls"
type stuff that was still around when I was young, when I made that
comment - and I guess I'd put HP more in that context than in the
league of Nicholas
Nickleby.
The point I was making was really just HP's wide appeal may be related to the school setting. After all, who hasn't had a teacher like Snape - or, if you're lucky, like Lupin?
Quote:
*I personally am suspicious of ideas of "race" based on skin colour. Why not eye colour? Or height? Or hair type?
i am not sure what point you are making here in relation to the books? True, "race" is a social construct (or 'destruct', in its effects) & there have been many ways of defining it. In relation to books, I guess the only clues JKR gives of the ethnicity of her "non-Anglo" characters is skin colour, dreads (and I've known whites with dreads of course) or name, while making no reference at all to the cultural differences, or possibly differning perspectives, of those characters. I guess our discussions are based on that.
We could hypothetically assume that, say, "tall black girl" Angelina Johnson's ancestry goes back as Black British for hundreds of years - but as a black skinned person, she would still - at the very least - experience racism, and this kind of difference is never really addressed. Not that I would really expect it of such a minor character, but JKR could still include it in her bigger picture.
Also, the reason it all gets to me is quite person - as I think I've stated elsewhere in this discussion. I'm white, but my son, who is half African heritage, loves the books, and his reality is never represented in these blockbusters, or in many other fantasy books. (Which is pretty much his favourite genre, aged 10). At a time when Britain, like many other countries, is becoming so 'multicultural', it just seems like plain denial to have such tokenistic characters. If the books were set in a total fantasy world unrelated to our real world, I wouldn't have such a problem with it.
And why do adults read HP? Well, for my part, I actually had to
read each of the 1st four books to my son - 3 - 4 times each, so
that's why I know them backwards! Thankfully he wasn't so enthused
about book 5! I enjoyed the 'mystery' element, and also how she
names things - the Draco Malfoys and the spells and text books etc.
They have been fun. But I admit, I have very frivolous tastes in
fiction. (I draw the line at the Abbey
Girls!)
|
redtriskell
Registered User
(8/17/04 11:55 pm)
|
race at school and other places
I am very interested to see all these comments about race and class discussed about an English book. I'm American and Southern and white- it sometimes seems like these issues don't exist outside of where I live. That sounds strange, but what I mean is race and social status, and how they're dealt with in literature, sometimes eclipse everything else about a book around here. For example, there is a rather heated debate going on in my hometown right now about a book, written by a white author, dealing with the lives of black characters. A few local black people are apparently incensed that a white writer would presume to know anything about black characters and are trying to have the book removed from the shelves. I am not sure what the point of this might be, and I'm happy to say they aren't succeeding; but it bothers me that this has even come up. What I really want to know is if the story is good, if the writing is good. I don't care about the author's gender or race or age- none of that is terribly relevent to the story. It seems to me that any decent writer frequently tries on different perspectives, so why should race be exempt from speculation? I guess I'm not really saying anything, but this whole thing really got under my skin. And as a peculiar side note about how poorly we seem to deal with racial issues... when I was in high school, there was a very controversial article in the school paper which quoted a teacher saying that education was "sugar-coated" for black students. What this person was doing teaching, I'll never understand. Anyway, the student journalist refused to say who the teacher was, citing first amendment protections. There was a huge ruckus to say the least. The sad part of this story is that to deal with the extremely tense race relations at my school, the NAACP decided to sponsor a series of assemblies on racial diversity and tolerance. Mandatory attendance for all students. Ready for the sad part? They split the assemblies. One for white students, one for black. I guess if you were some other race, it didn't matter which one you attended. The part I didn't understand then, and still don't get, was that they really saw no irony in what they were doing. They really believed that the best way to instruct young minds about racial acceptance was to divide them based on race. And the school administration apparently agreed with the logic. Bizzare, huh?
|
Anansia
Registered User
(8/18/04 1:46 am)
|
Re: race at school and other places
Well, Redtriskill, some of what you've raised is a whole other issue & maybe moving beyond the scope of this discussion - fascinating as it is. I'm involved in ending racism work here in Oz and my take is that there are times when it's appropriate & useful to do the work together, and times when it can make more sense to do it apart. I think both options are necessary, in order to move forward. Us white folk can dominate events and be racist in ways we don't even notice a lot of the time - even when acting with the best of anti-racist intentions.
