Heh. I almost posted this.

I wonder about him dying because Rowling has said that the last word of the series is "scar". Not sure if that would fit.

Meaning him dying doesn't seem to fit with that being the last word. Maybe.

1 -- She meant "Scar" -- this is in preparation for the big moment of synergy between the "Harry Potter" franchise and the "Lion King" franchise.

Well, someone else could wind up with a new scar.

I am like ninety pecent sure that Harry, Ron and Hermione won't die. Especially Harry, for the reasons you articulate -- the books are so much about Harry's development and viewpoint that JKR couldn't kill him off at the end, it would be like emptying out into a void.

I think I've said this before in this forum, but Neville is totally going to bite it. Draco and Snape too, probably.

I've got a business trip on the weekend of July 21, and it's already stressing me out. Maybe I could hold the book open on my lap underneath the conference table . . . . .

Arrrrghghgh I can't process the last word info. I'm annoyed she said so. The name of the last book is stupid, too.

I don't even haaaaave a hamster.

Neville bites it because he is, in fact, teh hero.

The name of the last book is stupid, too.

Not as bad as "Half-Blood Prince," however, which turned out to be such a damp squib in the text ...

I agree with Ogged, since the whole coming-of-age theme is more or less pointless if you never get to "of age." And there's no other character sufficiently central & sympathetic to carry on with the knowledge & wisdom gained from the carnage, etc. (I'm thinking of the Prydain books again-- Taran has to stick around if only to make narrative good on the deaths of his friends.)

Neville and Snape are obviously toast. I seriously doubt that Harry will die, although he might need to be occluded.

Dammit ogged, it's mice, not hamsters.

5 - Don't tell anyone, but this is how it ends (spoilers!):

"Well," mused Hermione to her companions among the smoking ruins of Hogwarts, "I agree with Ron that we shouldn't have been upset with Snape, since his seeming treachery was just the culmination of Dumbledore's master plan, but I'll be damned if I'm going to snog someone who liked Perdido Street Station better than The Scar."

THE END (or was it?)

Dammit ogged, it's mice, not hamsters.

You people think blogging is easy, but I wanted to say "gerbil" for the alliteration with "service," but I didn't want Richard Gere/gay/Fontana Labs associations, and I didn't want to say "mice" because B would think, as she always does, that it was about her, so it's hamster. Go, now.

Hermione is so right about The Scar!

"And all that was left of poor Harry was his scar."

(But seriously, why all the fuss about Potter? It's such mediocre fantasy.)

One hamster util = 1.333.... mouse utils.

I didn't want Richard Gere/gay/Fontana Labs associations

The word 'service' had already gotten you there, I'm afraid.

I omitted a disclaimer about small rodent allusions in 7 exactly because precluding the joke involved referring to it, which seemed too obvious. Unfogged: your blog for meta-level neurosis.

I just watched the Golden Compass trailer and was hugely underwhelmed, despite the brilliant casting for both Coulter and Asriel.

Long ago, back when the Matrix movies were the very thing for slumming highbrows (and oh, the Negri-ish Empire theorizing we discovered therein) I said to my friends, I said, "You all are wrong--the last movie is not going to build to some totally profound and radical climax; it's going to suck". They didn't believe me, since they didn't want to. But the inexorable laws of capitalism and genre prevailed, and it sucked. Similarly, neither Harry nor Hermione nor Ron will die. Instead, a rambly, poorly-plotted book will attempt to tie up all the loose ends while still giving us a mostly happy conclusion.

I mean, this is a book whose author thought that horcrux was a great name for the plot coupons, er, objects that Harry will be chasing all over blighty.

Each book has been more poorly plotted and unsatisfactory than the last, although I find a lot of interest in their very poorly-plottedness and unsatisfaction.

Also, Rowling won't want to kill or even abandon her main characters. I would be very suprised if there weren't a set of prequels, sequels, short stories and so on to follow, since warm fuzzy authors like Rowling usually want to go on with the worlds they created.

Also, The Scar is so fantastic as to defy belief, while Perdido Street Station is merely a rather dull thriller/catalogue of wonders.

Shit, now I want to read The Scar again, when I should be doing work. Fuckers.

Realize that I have read approximately 1/3 of the first book and watched maybe a movie and a half; it didn't turn my crank but that's my personal reaction. I think folks who like 'em should read 'em all eighteen times if they want, they got my nephews into reading and for that I will love JKR forever.

Having established that I am officially talking out my ass, I posit that in this setting of high ritual and initiations both formal and informal the death will be Harry's and symbolic rather than literal. Perhaps he's stripped of his magical abilities in the process of winning the climactic battle, maybe he gives them up, I dunno. Just thinking aloud here.

Least-likely last line: Harry, Ron and Hermione cry into their butterbeer while Brenda Kahn sings:

"And in the club where your girlfriend sells herself on the bar,
I left a stain on your glass, you called it a scar."

22: Glenn, Glenn...think of the thrillingly scary scene with the scary fish thing! And when they sink the Morning Walker! (How I love that Morning Walker is the real form of the Dawn Treader...what a meanie, that Mieville.) And think of the sense of spooky ocean depths!

"...a heart the size of a cathedral, beating far below in the dark"!

I rather suspect that Rowling will be glad to be finished with the series. She's made all the money she can possibly want, and writing under the kind of scrutiny and pressure she's faced doesn't exactly sound like warm fuzzy fun.

21: Not only do I agree with all of that, but I now want to know what you thought of Iron Council. (I didn't think much of it; the mechanism of the plot was simultaneously incredible, in a bad way, and insufficiently fantastic. And I had problems with the gender politics that I can't remember clearly enough to spell out.)

Yeah, I thought Harry might lose his magical powers. But Frowner is, as usual, WRONG, since the entire series was plotted in advance, and I haven't found it warm and fuzzy at all.

I thought The Scar was more interesting, but as diffuse in its focus, in its way, as PSS. Didn't like Iron Council -- for some reason, the speeches rang false, but I suppose I'm tempermentally opposed to fantasies of collective action and its contents.

And when they sink the Morning Walker! (How I love that Morning Walker is the real form of the Dawn Treader...what a meanie, that Mieville.)

Arrgh! I missed that entirely!

I guess someday I should read the copy of Perdido Street Station I have lying around so I can get on to the other two.

I found Perdido Street Station pretty purple and blah, so haven't read anything else of his. Perhaps I should!

I know a lawyer who included his love of Harry Potter books in his professional profile.

I suspect it is to draw in people charged with boy-love charges.

7: FL: so pretentious.

I admired Iron Council without enjoying it as much as either of the other two.

since the entire series was plotted in advance

Well, to a degree. But I think it's pretty clear that an awful lot of the interstitial plotting has been by the seat of her pants. It rambles.

People. Need I remind you that these are *children's* books?

Harry, Ron, and Hermione are not going to die.

Yeah, because the lead characters never die in children's books.

My bet on "major character to die in book 7" is Hagrid.

Apart from Ron or Hermione, who I don't think will die in the series (because the denouement will take place at their wedding), Hagrid is the only character whose death would hurt Harry even more than Sirius or Dumbledore. And Rowling has to top book 6 and 7 in terms of putting her protagonist through the wringer.

"book 6 and 7" s/b "books 5 and 6"

There's always Ron's mum, too.

38: In that book, the lead character is the boy; the girl dies in order to help him grow up.

I have a theory about the last book and the last word that's way better than all this "who dies" nonsense, and if I'm wrong, then Rowling should have asked me for plot points.

37: Aren't they teen books by now? Or does Harry not age perceptibly? Honest question. If the former, I think death is right at home in the story. I should note that if it turns out the death is more symbolic than real I will think it kind of lame but have nothing invested and the friends who will talk about the books for weeks will all sleep a lot better so I'm pretty OK either way.

My pet theory is that the series will culminate in some sort of collaboration btw the order of the Phoenix and the Muggle world. After all, the lack of literature, philosophy and magical theory (not to mention history, military strategy or political theory) at Hogswarts makes clear that the magic-using-world does not operate at a sophisticated level. And even we granted it more sophistication than the curricula of their elite schools would imply, (i) the population differential is such that there should be many more Muggle outliers in terms of intelligence, political and martial ability, and (ii) there is no suggestion in any of the Harry Potter books that the pace of magical innovation has noticeably increased over the last 200 years, much less matched the pace of Muggle innovation. If the good guys can learn to harness Muggle numbers, experience, intellect, deviousness and determination, those arrogant pure-blood pricks don't stand a chance. Of course, this could easily lead to the subjugation of magic-using Britain by Gordon Brown.

Well, I think book 6 made a lot of kids (and not-kids) cry! She's said so many times that she's not going to write any more of Harry, if I were her I'd kill him off (whatever I'd decided in that legendary cafe) just so I didn't have people nagging at me for the rest of my life about wanting to find out what happened when he left school.

I'd forgotten Daniel Craig was in the Golden Compass/Northern Lights. Timothy Dalton was Asriel in one of the National productions we saw - he was very good, but going by Bonds, Craig should be better.

Or does Harry not age perceptibly?

He does. They've gone from cooties to smooching. If it followed them into adulthood, we could get around to cooties again.

I think the really interesting question here is not "will Harry die?" (who gives a shit, says I to my hamster), but rather "who will win the vicious price war?"

agreed. harry will not die in 7.

however, hermione will be slated as dumbledore's replacement for head of school.

Not all of the rats of NIMH survived.

Harry can age, and yet the core audience of pre-teen kids can still be a big part of the audience. Rowling has kids; I don't think she's going to write an ending that would be a betrayal of her first audience.

Despite some people's desire to provide mice with immortality, children need to learn about death.

Potter dying would be a great life lesson. Kind of like Kubler-Ross for kids.

49: It's true. That was really sad.

I think it will be Ron's mother, since if you want to talk fucking dire gender politics, the Harry Potter books are the place to start. There's exactly one adult woman who has any kind of power who isn't evil or stupid or ridiculous, and the ones who are evil or stupid or ridiculous are all horrendous female stereotypes. There's the divination teacher--too skinny, too frilly, too New Age; there's Umbridge, who is too fat and doesn't perform gender correctly, as we can tell from all the emphasis on her frilly bows and cardigans; there's loud, badly-dressed Rita Skeeter...even Mrs. Weasley is depicted as fat, silly, a bit domineering and hysterical. Okay, there's Madam Maxime, sort of, but she doesn't even play as much of a role as Professor McGonegill.

It's okay to be a girl in Potterland, as long as you're okay with being thin, smart, feminine but not too feminine, and relegated to second place all the time.

I add that I, essentially, like the Harry Potter books.

But don't get me started about their fuckedupedness about race.

It's interesting, too, because I think Rowling is fairly liberal. What she writes is sort of the unconscious of liberalism (and I say that pejoratively) because she clearly thinks she's telling this wonderful tale with strong female characters and committed multiculturalism.

I don't think its happenstance that The Scar, the best of the three Bas Lag novels, is the one which does not actually feature New Crobuzon directly. The city, for all its conceptual brilliancy, suffers from the comparison to historical London. It works better as a generic imperialist malignancy like in The Scar.

I think the most brilliant children's lit handling of sacrifice that could have, but does not, involve the death of the main character comes in The Black Cauldron.

Yes, children "need" to learn about death, and they do. However, it would be frankly sadistic for the author of an extremely popular children's book series to kill off the titular protagonist after years of building her core audience.

How dare you people talk about Potter, etc dying in such a Cleveland fashion! He deserves more respect than such a thread as this one.

53: But don't get me started about their fuckedupedness about race.

No, do get started, please.

56:

Why?

What she writes is sort of the unconscious of liberalism (and I say that pejoratively) because she clearly thinks she's telling this wonderful tale with strong female characters and committed multiculturalism.

I quite agree.

46: Emerson is elderly Potter?

Disagreeing with Frowner. Hermione starts out being distinctly *un*attractive. And I like Mrs. Weasley; she *is* a stereotyped mother, but the book is written from the pov of children, and her silliness is pointedly undercut by the protective way she takes Harry under her wing. I forget which book it was, but the scene after he's injured and she shows up in the infirmary brings tears to one's eyes.

Hermione starts out being distinctly *un*attractive.

But (a) she's a figure of fun, even to Harry and Ron, and (b) she gets fixed, in your classic ugly duckling scenario. I like Mrs. Weasley too, but I wince periodically at her portrayal.

59: Because kids identify with protagonists even more strongly than most adults. That's why they do things like dress up as Harry.

LB, I was so proud of myself for noticing the thing about the Morning Walker. And the captain's name is an anagram for Prince Caspian, too.

54: Yeah, true. And I think Mieville gets distracted by New Crobuzon--there's too much there, too much that he's thought out, for him to plot smartly when he's writing about it. Also, The Scar is both plottily and politically the smartest of the three. Iron Council suffers on both levels--for Christ's sake, even a bunch of dirty fucking imaginary hippies wouldn't think that driving a train on train tracks was a great way to go join an insurrection. Hello, element of surpise! Also, Mieville doesn't actually do good characters, and Iron Council tries to be character driven. And also, it ends up having bad gender politics (the one character whose whole motives are not political like everyone else's but are all my baby, what about my baby!, for example...I don't think that's Mieville's considered position, I think it's a lumpy Marxist attempt to take note of class and the family. Plus the "romance"? Well, that's exactly how my romances go--lots of sublimation and the thrill of longing--but it doesn't really ring very true in context. Although I do like to see my life experiences (except for the golums, and the weird head-fruit trees, and the train and the violence) on the page.

Hagrid's toast.

Must work now. Bleh.

her silliness is pointedly undercut by the protective way she takes Harry under her wing

This doesn't save Mrs. Weasley for me, because she so pointedly plays favorites. I'm talking about when Rita Skeeter started writing libelous articles about Hermione, and Mrs. Weasley believed them and was mean to her in awful, petty ways.

I'm pro-HP, but Frowner's right, the books really are pretty dumb about sex and race.

63: She's a figure of fun, but brainy girls often are. I'm not one who thinks Rowling's a super great writer (she's good, but not great), but if you're going to write well for kids you need to be realistic enough to recognize the common dynamics of elementary school.

Her trajectory is a lot like Meg Murry's, and not particularly uncommon for bookish girls (and the authors they often become). And part of what happens in the first book is that Ron and Harry learn not to be such jerks to her.

Speaking for myself, I'd say that revolutionary fervor is much more productively used hating Paris Hilton (and "Elaine") than it is critiquing Harry Potter.

"there's too much there, too much that he's thought out, for him to plot smartly when he's writing about it"

The clomping foot of nerdism.

I don't think the books are paragons of feminist literature at all--after all, the main character is, of course, a boy. I'm just saying it's not as dire as all that.

64 -- Adults do that too, for some values of "adult".

i didn't really like the books, or at least the 100 pages of the first one i read, but i like the movies

Here's my theory, and I'm surprised everyone else hasn't figured it out.

Harry's scar is the last horcrux. Which is why the last word's gonna be scar: his is going to disappear once they figure out some way to use it to kill Voldermot.

I'm surprised everyone else hasn't figured it out

This is pretty much everyone's theory, B.

72: I don't think the books are paragons of feminist literature at all--after all, the main character is, of course, a boy.

That wouldn't keep it from being good feminist literature, surely? The protagonists of The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness were both male.

73: Hence use of word "most" in original comment.

71: Although perversely, M John Harrison is only tolerable when he's doing a bit of straight-up worldbuilding. He has the most wildly inaccurate ideas about his own work, too.

Mieville is clompily nerdy, behind that implausibly built hipster activist intellectual exterior. It is this--even unto his rather heavy-handed articles for various socialist outlets--which endears, actually.

76: Oh. Never mind then.

75: We need an Unfogged betting pool, because you're wrong, Dr. B, and I want to win.

I'm curious why you chose Toro as your example of of bad gender politics. It seems like the treatment of Lin in PSS is really heads and shoulders above anything else in terms of a shitty approach to gender issues.

Also, I don't think the Toro example is bad for quite the reason you think it is. Mieville compromises all his noble characters--thats where the lumpy(great word by the way) Marxism comes in. The gender politics comes in when the natural choice for compromising a female character necessarily goes to issues of family and reproduction. That strikes me as fairly generic sexism, not a specifically Marxist formulation.

82: Because we're...oh, goddamn it, I'll outline my argument in about 30 minutes. Tinkerty tonk.

77: Haven't read either, but for my money, we need more female protagonists in kids' adventure lit. Girls who have actual adventures and do things that aren't all about proving how independent from boys they are. Fuck the Paper Bag Princess.

47 - re the price war - the RRP is $50? Wow. RRP here is 18 quid, i.e. $36, and everywhere is selling it for half-price. We'll be doing the queuing at midnight thing - did it last time and it was very amusing.

Hey, let's talk about Riddley Walker. Such a great book.

Nit: "lumpen" means "ragged", not "lumpy". "Lumpy" may have taken on a life of its own now, however.

It seems like the treatment of Lin in PSS is really heads and shoulders above anything else in terms of a shitty approach to gender issues.

We've had very long discussions about that.

*SPOILER ALERT*

As for Toro, the fact that her whole reason for being a leader is selfish and pointless revenge was clearly intentional, designed to make that guy...um...Oli or something...(and the reader) disillusioned. I didn't think that was a sexist move.

Is that the one with Sigourney Weaver?

82: I'd disagree. The Lin thing is only problematic in the context of 'Women in Refrigerators' -- in a book where horrible grisly things happen to all sorts of people for no good reason, there's no particular reason that the attractive girlfriend of the hero shouldn't have her brain melted and her face ripped apart. There's nothing sexist about that within the book, only when viewing the book from outside in the context of conventionally sexist tropes.

In the other case, the gender issues are more bound up in what's actually happening in the narrative.

75: That's a pretty popular theory, but I don't hold it.

I just re-read book 6, and it seemed to me that a Horcrux is something you have to create deliberately, following the act of murder, which tears your soul and enables you to invest a piece in the Horcrux.

Voldemort was planning to create his final, sixth, Horcrux following Harry's murder, but since the attempt was unsuccessful, no Horcrux was created.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking it.

84:

Wasnt Nancy Drew relatively progressive?

They've gone from cooties to smooching. If it followed them into adulthood, we could get around to cooties again.

Only if they all go gay, right? You know there's slashfic about this out there somewhere in the shadowed corners of Usenet. I'll bet apo could find it.

I say this in lieu of some sort of STD storyline because we all know that needn't wait for them to turn the corner of majority.

the RRP is $50?

In Australian dollars. It's $34.99 in the U.S.

84 - for when PK's a bit older ... the CHERUB books by Robert Muchamore are about child secret agents (not at all like the young Bond books) - anyway, main character is a boy, but he has a younger sister who gets almost as much page space and is better than him sometimes, and is very much her own person. They're good all round actually.

The reinterpretation of the legend of St. Eustace by Goodparley is particularly nice, I think.

63: Prof. McGonagall (sp?) isn't ridiculous or stupid, and she's # 2 at Hogwarts.

And I don't see how Mrs. Weasley's any more ridiculous than Mr. Weasley. Men, particularly powerful men, do not come off so great in these books. *No* adults come off so great. Because they are children's books, and one of the premises of all children's lit is that only the kids really know what's going on.

Even sympathetic adults, like Hagrid & Dumbledore, (1) are given childlike qualities and (2) have ridiculous faults that can scarcely be believed (Hagrid's passion for lethal animals; Dumbledore's refusal to consider he could be wrong about Snape.)

21: On the contrary, I think the 3rd is easily the best plotted, followed by the first two, followed by the sixth, followed by the fourth, followed by the fifth.

As far as which I liked best overall: 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5.

If she intended to kill off her main character all along, she's really quite ruthless. I mean, think of the tone of the first couple books...I would guess that someone in the younger generation dies. Maybe Neville; maybe also Ron or Hermione.

Adult female characters...hmm. Who's the one character you have in mind, Tonks? I don't think the portrayal of Mrs. Weasley is at all negative, though I do actually like Mr. Weasley better. I also like McGonagall. It is true that most of the appealing & important adult characters are male, but a lot of this seems to be a combination of: 1) there's only room for one all-knowing mentor figure like Dumbledore; 2) there's a deliberate effort to save information about Lily (who may be the least flawed, most heroic character in the whole series, but about whom we know very little) until the last book. I guess we'll see about that. I'm also inclined to be charitable because the younger female characters are quite good--better than say, the Prydain books, or Narnia, or Tolkien obviously.

As far as both race and gender, there definitely seems to be some token, "oh, look, black and Asian and Indian characters! And female Quidditch players!" stuff going on. It strikes me as pretty useless, but basically benign, and maybe better than making no effort at all.

Thematically, it's plenty liberal.

And yes, I am a tremendous nerd.

92: And again, I point out my use of the word "more" in the comment to which you are referring.

95: Those sound good, thank you.

97: Dumbledore's not wrong about Snape. You'll see.

Y'all are relentless.

94 - oh phew.

As far as which I liked best overall: 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5.

Fascinating -- I thought # 5 was easily the best yet. Not something to argue about, obviously.

Heh, I'm a Snape fan too. Snape better not turn out to be truly evil.

we need more female protagonists in kids' adventure lit. Girls who have actual adventures and do things that aren't all about proving how independent from boys they are.

These books are pretty great.

We were talking about Nancy Drew at the beach and somebody was talking about when the creator of Nancy Drew sold the rights she had a really detailed contract outlining all of the things that they weren't allowed to do with the Nancy Drew character -- like she could never be bound or beaten or drugged or a whole other list of "women in peril" scenarios. Good on her.

bitchphd:

I understood the more part. I was just curious as to whether my memory was correct.

The Nancy Drew books would have been really progressive if the protagonist was George.

84: Haven't read either...

They're not kids' adventure lit but they are SF classics, and not long reads. You should treat yourself.

If you're on the lookout for interesting female protagonists in kids' lit, I hear tell Caroline Lawrence's Roman Mysteries books are good.

SPOILERS

It isn't the mind-eating I find problematic. Its the way that a previously independent character is transformed into a damsel in distress as soon as it is necessary to provide an emotional impetus to the male protagonist. Also, her treatment at the hands of Motley tastes more than a little bit of the "Scantily Clad Wet Jessica Biel in Peril from Psychopath" genre, which is questionable for what I feel are obvious reasons. (BTW, if you want a good example of truly fucked up gender politics, go watch the trailer for "Captivity." Jesus Christ.)

Because they are children's books, and one of the premises of all children's lit is that only the kids really know what's going on.

I should be molesting hamsters rather than quibbling about this, but that's one of the things that annoys me about the HP books. The conventional children's lit trope is that you can't get help from the grownups because they wouldn't believe you, you're just a kid and the story you have to tell is inherently incredible. It's a cliche, but it became a cliche because it makes sense.

In HP, there's no excuse for the magical world power structure not to be taking all of Harry's problems seriously. Magic isn't unbelievable, Voldemort isn't unbelievable, Harry has great personal credibility (oh, it's mixed, but if he says something it's going to get heard, he's important). So the plot where the kids have to do all the dangerous stuff themselves without help makes no sense. I hate that.

