Nice acronym, Mom!

Buffy ,'Showtime'


The Buffista Book Club: the Harry Potter iteration  

This thread is a focused discussion group. Please see the first post below for the current topic and upcoming book discussions. While natter will inevitably happen, we encourage you to treat this like a virtual book club and try to keep your posts in that spirit.

By consensus, this thread is reopened specifically to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It will be closed again once that discussion has run its course.

***SPOILER ALERT***

  • **Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows lie here. Read at your own risk***


aurelia - Oct 24, 2007 8:25:21 pm PDT #3270 of 3301
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story. Tell me a story.

it is almost inevitable that they will be read as analogies to human races, ethnic groups, and nations

I don't see the inevitability here.

I just saw a series of fantasy books that engaged the imagination and tried to show that being good might not be easy, but it's better than being evil (or evil's lackey).


Connie Neil - Oct 24, 2007 8:30:50 pm PDT #3271 of 3301
brillig

I just saw a series of fantasy books that engaged the imagination and tried to show that being good might not be easy, but it's better than being evil (or evil's lackey).

Wrod.

These discussions remind me of all the analyses of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis--except Lewis was doing analogies and Tolkien always said there were none in his stuff.


Typo Boy - Oct 24, 2007 8:36:32 pm PDT #3272 of 3301
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.

I stand by the inevitability - not that it is inevitable that everyone will read that way, but that a large portion of the audience will read it that way. I especially see this in terms of goblins and house elves. I can't see how either species can avoid being read as ethnic groups by a large portion of readers. I'm sure JKR did not intend it, but it does not mean it won't be there for many.


Typo Boy - Oct 24, 2007 8:42:49 pm PDT #3273 of 3301
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.

Oh, and in terms of this:

Companies cannot act with criminal intent because they have no human capacity for intent,” Reich says. “Arthur Andersen may have sounded like a person but the accounting firm was a legal fiction. . . how can any jury, under any circumstances, find that a company ‘knew’ that ‘its’ actions were wrong? A company cannot know right from wrong. A company is incapable of knowing anything. Nor does a company itself take action. Only people know right from wrong, and only people act. That is a basic tenet of democracy.”

OK - if you are saying that only people have moral responsibilities - fair enough. (Though some day we may have to extend the definition of people to include electronic persons.) But it is also important to understand that an institution can be evil in the sense that its only function is to let or help people do evil things. That is why certain organizations are illegal in the U.S.


§ ita § - Oct 24, 2007 8:45:05 pm PDT #3274 of 3301
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

I can't see how either species can avoid being read as ethnic groups by a large portion of readers. I'm sure JKR did not intend it, but it does not mean it won't be there for many.

I can absolutely see many people not reading it that way in absolutely the same way I doubt JKR intended to write it that way.

But it always (and has since Klingon days of yore) made me wonder. Too rarely for my interest do writers say how humans are summed up in the same way they capsule describe other species in the story. And not all of them are doing it in a PoV way.


Hil R. - Oct 24, 2007 8:45:09 pm PDT #3275 of 3301
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l

I can't see how either species can avoid being read as ethnic groups by a large portion of readers.

I think that they're different enough from humans that that reading is far from inevitable. Especially since we've already got a much more obvious ethnic group analogy among the humans.

The conversations about "The house elves want to do what they're doing" gave me a slight bit of pause, but that was very slight, because any thinking about it pretty quickly lead to "They're not human." And we were frequently reminded by Dumbledore that house elves have their own kind of magic. (The most obvious being that they can Apparate within Hogwarts.)

Similarly, with the goblins, we weren't told that they were greedy. We were told that they believe that anything goblin-made belongs to them. As far as I can recall, the only two objects that we're told Griphook looked at greedily were the tiara and the sword, both of which were goblin-made.


Emily - Oct 25, 2007 4:39:40 am PDT #3276 of 3301
"In the equation E = mc⬧, c⬧ is a pretty big honking number." - Scola

Isn't it possible that what appear as species attributes are really cultural ones? That centaurs don't have high-handedness somehow written into their genes but as a cultural trait? We don't really ever see any of these non-human groups in isolation from their species.


Aims - Oct 25, 2007 5:13:47 am PDT #3277 of 3301
Shit's all sorts of different now.

I can't see how either species can avoid being read as ethnic groups by a large portion of readers.

Then I would think that has more to do with the individual reader than how the author presented it. Like ita and Hil, I never read the books and thought, "Oh nice. The Goblins are obviously supposed to represent Jews." I mean, I can *see* how it can be read like that now, but I needed it pointed out to me.

I'm sure JKR did not intend it, but it does not mean it won't be there for many.

But is that JKR's responsibility in the end? Or any author's for that matter? Are authors responsible for how their readers will take something in their story? Should authors read through their texts and edit themselves because some readers might take issue with how a fantastical species/race of being is being portrayed and what parallels some readers draw from it?

(And I'm not asking this specifically of you, Typo. Just wondering out loud.)


Vortex - Oct 25, 2007 5:47:10 am PDT #3278 of 3301
"Cry havoc and let slip the boobs of war!" -- Miracleman

well, it's kind of like the memfault!trade aliens in Phantom Menace. Lucas said that he did not intend for them to be seen as Asian, but pretty much everyone saw it.


Aims - Oct 25, 2007 5:50:15 am PDT #3279 of 3301
Shit's all sorts of different now.

Ok, but how much of that is Lucas's responsibility? How can he account for what people are going to infer?