In relation to the book you mention, while I agree in principle that writers can write from any perspective, I think we have a responsibility to at least try not to reinforce existing stereotypes. I guess black folks would have a better perspective on the book you mention, tho it's possible they wouldn't all agree on whether or not it was racist. We have similar issues here in Australia in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, altho more specifically, mainly in relation to non-Indigenous people using Indig Dreamtime stories, which are often part of religious lore. It's really a matter of cultural appropriation, in that case, and there have been controversies around it - to the point where I would specualte that few non-Indig Aussie writers are brave enough to tackle including Indigenous characters in their work. I'm considering it, and I'm Verrry worried about it! (and I haven't considered using dreamtime stories or characters, unless they have become a part of more generalised Australian folklore)
I actually started a thread on this board on the issue of white writers using sources from other cultures, a year or two back. Don't know if it's still archived somewhere.
|
Black
Sheep
Registered User
(8/18/04 6:15 am)
|
Re: Back to school...
Having said that I don't use the net often I find myself at the library again today...
Hi Anansia and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and All,
It's very generous of you to assume that I might know more about
English/Scottish boarding school literature than you do but it probably
isn't true! I've never heard of the Abbey books.
I took your point about the school context being accessible to many readers and I certainly agree. Like you, I wouldn't favourably compare Rowling with Dickens but I would assume that "Nicholas Nickleby" is part of Rowling's culture and literary influences, whether conciously or not, and therefore relevant to any deconstruction of Rowling's work and her cultures, diacultures and idioculture (which deconstructions appear to be running through this whole topic).
In answer to your second set of points I have to say that the note you quoted was intended as a personal comment on my own idioculture so those of you who don't know me would have a clue about how my personal opinions influence my deconstruction of issues of "otherness" around the boarding school aspects of Rowling's Potter books. I'm sorry that wasn't clear.
I in my turn now don't really understand what you were trying to communicate to me about my previous comments on the othernesses of class/social staus, sex/gender, and appearance/race ... so I hope you'll excuse me if I think aloud here...
I thought I'd already expressed _all_ the views which you cover (except that I wouldn't assume Angelina's family were atypical in the way you speculated).
The point I was trying to make about othernesses in the context of English/Scottish boarding school cultures, and the literature which derives from or is influenced by those cultures, is that the primary otherness is the total exclusion of any non upper or wealthy middle class child (of any "race" or sex), the very recent inclusion of a tiny percentage of upper or wealthy middle class females (of any "race"), and the long term acceptance of non-"white" and also non-"English" pupils (as long as they were male and upper or wealthy middle class).
It is too easy for people who come from cultures where education included government enforced "racial" segregation until suprisingly recently (and there are sadly many including, as you know, parts of Australia) to project their local cultures onto different cultures without owning their own idiocultural, diacultural and cultural prejudices (in whichever direction!). English cultures are particularly prone to this reverse cultural imperialism because so many other cultures choose to relate to us as a "parent" culture (and then react towards us in all the variety of ways that offspring relate to a parent). Note: this doesn't imply that I think English cultures are in the above stated relationship from an English or an objective perspective!
I also already agreed with previous posters that Rowling's non-"white" characters tend to be "ethnic" in name only. This is disappointing for me personally because I enjoy living in a thoroughly multi-cultural family and society so I miss these things when they aren't around! _But_ the cultural "white-washing" of the upper and wealthy middle class students which Rowling depicts in their upper and wealthy middle class boarding school context is class based. The English class system is culturally exclusive, and therefore ethnically exclusive, but it's not "racially" exclusive (although it is, of course, weighted in favour of the staus quo i.e., pro upper class, pro male and pro "white").
|
Anansia
Registered User
(8/18/04 10:40 pm)
|
Re: Back to school...
Hi Black sheep - I think we are basically in agreement, I was just a bit confused by your comment on skin colour, so maybe I went off at at a bit of a tangent there; thinking aloud myself. I think what you say about class & exclusion is true & in that sense her books are just an accurate reflection of what happens in those schools.
|
swood
Unregistered User
(8/22/04 10:10 am)
|
Barbra Feinberg's Book
Well, it turns out Barbra Feinberg, the woman who wrote the editorial
that started this discussion, has a book out on the subject called
''Welcome
to Lizard Motel: Children, Stories, and the Mystery of Making Things
Up.''