Only if they all go gay, right? You know there's slashfic about this out there somewhere in the shadowed corners of Usenet.

Googling around, there's a disturbing amount of homoerotic slashfic featuring Snape out there. Unexpected.

103: Really? I think book 5 is the weakest one of the series so far. Harry was whingy and annoying, like Luke in A New Hope, and the big battle at the end verges on the unreadable. Rowling is not a very good action writer.

I'm with Katherine: book 3 is the best, so far.

112: I haven't seen any of the movies, but Alan Rickman is certainly someone who might inspire fanfic.

103: it had its moments. Actually, thinking about it I probably like it better than the first two--it was really only the third book that got me involved in the series. It was just so damn depressing--not so much the ending as much of what led up to it.

111: Really, LB? Isn't it becoming clearer and clearer that one reason the power structure doesn't take Harry seriously is because the power structure is invested in the status quo? That is, it *isn't* that they don't believe him--it's that they don't want to acknowledge it. That and the pretty common adult problem of pride: there's no way the grownups are going to let a kid do the leading, simply because he's a kid.

107: Ah. Yeah, I seem to remember Nancy Drew being pretty good. Ditto the Little House books, which LB recommended and PK is really enjoying. There *are* good girl protagonists, it's just that there are so few of them.

I'm also a member of the "Snape is truly evil" contingent. Dumbledore was mistaken: as he said in book 6, because he is so smart, his mistakes tend to be big ones. The biggest one, of course, was trusting Snape.

Plus, you can't cast Avada Kedavra without hatred in your heart.

I hear good things of the Roman Mysteries too, but haven't read them. Going back upthread a bit, what about , Lyra's a great character.

Going off to watch Battlestar Galactica now.

Harry Potter is pretty much the iconic genre for slash fiction these days. Kirk and Spock just can't keep (it) up.

I'm sure it'll only get more intense now that whatsisface did his nude scene.

112 - Hell, in this article, I learned that there's a whole subgenre of Harry Potter slashfic called "mpreg" dedicated entirely to exploring what happened if the characters have gay trysts and one of them gets pregnant.

Oh, Harriet the Spy? Just read that to my lot, and the PK-equivalent loved it.

117 makes a good point. I suspect that my Snape love has everything to do with Alan Rickman, because in the books Snape really does just seem like a bully.

And, what LB said about the plot relying on characters not sharing information....The fifth book leaned especially heavily on that, and by then it was getting quite old, and seemed out of character, frustrating, and depressing.

113: Agreed. Delores Umbridge is supposed to trigger our collective unconscious anger with passive aggression but she's cartoonish even for a cartoonish universe. Also, the secret DA meetings were boring, told with the insight of someone who was an administrative assistant for a revolution, not a revolutionary.

if the characters have gay trysts and one of them gets pregnant

Um, how?

125: I'm going to go ahead and guess magic.

"since the entire series was plotted in advance"

Yes, and did you know that George Lucas wrote detailed outlines for each of the Star Wars movies in 1975?

It's like all my friends became Scientologists or Trekkies. I need a hug or shit.

116: But Dumbledore doesn't have issues like that, and has immense personal prestige, and we're talking about genuinely end-of-the-world issues. While the HP books look like they're using the usual 'kids have to do everything on their own' plot, it's much weirder and less well supported; more like 'kids discover strong evidence of well-funded Nazi saboteur plot in NYC in 1943, convince their uncle the general that it's all true, but still have to take the Nazis out themselves anyway because of bureaucratic infighting at the Pentagon.' You could write a plot like that, but you'd have to put a lot more into justifying it than Rowling does.

Good sister protagonists: The Misadventures of Maude March. Second book comes out soon!

Huh. I somehow remember the original Nancy Drew series as being somewhat racist, and classist -- like whenever a character with brown skin or shabby clothing appeared on the scene, you could be reasonably sure that that person would be a bad guy, or at least aligned with the bad guys. It's been a while though, maybe I'm wrong.

The Little House books are good on gender, and obviously (given the manifest destiny themes) not good on race. There's a lot of "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" rhetoric. At one point Laura, whose supposed to be more progressive than Ma on the Indian issue, goes all heartsick because she wants to steal an Indian papoose ("his eyes are so black!"), which maybe makes her a little prairie Angelina Jolie precursor, I don't know.

Mpreg as a subgenre exists in most fanfic universes, not just Potter. Of course the magic in the Potterverse makes it easier to believably execute.

I think the most awful Potter fic I ever saw was a H/D necrophilia story. Harry was the dead one.

Snape is, of course, the most complicated and interesting character, and one assumes that much of the last book will reveal his story.

LB: In HP, there's no excuse for the magical world power structure not to be taking all of Harry's problems seriously.

Harry's world is like our own in this respect. The wizarding authorities are pretty pathetic. I daresay Rowling writes thus from philosophical conviction. (LB, Dumbledore *does* take Harry seriously, and *also* does most of his anti-Voldemort stuff on his own, like a grownup -- until # 6.)

Harry in book 5: you say "whingy," I say "finally acting like a teenager." Considering the strain on him, it was about damn time. (The big fight did have its problems, due to Rowling's theory of magic -- pointing wands & zapping people is pretty hard to make work; I think she does as well as she could, so it's not her writing, it's her theory.)

WHY SNAPE MUST BE EVIL: Because if he's *not*, then Dumbledore was right ... again ... and continues to be the perfect adult sage on whom Harry et al. relied rather than trust their own judgment. I think Rowling has laid enough hints that this is a fault -- that everyone's flawed, and that no authority figure can be trusted 100%. It's only this "faith in Dumbledore" that even has people *wondering* about Snape at this point.

121: I should reread that. Loved it as a kid, but in retrospect it seems as if it was very very strange.

For girl books, what about E. Nesbit, who's generally gender balanced but genuinely so -- the girls really aren't sidekicks? Or Anne of Green Gables?

E. Nesbit is great.

From that Salon article:
"At a session called 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Colonialism,' 22-year-old Tracy Douglas was giving a persuasive, Edward Said-influenced reading of the post-colonial overtones of Rowling's fourth book. She pointed out the focus on the eroticized 'other' -- Fleur Delacour, Cho Chang, Padma and Parvati Patil -- as the female sexual ideal."

Discuss, nerds.

I can't imagine wanting to discuss anything less.

My sis certifies Anne of Green Gables as the female protagonist in kids' lit.

Where this not a YA book, another traditional ending, of course, would be for Harry to be killed but only after impregnating Ginny with his child.

129: LB's writeup of The Plot Against Hogwarts doesn't take into account the concerted efforts of the principals within the wizarding world—particularly moneyed, institutional, and pure-bred wizards—to occlude the events that led to Voldemort's rise. The "He Who Must Not Be Named" meme is evidence of this effort: He mustn't be evoked or discussed generally. However the kids, being young and plucky, have not yet internalized this rule.

The Lemony Snicket books are also gender-balanced, in that the heroes are one girl, one boy, and one I believe indeterminately gendered baby (it might have a gender, but I missed it), and again no one's a sidekick.

Fleur Delacour isn't really a post-colonial 'other' right? I mean, she's French.

128: Right. Take one of each. Series haven't been worth reading since John D. MacDonald died.

134: But Dumbledore is killed off, so he can continue to be the infallible adult sage, and it won't pose any obstacle to Harry's growing up. The parental figure who Harry really has been struggling against is the shadow of his father, who throughout the books Harry has come to realize as deeply problematic, especially in his cruel treatment of Snape. In order to reconcile with his father, Harry has to forgive Snape, I think.

141: But does that make any sense in terms of the magnitude of the threat? Voldemort is presented as too big to be in denial over.

87: Lumpy in reference to plot and style, not lumpen. Mieville isn't a lumpen Marxist by any means, economically or theoretically--at least not unless the LSE has changed a lot in the past ten years.

143: She's part whatever, which is what makes her sexually alluring.

There has to be a joke about Algerians in here somewhere, I just can't find it.

Lemony Snicket: pretty sure baby Sunny is a girl, and mostly indeterminately gendered.

Now THERE was an awful last book of a series. Unless there's another book after The Last, I'm going to be disappointed with the whole thing.

My sis certifies Anne of Green Gables as the female protagonist in kids' lit.

I'm shocked.

144 is top-notch curmudgeoning. I salute you, and wish I was old enough to share in the sentiment. "Series haven't been worth reading since the Sprawl Trilogy" doesn't have the same ring to it.

146: I'm thinking about the problem of public memory in Russia concerning the Gulag. There's no problem to big to deny if the will is there to forget it.

LB and Armshasher have miraculously transposed the Gitmo thread.

129: Dumbledore's isolated politically, though.

The Little House books are good on gender, and obviously (given the manifest destiny themes) not good on race.

You know, re-read them. Because I was surprised that Pa, who is definitely the heroic central figure in those books, is quite admant that there *are* good Indians, and there's a definite undertone of sympathy from him for the Indians being evacuated from Indian territory. At the end of Little House on the Prairie, the Indians leave (the scene where Laura wants the Indian baby), and then a chapter or two later the book concludes with the Ingalls family having to leave as well. The parallelism is there. There's also the black doctor who saves the family when they get malaria; he's a doctor with the Indian tribes but is himself African-American. When PK and I read that book, I was surprised that the Indian parts were as good as they were; the main complaint I have about them is that they're so marginal compared to the primary narrative and the white character's *fear* of them that it would be easy to read them primarily as scary wild men. But when I read it I made kind of a point of using my voice to add a little irony to the fear, and of explaining that the reason the white settlers are afraid of the Indians is because the Indians are, in fact, quite angry about the settlers moving in and taking the land for themselves--a position PK was perfectly able to sympathize with. He cried when the Indians left, and that scene really is terribly moving.

PK cries a lot, huh?

Re. Nesbit, I have a problem with her portrayal of servants. I mean, wow.

Re. Little House, I also meant to point out that while Laura wants the Indian baby as a pet, her mother (who is otherwise pretty racist) says to her that the mother wants to keep her baby--which is, albeit a simple answer one might use to tell a kid they can't have a pet baby raccoon, also precisely the point.

155: I keep telling him boys don't cry, but it doesn't seem to be working.

152: But Voldemort was the enemy: it's not as if the entire power structure is implicated in his crimes (unless my memory of the books --I think I've only read the first four, or however many there were when I gave a set to my niece -- is all messed up. There are issues that some powerful people were implicated, but enough that no one in government is taking action?). What's the motivation for covering up?

"which is, albeit a simple answer one might use to tell a kid they can't have a pet baby raccoon, also precisely the point."

b now you're going to make w-lfs-n cry.

Try, "I'll give you something to cry about."

Then show him pictures of dead clowns.

These books are pretty great.

That sounds interesting, but do I trust a review written by "Nathan Brazil"? I think that chosing the name of the messiah from the Well World books as a pseudonym is a bit suspicious.

156: Hm. I can see that, but I wonder how much is servants, and how much is adults -- I'm remembering contemptuous treatment of adults generally, along the cliched 'they'd never believe the truth' lines.

LB, Harry's place isn't like that of any other kid, because he might in fact be the most powerful wizard in the world besides Dumbledore and Voldemort. And one of the reasons he's forever getting into very dangerous confrontations is that he doesn't listen to the adults who are trying to protect him.

Talking about Voldemort brings him power, like an evil Santa Claus. That is, like Santa Claus.

110: I don't think the matter of Lin is at all a girlfriend in peril scenario. I think it's--kind of like Rowling's sexism and racism--accidental. Accidental and very revealing. Somebody needs to have something horrible happen; it needs to be be someone we like; it needs to be someone very vulnerable to Mr. Motley; and it can't be Scientist Guy because of the plot. What happens to Lin happens because Mieville started out with a "guys are the majority of protagonists and various left-wing things happen" plot. I would also bet that he heard about it from people after publication.

I like Mieville because it's so fantastic to see a nerdy left activist fantasy geek get famous, and because all his books are about things that I recognize...the whole story in The Scar? Man, that's like the activist nerd day dream story--vampires plus pirates plus revolution plus buried theoryhead stuff!

I don't like Iron Council because I feel like he had a moral he wanted to impart and some wizardry to show off, and he cobbled together a plot all anyhow. (His work can be awfully left-condescending at times). I don't like the character of Toro because it feels like "Oh, I ought to illustrate both that women can engage in violence and that people can be motivated by personal things when doing politics and I need to show that family stuff motivates people....so I guess I'll show her getting all worked up about her baby". It's like, because he doesn't fully develop other women characters (like the woman mayor, I wish we'd seen more of her) he ends up having to have Toro do something annoyingly stereotypical. If you're going to have someone long passionately for revenge for years and years (which is, to me, kind unrealistic) you could easily have her be someone who'd been done wrong in a business deal, or jailed because she killed someone in self defense, or any number of (pat, inadequate) things that don't come down to oh, my baby. And Mieville doesn't write about kids or family or babies except when he needs to haul one in to make a political point. Clunkety clunk clunk.

156: I immediately think of the cap-gun scene in one of the Amulet books, and recalling that I cringed at the overt racism of it even as a kid when I read it.

I don't remember servants much, but that might be your point.

Damn, you people comment too fast. My predictions: Harry doesn't die, Snape isn't really evil, Neville is a goner.

I think it would be more interesting (for the reasons articulated above) if Snape were bad, but I think we'll discover it's all part of Dumbledore's plan. Which will be more satisfying.

You people don't read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee to your kids?!????!

Dead clowns are far less sad than live clowns.

If you really want him to live a joyless life, just get him a cute pet.

Also, all you smart political literary criticism types take all of the fun out of reading.

Series haven't been worth reading since John D. MacDonald died.

Talk about someone with gender issues ... I picked one up a couple years back, after having read them in my teens, and god knows how I managed to get past the attitudes towards women. Maybe I absorbed them unconsciously, which is why I'm now a cynical quasi-alcoholic living on a houseboat in Florida, pretending to be a "salvage expert."

154: I was waiting for this, because you're reading them now, on recommendation. Mine was one of the voices in favor; it seems I brought it up several times. One of the admirable qualities of the books is their age-appropriate narrative voice and point of view. Laura's reaction to the papoose, her sensitivity to Ma's terror, are about her being young. Things look very different in the later books, when Laura is almost then actually grown up, and judges accordingly.

but I think we'll discover it's all part of Dumbledore's plan. Which will be more satisfying.

*This* is what I'm talking about, dammit!

Eh, they could have been worse, so long as you accepted that any woman McGee was attracted to was either (a) evil and empty, or (b) just about to be torn apart by wild dogs.

"I picked one up a couple years back, after having read them in my teens, and god knows how I managed to get past the attitudes towards women. Maybe I absorbed them unconsciously, which is why I'm now a cynical quasi-alcoholic living on a houseboat in Florida, pretending to be a "salvage expert.""

But you are getting laid a lot? Right?!?! Right?!?! Please tell me that is true!

I read everything I could get my hands on. So I read Nancy Drew (sister's), lots of Louis lamour books and MacDonald (dad's).

Help! My nieces have taken over the internet! Someone bust me out of here!

I haven't read any of the books, but I'm guessing that my idea that Dumbledore is Voldemort is unlikely to materialize.

Sure, Laura and Pa are on paper as being on the side of "some Indians are really nice," while Ma comes off as more of an asshole on the issue, but it's Pa and L who are all about moving further west. Ma wants to stay in some settled area, and leave the rest of the country the f alone, and really, she's right, whatever her reasons.

173: Although Anderson and I disagree about the merits of book 5, I am in thorough agreement about the evilness of Snape, and the necessity for the story that Dumbledore not be omniscient.

I read a lot of Nancy Drew as a kid because they were on my sisters' shelves. I always thought of her as having admirable get-up-and-go. The Hardy Boys, on the other hand, were dumb jocks who probably killed time between mysteries administering swirlies.

The etymology for "Avada Kadavra": "The Aramaic avada means 'I destroy/kill' whereas kedavra means 'as I speak'." Did anyone else assume it was just a phonetic spelling of "I want a cadaver"?

re-reading the Little House books, what amazed me was the extent to which her father was a shiftless, irresponsible loser.

He is repeatedly unable to make a going concern of any farm or business he turns his hand to. He builds a rickety structure somewhere, tries to make a living, then the business goes bust--and off they move, somewhere further west, where he has heard there are prospects.

of course, old Unreliable Narrator Laura is completely blind to what a pathetic loser her father is. She even falls for that hopeless story when he takes their money to town, gets drunk and loses it all, and then comes back with this laughable tale about being stuck in a snow cave for days on end.

i mean--he is such a type. the bad provider. and of course the ma has to fill in for all of his absences and omissions. and she did an amazing job, right? cause laura *never caught on*.

I think the argument that Harry can't die because it will mess with the kiddie audience is non-operational, because haven't they already been toughened-up by the scene where he blinds all those horses?

181: when I saw it just now I thought it was a phonetic spelling of "Abracadabra," while in fact it is sort of the opposite.

182: And eats all their Christmas candy! What a jerk.

p.s.--E. Nesbit is the greatest children's author of all time, but her gender politics are not so great. E.g. in the house of Arden, Elfrida always has to take the back seat to Edred, the rightful heir. the Bastable girls are nice and white-mouse-ish, but it is generally Oswald who advances the plot, or Noel or H. O. (and that's not merely because Oswald is telling it all in his omniscient voice).

Endless things to love about Nesbit, but hard sometimes to believe that she was part of the most progressive, Fabian, feminist social set in England of her day.

185--
exactly. insult to injury. though whether he really bought it and then ate it, or just spent all the money on liquor, is hard to recover from the remaining evidence.

Did anyone else assume it was just a phonetic spelling of "I want a cadaver"?

Me, I always find myself singing the phrase to the tune of that "Lion King" song, "Hakuna Matatta" or whatever. One of these days I'll work up a parody.

182: Recently there was a story here in town about a frontier type like that. Around 1910 he left town and disappeared in the West after writing two or three letters. His wife and daughter felt terrible and really did suffer. His granddaughter recently researched his story and found that he had remarried (his third marriage) and raised a whole new family, and that he had already had a family in Michigan when he came to Minnesota. The frontier had its dark, scuzzy side.

People have been trying to farm the Dakotas and Montana for well over a centruy without much success. Failure is normal there.

"People have been trying to farm the Dakotas and Montana for well over a centruy without much success"

And yet you hearty, stoic midwesterners keep it up.

Hmmmm at comments way upthread about active female protagonists for the younger set...

I recommend Scott Westerfield's recent trilogy: Uglies, Pretties, and Specials. I haven't read Specials yet, so I suppose it could still go horribly wrong somehow, but I actually have faith.

The plotting isn't especially intricate, and doesn't break much ground as science fiction--the basic environment is Brave New World divided by "Harrison Bergeron", and the environment may call to mind the WB network of the last decade.

The wonderful thing about science fiction, as Le Guin points out in her indispensable introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, is not that it can predict some alien aspect of the future; the best science fiction reveals an alien aspect of the present. And there's a reason so many stories can be reduced to a few basic plot structures; it's not a mere failure of imagination.

Westerfield seems to actually take the choices of his characters (especially his lead, Tally) very seriously. She's believably heroic because she takes action to serve not some ideal of Heroism, but rather to serve her own needs, and her community, and her world. In no particular order. Which is why every choice she makes matters. Tally's eventual and literal liberation (I hope!) springs from the same struggle every high school harbors.

But it's also a Ripping Yarn of the old school. Flying blind, jumps from high places; evading pursuit, dangerous climbs; making camp without fire, making conversation with a stranger caught by surprise. And that's not the half of it.

If you're gonna read it, this summer is likely your last chance before Hollywood starts mucking about. I'm just sayin'.

I was wondering if John wouldn't find the last dozen or so comments more to his liking.

It's all Ukrainians now.

I actually live in Minnesota. Most Dakotans live huddled on the Minnesota border, or at an airbase.

Not Kidding.

Emerson, avert your eyes.

the environment may call to mind the WB network of the last decade

So true, and one of the many reasons I love you. Bascha scores so many cool points for telling us about those novels.

194: Fucking shite. Uglies is in the hands of the same production company that brought us Aliens vs. Predator (both 1 and 2), First Daughter and Dr. DoLittle 3?

I'm ditching work a few minutes early so we can convivially bitch about this in person.

Oswald Bastable?

Wow, I learn something new every thread.

174: That's the "redshirt" convention, right? You definitely didn't want to be a secondary character in any sort of adventure story. IMX McD. was a good man with whom to spend an airplane flight or a few hours at the pool or beach.

135 - Yeah, HTS is pretty strange. It's remembered for the finding of the notebooks and so on, but in fact the first half of the book is taken up with Ole Golly leaving.

Those Scott Westerfield books sound really interesting, thanks.

Edward Eager is good gender-wise, and otherwise.

Speaking of genre-y novels with female protagonists being turned into movies, I am surprised to see that the people involved in this give it a chance of being rather good.

I've just been rereading Harriet the Spy myself. It is really great.

197--

interesting--i didn't know someone had re-used the name from Nisbet.

Yeah, Oswald is the oldest boy in the family, and he writes the book, but he is always trying to write as an uninvolved omniscient narrator, only his own POV keeps leaking through.

"Then the children puzzled over what to do, until Oswald came up with a very clever idea. He often does this sort of thing."

part of the brilliance of the book is seeing Nesbit handling Oswald's own difficulties with the narration.

Gore Vidal somewhere comments that it is the most brilliant piece of third person autobiography since Caesar's Gallic Wars.

I'm actually working on a paper right now that is rather a lot about Oswald.

Dammit, I suffered through PSS because all you Internet nerds said Mieville was awesome. And it wasn't. Now you're telling me, I read the wrong one?

204--
whoa--rfts--when you're done with that paper, can you post it on this site? i really want to read it.

If it's about the theme of Oswalds throughout the British novel, you might want to include this book.

The Scar is better. On the other hand, if PSS struck you as really not your kind of thing at all, I probably wouldn't bother.

Is this the Vidal you're thinking of, or was it something else?

I doubt I'd care about pollution as much as I do if I hadn't internalized John D. MacDonald's attitude from the McGee books at an early, impressionable age.

207: It isn't (you're shocked, I know), but that sounds great.

it isn't *completely* about british oswalds, just *mosely*.

re: 45

They filmed part of The Golden Compass at my wife's shop. They closed for a day or so, and completely redressed it 'period' style. Unfortunately, for her, Daniel Craig wasn't there.

201: I predict the record for absolute suckitude of film adaptations of Gibson will remain intact.

209--
yes, i imagine that is the vidal quote i was thinking of, and my memory made it more complimentary than it is.

whoa--rfts--when you're done with that paper, can you post it on this site? i really want to read it.

It's a paper intended for publication/part of my dissertation, so I wouldn't want to post it outright, but I'd be delighted to offer a copy of the ms. by email. You may not enjoy it in any way, as the Oswald stuff is serving as a main example in an argument about something else (the way that fiction exploits certain cognitive biases to create nifty effects), rather than claiming new and thrilling things about the book or Nesbit, but it would be my pleasure.

MacDonald isn't so much anti-pollution as he is misanthropic -- people should just stop moving to Florida, you know? Ask Hiassen.

I think the best old-school children's books for gender equity are Swallows and Amazons, particularly if you can restrain yourself from making "Able Seaman Titty" jokes.

And it was all a dream, right down to the scar.

THE END

219: Perfect.

214: Probably, but Peter Weir? The guy who wrote Children of Men? Way to get my hopes up, internet.

216--
thanks, rfts. sounds like a good dissertation.

218--of course, why didn't i think of Nancy & Peggy?

though one might have some worries that the independent girl roles are still somewhat masculo-normative. And the Dees do not break any ground in combatting gender stereotypes.

still, much much better than most of the competition.

221: I guess I thought Children of Men was overrated; the really stand-out element was the cinematography, not the writing.

The sanctity-of-off-blog-communication violating mention of a Google Groups for Frowner was in re: a children's books group blog I'm ginning up, fwiw. I'll be sure to mention when it's ready to roll, and Emerson can rage against the dying of the light.

As Harry lay dying on the Quidditch field, he reached up and grabbed Hermione, whispering "please, please, before I am gone, tell me what the man said as he saw the snail drive by in his fancy car with an S on the hood."

"I don't know, Harry," said Hermoine, tears welling in her eyes.

"I can tell you, dear friend," the young wizard rasped, his last breaths leaving his body as he prepared to deliver the punchline, "the man said 'look at that s-car...'"

A+ for 219.

Un Lun Dun, Mieville's latest, features an unattractive female sidekick who becomes the protagonist. No ugly duckling transformation, no weird gender role stuff, although her pretty friend is put in peril.

Re: 224, I really am eager to get that off the ground. We can do it!!

223: still, a better chance than the others. I actually thought the book was relatively weak for Gibson, but Peter Weir has made some swell movies, and if nothing else CoM was endlessly competent. Whatever, though. Books are books, movies are movies. If it's lousy I'll survive.

222: Thanks! I hope it is, and will be.

Hermoine: That was a fun adventure! I'm ready for one last sentence, then let's be done with this book.
Harry: Let's go watch Na-scar!

Harry: Or talk to O-scar?

Hermoine: Oh, Harry. Don't you know that you are a shooting scar?

"Hooray, gang, Voldemort's gone! How about one last celebratory singing of the Oscar Meyer weiner song, except I know you have places to be, so we'll only sing the first line."

Harry: We could live in a bockscar.

pwned, pwned, pwned.

Harry, to Cho: Perfectly normal, babe. Good lovin' always leaves a scar.

213 - still cool though. I'm a bit disappionted they went for Christchurch (yawn) rather than Exeter (my College as well as Pullman's) for the filming, seeing as Jordan College is ON the site of Exeter. I suppose Chch is more picturesque but it's still bloody Christchurch.

First, and briefly, i'm surprised nobody's mentioned Ginny as a possible corpse. She would be perfect for the "Harry have to learn to grieve and lose somebody else he loves" ending. Beyond that, I'd add that of the main three, I'd put Ron as the most likely to die. Apparently the bookies disagree with me, though.

It's only this "faith in Dumbledore" that even has people *wondering* about Snape at this point.

Nonsense. This is an issue about which intelligent people can differ, but there are plenty of reasons to suspect that Snape is not evil.

In the first place, there's the fact that Harry is always wrong about Snape - he has repeatedly assumed that Snape was up to no good, and then been proved wrong, most notably in the first book. This isn't proof, of course, but it's a decent reason for thinking that Harry is, once again, mistaken.

In the second place, there's that incredibly ambiguous conversation that Hagrid overhears between Dumbledore and Snape, in which Dumbledore wants Snape to do something, and Snape refuses. The only plausible explanation (or, at least, the most plausible explanation) that I've seen or thought of for this is that Dumbledore for some reason wanted Snape to kill him, and Snape was refusing. The fact that Dumbledore's last words are "Severus, please," and not "Severus, no" or "Severus, don't" clearly maintain this ambiguity - Dumbledore may just as well be pleading with Snape to kill him as pleading with him not to. Presumably, the reason for all this would be to save Draco's life for some reason

The third issue is a bit more fraught, because I'm not sure here where Rowling's limitations as an author come into play. My basic sense throughout the series has been that, while Snape is a prick, Harry's continuing hatred of him is increasingly puerile. Snape's hatred of Harry, likewise, seems essentially based not on Snape's personal commitment to the cause of evil, but to his visiting the sins of the father on the son. All the psychological drama of this would basically be removed, I think, if Snape is simply evil. Unfortunately, though, I'm not really sure this is what Rowling is trying to do, because she's not a very good writer. So I can see where the disagreement would lie on that matter.

But, at any rate, I think the pretty obviously calculated ambiguity of Snape's "betrayal" of Dumbledore provides reason enough to suspect that all is not as it seems, without having to worry even the slightest about "faith in Dumbledore."

I'm ready for one last sentence, then let's be done with this book.

xox.

'mais pourquoi, mon cheri," dit Hermione, "pourquoi mourir?"
"pourquoi, tu demandes? en effet," dit Harry, " je meurs, car...."

Hermoine: You know where I've never been? Madagascar!

"That's no scar."

"The captain's log."

re: 238

Yeah, I empathize. It's always ChCh, which is totally atypical. Most of the older colleges in the centre of town are like Exeter, Jesus, Brasenose, Merton, etc.

I like that song by Tracy Chapman, "Fasscar".

"As Snape approached the door, wielding the Deadly Deadly Dagger of Deadly Deadly Death, Harry finally used his RAZR to call the number Dumbledore had told him would restore his power. But the automated telephone menus were terribly designed, and Harry cried out powerlessly as his fate befell him.

"Beside his body the telephone mumbled, 'Si ya tienes un contrato de servicio y estás buscando un teléfono celular nuevo para quedarte dentro de tu plan, entonces simplemente puedes buscar...'"

"One wand, broken; one cock, unused, uncut; one head, with scar."

my kid has been reading the french version of hp1. one of the best coinages is the french for the sorting hat: choixpeau.

re: 249

A friend of mine swears the best way to learn* a language is to buy a copy of Harry Potter in the language, and work through it.

* or at least, advance beyond the bare rudiments of grammar and vocabulary

250--
that's progress; it used to be the new testament.

250: And yet the funding isn't there to publish Harry Potter Agus Clach An Fheallsanaich.

"Aw, look at the kitty cat's whiskar."

239 - It's something I've been wondering, the extent to which Rowling can tell that Harry is unpleasant and immature. Is that something Rowling planned? A "characters go where they want" sort of thing? Or does Rowling think we're just wild about Harry? If she more skilled in character development, I too would be more certain about where the last book will end up.

re: 252

I'm impressed by your fluent teuchter.

A Scots version would be more fun.

http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter

(dept. of full circle dept.)

"What do you mean, you hardly even know her?" said Harry.

"Who is she, anyway?" said Hermione. "And how do you 'mysc' someone?"

"It's a Muggle joke," said Ron. "See, first you said, "My scar..."

For female protagonists, I love Diana Wynne Jones--especially Howl's Moving Castle (which was later adapted by Hayao Miyazaki) and Fire and Hemlock--and Robin McKinley, with just about every book she writes.

As to the problematic race/sex question in Harry Potter, I think that the Muggle/other races/Wizard dichotomy is generally supposed to address the question of a class thought to be deficient. Hagrid is clearly an example of a perceived miscegenation, and it's pretty clear that prejudice is incredibly widely spread throughout the wizarding community--and also what Harry Potter and Pals feel about that.

As to sexualizing the other...Hermione and Ginny are the real romantic leads in the last couple of books, and they're both as British as you get.

I remember seeing articles like this.

But now it seems as if it might actually exist.

CHAPTER 28: I ALONE SURVIVED.

They were all dead. McGonagall, Lupin, Weasley, Hagrid, even that promising young wizard, Potter. If only they had listened, if only they had taken his warnings to heart! Moody gazed, one last time, at the ruins of what had once been the best magical academy in the world, and which now served as a mass grave for every decent witch and wizard in England. Every one, that is, except himself. Moody forced himself to turn his back on the smoking ruins of Hogwarts. As he limped, stiffly, towards the horizon, a single tear trickled from his good eye, and zigzagged down his face, pale with grief and disfigured by scars.

258: apparently people who buy that also buy this.

Goddamit, nerds! How many of you are there?!?

This airticle's a stub. Ye can gie Wikipædia a haund bi eikin til it.

You have got to be kidding me.

So is the Scots Wikipædia the only one that uses the ligature, or what?

If there are enough nerds to write Latin Wikipedia then there are enough to buy Harry Potter in Latin.

As he limped, stiffly, towards the horizon,

…clutching his stapler…

re: 258

Both of those links say it's planned. There's no actual release. I can't imagine there's enough demand to make it financially viable.

There are only about 60,000 speakers of Scots Gaelic and the number of children and young people who'd form the core audience for the book, a tiny fraction of that.

257: See, I just don't buy this line of reasoning. It's saying, in effect, "We white folks will be glad to talk about race as long as we don't actually have to include any of those pesky people of color....we can do it all by metaphor and from the perspective of white folks, but don't worry, we're just as multiracial as can be". If you write a set of books taking place in the UK which ask (in part) "What does it mean to be British?" and those books include actual brown people only as tokens, well, that's not good enough. In fact, I'd almost prefer a Harry Potter that was all white instead of the tokens--this way, it just deals with questions of race and brushes them aside.

Actually, I don't like what the Harry Potter books have to say about "being British"; I think it's really retrograde, but not on purpose. Anyone else here read The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter? It's okay, and sorta thought-provoking, although a little thin in places.

264--

60,000? that's a lot. you do know that there is a version of hp1 in print in ancient greek, right? and the number of children and young people who read that?

on race--don't forget house-elves, which seems to me JKR's main attempt to address it.

re: 261

W'ur an educatit folk. Nane ae yer bastardised nae-ligature orthography for us.

re: 266

Yeah, but that would be created by geek enthusiasts for geek enthusiasts. I'd imagine the Hebrides don't sustain an enormous geek-subculture. Although there is a fairly active language-advocacy subculture which, if those articles are right, have taken it upon themselves to produce a translation.

I had initially read the "D" in "H/D" in 132 as "Dumbledore", and was utterly appalled.

On the ride home, I realized it probably stood for "Draco", and now I'm much less squicked out.

OT, do any of the cyclists here have a recommendation for cycling gloves that don't disintegrate after a few months of use?

I'd imagine the Hebrides don't sustain an enormous geek-subculture.

Yes, but that may change.

re: 270

Heh.

Linlithgow is slap bang in the industrial belt in between Edinburgh and Glasgow. No-one's spoken Gaelic there for 1000 years.

ttaM, this is a bit rude to ask perhaps, but is that Scots Wikipaedia serious? serious but sustained by cranks? I mean, I'm very very ignorant about Scottish culture, but it just sort of looks like the sort of dialect rendering I remember from 19th-c English novels, which all the post-colonialists in my department used to rail against.

174

And in fact some of MacDonald's 1950s books were "worse". Also I don't remember all of McGee's women getting killed off although certainly some were.

265 -- The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter? -- contrasted to The resistible rise of Arturo Ui

269--
yes, Held gloves from austria. top quality, carbon plates on knuckles and palm for when you hit the road at 95mph.

by the way, anyone think that JKR is just trying to be like Dante? He ends each of the three parts of the Commedia with the word "star".

(oh, alright, "stelle". whaa, you want JKR to use "cicatrice"?)

?

Darn, 276 is the missing punctuation from 274.

The Uni Tit States. Love it.

265: Yes, exactly. It's published by Verso, and that's rather their style.

re: 272

Well, a bit of both. There's a serious movement to rehabilitate Scots as a literary language which has been ongoing in various forms for the past 80 years or so.

However, Scots hasn't really been a literary language since the late 17th/early 18th century so there's no hard and fast orthography -- although there are some conventions developing -- and there's no single 'standard' Scots dialect.

So, while there's quite a bit of Scots on the web, the people who maintain those pages are 'enthusiasts'. But they are genuinely serious in their attempt to revive Scots as a literary language.

Most Scots from the central belt and the east coast speak some Scots, though. It's just that there's a sort of a continuum between 'pure' Scots at one end and standard English at the other and most of us slide back and forth along that line depending on context and who we are talking to. This makes attempts to write websites purely in Scots seem a little artificial to me -- most people speak a sort of 'creole' of Scots and English all the time.

Scots does have a distinctive vocabulary and the grammar isn't the same as English most native Scots tend to mix them up a lot. I'd imagine I'm fairly typical in that when speaking to people in my hometown I'd use largely English grammar with a lot of Scots vocabulary rather than the sort of 'pure' Scots of those web-pages.

There are people in other parts of the country, though -- rural Fife, Aberdeenshire, etc -- who speak very different forms of Scots that still use distinctive grammar and whose speech would, I'd imagine, be largely unintelligible to non-Scots. Largely unintelligible even to a lot of Scots.

I suspect a lot of the stuff on that site looks funny to you because you are not used to seeing a dialect (or language) so close to English written down.

Anything involving the word "wee" looks funny to me.

280--
weird, so like, are you scots yourself?

somehow i didn't think of 'ttam' as a scots family name--i thought they all started with 'mc' and stuff. or is your family named after that doofy hat?

you are not used to seeing a dialect (or language) so close to English written down.

True, and most of the time I've seen dialect (or language) written down, it's been done by people who were, by and large, speakers of "standard English" who were doing it for effect (often belittling)---with the occasional writer like Hogg or Clare who slip in and out of dialect voices with rhetorical deliberation.

I overheard a conversation between an elderly women and the driver on a local bus on the Isle of Lewis, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't English, although with the noise of the bus and me sitting a few seats back, I couldn't hear them that well.

http://www.luath.co.uk/audio/fiction/butnben/chapter1-nadia.rm

Is a clip of someone speaking Scots as it's actually spoken more or less where I am from. He reads nicely, too. It's the author of a modern Scots novel reading from his book.

It's really well worth a listen. He's quite funny, too.

I sure hope 282 is a joke. If not, bitzer, you should lurk more.

I can't listen to the link, ttaM, because I've one way or another disabled all of my audio programs. But thanks for helping a sister out!

This conversation is making me want to reread Huck Finn.

286--
you already told me that today, ogged. and i told you i will stop commenting, soon, when a raft of work comes in.

and if you got suckered by 282, then you should probably lurk more, too.

I find the way Flann O'Brien slips back and forth between English and Gaelic (when writing with his "Myles na gCopaleen" hat on) fantastically disconcerting.

Actually, everyone should click on the link in 285. Honest.

The link in 285 is indeed good, even if I'm not sure what's going on.

I have no idea what 285 is talking about, but at one point he says "virologist".

And I think at one point he says someone doesn't deserve to be called such a great and strong name as Seamus.

Also, there was a jangle of electricity when somebody's cast was switched off.

My twa brithers were both muckle pilots, which is more than ye can say, Pavel.

There's a serious movement to rehabilitate Scots as a literary language which has been ongoing in various forms for the past 80 years or so.

Does this include Irvine Welsh?

I dunnae either, but the last sentence, when he says "my name is Pavel," reminded me of Ken Loach's great film "My Name is Joe," which was subtitled in its American release.

286: Bitzer has been sternly spoken to by the resident Hitler.

re: 294

I'd be surprised if Welsh sees it that way. He's just writing in the 'actual' voice of people from the places he writes about. James Kelman* has been doing the same thing for 20 years or more (and in the process written some great novels).

I don't think either of them see what they are doing as 'promoting' anything, so much as they are gesturing towards a certain authenticity of authorial voice.

* His novel, A Disaffection is great, but bleak.

296--
heh, now, it's early in the thread for the law of large numbers to kick in.
it's just a way ogged has of making people feel welcome. first he welcomed me on the analicious thread, and then he wanted to make sure i felt welcome here, too.

and i do.

178: Well, again, the sympathy with Indians/passively cooperating in their deracination thing is historically accurate. What do you want, a book about the mid-nineteenth century in which the white settler leads some kind of rebellion and drives himself and all the other settlers into the sea?

What do you want, a book about the mid-nineteenth century in which the white settler leads some kind of rebellion and drives himself and all the other settlers into the sea?

Wa-tho-huk and Louise?

299: It's not all about white people.

299--
oh sure--and next you'll probably tell us that shakespeare's portrayal of shylock was just totally totally fine and we shouldn't get upset because things were different back when history was around.

Hank knocked his Stetson back as he sidled up to the bar. The two drunk cowboys at a nearby table took no notice, while the bartender flashed a smile that showed three gold teeth, but twice as many empty spaces. A somewhat haggard bottle-blonde stood up from her seat at the other end of the bar and groped her way towards the jukebox in the corner.

Hank ordered a beer, then turned around to watch the woman choose her songs. After some fumbling and a few curses, she managed to hit the buttons in the right sequence, and an dreary Johnny Cash tune wheezed up from the ancient speakers. Turning, she noticed Hank watching her, and, with a few stumbles and more muttered curses, she made her way to his place.

"You new in town, stranger?" the harridan screeched redundantly. "Yep," Hank answered laconically. "Where you from?" the interrogator persisted. "Back east," said Hank. "Are you stayin', or just passin' through?" the woman continued, with a vacuous leer that was clearly meant to imply that she would prefer the former alternative. "Depends," said Hank. "Well, you sure are a big one, ain't chye?" This question coming just as the unctuous tavernkeeper finally delivered the promised brew. "That'll be two dollars, mister." Hank paid him, took a sip of the bland beverage and turned back to his interlocutor. "Guess so," he replied.

"But say, what's that thing on yer forehead there -- is it a tattoo?" Hank checked his hand as it moved involuntarily to brush the mark that once had seemed to mean everything in the world. "Just a scar," he said, "just an old scar."

Re: the Little House books, and specifically bitzer's comment upthread, I've been imagining a retelling of the series as a Faulknerian epic, told from the multiple perspectives of the other characters and full of all the darkness Wilder left out. I'll think more about it when I'm reading it with my daughters, who are now four. I forget, B -- PK is six? Seven?

301: When it's a memoir written by a white woman who grew up in her white family, it is, actually.

302: Did I say "totally fine"? I said remarkably sensitive, and not the simple stereotype people think they remember. I'd go to bat for Shylock, too, actually: yes, he's a stereotype, but that's not all he is.

From ttaM's link: a pared-down prose utilising vernacular Glaswegian speech patterns, though avoiding for the most part the quasi-phonetic rendition of Tom Leonard.

I don't know either of these writers, but in general, rendering the speech patterns and grammar rather than the phonetic has been my preference. There's a rich linguistic tradition in Black American, but reading "dat" or "goin" just makes cringe, like I'm participating in minstrel-show racism.

I've skimmed through a couple of that genre of books called "urban," which is written by black people for black people, and what they choose to render phonetically is quite selective: everyone uses "aight," in the books I looked at, but the broadest phonetic dialects tend to distinguish the lower-status, comedic characters.

Books, Gaelic...you watch the topic swirl and eddy until you get a chance to jump in and say:

Happy Bloomsday!

That is all. I skipped the reading again.

305: Well, you were positing an alternative story altogether, so pbbth.

304: He's six. And Louise Erdrich wrote a book called "The Birchbark House" which is intended as kind of an Indian version of the Little House books--we'll read that at some point precisely to get another perspective, but damn (having leafed through it), it's got dead kids and all sorts of shit. Which, I know realistic, but we might have to wait a while before PK's really ready to let me read it to him.

This book was required reading in my middle school. It's about how a boy who was captured by Indians as a baby loves being with the Indians and hates his original family's way of life after they recapture him. I particularly remember the segment about how uncomfortable European shoes are compared with moccasins.

305--
the repetition of "totally" was there to indicate i was teasing.

i recently read 'uncle tom's cabin'--really good book, and of course of huge historic significance. not, shall we say, untouched by racist presuppositions on the author's part. yeah, you've got to read old stuff with some awareness of when it was written.

I would also recommend reading the Amazon reviews of that book as a fascinating window into the world of juvenile closed-mindedness.

Lots of Minnesotans on this thread: Any of you read any of the Moberg emigrant series? I've been curious about it for a while.

310: Eh. The Noble Savage stereotype isn't a whole lot more enlightened than the vicious one.

312: Those are great. Mustn't some of them be parodies though?

Also, is this the one where the protagonist arrives in the English settlement and recoils at the "glittering falseness" of the whitewashed houses? 'Cause that was a great line.

313: It's certainly well regarded locally. I've seen the statue, but never gotten around to reading the books. Because I hate America.

Was at a recent SF convention near home, participated in a Harry Potter track of programming. The young lady who thought of the track had an intriguing idea -- McGonigle is not as necessarily aboveboard and nice as she seems, after all, she appears to stand by and let a lot of stuff happen that she could help or make pleasant, etc. My friend is Harry's age, and has pretrty much grown up with him. I was fascinated by the idea and can't see how well it bears up (if at all).

re: 306

I think it depends how it's used. Christopher Brookmyre -- the Scottish 'Carl Hiassen'* -- uses a lot of quasi-phonetically rendered dialect in the dialogue (and any first person narration) in his novels but mostly uses standard English for the descriptive prose. However, he does so without condescension.

http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/short4.htm is an example.

I don't get any sense of the equivalent of 'minstrel show' racism from prose written in Scots dialect/language. It's how people actually talk and if you completely avoid any attempt at rendering how it actually sounds (the quasi-phonetic thing) you lose the dialect completely. I'd feel differently if I was reading prose written by someone who wasn't actually Scottish which attempted to do the same.

* he's better than Hiassen, but some of his writing is in a similar genre.

I like Brookmyre (though Welsh is just too depressing, can't put myself through that). But I always wonder when reading that sort of stuff - do I try to pronouce it in my head or do I just understand the words? And what the fuck would I do if I were reading it out loud? In Will Self's latest book, The Book of Dave there's lots of a sort of cockney dialect written phonetically - that took many pages of sounding it in my head before I could just read it and 'know' what it said. But I think I could read it out loud pretty easily because it's just a sloppier version of how I speak anyway. But I'd sound like a tit trying to read in a Scottish accent (especially as I am completely awful at accents).

314: I don't know about the book in 310, which could very well be a noble savage portrayal, but there are cases of captives deciding not to return to their families (example which I haven't read).

I liked that book when I was 11, and so did most other people in my class. You've gotta start somewhere when it comes to viewing The Other as real humans.

Frowner, I'm not sure I understand 265. Is your issue that the protagonists are all white?

320: There are indeed.
321: Ideally, it would be nice to start with books where The Other, isn't. Luckily kids books are getting much better about that, I think.

297: I guess what I meant is, does Irvine Welsh believe himself to be writing in English-with-dialect, or in Scots?