The following link is to another essay on the subject appearing in the Times' Sunday Book Review. It's not nearly so much a review as another essay on the subject:
www.nytimes.com/2004/08/2...LLERL.html
Sarah
|
Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(8/22/04 2:39 pm)
|
Re: Barbra Feinberg's Book
Quote:
I decided that there were two types of children's books: call
it ''Little
Women'' versus ''Phantom
Tollbooth.'' The first type was usually foisted on you by
nostalgic grown-ups. These were books populated by snivelers and
goody-two-shoes, the most saintly of whom were sure to die in
some tediously drawn-out scene. When the characters weren't dying
or performing acts of charity or thawing the hearts of mean old
gentlemen, they mostly just hung around the house, thinking about
how they felt about their relatives.
Indeed. I thoroughly agree with this reviewer, except to add a third type of book: the type in which a teenage girl is anxious and has low self-esteem until she meets a cute guy and a supportive teacher both of whom like her just the way she is. This type is usually funny and entertaining enough, but pretty formulaic.
|
Black
Sheep
Registered User
(8/24/04 4:13 am)
|
Potter +
You've all made me think too much about Potter now and I've realized that the only fully participating working class characters in the story are vicious Filch whose name is a slang word for "steal" and Mundungous, nicknamed Dung, who is an unreliable "comedy" criminal (Flash Harry from St. Trinian's) who is only allowed into the Order of the Phoenix _because_ he's a criminal.
So the working classes in Potter are: male, vicious, stealing, thieving, @#%$!
Mmm nice stereotypes... not!
There was a survey in Britain recently which asked people what their
favourite fairy tales are. Number 1 was Cinderella.
I'm refraining from comment because I could rant on indefinitely about that.
I believe number 2 was Sleeping
Beauty.
|
Black
Sheep
Registered User
(8/24/04 4:17 am)
|
@#%$
I see SLL censors the word sh!t. Sorry. It's not obscene over here in England. Let me rephrase that...
"So the working classes in Potter are: male, vicious, stealing, thieving, dung (sh!t)!
|
Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(8/24/04 8:04 am)
|
Re: @#%$
Unless they're Hagrid, in which case they're slow, destructive, comic relief. I suppose they might be Rosmerta or Ernie, in which case they're non-entitities (I mean, clearly Rosmerta is the big-hearted barmaid, but she doesn't do much).
|
Terri
Windling
Registered User
(8/24/04 8:57 am)
|
Re: Back to school...
Anansia wrote: "Also, the reason it all gets to me is quite personal - as I think I've stated elsewhere in this discussion. I'm white, but my son, who is half African heritage, loves the books, and his reality is never represented in these blockbusters, or in many other fantasy books. (Which is pretty much his favourite genre, aged 10)."
Anania, where your son is a bit older, try the Borderland series
books. (www.endicott-studio.com/borderland.html)
There are a lot of mixed-race characters in them (various mixed
human races, and also mixed human-elf kids). At ten, he's still
a bit too young for them (they were written with older teens in
mind), but he might like them when he's older. The books got a lot
of fan mail from mixed-race kids who identified with that aspect
of the series.
Edited by: Terri Windling at: 8/24/04 9:03 am
|
Black
Sheep
Registered User
(8/24/04 9:02 am)
|
Re: @#%$
Hi Veronica,
But as you've already said Rosmerta and Ernie are only background fillers not fully participating characters.
Yes, the non-human species include Hagrid who is stupid but loyal (we're led to believe that all giants are stupid), and house-elves who are self-hating but loyal (we're led to believe that all house-elves are self-hating), but they aren't human. I read them as species rather than classes although that is my own idiocultural reading. I can't imagine working class English kids identifying with either giants or house-elves as role models but I can imagine them identifying with school caretakers and petty criminals as representing the social group they're identified with in the Potter books.
Any other working class characters I've missed?
|
Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(8/24/04 11:51 am)
|
Re: @#%$
No, of course you're right, I was trying to agree with you and was going to add "but Rosmerta and Ernie aren't major characters," but the screen froze up on me. I couldn't even tell if the post had gone up or not.
|
Anansia
Registered User
(8/24/04 5:32 pm)
|
Re: Back to school...
Thanks Terri,
I have bookmarked that page & will see if I can find the series in Oz. The books look very interesting & I'm sure he will like them in a few years.
BTW I really like your site, it has some great articles & lovely artwork. I actually found this discussion board via your links, a couple of years ago.
|
|