321: You know, I remember something like the moccasin thing from school reading, so I probably have read that book and don't remember it at all. Or there's another moccasin scene out there. I read Ishi: Last of his Tribe, sometime around that same age, thought it really interesting, and really depressing.

there are cases of captives deciding not to return to their families

Sure, I grew up a mile from a park named after this interesting woman.

Here's a question for ttaM: is it harder---slower, less natural, more sound-out-loud---for you to read the phonetically rendered stuff, as in the Scots Wikipaedia stuff, than it would be to read Standard English stuff?

325.---My mother read Ishi as part of a required Californian History segment---in high school, I think. It would have been before 1960 in any event. Other fun fact about Ishi: it was written by Ursula K. [Kroeber] Le Guin's parents.

So no one wanted to talk about Riddley Walker, huh? What about The Lion of Jachin-Boaz and Boaz-Jachin?

Oh, whoops, it's The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz—I can never remember.

I think it's great that Riddley Walker was written by the same guy who wrote the Frances the Badger books. But it's been too long since I read the former for me to have anything interesting to say about it. I have never read The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, and yet this cover looks strangely familiar. I have read The Mouse and His Child, but found it disappointingly disappointing.

re: 327

Fwiw, the Scots wikipedia stuff isn't phonetically rendered. That's an attempt at a modern Scots orthography. It only looks phonetically rendered to you.

I don't find all of it that easy to read but that's because they use words that are either quite old-fashioned or which are from dialects other than my own, and, tbh, my Scots vocabulary could be larger.

Some of the articles on there I can just read like I'd read standard English, though. It depends on the content.

re: 324

I have no idea, actually. I'm not sure he'd accept a Scots versus English-with-dialect distinction. He's writing in an Edinburgh dialect, and whether you'd describe that as Scots or English with a dialect, or a Scots/English creole, or something else, is probably a question for linguists rather than novelists.

321, 323 etc.

A book in which "The Other...isn't" is a completely different beast from a book that encourages "viewing The Other as real humans". If not, your comments have already achieved comity! I can't speak to the qualities of that "ideal" book, but I must speak up for the kind of book that made me able to live in society at all.

I'm (manifestly) no academic, but I remember enough of elementary school to know that the overwhelming majority of kids reading books can not be gassed into thinking we're All One under the superficial coating of pigment/culture/naughty bits/whatever. They already know there's an Other somewhere.

In my 2nd-grade class, I never had trouble identifying The Other because he was the guy reading a book during recess--namely, me. And being The Other had consequences, as it always does.

As soon as it's possible to raise a generation of children who never sense any significant difference between their identity and that of some mysterious Other they encounter in their family, classroom, playground, neighborhood, church...on that golden day, we shall gather up all the books in which the threatening Other must be confronted as a figure with rights, interests, and power different from what we see in ourselves...these books will be unnecessary.

When that day comes, I expect I'll be long gone. Or newly gone. Or gone real, real soon.

Oops, mustn't forget the "/rant" tag. But seriously! This is why the Republic of Plato gives me hives. Hives that have left a scar.

Also, before I shut up about Scots and go to bed, a lot of words that look like English words mis-spelled (to you) are Scots words.

If you accept that Scots is a language (rather than a dialect of English) -- and there's a pretty compelling linguistic and philological claim to be made for that even if one wants to argue that most actual Scottish people speak some English/Scots hybrid -- it makes no more sense to describe the a Scots word as a variant spelling of an English word than it would to describe a Danish word as a mis-spelling of a Swedish one.

331: Thanks for that. I was putting one of the girls to bed the night before last and saw Russell Hoban's name on one of the Frances books. I thought, could it be?, I have to look that up... but then parenting-induced brain damage made me forget.

He also wrote The Mouse and His Child. This sort of experience is what led to passages like the following in Turtle Diary:

It was a lazy summer afternoon,
and Victoria Beetle was enjoying a quiet cup of tea
when she heard a knock at the door.
She looked out of the window
and saw Big Sam Bumblebee the gang boss.
"If he thinks he can try on that
protection lark with me he'd better think again,"
said Victoria, and she picked up the poker.

Okay, I realize the thread has moved on, but why do the Potter books pose evil wizards as a world-class threat when the most horrible thing they can do is zap people dead one at a time, while ordinary everyday Muggles have guns and bombs and napalm and shit? Can't the Air Force take out Voldemort with a cruise missile?

333--

"I'm (manifestly) no academic"

ahhh...no. not manifest to me, at any rate.

337--

oh, jesus, stras: you just killed Tinkerbell. you just fucking killed her. there you were supposed to clap, and instead you made rude noises, and now she's dead.

mrh: I meant that it's not good enough to be like, "In this book set in contemporary England all the black characters are tokens, but hey, we've got house elves, so we're being proper liberals and talking about race". Contemporary England is just full, you know, of brown people--so a book set there which purports to talk progressively about race and doesn't really include any brown people seems a little funny to me. Seems like deferral to me--much more fun to talk about the rights of cutely foolish, loyal little nonhuman stereotypes than it is to talk about the rights of actual brown people.

Again, I wouldn't mind this if the novel weren't set in contemporary England and weren't about Englishness. But it can't go both ways.

339: Hey, I'm not the one who wrote Tony fucking Blair into the beginning of book six, now am I?

There's fucking in book six?

There's fucking in book six?

All those Weasley kids are coming from somewhere, right?

Speaking of, I'm surprised no one's brought up the umpteen zillion Weasleys in connection with the gross parade of ethnic stereotypes in the Potter books.

344
...weasley being a name of which ethnicity?
i mean, if it was "O'Riley" or the like, i guess there'd be the irish catholic angle.

but what's yours?

scar

No, that was pretty much it.

Harry: Hermione! I really love this scarf!
Hermoine: Harry, watch out for that bus!
Harry: No, I said I really love this scar-

The end.

332.---Thanks for being my native guide!

340: I know the movie casts the key roles as white, but I'm trying to remember the extent to which the text actually clues us in. Not sure what my point is. Just that I tend to default to picturing characters as white unless the text clearly reveals otherwise.

333: Books that encourage kids to grapple with otherness are great. But actually interacting with "Others" makes such a difference. I was lucky enough to have my daughter in a University preschool for several years where the kids were a mix of races, national origins, socioeconomic backgrounds. I think it's really shaped the way she view people. Stereotypes about how all [blacks/poor people/non-English speakers] behave just seem really stupid when you've actually met and spent time with representatives of these groups.

Harry: Hermione, what's your favorite Simon and Garfunkel song?
Voldemort: SILENCE!
Harry: Oh, yeah, "Sounds of Silence" is great, but I'd have to say my favorite is "Scar..."

Hermione: I lik to leav th "e"'s off the ends of words!
Harry: M too! When peopl includ them it can giv you a scar.

339 is pretty classic.

No no, they're debating which Captain Beefheart songs are the best, and one of them comes out in favor of "Dali's Car".

Isn't the "Harry Potter" series set in the future? Because Harry and his little chums could go to the movies to watch Lion King XLVI: Incident at Pride Rock, and afterwards they are all discussing the movie, and Hermione (or whoever is appropriate) sez, "Ooh I really think Simba's gonna defeat the forces of hyaenitude next time around!" and Harry grins his impish little grin and is like "Well I actually rather sympathize with Scar..." as he pulls from his pocket the contract he has signed with Voldemort, and eternal night falls on the world of the Muggles.

ot: is the Chicago meetup still on for tomorrow at 8 at Piece? I think it is, but I want to be sure....I'm going to feel really stupid if I'm the only one who comes.

Even if not everyone comes, there are other ways of having fun too.

"Don't worry, Hermione," said Harry, already dreaming of their future together. "These days, they make the incision under the armpit, so no one will see the scar."

"This fucking performance better win me an oscar..."

Frowner -- I guess I wasn't viewing Dean and Parvati and Angelina (and Cho?) and Kingsley Shacklebolt (and possibly more unspecified) as mere tokens. I certainly don't want to claim that the HP books are a model of excellent writing about race, but I guess I don't find them as bad as you do.

And I don't know how to understand what you mean by "about Englishness" and all that. Clearly you're reading/writing with more information or education than I am.

I find that it's very, very hard, almost impossible, to prove to somebody's satisfaction that a character is not a "token", so I ignore that word whenever anyone uses it.

"...and eternal night falls on the world of the Muggles." is a fantastic way to end a novel. After I saw Fong Sai Yuk, I kept saying that all movies should end with a heroic kung-fu rescue by the Red Flower Society (seriously - Casablanca, Blazing Saddles, The Garden of the Fitzi-Continis, it's all good!); now I'm going to be disappointed if Against the Day doesn't end with eternal night descending on Muggledom.

LB, Harry's place isn't like that of any other kid, because he might in fact be the most powerful wizard in the world besides Dumbledore and Voldemort.

What annoys me about this, and most about the series as a whole in fact, is that he might be, but he's incredibly uninnovative and Hermione is even worse (in book 6 she's all about not ever stirring potions in a way that doesn't accord with the text, without, say, any reasoning about how it might be dangerous, but just that It Isn't Done). The only substantial magical innovators are in fact, roughly in order: Voldemort, Dumbledore, James Potter and friends, the Weasley twins (books 5 and 6) and the younger Snape (book 6). Harry starts to look really frankly quite irresponsible, if you believe he has this kind of power and consider the tiny amount of work he's done in learning its scope and contemplating the ethical uses of it. The lack of exploration is not a function of Harry's age: the young Tom Riddle at a similar age had figured out how to trap fragments of his soul and his father and the other three had worked out how to map the inside of hugely well-protected magical school, complete with flawless tracking even of individuals like Snape, who, as an Occulmens ought to be pretty good at avoiding that kind of thing.

Although I like the books too, the geek-like worship of them strikes me as really odd when research and innovation is judged as at worst dubious and at best a money spinning sideline. (The twins do sell protective devices to the Ministry but... sixteen year old joke makers are the ones who come up with the idea of protective devices?)

My bets is Harry lives. I am completely unable to make a prediction on the subject of Snape being evil or a triple crosser.

Finally you never need to ask about slash HP again now that SixApart restored fandom journals.

"Iron Council suffers on both levels--for Christ's sake, even a bunch of dirty fucking imaginary hippies wouldn't think that driving a train on train tracks was a great way to go join an insurrection. "

The bit that got me was the fact that they escape by laying the rails in front of the train, driving over them, and then taking them up again behind the train. Exactly like the climax of "The Wrong Trousers". And once you've made the link between China Mieville and Wallace & Gromit, it never goes away.

364: goddamn stinking bishop sticks his head in where he simply don't belong. Hot Fuzz? Gah!

360: If Kingsley Shacklebolt isn't the very definition of "token", I will eat the sorting hat. He doesn't do much, his personality isn't developed, he's just a Nice Black Man. But before I go on, I want to make clear that I actually like the Harry Potter books, I have all of them, and in general I have a big soft spot for Rowling--it's so hard to have conversations critical of something that people like without it feeling like a personal attack, she said earnestly, so I wanted to state up front that I'm not making some kind of "if you don't line up with Frowner on your analysis of Harry Potter, that's because you have bad politics" argument".

The thing is, Parvati for example isn't very central to the plot. Who is central? Well, there's room for debate, but I think most people would agree that Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville (in the most recent books), Hagrid, Snape, the Weasley Twins, Percy, Mr and Mrs Weasley, Dumbledore, Lupin, Remus, Fudge, Ginny Weasley (again, recently), Mad-Eye Moody (somewhat), Voldemort, Umbridge, Rita Skeeter....well, these (and maybe a few others) are the people we see sustainedly, who take substantial parts in the action, whose character is an essential part of the story. (ie, Fudge is weak, conflicted, a slave to opinion polls--so he does thus and such). It stands out very clearly--even, I think, were you to expand the list--that these characters are almost all white, mostly male (especially the heroic ones), and almost all perform gender very, very normally. Moreover, the ones who don't perform gender normally are the ones who "fail" to perform it correctly--Neville is nebbishy, Rita is flashy and loud, Umbridge is cutesy-poo while still being too blocky and strong.

And yet there's this contstant presence of relatively minor characters whose race or gender is emphasized--Kingsley Shacklebolt, Tonks-the-cute-spunky-unlikely-Auror, Lee what's-his-name, Angelina, Parvati and her sister, Cho (These characters don't do too much to advance the narrative; and more importantly, we see them for one or maybe two episodes but we don't get any sustained view of them and we don't get a developing sense of their motives; their motives and character do not drive the plot)...the text almost suggests that yes, brown folks and women can achieve things too and can certainly be sexually desireable, but they're not worthy of being central to the narrative. Seriously, if you're being a big liberal--like Rowling clearly is trying to be--would it kill you to have, say, Lupin be Indian? Why are all the teachers at Hogwarts white?

(I think (and man, you people are making me late for work) that Rowling doesn't include brown people in major roles because it would bring disequilibrium to the text. It would be almost impossible to have a happy, nostalgic vision of the UK if you had to talk about Lupin getting Paki-bashed as a kid, or even explain that while the Muggles are a bunch of racists the Wizarding world is above all that. This is why, partly, I'm troubled by Rowling's happy, nostalgic vision of the UK.)

As far as the books being "about Englishness" goes--most obviously, consider how they return and return to "Englishness" versus "Frenchness", Hogwarts versus Durmstrang. Consider how heavily larded the books are with Englishy-twee nostalgia--the sweet shop, the pub, the suits of armor in the halls, the old-fashioned train, etc. And the debate about inclusion/exclusion which is built into the whole Muggle/Wizard thing and made more explicit as Rowling brings in the politics of both the Wizarding and Muggle worlds. Also how the books go on and on about pulling together across difference for a common [national] purpose. Also, for god's sake, Quidditch, with its comic riffs on cricket.

It's not that the only way to read these books is "about" Englishness, but it's a legitimate and supportable reading.

I would add that "the branding of Englishness"/ "Cool Brittania" is a real feature of the books.

Well, damn, if that isn't a thorough response. Okay, yes, I can agree that it's disappointing, from a liberal program point of view, that none of the main characters are anything other than white.

while the Muggles are a bunch of racists the Wizarding world is above all that

Of course, the Wizarding world isn't above all that. (See the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.) Lupin's not Indian, but he's a werewolf, and therefore suffers even more overt prejudice. (Of course, with lycanthropy the better analogy is to homosexuality.) And while it's perhaps a cop-out to construct the racial narrative about imaginary creatures instead of black people, I'm willing to give the books a pass on that since they are, after all, children's books.

I think that we should allow the dependent nations their quaint little delusions of national pride. Otherwise the poodles might feel impelled to attack us in some laughable but annoying way.

it's so hard to have conversations critical of something that people like without it feeling like a personal attack

Coming at this from the other direction -- as someone who has never lifted a page of Potter nor watched any of his movies -- I feel more apt to do so after reading your criticism, Frowner -- it gives me more of a handle on the books, a reason to open them, than I had before.

I've always assumed that Rowling is engaged in a deliberate homage to English children's fiction from the 30s, 40s and 50s. In that context, a primarily white, primarily male universe makes sense.

Of course, any self-conscious homage of that type gets to have its cake and eat it. Both distancing itself from that universe and, at the same time, exploiting the 'comforts' of it.

[I say this as someone whose never read any of the novels, although I have seen two of the films.]

deliberate homage to ... children's fiction from the 30s, 40s and 50s

[Paging Counterfly!]

As a good parent who reads these books only because I want to connect with my child and encourage her love of reading, and not because I secretly harbor some warped little crush on Severus Snape, who is clearly the archetypal bad boy, plainly nasty but who I feel compelled to believe in because the whole smart, brooding, deeply wounded guy struggling with his past thing is just kinda... er, um, as I was saying...

On that racial narrative point, a couple of commenters have mentioned the house elves as symbolic of race issues, and that was my first impression, too. Which is what makes the whole treatment so decidedly disappointing to me.

Hermione, bless her, founds her Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare and tries to work for their liberation. And she's mocked by Ron and humored by Harry, which I was okay with at first when I was figuring they'd come around and see the light and Hermione's radical ways would be vindicated. But instead the plot takes the direction that the house elves prefer their enslavement, they don't want to be freed, and Hermione is ultimately doing them a disservice in her struggle for their independence.

339 is awesome, but s/b "'That wasn't enough. You did not clap hard enough. Tinkerbell is dead.' And then we all started to cry. The actress stomped off stage and refused to continue with the production. They finally had to lower the curtain. The ushers had to come help us out of the aisles and into the street. I don't think that any of us were ever the same after that experience."

366 - And I'd add (as someone who also enjoys the books) that it's hard to view the non-white characters as anything other than deliberate tokenism, despite the dangers of talking about authorial intention. Rowling was writing a story for her kids and defaulted to all the major characters being white; when she realized this, being a well-intentioned sort, she seems to have gone through and made an effort to ensure that some of the supporting cast reflected Britain's ethnic diversity. Let's not get into the weird, weird dynamic with Hermione and the house elves, which I have reconciling with Rowling's politics (either of the partisan- or the identity- sort).

Pwned by 372.

373(a) -- thanks for making that explicit.

372 -- did you ever watch "Ella Enchanted"?

375b -- No, I have not. Should I?

Re: 117, 179:

Very interesting. I had been pretty convinced that Snape was good until you brought up Dumbledore's quote about his own mistakes, and now I'm not so sure. However, he could just as easily have been talking about the trust he extended to Tom Riddle himself, not Snape. Also, you have to be in a certain state of mind to cast Avada Kedavra, sure, but there's still a lot of leeway there. When the fake Moody cast the killing curse on the spider in the classroom in Goblet of Fire, it's safe to say he didn't actually hate the thing. Either a wizard can create enough hate for any target through simple concentration for the curse to work, or his hatred for other targets can be transferred. And finally, you're right that there's a problem with Dumbledore being omniscient, but remember, the alternative is that Harry has been right all along, which is, if anything, even worse.

Basic point: Snape - probably still good.

I may give up commenting entirely other than to say 'what Frowner said'. 366 is just right about tokenism; it's not so much about status within the fictional world, as it is about focus within the fiction. When I'm thinking about books that don't marginalize girls, I'm not bothered by nineteenth century books in which the girls are restricted by nineteenth century gender roles, so long as they get to behave as fully drawn human beings at the narrative center of the books.

376 -- Well, it's a kind of fun movie. Sylvia liked it a lot and I think we saw it about the perfect time (6 years old), I think it would have been too corny for someone much over 8. It's a whole bunch of faerie-tale themes slapped together, but the principal plot line is about young Ella leading a revolt of the oppressed magical creatures, and in the process humiliating her dumb, greedy, arrogant step-sisters.

while the Muggles are a bunch of racists the Wizarding world

This, in particular, and 366 in general are just so wrong.
What's the worst thing someone can be called in these books? "Mudblood," which is the term for someone who is wholly or partly of Muggle parentage, but has wizarding powers. One of the things that distinguishes the villains from the heroes is the former's belief in the superiority of a pure breed of wizards. The racial categories aren't the typical ones, but it's certainly an issue in the book. And, in any case, if Rowling had tried to write major characters from races we recognize as "other," she would have been accused of either "whitening" them or of improperly appropriating or portraying their characters. It's arguably a lot more effective for a children's book to raise the issue of race with invented racial categories that make the injustice of racism clear without giving recourse to mitigating prejudices.

(The villainy of the purebreeds is also one way in which the books aren't simply nostalgic for old England, but I know a lot less about the details of the debate there.....)

'what Frowner said'

That's what she said.

As I walked to work, I was thinking about how dissatisfied I am with the "talk about race by talking about giants and house elves" approach.

If giants and house elves are supposed to stand in for people of color, well, it's a bit disturbing that the house elves are cheery, loyal little dialect-talking stereotyples who literally, racially, genetically live to serve, and that the giants are these stupid, brutish, wild creatures which drift naturally toward evil.

In fact, isn't "giants or house elves" a good summing up of racist views of brown people? Ie, they're either weaker, comic, loyal servants or bad, dangerous, incomprehensible Others who live Out There somewhere, perpetually in danger of being co-opted by the Communists Voldemort. And in either case they're just a bit stupid.

Of course, you can throw in the centaurs for a quick view of the noble savages/Virtuous Pagans and the veela for the sexy, sexy Peoples of Far Europe (standing in, I suspect, for the sexy, sexy Asians), but we don't really see much of either. The main "others" are giants and house elves.

The thing is, on a literal level the text says a great deal about how wizards shouldn't abuse their authority, should let the lesser breeds without the law make their own descisions, should remember that the Wizards aren't so fucking great, et patati et patata. But since we only ever see giants and house elves being loyal and stupid or evil and stupid, and there's no sustained suggestion that they want to be anything else, and there's no real suggestion in the text that loyal stupidity or evil stupidity somehow has equal standing with the human nature of the Wizards, it's hard to believe that Rowling really sees the house elves and the wizards as "races" equal to the humans. If you read the whole thing as being about actual human race, you come away with a message of "those brown people may be dumb, and they may avoid the very things that we white people cleverly value--like freedom, pay increases, and physical comfort--but we whiteys shouldn't tell them otherwise. Their ways are not our ways."

I would prefer to think of Rowling's views on race as missing rather than disgraceful.

And note that the only non-service house elves we see, and the only non-wild and evil giants are clearly coded as exceptions, exiles, weirdos.

Goddamn it, my strikethrough attempt didn't work. I knew I shouldn't hae messed around looking at that XHTML page.

Frowner:

Are you in grad school?

I frequently find myself thinking, "damn, she captured that thought very well."

Did we ever have that discussion of "Boys' Weeklies?" I mean about the take-away idea that reactionary content, and the desire for it, are pretty deeply imbedded at least in culture, and attempts to develop correct alternatives are very often lame because of it?

375a - Shit, was that supposed to stay on Standpipe's blog?

What I meant by "the Wizarding world isn't racist" was if Rowling wrote more non-white characters, she would then have to either address regular British racism or explain why the Wizarding world didn't have it.

I feel that the "ooh, I don't like them Mudbloods" thing is pretty silly. I know that a kid's book can only be so complex, but since the Mudblood thing stands in so obviously for racism, I think that reducing it to mere snobbery is pretty inadequate.

384: I long to have people believe I am in grad school, but I am not. I have a terrible memory, for one thing, and I don't really have the scholarly temperment. But I hang about with grad students and am perpetually doing feeble little bits of theory-reading in an attempt not to feel so dumb.

So I am very flattered indeed.

How about the goblins/Jews whose sole purpose is to run the bank?

On the outcome of the story: I agree that it's a coming of age story, mostly, with a very strong theme of the importance of friendship and collaboration to beat enemies. There's certainly room to play around with the solitary hero archetype: Harry thinks he's the Chosen One, but so far we've seen that those who prefer solitary action are either evil (Voldemort) or hoist by their own petard (Dumbledore), so I'd expect that whenever the Final Shit goes down, Harry will realize it's going to take a group effort.

I expect he survives, but loses his special "hero" status because as it will turn out, everyone he knows ends up being a hero, with or without a scar.

Harry Potter, however, is like Star Wars in that it's really not all that good, but captures everyone's imagination well enough that we fill in the details that the author only sketches. So Rowling could fuck it up.

On the race thing, I'm loathe to give Rowling that much credit, but I think most of the everyday race issues have been transformed into magical analogues. Our heroes are white English kids, but their friends, while tokens, aren't stereotyped tokens. Race is a magical problem. There's the Mudblood slur, Lupin & Hagrid, the house elves, the centaurs. Good guys accept Lupin & Hagrid, bad guys want racial purity.

When you're worried about human-giant miscegnation, where Padma and Parvati come from pales. I think trying to treat everyday race more seriously in the fantasy context would have come off either very clunky, reinforced stereotypes, or very shallow.

If you read the whole thing as being about actual human race, you come away with a message of "those brown people may be dumb, and they may avoid the very things that we white people cleverly value--like freedom, pay increases, and physical comfort--but we whiteys shouldn't tell them otherwise. Their ways are not our ways."

Yep. This comes up in SF occasionally; I'm thinking about an alternate history series of stories by Harry Turtledove I read ages ago in which a population of what I suppose were Australopithecines survived in Africa -- bipedal hominids incapable of speech, but more intelligent than chimps or gorillas -- and were enslaved by humans in a history otherwise like our own.

And, you know, there's nothing with playing with an idea like that. But there's something very uncomfortable about reading a series of stories devoted to working out the moral problems of how to justly and humanely interact with beings that are very much like people, but are objectively different and 'inferior.' If the writer is in any way thinking of them as illuminating real problems in race relations, that's horrifically fucked up.

Let's not get into the weird, weird dynamic with Hermione and the house elves

I seriously cannot make heads or tails of what Rowling is trying to do with this plot. As Frowner says, so many things about it would seem to add up to something awfully distasteful if it's really meant as any kind of reflection of real issues of class or race -- and yet, if it isn't meant that way, what is the point of it? It takes up an awful lot of space, and I can't quite bring myself to believe that its ultimate payoff is supposed to be that Hermione is a deluded meddler, and social activism on the behalf of others is misguided and dippy and if you paid any real attention, you would realize the house elves really do want to be slaves. There must be something else coming out of it, right? Or did it just get away from Rowling, and she discovered that she couldn't write the elves as anything other than a committed, genuine slave race? So weird.

I'm convinced that Rowling got bored with the house-elves subplot and didn't know what to do with it.

How about the goblins/Jews whose sole purpose is to run the bank?

If someone has an exculpatory explanation for this, I'd love to hear it. It's the one thing in the book that always makes me say "what the hell were you thinking, JK?"

389: O invisible Unfogger, good point.

390: Cala, the thing is, we can't say "Rowling, produce a story with proper numbers of people of color, or else". But I'm really troubled by the line of reasoning that says "When white people try to write people of color, it's either clunky or shallow or forced and so they shouldn't even try". (Especially with Rowling, who is often clunky/shallow/forced). Particularly when other textual clues suggest that Hogwarts is, like the ship in Moby Dick or the Starship Enterprise, a microcosm of Our Very Earth. And FWIW, when I've read writers of color on this topic, they generally don't like the "don't even bother, whitey" approach, either.

Alison Bechdel, may her name live forever, talks quite a bit in her writing about how she felt she had to make the effort to write plausible, well-differentiated women of color in Dykes To Watch Out For, even though she herself was so very white. Also how it was a challenge, and that she felt uneasy as she did it.

393 before 392. I think that Hermione is mostly a Rowling stand-in, and it wouldn't surprise me if she was a little activist eighth grader wanting to save the whales or whatever we save in eighth grade and thought that it would be fun to play with those themes in the Harry Potter universe and didn't really have it all worked out.

At least it shows that activism is hard. Would have been a little weird if all of these magical house-elves had never figured out how to revolt until a little white girl came along.

394: But, you see, she wasn't thinking. She was writing "naturally" and just letting the story flow. And what "naturally" comes out is the unredeemed side of liberalism, where you don't need to think about stereotypes or structural racism because we're all just people, really, and racism would go away if we only stopped being so snobby and foolish.

And what "naturally" comes out is the unredeemed side of liberalism, where you don't need to think about stereotypes or structural racism

And I'm fine with that; not every story needs to take account of race or gender, and if someone isn't up to doing a good job with it, I'd just as soon they leave it alone. But I dare say the goblins wouldn't have made it past any publisher in the States.

395: That's not quite my line of reasoning. It would have been great if Lupin or Ron or Hermione had been something other than whitebread. But as I understood your earlier argument it was that the brown characters who were there weren't developed further: we didn't have a Padma/Parvati race story, or Cho dealing with being thought of as exotic. And I think that keeping the main characters white and then deciding to spend an incongruous amount of time on race issues (WHILE VOLDEMORT PLOTS, this is still a fantasy story) of minor characters would feel very forced, and I don't think Rowling is a gifted enough writer to pull it off.

388--

by the power vested in me by the trustees and president of the University of Platonia, i hereby grant you entrance into the graduate school, with all rights and privileges thereto appertaining.

Through your scholarly temperament, shrewd insight into literature, and crisp incisive writing, you have proven yourself wholly worthy to style yourself "a graduate student", and will find yourself welcome at any institution of higher learning in the fifty united states.

Congratulations!!

(now i just hope the silly git doesn't realize that "grad student" is a racial category slightly lower than "house elf". still, they seemed to want it, and they certainly deserve it, so....)

The thing is, I feel like a lot of white authors assume that if you talk about race at all it will destabilize your story.

It seems like--had Rowling wanted to do this--she could have taken two tacks. She could have just written some major non-white characters and said, somewhere, "The Wizarding world doesn't care about human race because we're all so racist about the giants" or whatever. (This would have read a little weirdly with the books' obscession with national character, granted). Here, she wouldn't have needed to do too much about her characters' race as part of their character.

Alternatively, she could have talked a little about how race plays into the Wizarding world. Where did all those brown wizards come from, for example? How does British history play into this? (And I think, honestly, that this could be done in passing, in a couple of paragraphs. We get lots of Wizarding history this way.) And when the national obsession starts breaking loose, she could bring in some non-European stuff. Like, why does the TriWizard tournament involve only people from Europe when it's supposed to be global? I know we only see one TriWizard tournament, but we see so very little evidence of, say, African or Indian wizards anywhere in the books, even though there's constant reference to the "Wizarding world".

I don't think this neccessitates a huge plot commitment; it's just worldbuilding that would support a more progressive reading of the books. And since--from interviews with Rowling and from textual evidence--I suspect that's what she'd want, I see no reason not to do so.

Yeah, authorial intent, blah blah blah. I'm not in grad school, so I can say as I please about it.

I guess I'm not sure at what point we're criticizing the books Rowling wrote or criticizing her for not writing the books we think she should have written.

Little asides in the History of the Wizarding paragraphs wouldn't give us a major Brown character, and doing a major Brown character convincingly would take a little more than just changing Ron's name and hair color (probably not a good idea to make his father a buffoon who doesn't know about telephone cords if Ron's an ethnic minority, for one.)

Actually, Samuel Delany writes about reading some Heinlein book or other and being really gratified to realize on page hundred-something that one of the main characters was black, which point was only made by having him (clunkety-clunk) see himself in a mirror. I don't think it's impossible to say "In this imaginary world, race is so trivial that everyone is essentially the same". It's not a political position I'm really fond of, but it's not reprehensible either.

But then, if you're saying that writing a black main character would require so much effort that it would ruin the plot by making it all about race, doesn't that suggest that exciting, fun-type books can never have major non-white characters because fun can only take place when we can assume the "neutral" blank template of whiteness? (I mean, I don't think that's your actual position, of course)

My point about the alternate Potter books is simply that it would be possible to write them, so that to me the argument that it's impossible to have a fun, successful children's book which has some plausible non-white main characters--well, argument seems wrong.

But I dare say the goblins wouldn't have made it past any publisher in the States.

In World of Warcraft, goblins are greedy little short guys with huge noses and New York-ish accents and almost every overtly mercantile organization in the world has goblins behind it (that changed with the first expansion, but it's still true in the core game). They're the only faction with a network of cities and a capital and their own banks and their own auction houses that are not part of the two big political entities in that setting. At Christmas a lot of the in-game gags revolve around "Smokeywood Pastures," a goblin-run business that explicitly mirrors the commercialization of holidays in the real world. I am continually torn between being extremely embarrassed by them and wondering whether I should take them as some twisted positive. They are the very embodiment of every stupid stereotype I've ever heard about Jews but they are also the only non-player species that is neither violent/noble savage nor timid and subjugated.

Why not? Seriously, if you're writing books with minority characters, and books with buffoons in them, some of the minority characters are going to be buffoons.

And what's being criticized here is, I think, that Rowling looks to be a pleasant, formally non-racist person in whose mind minorities are marginal, and who wrote a series of books in which minorities are marginal. That doesn't make her an evil person (I hope not; I don't know that I have any standing to criticize her as being significantly more enlightened myself), and it doesn't make the books hateful or importantly damaging. But they do reflect a society in which non-white people are marginalized -- they could have been written so that they didn't, and it would have been a good thing if they had.

405 to 402, pre-empted by 403.

Heck, on the very walls of a certain left-wing bookstore in a massively Protestant area where I sometimes volunteer were painted satirical images of the Forces of Corporate Evil--mostly little men with big noses looking longingly at dollar signs. (We've since painted over them and had a Little Talk) But seriously, stereotypes just come right out to play when even well-meaning folks don't keep them in check.

See, with all the writing talet and wit floating around here, one or more of you should get going on the global wizarding response to HP. A little girl who is befriended by a Native American Shaman who teaches her about the magical powers she never knew she had.

She responds, "You mean like Harry Potter?"

With an indulgent chuckle, "Well, yes, a little like Harry. But the world of magic is not limited to places like Hogwarts. You do not need a wand, you do not need robes, and no hat will be sorting out who you are."

And then off we go on an adventure that teaches our you protaganist about equality and justice and hope.

Okay, now I really must work. But before I do, I will comment that if I had read Harry Potter as a child, the Sorting Hat would have really messed with me.

My childhood was full of the idea that you are who you are, unchangeably--either good and clever and unselfish or bad and foolish and maybe basely cunning but certainly not generous and putting-others-first-ish. So if you were revealed to be stupid, or selfish, or otherwise bad in one way, this was because you were not really Good and Pure and True but were instead Evil and Selfish and Bad.

I would have read about the Sorting Hat and worried endlessly about how I might really have been a Slytherin or a Hufflepuff, despite thinking of myself as a Ravenclaw type. I mean, the hat can tell what you're "really" like. Yuck. Good point, Di Kotimy.

Little asides in the History of the Wizarding paragraphs wouldn't give us a major Brown character, and doing a major Brown character convincingly would take a little more than just changing Ron's name and hair color (probably not a good idea to make his father a buffoon who doesn't know about telephone cords if Ron's an ethnic minority, for one.)

But then, OMG why is the ethnic minority family the one with the house full of disruptive children? Why is the ethnic minority character the bumbling sidekick who has to be rescued from his own stupidity? What was Rowling THINKING?

The Anti-semitic murals in Frowner's book collective: latest victim to the forces of political correctness.

403: Do you remember the fuss Ursula K. Le Guin made about a filmed version of the Earthsea trilogy a couple of years ago on related grounds?

For those who haven't read them, they're fantasies set in an entirely not-Earth world. Most of the central characters are of an ethnicity with medium reddish-brown skin, the hero has at least one friend from somewhere else with dark brown skin, and there's another nation/ethnicity of people with white skin, most of whom are politically/militarily the enemy, but some of whom are sympathetic characters.

The SciFi Channel filmed them with the main character as white, over the author's protests, because they didn't see race as an important factor in the books.

In World of Warcraft, goblins are greedy little short guys with huge noses and New York-ish accents

There's also the Ferengi in Star Trek.

410: See, this almost tips over into "we can only depict white people in fiction, because only when we depict white people can we show "universal" human traits. Brown people nail us down to the particular and marginal".

But--she added, wickedly--this whole problem would be solved if there were enough characters of color. Maybe the Wizarding world could be sixty or seventy percent brown, and so both Ron and Hermione could be of color, and so could Dumbledore, and so could Umbridge and so could Susan Bones and so could Tonks and....

410: You know, the possibility of bad faith or otherwise ill-informed criticism of how a work of art deals with racial issues doesn't make all such criticism inevitably bad faith or ill-informed.

413: And the slave-owner character in Star Wars I, whatever it was supposed to be. If that wasn't an anti-Semitic stereotype, it sure looked like one.

412--

earthsea trilogy? is that the one about the boy who grows up in poor, deprived circumstances, who a little before puberty is told that he is going to go to a school for wizards, where he turns out to be one of the greatest wizards in the world, and has to fight a duel against a student rival who is very snobby to him?

nope, never read it. neither had jkr.

re: 413

And the godawful character in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace ...

[although that whole film is a lesson in film-making from the dark side]

re: 416

Fuck, pwned.

417: I'd acquit JKR on that front -- the atmosphere of the books is completely different. But when you put it that way they do sound similar.

412.--Yep. The producers of that movie seemed to miss the part about Le Guin being really political.

I 'inherited' a lot of my Dad's 1950s 'boy's own' annuals when I was kid.

The kid-with-hidden-talents goes away to boarding school and has to battle with snobs and bullies before ascending to popularity genre is common place.

re: sorting hat. Wasn't Harry actually pegged a Slytherin, but for the fact that he really didn't want to be one? Anyway, one of the characters in the movies said something to that effect. Or I remember it so.

Assuming that my memory is fail-safe, this would point against the idea that you are what you are, despite your wishes.

I don't think the argument is that it's impossible to have non-white major characters, just that it's very very difficult for a non-gifted white author to pull it off. And I think Ned's point is right: if a white author tries to be inclusive about race, it's very hard not to seem racist, no matter what; Kotsko is making a similar piont about tv commercials (more in the comments there).

All fantasy books are about some deprived child who is revealed to be the BESTEST. Most of 'em, anyway.

Piont friont.

re: idealogically pure child fiction. I've already jotted down an outline for "The Brown Harry Potter And The Brown Philosopher's Stone," so no worries, it's covered.

403 - I can't quite remember (I know the essay you're talking about, I think it's in Longer Views), but I think Chip Delany was talking about the big reveal in Starship Troopers, in which the fact that that the protagonist ("Johnny") is in fact a Filipino named Juan is revealed in an aside halfway through th book. The greater glories of militarism make mere racial prejudice trivial. Although he may have been talking about Tunnel in the Sky, in which it is strongly implied but IIRC never actually stated that the protagonist is black.

Also, I don't know what it means to refer to a person as "brown". That sounds really, really forced.

It doesn't seems specific to race. She seems to have made a pretty generalized choice to make wizards blissfully unaware of, or unaffected by the actual specific problems and evils of the modern muggle world. Technology is a cute hobby of Mr. Weasley; there's no discussion of "hey, these muggles are actually much better than us at killing large numbers of people." You can find wizard-y analogs of many of the social and political issues of the day--racism, homophobia, genocide, war, terrorism, homosexuality, treatment of prisoners, etc. if you look for them, but she's just not interested in dealing with these things directly as opposed to their wizard-y analogs. I can imagine a better book that did, but it wouldn't be the same sort of story.

All fantasy books are about some deprived child who is revealed to be the BESTEST.

That damn Rowling and her shameless stealing from the Bible.

425 - Fans are slans! Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad have both had useful things to say on this creepy tendency.

But then, if you're saying that writing a black main character would require so much effort that it would ruin the plot by making it all about race, doesn't that suggest that exciting, fun-type books can never have major non-white characters because fun can only take place when we can assume the "neutral" blank template of whiteness?

No, that's not it at all. It's just that the options would go one of two ways: either in the Harry Potter world race is completely ignored and you get the sort of PBS-approved color palette: white boy hero, best friend black, smart witty girl friend, funny Asian kid in their class, where while everyone is a different color, everyone is exactly the same underneath. That's not a bad message, exactly, but it's not one immune to criticism, either (I'm thinking of criticisms of the Cosby show.)

Or you treat race seriously, and that path either goes into stereotypes (here come our spiritual Native Americans or all of The Phantom Menace) or gets very complex. Complexity's not bad either, but it does make for a very, very different book.

It's not incompatible with fantasy, of course, but I find it hard to criticize Rowling for sprinkling the book with minor characters of minority ethnicity when she does avoid the stereotypes pretty well, and throws in "wizarding" race issues, when the revisions I can think of that would improve the racial balance to make it more realistic are pretty significant or PBS-land. It's not The Horse and His Boy, here.

429: Take it as equivalent to 'of color' -- non-white.

I really hate on-topic comments in some cases.

Also, I don't know what it means to refer to a person as "brown". That sounds really, really forced.

It's quite common in the circles I travel in, as a somewhat jocular alternative to "of color" or similar.

423: Yeah, you're right. One of my favorit lines in the books/movies is where Harry is struggling with the knowledge that the hat considered placing him in Slytherin, and that it only didn't because he asked it not to. Dumbledore responds to the effect: "It's not our abilities that decide who we are, but the choices that we make." My daughter is quite sick of me repeating that. But it's a really, really good line.

And yet, there is something interesting about the idea that we can choose only to sort ourselves into clearly defined groups. And that the majority of the characters aren't shown making a conscious choice about it. Could Draco change his mind and become a Gryffindor in the end?

433: I think white writers are often too afraid of the racial issues. Rowling could have gone the 'Cosby' route without any additional work, and that would have provided a base from which she could have gotten slightly complex on racial stuff if she'd wanted to, without committing herself to writing the wizarding version of Invisible Man.

What were the race issues in "The Horse and His Boy"? All I remember is the kid eating a stick of butter.

Amongst the dirty hippies, one says "brown" sometimes to refer specifically to people who aren't usually described as "black" or "white" but also sometimes to describe people who are not-white without simply describing them as "all those people who lack whiteness".

Waaaaaaay back at the start of this discussion, I commented that the Potter books reveal the underside of liberalism. I still maintain that this is true. It's not that Rowling should go back and rewrite them; it's that they reveal a great deal about what whitey liberals think about race. As such, pretty interesting.

439: Evil Ayrabs versus good white folks. Now, the girl is a sympathetic Calormene, and not particularly presented as 'really white' or anything, so it could have been worse, but the ethnic hostility is clear.

a stick of butter

Did he spread it on the Turkish Delight?

re: 436

Despite being generally quite PC [and I'm not using the term with any implicit mockery] I find the 'of colour' construction almost intolerable. I choose to ignore it and translate it in some more acceptable term in my head.

I choose to ignore it and translate it in some more acceptable term in my head.

Like "brown"!

439: Huh? No, seriously, huh? Is this some insider Unfoggism that I just don't get? Or are you thinking of one of those other kids' books about horses?

A Horse and His Boy is the CS Lewis one with the Arabs who are evil and worship the devil, as well as being frivolous and sybaritic, yes? Interestingly, both the "good" Arab girl who flees to the North and her "bad" Arab friend who is all frivolous are clearly just various kinds of British schoolgirl.

it's that they reveal a great deal about what whitey liberals think about race

I'm not sure this is true. What she thinks and what she thinks it's ok to write about in a fictionalized world could be pretty different. If the point is that only certain approaches to the problem of race are publicly viable, then I think that's right, but that's not just whitey's doing.

re: 444

Heh, not "brown" either.

"off-color"?

437: Yeah, there's something very waspy, boarding-schoolish about the clearly defined groups. And yet, that's what the books celebrate, in the end. In my reading, the books are primarily about how totally awesome it is to go to a fancy British boarding school. In a lot of ways I'm sure it is awesome. But a bit much to expect any profundities about race to come out of that.

ttaM translates all your crude phrases into "embodied alterity."

438: I think I just may be unusually allergic to the Cosby route in children's shows. And I say this liking the Cosby show. But after a while, white boy heroes with exactly one black friend and exactly one girl friend and exactly one Asian or hispanic friend makes you want to torch a couple soundstages.

But I think generally Rowling punts most everyday human issues to the curb. She doesn't explicitly say "We in the wizarding world have moved past race", but race is rarely mentioned (Angelina and Kingsley, I think, everyone else we just figure out from their names), and it's just part of a list of concerns that aren't in the wizarding world. No religion, no race, no politics, no technology. (Fuck owls! Comment boxes!!)

yeah, the "good" Calormene girl is clearly of the genus "hot exotic babe", subspecies "orientalizing".

by the way--i'm not watching a move upthread to declare Heinlein a socially progressive author, am i? please.

447: "wogs"?

I totally didn't get that there were arabs in that book. I do remember detesting it for some reason, and I will attribute that to my inherent goodness.

Heinlein a socially progressive author

For his time, he could have been an awful lot worse.

452: No, Delaney just wrote about one book of his as having a good handling of race in one instance. I couldn't read any Heinlein after the first part of Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein is the Ayn Rand of science fiction.

re: 450

You know I just divide the world into 'Scots' and 'teh effete'. It's a simple binary division, but it serves well.

Heinlein is the Ayn Rand of science fiction.

Indeed. And oh my god, his women! (And yet for some reason, I read him voraciously as a pre-teen. What with that and my sneaking attachment to such deeply problematic gems as That Hideous Strength, I'm lucky my gender role issues aren't more fucked up than they actually are.)

That Hideous Strength is possibly the worst book evar, even including that giant-furry-shark book by what's his name Eng. I do have an awful soft spot for Perelandra, though, and even parts of Out of the Silent Planet. But man, CS Lewis really, really didn't like adult women, did he?

Fuck a bunch of C.S. Lewis. I'll give up my dissertation and have babies like I'm supposed to.

I really liked reading his books quite a lot as a teen, and probably stopped more because I ran out than because I outgrew them. But I have a strong taste for a certain kind of straightforward adventure writing that tends to go with bizarre/lousy gender and other political issues, so I have a whole lot of practise overlooking them when I'm reading for light pleasure.

I know, it's really, really terrible.

(I've probably read it at least a dozen times. What is wrong with me?)

408: A little girl who is befriended by a Native American Shaman who teaches her about the magical powers she never knew she had.

DK: your answer to Harry Potter is to write a Mystic Negro book? And you think that would be some sort of improvement? Because certainly "noble mystical savage shaman in tune with the earth" isn't any kind of cliche or anything? Oh dear oh dear.

How about the goblins/Jews whose sole purpose is to run the bank?

Sorry, how exactly are the goblins supposed to be Jewish? I mean, apart from the fact that they run a bank.

464: I think the idea is that the goblins are Jewish because they run the bank and are short with big noses.

Those were never among the stereotypes I heard about Jews when I was growing up, but some people think that's what it means.

461 to 458 on Heinlein. I actually really enjoy CS Lewis as well, despite the fact that he's not keen on adult women -- if you read THS as fantasy: what do you do in a world where there is a God who wants women to submit, I find it entertaining. I'd find it enraging if I actually had to deal with anyone with religious opinions of that nature, but I don't -- any sexism I deal with in my day-to-day life feels totally unconnected to that.

Fuck a bunch of C.S. Lewis.

Word.

465: These were among the stereotypes of Jews that I picked up in my massively, massively non-Jewish town where I knew precisely one Jewish girl.

Of course, I also learned that Jews all had attractive, dark, curly hair and were smart and politically left-wing, so this made me more of a pro-Semite stereotyper than anything else.

Later, when I moved from Illinois to Minnesota, I learned from a friend that he had grown up assuming that Jews were all right-wing Zionist capitalists and was, in fact, sort of mildly anti-Semitic. We had, again, a Little Talk.

(Because you know, I have only perfect political views and am entitled to correct everyone else. No, because it made me deeply uneasy. I often feel stupid being like "Frowner, the white descendent of Swedes and child of Protestants will now speak for various Others", but I feel more stupid when I don't.)

what frowner said, to the nth power. she's righter than a grad student who's totally right about some shit. I feel that 7 seconds of mental screen time for "ooh, look it's parvati" followed by a return to the real (white) characters is somehow worse than just straight-up white people. it's like the author got as far as noticing that there ought to be a few brown faces sprinkled into the group portraits but then dropped it.

I don't think I've ever personally encountered a Jewish stereotype in the wild. Literature, yes, people saying 'oh have you heard of that stereotype', yes. I'm sure it exists, but the goblin thing went right over my head.

464: Wow, from that one sentence, you could already tell that the character would be a cliche? Gosh.

Sort of highlights, though, the problem with suggesting JKR should have made all her characters or her main characters or selectively chosen characters ethnic. Make them white, you're a racist. Make them ethnic, your a patronizing racist.

I'm not sure how "in tune with the earth" the shaman in my proposal would be. I was actually more picturing him walking about with some fancy smartphone gadget where he obsessively checks Unfogged comment threads. "Cutting edge technology, connection to the mystical powers of the universe, and still no comity," he'd mutter wearily. Then, turning to his young protege, "You're not putting on *makeup* are you?"

I often feel stupid being like "Frowner, the white descendent of Swedes and child of Protestants will now speak for various Others", but I feel more stupid when I don't.)

Yep. Calling someone like Rowling on being a 'well meaning liberal for whom brown people are nonetheless marginal' is desperately embarrassing for me, because in many contexts someone could fairly say exactly the same sort of thing about me. At some point, though, there's a value to pointing out that something's a problem, even if you can't claim to be any better yourself.

I grew up thinking that Jewish people were all wise and beautiful, like Rebecca in Ivanhoe.

On the anti-Semitic front, I recall the NYT ran an op-ed by two Columbia Colleges students, illuminating Batman Returns (the one with the Penguin, right?) in terms of Weimar-era imagery. Amazingly persuasive; a quick google didn't pull it up, alas.

Sort of highlights, though, the problem with suggesting JKR should have made all her characters or her main characters or selectively chosen characters ethnic. Make them white, you're a racist. Make them ethnic, your a patronizing racist.

Exactly.

I like to give artists the benefit of the doubt.

Interestingly, both the "good" Arab girl who flees to the North and her "bad" Arab friend who is all frivolous are clearly just various kinds of British schoolgirl.... wearing snug white panties.

CS Lewis, Tolkein, and Rowlings are all the same bag thing me, and I hate it. And no, I'm not going to try it. I hate it, that's why.

Have I ever mentioned that I'm an Anglophobe? Probably including the Scots and the supposed Welsh.

I hope, btw, that no one is judging Rowling by how much screen time the movies give non-white characters.

473: And hott. Rebecca = Elizabeth Taylor.

I enjoy saying "Mystic Negro". It sounds cool.

Lest we forget, Heinlein ran for political office as a backer of Upton Sinclair's EPIC economic policy in 1936. I don't think it's remotely a stretch to say that Heinlein was racially progressive, even if his politics turned sharply right in the '50s and his ideas about gender were, um, eccentric. Something like Tunnel in the Sky (with the protagonist being ambiguously black, one of the two female sidekicks being explicitly black) does at least as good a job and arguably much better at depicting a racially diverse society than the Harry Potter books despite being written in 1955.

479 - Gswift is Rush Limbaugh.

474 -- No way! I was friends with those two Columbia students when I was one myself (they had graduated and I had dropped out when that op-ed appeared) and I totally tried and failed to get into the pants of the female among them. I can't immediately find a link to the piece but it is referenced here.

the goblin thing went right over my head.

Hook-nosed and money-grubbing didn't set off your anti-semitism alarms?

433:

No, that's not it at all. It's just that the options would go one of two ways: either in the Harry Potter world race is completely ignored and you get the sort of PBS-approved color palette

Or you treat race seriously, and that path either goes into stereotypes (here come our spiritual Native Americans or all of The Phantom Menace) or gets very complex.

Those aren't the only two options. See Leguin, not just in the Earthsea trilogy. Check out the link LB provided in 412 if you haven't read it already. I suppose you could consider Leguin's treatment complex, and perhaps it takes a writer of her talent to pull it off, but the books don't read as political treatments of race in the first instance. (I don't get a sense that Rowling is world-building in the way that Leguin does.)

I haven't read the Potter series, but I can't help but think that while this is an interesting conversation, Rowling's work doesn't have enough literary merit to warrant such direct attention. She'd be a sidebar, at best, in a larger discussion of the treatment of race (and gender) in science fiction & fantasy. You'd want to be talking about Leguin and yes, Delany. Maybe Lloyd Alexander, given the similarity of Rowling's themes to Prydain.

I've missed a bunch of comments while writing this, so perhaps I'm repeating.

Snape is described as hook-nosed as well.

475: See, I don't think that "the benefit of the doubt" is very satisfactory. (Neither, of course, is "artists should write this way or they have bad politics".)

The thing is, white liberals are always giving "the benefit of the doubt" to racially problematic works of art or politics, because we believe deeply that good intentions count, and that nobody (especially white people) is really evil, and that you have to have someone on tape cackling "Ah hahahha, at last I will reduce those Mudbloods to penury and imprisonment" before we can start talking about racism.

And yet somehow, no matter how much doubt we give, it's only the white people who are willing to hack away and set a directly political course (like ol' Ursula Le Guin and even Heinlein) who ever actually end up writing any significant characters of color. And you know, the norm will never, ever shift until some people start trying to shift it.

Every so often, everyone needs to be reminded that Black People Love Us.

Rowling's work doesn't have enough literary merit to warrant such direct attention

Her extremely broad and loyal readership alone, I would say, warrants it.

Hook-nosed and money-grubbing didn't set off your anti-semitism alarms?

I didn't grow up with an "anti-semitism alarm", so it doesn't come naturally to me to question people's motives.

I didn't grow up with an "anti-semitism alarm"

Anti-semite.

I didn't remember them being hook-nosed or particularly miserly. Just that they ran the wizarding bank.

484: LeGuin's is complex, very well-done, and she's also explicitly creating different races of humanoid people. That gives her a little more flexibility in playing around with race.

483: That's so last millennium. Now it's our total control of all the media and the pron shops in the Valley.

I didn't remember them being hook-nosed or particularly miserly. Just that they ran the wizarding bank.

Anti-semite.

(Who wants the next one?)

Re: 405
And what's being criticized here is, I think, that Rowling looks to be a pleasant, formally non-racist person in whose mind minorities are marginal, and who wrote a series of books in which minorities are marginal. That doesn't make her an evil person (I hope not; I don't know that I have any standing to criticize her as being significantly more enlightened myself), and it doesn't make the books hateful or importantly damaging.

Fair enough. If I wrote something, then unless racial/gender/whatever conflict was a main theme, it would probably wind up being as homogenous as HP. And like you, I think or at least I hope it's for perfectly innocent reasons on my part, which isn't totally implausible: I grew up in a small town in Vermont. Unless you count the Hispanic college professor who had a summer home down the road a ways, I don't think I had spoken to a person, um, "of color" until after I graduated from high school. So overall, I'd say I agree with Cala in 433 pretty much completely - but I didn't want to say so myself.

And about "of color" vs. brown: I had an Indian friend in college who described his friends as brown and himself sometimes as brown and sometimes as white (his accent was unnoticeable, unlike most of his friends, but going by hue he was as brown as any of them). It seems that "brown people" is an at-least-half-ironic label open to anyone who doesn't look either pale European, East Asian, or black. Entirely anecdotal, of course, but still. "Of color," on the other hand, I find very annoying partly because nobody ever seems to apply it to themselves, but mostly because I'm a pedant and have a hard time accepting that phrase if the nearly identical "colored people" is beyond the pale.

because we believe deeply that good intentions count, and that nobody (especially white people) is really evil,

Gah. This is just flat out wrong.

The house elves thing interests me, because initially I thought it was an obvious (and clunky) allegory about slavery, but then it doesn't pan out that way. It's certainly led to some interesting discussions between me and PK. On the whole I'm somewhat inclined to give Rowling credit for not just doing simple pat analogies, which would be easy enough; it's a little more to her credit, I think, that she introduces the issue of race but doesn't really bother to resolve it; the stories end up being about stories, rather than social issues.

495: I dunno, I think white folks are always making excuses for white racism along just those lines, and many of the excuse-makers are liberals. One sees it all the time, ad nauseum in fact, on feminist blogs. Anyone says "hey, wait, your "feminism" really applies only to white women" and someone liberal white feminist comes right back with "But they meant well! They didn't mean to rely on brown labor/assume that abortion is the only important issue for feminism/etc! And now my little white person feelings are hurt! Oh, boo hoo, you're all so mean and divisive with your talk about race!"

I know I must now ban myself for analogy.
Although it's not exactly an analogy.

I guess to me Rowling is writing pretty explicitly about race and nation--that's what puts her so seriously on the hook. It's not just that she's writing about Imaginary Land of Beautiful White Princesseses Far Far Away--she's writing about the UK. And she's writing in a very didactic manner about nation, politics and race--vid Blair/Fudge, the House Elf Liberation Front, Dumbledore's pontifications, etc. If you start writing about contemporary stuff, it's not reasonable to expect that you can get away with the same things as when you're writing about the Land of Heroic Fantasy Before Time Began.

Oh sweet Jeebus. Apparently the choices in treating minorities are:

(1) Ignore 'em.
(2) Turn 'em into inoffensive paste figures.
(3) Write a book about race-related issues rather than the book you wanted to write.
(4) "Treat race seriously," whatever that means. (I stole it from parsimion, but only because that's what I saw first. I think that's a pretty good description of what a fair number of people seem to be arguing in favor of.)

If those are the choices, I vote (1) or (2), because (3) sounds boring and ill-done, and (4) sound like it may well be offensive and ill-done. A lot of these concerns, at least as articulated now, seem more appropriate to the world of twenty years ago. Anyone come out any of the books wanting to do something harmful to Jews? Other than ogged, I mean. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Frowner, what do you say to 430?

500!

Her extremely broad and loyal readership alone, I would say, warrants it.

Warrants attention to the subtext of her books, maybe, if you assume that due to broad distribution, they're informing the 'cultural dialogue' or whatever. In that case, discuss the books as a cultural phenomenon, not for literary merit. (I'd venture that this is what Frowner is meaning to do to some extent.)

I consider the popularity of the Potter books to have been strongly influenced by savvy marketing. Whether the books will stand as classics 30 years from now is unknown. Those of you who've read them would have to tell me whether there's anything innovative, seminal or some such to distinguish them.

498: People have written extensively on how to write responsibly about race. I can't rattle it off, off the top of my head, but there are clear protocols that are not intrusive or clunky other than just those four options.

502: The idea of "clear protocols" for writing about race is about as depressing a sentiment as I can imagine. Eneough so that, but for the last few words, I'd assume you were joking.

#500. Damn. Petey Greene was shouting for 500.

It's not just that she's writing about Imaginary Land of Beautiful White Princesseses Far Far Away--she's writing about the UK.

Except that she is in fairyland, because the wizards are so isolated from the rest of modern day life. Their Minister of Magic can contact the PM, but we don't see the Weasleys voting Labour, or wondering about the war in Iraq, or reading the major newspapers or following football. (I would really love a wizarding story in which wizarding powers were pretty irrelevant because of blackberrys.)

Rowling could have, very easily, just made Ron Indian or something. And maybe she should have. But I don't think it would have advanced the cause of racial equality much. He just would have been a white public schoolboy with a different skin tone; the rest of the story isn't set up for a sustained critique of Muggle politics and life. It would be strange in a world where no wizard votes for PM or deals with non-wizard issues or knows what a gun is, to have the same race worries instead of, oh, worries about purity of magical bloodlines or something.

I've taken it upon myself to compile a list of protocols for writing responsibly about race. e-mail if interested.

And I'd say that there's room for as much or as little complexity as your story can handle by combining 2 with 3 or 4. Even if you don't want to 'deal with' race in any complicated form, there's something to be said for putting some non-white characters at the center of events. It may look PBS-liberal-ish, but it's something, and if you find yourself capable of/interested in addressing race in any more complex way, having non-white characters at the center of events allows that to happen organically rather than having to drag someone in from the periphery for a moment of racial sensitivity.

Clear protocols is poor language. I'm just saying, people have written thought-provoking stuff that, if a writer reads it, might lead to that writer doing a better job incorporating race into their writing.

I miss Chappelle's "Ask a Black Dude".

507: But if one, as a PBS-ish liberal, includes non-white characters but does them or their lack of whiteness a real or interpreted disservice, perhaps by mentioning their lack of whiteness or including some awkward discordant phrase that only emphasizes one's own PBS-ish liberal whiteness, then one opens one's arms to criticisms like Frowner's.

430!

Well, about race I would say 382 over again. (I'm actually finally needing to do some actual work now, I think....sigh.)

The thing is, the Potter books have a foot in both worlds, so to speak--they are overtly about both the real world of the UK today and about its parallel Wizarding society. That's why I don't think that you can just assume that you can discuss race by metaphor. (Even bad metaphor). In fact, much of the thrill of the books lie in their teasing and comic similarities to the 'real' world.

Well, in the 'real" world, we've got lots and lots of racism. If your book stands partly in the real world of today and treats upon race then you need to have some explanation, however trivial, of the logic of race in your books. Why does no one exoticise Parvati or make ethnic jokes about Cho? Or, if they do, why do we get only the sanitized happy-happy version? Similarly, why is it that the brown characters are just like the white characters except in their appearance? I can believe in a wizarding world where this is the case, but I can't believe in a wizarding world that overlaps with the Muggle world where nobody remarks on it.

And I would add that since Rowling is so explicitly talking about prejudice and exploitation--which obviously take some kind of intention--382-ism just doesn't cut it.

The only argument I can see in favor of her approach is that if you're going to have a big audience of school kids of all ages, you don't want to make the not-white ones feel like the not-white characters in the story are presented as victims or exiles or enemies. But this would then turn into a good argument for having a main non-white character.

The thing is, either Rowling is intentional or not. If she's not, and this is all unchecked id, so to speak, then what she writes about race reveals a lot about her assumptions and about what's acceptable to the average white reader. If she is intentional, cleverly cueing all this to her audience, then there's every good reason to write in more brown characters. Why exactly can't some major-minor character like Lupin be non-white? What about Fleur? Why do all the veela have to be blond? Or, as we've discussed before, Ron or Hermione?

500 -> 499

If you apply my protocols to a thinly veiled celebration of posh boarding schools it comes out like Native Son, every time.

498: No, there are other ways that race or racial issues can be written about intelligently, or can intelligently be part of a book that's about something else.

All I'm saying about Rowling is tha (1) by and large fantasy novels pretend that race doesn't even exist (I know there are counterexamples; "by and large"); (2) by and large white writers aren't comfortable with racialized topics (as Frowner pointed out Bechdel admits); (3) by and large kids books that deal with topics of race are annoying--either you get the Benetton tokenism thing or you get the Serious Issue Book in which brown people Lived in the Past and were Oppressed and Isn't That Terrible. Again, there are counterexamples, but honest writing for kids about the complexities of racial history seems damn rare.

I think the way to go with kids' lit is to explicitly search out books by authors who aren't white that aren't explicitly about race or Our Noble Past--that is, to just make ethnicity and skin color part of normal human variety, like languages or where people were born or whatever--before you get into the Social Issues stuff.

498:

(4) "Treat race seriously," whatever that means. (I stole it from parsimion,

Tim, to be fair, my 433.2 saying "treat race seriously" was a fuckup on my part. I was quoting Cala's earlier thing but screwed up the italics in the second quoted paragraph.

Oh noes! Someone might try to write in a left-wing manner and be criticized for it! I guess that proves the futility of all left-wing writing!

I am going to remark, meanly, that it is quintessentially bourgeois liberal to be very, very concerned that we find a formula which avoids conflict and criticism. Particularly when this formula allows us to sit on our hands.

The thing is, either Rowling is intentional or not

Rowling is an accident of history.

510: Sure, one invites that sort of criticism. And then one reads it, and figures out if one thinks it has a point, and if one does think it has a point one tries to do better next time.

I suppose race could have been integrated in the same sense as other "Muggle" issues. Harry remarks to Ron about how Dudley hated people who look like Padma and Parvati. Ron says something like, "Oh, you mean because they wear they dress all girly?" "No, no. You know, because of where they come from." "I thought they came to Hogwarts from London, too?" Then Harry explains ethnicity to Ron, who shakes his head and mutters about how he'll never understand Muggle culture. Then Hermione can explain that it's the same as the bit with the pure bloods and mudbloods and Ron can say he still thinks it's pretty stupid.

"they are overtly about both the real world of the UK today "

I just don't agree with this at all. "Set in," sure, but the books are as much about direct, serious social and political commentary about Muggle England as they are about serious character analysis of the Dursley family.

I'd like to note that this thread made it to 516 comments before the word "bourgeois" was used. That must be a record.

The thing is, either Rowling is intentional or not

I don't think this is true; she's intentional about some things and others probably not. The point of the "intentional fallacy" wasn't that there weren't any intentions, just that everything you could find was put there on purpose.

A lot of what Frowner's pointing out was obvious to me, and I'm sure to many others from the start; I thought of it as coming with the territory, so to speak.

Frowner, in 516 you are being mean to yourself. The Harry Potter books are frankly elitist; they celebrate institutions that have served throughout their history to keep powerful people powerful. There's no real way to fix that and, if you like the books, it's part of the reason why.

It took 516 comments to get to the dropping of the "bourgeois" bomb? In a discussion of fantasy? The mind reels.

Is 516 a response to 514? Serious question, not pissy archness. B/c if so, I guess I should clarify; I'm absolutely not saying let's find a formula that avoids conflict and criticism. I'm thinking of the books primarily as children's literature, as opposed to Socially Responsible Literature.

If not, I don't understand what 516 is a response to.

I can believe in a wizarding world where this is the case, but I can't believe in a wizarding world that overlaps with the Muggle world where nobody remarks on it.

They haven't figured out telephones, either.

And I'm not sure how changing Ron or Hermione or someone to a different race would help with the sanitization problem you're worried about. The sanitization problem comes about partly from the wizarding ignorance of everything Muggle, and partly because sanitization makes it very palatable, Cosby-like, for kids.

Ron could be Indian, but in a world where wizards don't drive or vote, he's probably not worried about being profiled as a terrorist. It wouldn't hurt, but I don't think it would count as a truer representation or critique of modern England.

525: I read 516 as a response to 510.

Ron could be Indian, but in a world where wizards don't drive or vote, he's probably not worried about being profiled as a terrorist. It wouldn't hurt, but I don't think it would count as a truer representation or critique of modern England.

On the other hand, it would probably be of some value to Indian kids reading the books.

The Harry Potter books are frankly elitist; they celebrate institutions that have served throughout their history to keep powerful people powerful

Institutions like schools? What?

525: No, it wasn't. I just didn't number it because I was so distractingly pleased that I could finally write "Oh noes!", which seems to me the very height of hilarity.

It was about the idea that if the left criticizes the left for not being left enough, this somehow means that the right is right. Or at least that we don't need to make any of the changes proposed by the left.

So you guys just haven't read any of those memoirs by writers of color where they're all like "and all the main characters are white, and it was really, really disappointing to me as a kid"? It seems like including a few non-white important characters in a major, heavily marketed, obviously rather focus-grouped series would be nice for that reason alone.

518: Or one finds the criticism, bien pensant as it may be, worth rebelling against as an example among others of the general desire to harness the author's imagination to the critic's own prejudices. Authors ought to rebel against the well-meaning and the "concerned" as vigorously as they do against the crude and the boring.

That came out a little more ragged individualist than I intended. Another try: I seem to recall an acid comment by Rowling expressing triumphal satisfaction in the expectation of completing the series without taking note of the "more feisty female football captains" comments in reviews.

527: Ah. My memory of the details of convos usually only goes back about five comments or so.

Authors ought to rebel against the well-meaning and the "concerned" as vigorously as they do against the crude and the boring.

Why? What makes it important for an author to rebel against a comment noting that, e.g., "Your books appear to marginalize the minority characters; if that's not essential to your artistic vision, you might consider more attention to these issues." An author isn't obliged to obey every socially conscious nitpicker, but that's a far cry from saying that it's important to rebel against that sort of criticism.

531: I just don't buy that version of how art works, like it's this sacred, Flaubertian, late-19th-century yawp over the walls of the world, hewing to exciting, individual visions, etc.

I mean, this is Harry Potter.

(I just saw both a woman who was a total ringer for Ann Althouse and a girl wearing pink, knee-length harem pants. Apropos of nothing, that is.)

528: Eh. That might be enough of a reason to do so, were I writing the book or making the PBS TV show. All the little children of the world, &c. But then again, it would be so sanitized that it might be hard to relate to (Cosby the inoffensive doctor?), again, because Rowling pretty much punted all mundane political and cultural stuff in favor of Owl Post and Quidditch.

PEOPLE! Race, gender and class have been issues in science fiction and fantasy forever! Whether addressed directly (rare) or by omission, or commission!

And it's the rare scifi/fantasy work that aspires to be literature in such a way that it tackles these things.

This is a big problem in the genre! Everyone knows it! Why Rowling would be taken to task for producing something that is, to all appearances, completely mainstream and flaccid, is a little beyond me. Go for it, since she's there in front of your face, but I don't in the slightest hold her responsible for a damned thing, wouldn't expect a thing, so can't manage to be disappointed. I suppose this is what puzzles me: why anybody would be disappointed in what she's produced.

529: Boarding school, specifically.

530: I think we're eliding the distinction between a character's who is, say, Anglo-Indian, which involves specific historic and cultural issues, and one who has long straight black hair, dark brown skin, and whose last name is Chatterjee. I agree with you that the HP books really ought to have more of the latter, but I agree with Cala that it would be really difficult for them to have the former. I suspect that part of the reason they don't have the latter is b/c Rowling herself doesn't really understand the distinction.

institutions like Eton, yeah.

Erm, what does saying 'it's a big problem in the genre' have to do with not being disappointed in Rowling? Defending her on the grounds that she's as good as the bulk of a genre that has big problems on that front seems poorly founded.

hewing to exciting, individual visions, etc.

Huh. I rather like this concept of art.

institutions like Eton, yeah.

Eton doesn't accept mudbloods.

institutions like Eton, yeah.

Except that Hogwarts isn't an elite institution in that (as I recall) it's where every wizard gets schooled, regardless of things like money and social standing.

I think we're eliding the distinction between a character's who is, say, Anglo-Indian, which involves specific historic and cultural issues, and one who has long straight black hair, dark brown skin, and whose last name is Chatterjee

And who doesn't have any specific history or culture? Wasn't one of the criticisms of Julia that, while the main character was black, she was essentially a white woman with dark skin? I can easily believe that Rowling just doesn't know enough to write non-white english characters.

Re my 103: I was thinking on the ride to work this morning (all my good thoughts come while bike riding), that in spite of the fact that book 5 is my least favorite of the series, it has two of my favorite scenes: "Christmas at St. Mungo's", which brought tears to my eyes in a way that Sirius and Dumbledore's death did not, and the triumphant exit of Fred and George Weasley, which made me want to stand up and cheer.

540: Well, I don't mean that art is collective and of the people, either.

But the thing is, if you go into all that "I have my sacred pure original vision which I must put down on paper regardless of what anyone says or thinks"...well, that's not how the artists and writers I know actually work. They talk about stuff, they debate technique and content, they work in artists' groups or even in collectives, they appropriate other people's themes and ideas, etc. They even develop theories--often changing--about why they work as they do and what they want to achieve. So I don't really think that a book is sacred fire that descends from the heavens and if we expect the author to carefully consider what goes into it, or change part of it for any reason, or whatever we are somehow interfering with a pure, "natural" process. Art isn't natural.

only the very special kind. a letter comes in the mail just for you, and they take you away from your awful, middle class family.

536: Come on. She gets taken to task for the same reason that, as you say, it's a big problem in the genre--because it's a problem. And because her books are a huge, huge crossover success, *and* because they're for children--and children's lit is at least as highly aware of the issue of race as scifi/fantasy.

533: I suppose I assume the superiority of the rebellious spirit that is of a piece with quixotic individuality.

542: I'm not sure if that's true, but even if all wizards get to go to Hogwarts, there remains the fact that only wizards get to go there.

I've wondered about this before, in the context of books whose purpose is not to explore say, race, and the idea that you write what you know.

If you don't actually know many people outside a fairly homogeneous group, how do you write about them without being superficial? It would be easy to change the skin color of a character in your book, but if you don't actually know anything about the associated culture, ethnicity, politics, etc, what are your choices? I guess either you write your character as a superficially minority character, or you do an awful lot of reasearch. If that research isn't related to the main themes of your book, are you going to take the time?

It makes sense the comments above about people being frustrated about not having characters in childrens book of their own ethinicity or whatever. Is it really better for a kid to read about a random white british upper class kid who happens to be painted to look black/brown/indian/whatever? Is the message any better when it's `sure, there can be a character in this book that looks like you, so long as they aren't actually anything like you' ?

Isn't the real argument more about things like a lack of diversity in the marketing of childrens books? I'm pretty ignorant of the state of things, not having any children, but I'd hate to think there are no talented childrens authors who happen to be minorities, and no books featuring minority children without making that the point of the books. Do these books exist? If so, why aren't they widely promoted?

And who doesn't have any specific history or culture? Precisely. Both because, as you say, Rowling doesn't know enough to do otherwise, and because the books are fantasy and therefore contemporary racial issues would be weird--the characters simply don't have the cultural/historical background they'd need, because the culture and history they live in isn't real.

The thing is, the Potter books have a foot in both worlds, so to speak--they are overtly about both the real world of the UK today and about its parallel Wizarding society.

Absolutely. I continually find myself wondering about things like the history of how Pavarti's family would have come to England -- was there wizard colonialism to go with the Muggle version? How does that intersect with their pureblood status, especially when purebloodedness and status goes with being a Grand Old British Wizarding Family? I suppose you can say that kind of question is exactly what fanfic is good at (and so it is), but I do wish the books gave a little more thought to how these things were supposed to fit together.

Maybe it's the difference between "Harry Potter has a problematic treatment of race" and "J.K. Rowling should have written a book that takes race more seriously" - the first criticism is clearly valid; to the second one, literally taken, has a bunch of problems itself.

Also, she clearly knows nothing about how sports actually work, and as a result Quidditch is fatally flawed. If this is what happens when she tries to write about that with which she is unfamiliar, she was right to not create the Racially Aware Harry Potter.

549: Well, it would be pretty frustrating for a kid with no magical abilities to sit through transfigurations day after day...

545: Something doesn't have to be "natural" to be worth protecting from our ineluctably natural desire to tell each other what to do and how to do it.

it would probably be of some value to Indian kids reading the books.

I think it's important to remember that when Rowling started writing these books, she had no idea that they were going to blow up and become the phenomenon they have. She just had a story to tell but surely didn't expect that millions of kids all over the world wouldd be reading them. Given that the ethnicities of many of the main characters were set in the first book, I don't think that can be held against her. Might she have made the characters more international had she known it would become a worldwide hit? Maybe, if only to help sales by reflecting her readership. But she had no idea what she was creating when made those initital decisions.

539: Who said I was defending her? I dismiss her. She wrote a series of super-popular children's fantasy books that completely fits the genre, to the extent of being rather deeply derivative.

That doesn't preclude the possibility that it's very entertaining.

549: I know I am the nerdiest nerdiest nerd ever to walk the earth, but I was trying to figure out how the Hogwarts thing worked and it led me to assume that there are very, very few wizards. Consider this: We seem to know almost all the Gryffindors of Harry's year: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Parvati, Lavender...and even if we assume that there are a LOT of unmentioned ones, we can assume, say, twenty. So there's eighty kids per year. Then let's assume that this holds true for every year, just to make it easy: there are eighty babies born per year, eighty two-year-olds, etc. So for every decade of life, there are 800 people. So assuming an average life span of eighty (again to make it easy), there are only 6400 wizards in the UK. When I think of this, I think that the Wizarding community is rather oversupplied with government--just how many departments at the Ministry of Magic does it take to administer 6400 people? There are high schools that big.

Or else maybe not everyone goes to Hogwarts. Do you really think ol' proletarian stereotype Knight Bus driver guy went there? Cor, not on your life, gov'nor!

542 - This is true as far as it goes, but poorly thought out on Rowling's part, I think. (Hogwarts is meant to be the center only of the British wizardly universe, given the appearance of French and Mitteleuropean wizards later in the series, but how this squares with Voldermort's plans for world conquest and the intersection of national origin and purebloodedness as mentioned by rfts in 552 is completely unclear.)

Frowner's posts are great on the race stuff. And pace 536, I don't think the hitherto cluelessness of much of the genre is an excuse for further cluelessness in the genre. There have, after all, been SF writers who've demonstrated that's possible to be non-clueless about this stuff, even if they're in the minority.

Just in case it hasn't been said enough already: the "hey, it's addressing race by metaphor!" defense is really super lame, not least because the texts so defended are almost always wearing a very specific attitude toward mundane racial dynamics on their sleeve. On this score, it's exactly right to identify Rowling as twee nostalgia with a splash of tokenism. That's progressive compared to, say, Tolkien's whiter-than-white chivalric romance template, but it's not really that impressive in a genre that now claims Wizard of Earthsea among its classics.

551: And explicitly excluded from the wizardingn world. Hell, CYS doesn't even come to check up on Harry. No one worries whether they can still be good Anglicans with their newfound magic powers, either.

Is it really better for a kid to read about a random white british upper class kid who happens to be painted to look black/brown/indian/whatever? Is the message any better when it's `sure, there can be a character in this book that looks like you, so long as they aren't actually anything like you' ?

At the level of writing we're talking about for the Harry Potter books, I don't know that this is really a problem. There are plenty of British kids of subcontinental origin with enough points of cultural commonality with white British kids that the superficial approach isn't going to be glaringly insulting. And Rowling's almost certainly met people of subcontinental origin, and might have noticed something about some of them sometime that would be useful in drawing up a character.

Oh, and has someone cited John Rogers on characters and race yet? I hope so.

553.b gets a thumbs up from me. Gah, I'm glad she finally decided to stop giving us Quidditch blow-by-blows.

And Rowling's almost certainly met people of subcontinental origin

You think?

553: One might argue that, today, "Harry Potter has a problematic treatment of race" is, for the sort of person who would say so, as prescriptive as "J.K. Rowling should have written a book that takes race more seriously," but the passive-aggressiveness of the former seems preferable to the daydreaming-commissar tone of the latter.

553b is so right.

565: Not least because she's long been a hot property at writers' festivals, and South Asian authors are still fashionable in BritLit. It's very unlikely she hasn't met quite a few at least in that context alone.

565: Maybe. I mean, sure, she's got to have some experience, but can she get beyond a superficial treatment? I had a friend who used to complain about all the `fucking coconuts' in books; she was generally disparaging of white authors treatment of black characters. Just anectdotal though.

re: 568

Or, you know, the fact that there are literally millions of people whose families have immigrated from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh living in the UK.

569 - It's not clear that racism shakes out in any noticable way in Rowling's Wizardland. I'd have been happy if any of the, say, ten most plot-centric characters (in which group I do not file Cho) had been non-white.

533b: I'd worry that Ron would be Indian, and the only difference would be that his mother would have them peel potatoes for curry rather than roast.

570: That too!

Well, yeah, I meant to be understatedly sarcastic there.

569: You know, while I can totally see her getting criticism for superficial treatment of non-white characters, she's getting criticism now. I think she'd have done better to get the criticism for treating non-white characters superficially if that's the best she could do.

568: `I can write about the x because i met a few x'? In a way this problem is even worse for childrens books. I doubt you can infer culturally significant difference in childhood experience from interaction as adults. You'd have to either research it properly, or have known about it as a kid yourself.

I agree with soubzriquet. Just because someone is a good writer doesn't mean they can see the world through the eyes of someone from a completely different background. That takes a sort of genius. It's hard enough for most writers to create believable characters of the opposite sex. Better not to even try if the only reason you'd be trying is to get on the same page as somebody politically.

Also, since Frowner is specifically offering her criticism of the book because it's set in a an offshoot of contemporary Britain rather than in distant fantasy land...that seems similar to the criticism of "Sex in the City"/"Seinfeld" presentation of a completely white New York. Which is very valid. I think "Harry Potter" is more blameless, though, because of the aspects of nostalgia that people mentioned earlier.

"Or, you know, the fact that there are literally millions of people whose families have immigrated from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh living in the UK."

Resulting in the only delicious food in the UK.

re: 575

Also a good point.

Eh. Frowner's right that it makes more sense to think of this as insight into liberal-white-folks-for-whom-people-of-color-are-marginal than it does to be talking about it in terms of what Rowling should have done.

574: I agree --- and was really meaning this more generally than about Rowling. Her books are an outlier, and you could argue that once the series really took of she should have made an effort this way.

Is Wizarding Britain a more major world power in its world than Muggle Britain is in ours? Is (therefore) Wizarding Britain an active colonial power? What of Wizarding America and Wizarding Australia? Is the Wizarding Middle East a tranquil backwater, because there's no such thing as Wizarding Oil or Wizarding Religious Strife? Or are all the wizards from areas with so much Muggle Unrest refugees in calmer Wizarding nations?

By dint of enormous work and massive government programs, some non-white people have learned to write. Some of those people have even written books. If you feel your kid needs some multiculti in his diet, buy one of those books. It'll be good for him and he might even learn to like it. (Or not.) Attempts to turn a popular series into the One True Guide to Life as Decided by Committee Consensus seem doomed to failure, and concerns that there may be no kid books written by minority authors seem more appropriate to a past time.

This thread is getting creaky. Do y'all want a new Potter thread put up or are you ready to declare comity and war on whitey?

Wizarding America will have wizard cowboys. You just know it.

574: Really? Better in what sense? She'd be getting criticism from educated liberals who think about race a lot either way, but this way she's sold however many tens (hundreds?) of millions of books.

577 - Oh, come on. Anglo-whitey makes excellent dessert.

You think she wouldn't have if Ron's last name were Kumar?

Mainly, racewise, I just wish that there were some racial diversity among the Hogwarts staff, and that the giant and house-elf plots were either much more thoughtful or just left out. The geopolitics of the HP books are clearly not very well thought out, and the reflexive Eurocentrism that results is... well, it gnaws at my mind but it's not exactly shocking that things came out that way.

Isn't the real argument more about things like a lack of diversity in the marketing of childrens books? I'm pretty ignorant of the state of things, not having any children, but I'd hate to think there are no talented childrens authors who happen to be minorities, and no books featuring minority children without making that the point of the books. Do these books exist? If so, why aren't they widely promoted?

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Because books by minority authors, no matter what the topic, get slotted into the "minority author" subcategory.

It's really amazing what a difference a good bookstore makes. In grad school city, the local independent had an awesome range of great and diverse kids (and grownup) books. In professorial job city, the local independent had an earnestly liberal section of First Nations books, and virtually all the other kids books were about "normal," i.e., white kids. Here, the local independent kids bookstore is about halfway between those two examples--a broader variety, but books by or about brown people tend to focus on their brownness as the major subject.

582: Not exactly apropos, but, as noted time and again above, the Leguin Earthsea books are wonderful, in both the strict and the other senses of the term.

583: I think this is more of an "agree to disagree and send Whitey a hastily-scrawled, rambling letter" situation.

560.--Hey, DS, could you talk a little about how Le Guin's treatment of race resonates with people of color? As a core whitey, what I remember is only that bit at the end of The Tombs of Atuan where what's-her-face compares her white arm to Ged's coppery-brown arm and admires him. Even as a kid, I thought it was a pretty erotic passage, but I don't really remember it as really describing much about race, per se. Maybe the passage is a political act, in the sense of educating in a very subtle way?

War on liberals for being insufficiently left.

553b. So true! I think that by making Luna the Quidditch commentator in the final match of book 6, Rowling was making fun of herself and her total lack of knowledge about sports.

The only way I can make sense of the ridiculous scoring system of Quidditch is if the match is not the decisive unit for comparing teams, but rather the entire season. As if we determined the best basketball team by adding up all their points at the end of the season.

From reactions I've read to the books, I think a big chunk of it is incredibly simple -- just the feeling that being brown-skinned doesn't disqualify you from being a centrally important narrative figure. I mean, the ethnicities in EarthSea don't have any cultural or historical links to real world ethnicities.

591: There has been at least one edition of A Wizard of Earthsea with a non-white skinned Sparrowhawk on the cover (I seem to think of Ged as reddish-skinned, and always thought of him looking like a Native American of one of the Plains nations, but "coppery-brown" sounds right), which I seem to recall being something of a touchstone for SFF authors of a certain age.

587: Nope. For all that Ron's family is a mildly objectionable (Irish?) Catholic stereotype, it's clearly something that Rowling understands to some extent and can write in such a way that the characters have their own existence. Ron Kumar would either come from a family that seemed suspiciously Catholic for a bunch of subcontinentals, or would have come from a family of space aliens who happened to like curry and arranged marraiges. In either case, the books would suffer dramatically.

575: You'd have to either research it properly

Yes! Exactly! And this part 575 to the first part of 576. Being able to write well about people from different backgrounds and mentalities is not some mystical power, it's a fairly key part of the work of writing. It's the difference between writers who can do a good, diverse palette of characters and writers who can't.

Of course there are plenty of writers who cannot be bothered with this, or who can't apply research in a convincing way -- men who just can't write female characters (and sometimes vice versa), non-athletes who can't write sports, computer programmers who can't conceive of how humanities majors think, etc. -- who compensate with other virtues (the ability to spin a good suspense yarn or serve up a perfectly-timed slice of nostalgia, for instance). It's just that those who have to compensate for lack of research and insight are likelier to be seen as hacks.

I doubt it. Look, Zaidie Smith isn't Indian or Pakistani, yet she can write subcontinental characters without royally fucking them up -- given that all of JKR's characters are thin and stereotypical, the idea that it would have been impossible for her, as a white Briton, to have pulled together enough information to write a thin and stereotypical British Indian family that would have matched the depth of her other characters seems weird.

598 to 596, and I agree with 597.

600!

598 -- Cool! You read her stuff? I thought you hated modern fiction.

(And the obligatory "Curse you, JM, curse you!")

I'm not sure writing the Weasleyjees as a thin stereotype would be an improvement. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would be disastrous.

It's easier to get away with thin stereotypes when they're about majority, powerful players (like schoolteachers and headmasters) than it is when you're trying to present a minority character in order to be diverse.

I almost like her a great deal -- I think she's spectacular on a page-by-page and chapter-by-chapter basis, but get cross on a global, goddamnit-I-belong-in-the-nineteenth-century-and-want-a-functional-plot level. But for people who have entered this, or the prior, century, she's excellent.

594:

just the feeling that being brown-skinned doesn't disqualify you from being a centrally important narrative figure

Pretty much right, I'd say. The skin color of the characters doesn't have much correlation to the associations we have: darker as more of a liability in one way or another. Color/race comes up more in terms of one's historical past, what sort of culture one is from in the Earthsea world. Not the slightest privileging of lighter skins. Not a big deal is made of the skin color of a given character until you, the reader, put together that since so-and-so is from such-and-such area, hey, I guess he must be black, he must be coppery-red, and so on. Skin color itself is of far less notice than cultural affiliation.

I'm not sure writing the Weasleyjees as a thin stereotype would be an improvement. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would be disastrous.

Indeed. Rowling is white. The bar is much higher for a white author trying to write about the brown people.

In fact, I'm pretty sure it would be disastrous.

I'm not so much arguing about what JKR should have done anymore, but I really think this is wrong. If you believe that any artistic depiction of non-white characters is going to be wrongful or disastrous unless it's great art, then non-white characters get eliminated from pop culture.

606; I'm not denying that the potential for attracting criticism is higher, but there's a point at which you need to suck it up and take the heat.

600? Jesus, people, you're getting even less work done than I am.

Book 7 ends with Harry in a Schrodinger's Cat box, neither alive nor dead. There! Now you know!

597 is true, and certainly w/r/t Rowling and subcontinental Britain, it's kind of hard for me to imagine that Rowling really doesn't have good friends who aren't white. But maybe I overestimate the extent of integration in Britain.

OTOH, I'm not *quite* as sanguine about the "hey, it's just part of writing" thing. It's kind of amazing how difficult it can be to really imagine difference around basic identity issues--shit, I think that *most* men writers don't do great women, and presumably most men actually *live* with women. I think crossing those lines is a lot harder, too, if you're in the majority group, for obvious reasons.

Which doesn't mean it shouldn't be done a lot more often than it is. Just that it's sadly unsurprising that it's not.

591: Sure. There was a worthwhile conversation about this over at John & Belle's blog last year. To quote what I said there (excising some of my usual snark): Race wasn't a central focus of Earthsea, but Le Guin was one of the first fantasy writers to recognize the multicultural nature of her audience and to deliberately write a world in which "minorities" didn't appear solely as either savages, villains or bit-players . . . it was a significant departure in a genre that was mostly imitative of Tolkien's attitudes to race (which at best was a kind of genteel recycling of the stereotypes of chivalric romance) . . .

I remember the first book much more vividly than Tombs, but I do recall the passage you're talking about and I think "subtle education" is a good reading of it.

558: You're right that the population is probably a lot smaller than the school facilities and government institutions and stuff would warrant, and that's part of the problem with the wizarding world, that it's so insular (both a problem facing the characters, and a writing problem related to what people are talking about here). We can presume that the Ministry of Magic also spends a lot of time dealing with nonhuman magical beings, though, and then there's the possibility that the magical community may once have been larger. But also, spatial/geographical limitations are obviously not as big a deal for them as they are in real life, see for example the Quidditch world cup, so the number of floors in a building is probably not as good an indicator of complexity or importance as it is in real life, so maybe the Ministry isn't as big or important as we think, but then...

If J.K. Rowling had only been as successful at this as, say, Frank Herbert, we could look forward to prequels ad infinitum to explain the history of the hidden world exactly as she would have wanted. Or at least, exactly as her kids decide she probably would have wanted 10 years after she dies, and isn't that close enough? However, since she became not just successful but wildly, filthy rich, she can easily say "shove it" to the people who really, really want the backstory spelled out in every niggling detail.

My own personal fankwanking interpretation, also relevant to 552 and 581: the magical community (at least, in Western Europe, who knows about the rest) has been in steady decline since the Enlightenment, if not for a long time before that. And it has been interconnected but insular since more or less the beginning of history, more or less around the world. So a pureblood subcontinental family might have the surface trappings of India, just like the Weasleys have the surface trappings of England, but they would have more history, politics and culture in common with each other than with the nearest Muggle home. Therefore, colonialism would mostly have passed wizards by. Admittedly, this is hard to square with the "what it means to be British" reading of the books, but so what?

I know discussion has moved on, but I am a big supporter of the idea that the series has to end with HP deciding he doesn't want to be an auror after all, and taking up the position of teacher of "defense against the dark arts" at Hogwarts.

606: Disagreed. Because it's a *fantasy* novel. You can give a lead character identifiable ethnic attributes, or simply brown skin, but then you can make him be whatever you want. Who's to say that hobbits, or wizards, don't look Asian and drink lots of milk? It's a make believe world.

The sad thing about the Earthsea novels, which I like, is that they're *still* the go-to books for a good example of non-whitey fantasy, even after Octavia Butler and everything.

615: Quality's a harsh mistress.

615: It really is too bad. More people should be reading Nalo Hopkinson, for one thing.

(I wish I could be a bigger booster of Octavia Butler herself, but unfortunately I just didn't like her books much. She often really was an example of race politics being uncomfortably heavy-handed in the other direction.)

Thanks, DS. At the end of that thread, Gary links himself quoting from a moving Pam Noles post about being a young black SFF fan.

617: I haven't read her, because I don't really read fantasy/scifi. I just know she died recently.

I liked Walter Mosley's SF novel The Wave. IIRC, his other SF novel, Futureland wasn't as good.

615: Well, Butler writes darker, more adult stuff -- it's not getting sold to 11 year olds. I think Earthsea pops up because it really is classic children's/teen writing.

For a white guy doing the sort of thing that I kind of wish people would do more of, I'm thinking of something like Peter Beagle's Folk of the Air. It's a fantasy novel set in Berkeley; the protagonist is a white guy, who's dating an American woman of Japanese origin, who is also involved with a black guy (who's mostly a plot device rather than a character), and there are a few other black characters who get a fair amount of narrative attention. It's fluff, and there's no particular insight into American Japanese culture, or African American culture -- nothing important, racially, is happening at all.

But it happens in a world where it's not true that all the non-white characters have somehow gotten shoved out of the narrative spotlight, or disappeared altogether. There are non-white people living in Berkeley, and if you're going to set a book there it makes sense to have them show up.

I've recommended this book before. Everyone should read it, age 10 and up.

621: Hey, someone besides me has read The Folk of the Air...and of course it's LB, my science fiction twin.

Yeah, actually although the racial politics of that book are flawed in places, I think it's fantastic. Plus from time to time exquisitely well-written. Don't forget about Sia, who although she is Greek is definitely not written as just some white lady.

Hippety Haunches? So very funny.

And so sad--I always wonder what happens to Mansa Musa when he's restored to his own time.

And the bus driver, and the guy who works for the post office, who is totally my favorite character.

Unusually, it's a book where an awful lot of the characters are working class or class-displaced.

Normally I can quote whole paragraphs of it from memory, but since I want to quote one to show how good it is, now I can't.

When you all finish telling JKR how to write commercial fiction why don't you give Tiger Woods a few tips on how to play golf?

624 is so right. Readers, please stop having opinions about what you like! Shut up and eat your porridge!

Hey Tiger! Slow back, dinna press, and keep your ee on the ba'!

Well, drat. He doesn't seem to be reading the comments anymore.

why don't you give Tiger Woods a few tips on how to play golf?

Isn't this why sports networks were invented?

I also very much like Folk of the Air, and Sia is amazing.

If you believe that any artistic depiction of non-white characters is going to be wrongful or disastrous unless it's great art, then non-white characters get eliminated from pop culture.

Not what I'm saying. Just that you can't change Ron's name and add a little stereotypes and expect it not to be cringeworthy. The bar isn't great art, but it's easier to lampoon the dominant culture (the Dursleys, say) with a stereotype than a minority one. Wouldn't you cringe at, say, GhettoRon and his soul-food cooking single mother?

Hell, ogged's cringing at the goblins.

597: Yes, but also to an extent you have to accept that a certain amount of research is going into a book at most, and writing well across these sort of boundaries is at best very difficult.

Too bad, I think Shearer would have enjoyed 626.

I'm ridiculously fond of everything Beagle's written -- I read The Last Unicorn before I knew that naming the magician Schmendrick was a joke, and imprinted on his voice like a baby duck. It's a shame he hasn't written all that much.

632: Oh, I'm assuming Shearer will read it; I'm regretting that Tiger no longer lurks.

615: But to continue with that example, Octavia Butler didn't write anything in that niche really (their older). At her best, she's not nearly as good as LeGuin at her best either, in my probably flawed opinion.

621,623 - The scene in which she goes falconing with the owl is really memorable to me; the rest of the book less so.

It's odd how pastyfaced most of science fiction presents as given the immense amount of repurposing of science fiction and comic book imagery in African-American popular culture (Sun Ra, George Clinton, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Shaq's "Superman and Flash" schtick, etc.). Other than the aforementioned, Steven Barnes is the only black science fiction author I can think of. (And Christopher Priest, the DC comics version, I guess.) I have no really interesting thoughts on this other than standing around waving a sign that says, "Whitey's here! Explain shit to him!"

Didn't someone say something about "creaky thread" and "new post"?

634: Of course. Well, I'm pretty sure Jack Nicklaus lurks and would pass it along, so it's not a total loss.

636: See comments of O. Butler (even more rare being female as well). But your point is valid, it's a pretty pastyfaced bunch on the whole.

636: Some of the use of SF in black pop culture may have actually queered the pitch a bit for black SF writing. I'm thinking in particularly of some of the SF-tinged kookery of the Nation of Islam, for instance. But any mention of black SF writers should include Samuel R. Delaney.

(Sorry 637, that's my last in this thread.)

Butler and Delany (and Mosley, I guess, although I think of him as a detective writer) were the "aforementioned" I was referring to, although it's not like you could tell based on the actual sentence.

Among ethnic-minority SF authors, my favorite has always been Kenneth Eng.

Of course Butler and Delaney. Obviously. But they're kind of a while ago, now, and they are only two people.

Nalo Hopkinson. Jewel Gomez. That woman who wrote the extremely interesting and bizarre Mindscape. There are two anthologies, something like Dark Matter I and II, of stories by black SF writers. But yeah, it's a very white field. I mean, I can't think of a lot of, say, US Latina science fiction writers. I can't think of any in fact, although I'm sure there are a few.

625: There's a big difference between "I would have liked the book better if X" and "The book would have been better / more successful if X."

I don't think anyone was putting forth their criticisms on the grounds that they made the books less commercially successful.

Googling around for Mindscape, I came across this blog connected to the Carl Brandon Society, "dedicated to improving the visibility of people of colour in the speculative genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism etc."

Tananarive Due.

644: I can't think of a lot of, say, US Latina science fiction writers.

Latina writers still seem to be in the grip of "magic realism" for the most part. Which is cool.

645: Likewise there's a big difference between "moves units" and "deserves your respect as a timeless classic."

461

You ever read any of Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm series (the early books are better)?

646

Which means a lot of them didn't make much sense if you assume JKR was just trying to write successful commercial fiction.

Right, people who want to sell books typically don't care about anything else and, therefore, there's no basis to criticize them.

One learns a lot from reading blogs.

All this furor over the responsibility to represent race! I read somewheres that a good novel contains everything the author knows. But if a novel is in any sense a "whole story", the story has to start the same place every good story starts--in the middle. We all get that The Narrator (of whatever sort) is always, inherently, unreliable. Nobody knows everything.

That's why we build fucking Libraries instead of Sanctuaries Of The One True Book. Truly a book, even a fantasy, can leave out Important things or get them wrong in obvious ways. (Why, it's thanks to Tolkien I always thought Elves never used the bathroom! Surely that can't be true!) Talking about what gets left out can be fun & enlightening; but if it's the most productive question a novel raises...

I've been skimming a few Potter-intensive posts, as JKR is on the To Read shelf, & I'm left curious...I'm starting to get some of what JKR is blind to; but what's she looking at?

I realize this sounds like a lazy question after so much discussion, but I've only got the one life--does Harry Potter have Something to Say? Or should I actually sign on for all 7 volumes just to maintain cultural currency? Or should I just reread Le Guin (including what she has added to Earthsea since deciding that it needed a shift in perspective) and Timothy Hunter?

On a similar note, I put forth that none of this says anything as to whether Ms. Rowling is good at bocce ball.

654 to 651

653: Nobody expects anyone to write The One True Book. Writers can still be evaluated on the advantage they take of opportunities for research and the dramatic possibilities of the world around them (SF writers are not an exception to this).

what's she looking at?

Kid's adventure yarn with lots of accumulated backstory and a nostalgic boarding-school British setting. To take your other questions in order: no (which is fine), no (just watch the movies), and yes.

652

No, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to come up with complicated explanations for why they didn't make their books less commercial.

ONION PWN'S UNFOGGED:

Calling the final Harry Potter book her "darkest yet," J.K. Rowling confirmed one of the characters in it will be date raped.

My bet's on Neville.

Popping in briefly & pseudonymously* to say that as an aspiring professional writer of commercial fiction whose first book in a genre not a million miles away from JKR's is coming out too soon for it to be possible to fix things, lurking this thread has been utterly fucking paralyzingly terrifying.

We do try to get this stuff right! It's really really hard.

Pity poor whitey.

*extremely irregular commenter; no point guessing.

657: Exactly! And it makes even less sense to concoct complicated commercial explanations as to why she isn't any good at bocce ball.

Everyone, be gone with your irrelevancies. Don't you see that this thread is about commercial sales and bocce ball?

I object to your culturally imperialist attitudes toward bocce ball. Honky.

Grover Cleveland is a racist.

Aren't we all?

659: Racist.

why is text going to town with these anti-italian slurs about bocce ball? it's not nice.

doesn't he know our host is italian?
(course he spells 'dego' backwards for google-proofing purposes).

Cleveland, you should be so lucky that everyone who criticizes your book will do so while professing total charmed admiration and saying that they've reserved a copy of your latest, to be read the minute it becomes available.

Y'all, the thing I do NOT get is that we are apparently supposed to refrain from any criticism of a book that we all like, for heaven's sake. If you can't read something and think, "Well, that was very engaging and I'll certainly be discussing it with my friends, but I was troubled by X matter"...well, jesus christ, people!

We're also all bourgeois.

Grover, it's really hard to call a British North Americans of Colour Association hit team in on you when you're being so coy about the whole thing. Did you ever once think about my needs?

How long ago did I claim I was making my last post to this thread? Fuck.

Frowner, you appear not to understand that artists demand your unconditional love, nay subservience: BOW DOOOWN! (RIP Giblets.)

Damn.

659: Sexist.

a book that we all like

I got kind of bored with the whole thing and dropped it after book 3 or 4 or something. Maybe I'll pick it up again if the kid gets interested.

I enjoyed grover cleveland's book, but would have preferred it to have been written by a Latina.

god i miss fafblog.

i refuse to believe giblets is dead. giblets will rise again.
indeed, i believe we are in the end times, the last days, when soon we may expect the rapture of fafnir.

that is, if our faith is pure enough.

and you know what i liked best about fafblog? how sensitively, knowledgeably, yet subtly and unclumsily, it handled themes of race and gender.

not like some multi-billionaires we could slag off.

667:

Frowner, I didn't mean to say, "everybody shut up, you might be upsetting a stranger on the internet." After all, if I didn't think this stuff was important and worth discussing I wouldn't care what was said.

I was wondering all afternoon if I should try to comment on what it's like worrying about these problems from the inside, but I decided all my drafted comments could usefully be distilled down to their essence, which was whining.

Grover, if it's any help coming from a writer in a wholly different genre, let me tell you that everyone on the Internet is an idiot who knows nothing of your work.

Except the people who like it, of course.

659: Grover Cleveland 22 or 24? It matters in this context.

If you can't read something and think, "Well, that was very engaging and I'll certainly be discussing it with my friends, but I was troubled by X matter"...well, jesus christ, people!

Not everyone has reached the 7th level of Liberal Enlightenment, Frowner. Go easy on them.

and if it's any help coming from someone who has only a shoddy manuscript to his shoddy name: racist.

Published racist.

675: I was wondering all afternoon if I should try to comment on what it's like worrying about these problems from the inside . . .

Actually, you should. Seriously.

There's a word for people who pile onto self-deprecating jokes.

but I can't remember it.

Jerk?

*extremely irregular commenter

An extremely irregular Unfogged commenter might be a genial and well-adjusted person.

Ooh, look, I'm a fancy novelist, I know fancy words like "jerk."

If you were a hard-working Persian immigrant like me, you'd have such words at your beck and call.

It's true. Oh well. Think I'll buy a Wii.

Grover -- Standing offer to anyone who reads this mess; if you send me a copy, I'll review it on the blog. Heck, if you just send me a link, there's a good chance I'll buy it and review it.

650: No, but I'll keep an eye out for them the next time I'm looking for light adventure novels.

Some days I have trouble figuring out what's going on around here.

Harry Potter is dead, and we are making fun of him. It seems a little early, especially because he was Ogged's only friend.

cheers, slol.

663, 665 . . . 679: you all forgot anti-semite.

(And boy, are you going to feel stupid!)

681: I'll have a go; not tonight.

688: thanks, LB, I may do that.

633: Was the book better than the awful, awful movie? Because if you saw and hated the movie that would totally motivate me to track down the book in expectation that I would love it.

688: Will you review my Hermione/Ginny slash fiction?

691: We also forgot "bourgeois".

he was Ogged's only friend

I don't befriend uncircumcised guys.

692: Yes. Everything good about the book is missing from the movie. (Now, if you're going to have problems with the twee-ness of a book about a unicorn, don't bother. But if that's not going to be insurmountable from the beginning, it's lovely. You might read it to your daughter: she won't get big parts of it, but she won't mind.)

Latina writers still seem to be in the grip of "magic realism" for the most part. Which is cool.

No, it really isn't.

dude, he's got a scar.

695: Because friendship would just get in the way of the hot monkey sex.

So, I realize I'm a few hundred comments late with this, but regarding

How about the goblins/Jews whose sole purpose is to run the bank?

If someone has an exculpatory explanation for this, I'd love to hear it. It's the one thing in the book that always makes me say "what the hell were you thinking, JK?"

The goblins as Jewish stereotype did occur to me when reading the books, and bothered me a bit. But it also occurred to me that Germanic mythology is full of short, greedy approximately human creatures that like to hoard gold, and that these myths probably predate Jewish stereotypes. So, with the goblins (and also the giants) it seems like Rowling is just lifting the usual trappings of fantasy literature, and since they don't really play a major role in the story, she doesn't think too hard about what she's doing with them. I could easily believe that the possibility of goblins as Jews never crossed her mind, because she just lifted the goblin-guarding-stores-of-gold wholesale from myth. (The house-elf plot, though, I really don't understand, because she did devote some effort there, and then it completely derailed.)

I also don't see the muggle / mudblood / pureblood distinctions as being analogous to race, really; more to class.

Damned HTML. Italics should also be around If someone has an exculpatory explanation for this, I'd love to hear it. It's the one thing in the book that always makes me say "what the hell were you thinking, JK?" in 700. Also, um, 700!

697: Well, I can see why the Mexican novelists have gotten sick of it, but it's not all bad.

667

Of course you can criticize, but criticizing a very popular book because it does not precisely align with your minority political views seems a little unrealistic. As does requesting that JKR write a book that she is probably not capable of writing.

700: I associated them with the "gnomes of Zürich".

thread creak .. old wicker rocking chair .. swayback, cataract .. ayup, ayup, Janine, those young pups all readin' that Potter business back when, dunno what they were thinkin', thought it was a crock o' shit myself, they don't know from shadows.

703: What's this minority political view? And upthread, did you mean that a Harry Potter book featuring the black Ron Weasley would necessarily have sold less copies?

690: Believe it or not. You're right. Well, that's not exactly it because we don't know how book 7 ends, but whatever status the character has at the end of the story to be released in a few weeks, he already has that status in "the world of the story."

A bit of trivia I've always liked is that Harry Potter is a couple years older than me. Someone figured out once - I tried to find where I read it, but the link is broken - that the second HP book is pretty solidly set in 1992. See Chapter Eight of "Chamber of Secrets". This would make Harry about 27 right now, assuming he lives.

667: unrealistic

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Hey, I was just thinking you hadn't been around much lately.

Shearer gets it right again! Anything that sells a large number of copies is Inerrant and Should Not Be Criticized. (Admittedly this might get a bit confusing, since the Qur'an, the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Quotations of Chairman Mao all still outsell Rowling... but I'm convinced the theory is sound!)

You mean me, LB?

Even if not, hey, congrats on the memo thing, well done.

711: I do indeed.

As a matter of fact, Shearer's... Shearer-ness is not entirely unconnected with my absence. Quick, someone tell me if we're taking him seriously this week or not.

Well, that and "hey, Rocky, you're really good at [X] which is related to [system Y], do you think you could help out with it as well?" has pretty much replaced "hello" as my co-worker's standard greeting.

Do we ever? Eh, that's not fair. He's had a point a couple of times that I can recall, and he's generally clear enough that it's not much trouble figuring out whether this is is one of those times.

584 meet 303

688

It appears they are long out of print so don't look for them in bookstores. Actually I am not sure they are worth tracking down but I enjoyed them (the early ones at least) and I thought his treatment of women was a little different than the norm for that sort of book.

710

Not that it shouldn't be criticized, just that if you are JKR and you set out to write a popular children's series and you come up with HP you probably aren't going to take suggestions you should have done something different too seriously.

The issue of the relative contributions of talent, luck and the star making machinery to JKR's success is of interest to me. Are there recent children's series that people feel are objectively better? For that matter are there recent children's series that handle the issues that bother Frowner better?

717: That's a shame. I was hoping she'd come across this thread and promptly rewrite the whole series from scratch.

What's ironic about this whole thread is that the revelation from book 7 will in fact be that Ron Weasley is black.

Honestly, people, criticism is of no practical use. Fiction is *so* unrealistic.

716: Yes, there were plenty of deadly competent females around. Never a match for Matt of course, but better than anyone else they ran up against. And yes, the earlier ones are better. I think there still are plenty in used bookstores.

720: Sure it will be... now.

Rowling hints at Harry Potter date rape scene in final book.

724: Somewhat less funny in that I seem to recall, not quite a date rape scene, but a scene in 5 (I think) where Hermione goes to a party with some Quidditch player in hopes of making Ron jealous and winds up fleeing because the boy gets overly amorous and won't back down. So Rowling actually does (in a much more sanitized way) touch on the idea.

I don't think it was aggressive sexual advances as much as it was that the guy was a pompous twit.

I'm a little embarrassed for you guys that this thread is still on-topic after 726 comments.

Nah, on-topic would mean still speculating on how the series will end (eg. Voldemort will be destroyed, Harry and Snape will come to see eye to eye at last, shortly before Snape sacrifices himself to destroy Voldemort, Ron and Hermione snog, and they all live happily ever after.) We're just still vaguely related to the original topic.

(That said, I acknowledge the slight embarassment...)

Makes me feel less bashful about admitting that I watch NASCAR occasionally, I'll tell you.

This thread is WAY too long. How long does it have to be before we break the internet?

See now, I find it hi-LAR-ious the way Rowling keeps amping up the hints about how "dark" her next book will be--darker, darker, darker yet. Seriously, just how "dark" can a Harry Potter book get and still stay within the confines of massively successful genre fiction? To me, a "dark" book is one whose worldview is "dark"--one in which people are irredeemably crummy and selfish, the environment is shattered, such goodness as there is gets instantly crushed, reform is impossible, blah blah. A genre book that's "dark" might be John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up; a non-genre book that's a bit dark, well, maybe Berlin Alexanderplatz (which I've only just started on but seems rather grim). In Harry Potter, we know that Good will middle-classily, middle-Englandily triumph and the world will wag on. I don't even think we're looking at a Tolkienish "and that's how the magic faded away and our world got boring". Merely having a couple of second-ring characters die doesn't cut it.

(Also, back when I took journalism classes, we were routinely told to eschew "dark", "black", etc when we meant bad, negative, depressing, alarming.)

(Also, back when I took journalism classes, we were routinely told to eschew "dark", "black", etc when we meant bad, negative, depressing, alarming.)

For reasons of not appearing racist? Or just avoiding cliché?

It is a book aimed at eleven-year-olds. Ooh, ooh!

Harry Potter:dark::Harry Potter:children's literature.

731: A little bit of both, I think.

There really is "dark" (just can't type it without scare quotes....) children's literature out there, though. A lot of Rosemary Sutcliffe, and then there's that series whose name I can't recall--it's set in the UK, and suddenly people can't stand to go near machines, riots occur, and there's this little girl who is abandoned by her parents and takes up with this group of Sikhs. Or The Girl Who Owned A City, a libertarian propaganda treatise that fascinated me as a child and which is set in the suburb next to the one I grew up in.

Even The Neverending Story is "darker" than Harry Potter, if you ask me.

I'm trying to come up with an answer for 718, and am realizing that other than Harry Potter, I'm twenty-five years out of date on children's lit, mostly. Sally is just getting old enough to find her own reading material, but I haven't noticed anything interesting other than the Lemony Snicket books, which I'd call superior to HP as literature, but no better (somewhat worse) on racial issues in that I don't think there are any non-white characters.

You'd call Lemony Snicket superior to HP as literature? I liked the first few books but then stopped reading them because they were just the same book over and over and over.

Snicket books are accessible and somewhat captivating for children.

Artemis Fowl books are better than Snicket books.

I've only read a couple of the Snickets, and I really don't like HP much: I think it fails on its own terms. (Yes, I know I disagree with everyone else in the world about this.) It might not be a fair comparison, because they're trying to do very different things, and the thing Snicket is trying to do (gothic comedy, essentially an expanded Edward Gorey cartoon) is probably a lot easier than what Rowling is trying to do (full scale world-building). But I think Snicket succeeds at what he's trying to do, and Rowling fails.

Ooh, I kind of hated Artemis Fowl (only read the first one, so perhaps they get better).

so the challenge is, can we keep at least ten comments on this thread per day, until 7/21 when the last book comes out?

redtailfoxshrub:

they are kids books. They have to stay at a certain level. They cannot be deliberately obtuse.

Also, please re-post your recipe blog.

I read kid's books all the time and like many, indeed perhaps most. Artemis Fowl, however, I disliked. I don't think I wanted it to be deliberately obtuse; I wanted it to involve less hackwork and to be more genuinely clever. To me it felt like it was continually displaying the trappings of cleverness while being actually rather plodding and devoid of wit. Kids do love it, though, it's quite true.

My food blog: The Hungry Tiger.

731: There was a "surge" in the '60s to neutralize all the colors. It didn't go far, the French refused to abandon Film Noir, many people already liked dark beers, and Congress changing the names of things on their menu didn't catch on any better back than.

thanks redtail

neutralize all the colors

This is silly. "Dark" means negative and scary because it's dark at night, when negative and scary things lurk outside the periphery of the campfire or the mouth of the cave. It hasn't anything to do with race.

I also rather disliked the Artemis Fowl books.

The Internet breaks at comment 746, so hopefully we'll stop before then.

I'll bet you people hate Where the Wild Things Are and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom also.

Aside from the racism, they were great. BTW redtailfoxshrub, was great, and I am going to make the zucchini one for my band tonight. The dinner party thing folded, but I look forward to exploiting your yummy blog as a means of getting myself back into cooking from recipes.

Ooo. bad tag. The link should have ended at "this".

744: That's only partly true. "Dark" and "black" as negatives have picked up racialized weight from being used as opposites--for example--to "fair", which was used to mean both pale and beautiful, ie paleness as a component of beauty.

I usually try not to say "black" or "dark" when I mean "depressing", "evil" or whatever, because it bugs some people and I think there's some racialization in the usage.

As far as "Film noir", "dark beer", etc, I feel like those usages are stand-alone enough that I don't really worry about it. Especially with, say, "dark beer". You're saying that there's beer, and it's darker in color than some other beer, just as (whoo, analogy coming on!) "blackened redfish" is blackened in color.

But seriously, I don't find darkness particularly depressing or scary, and I don't believe that if we dissected Voldemort his heart would be anything but reddish-purplish--that is, it would not be black. So I don't feel very attached to those usages.

It's not something I feel too strongly about, though.

re: 744

I had an ex-girlfriend who was a primary school teacher and she was told to avoid referring to 'blackboards' because it might be perceived as racist.

I always though those claimed examples of 'political correctness gone mad'* were largely made up by the right-wing reactionary press, but, in this case, it was true. It was both amusing and slightly sad.

* (tm) The Daily Mail

Hey, I got one more:

How embarrassing, to be set up by Snape when he was in full costume for the drag ball. Still, Harry thought, he must face the end with a stiff upper lip; it would not do for his corpse to be found with a face full of runny mascar—

I don't think The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm, but it was a critically and commercially successful children's book (athough not on the level of HP, because what is?) that succeeds better on the Frowner scale -- as well it might, since it's set in science fictional Zimbabwe.

For "darkness", there's always everyone's old pal William Sleator. (Or, when they get older, the misery-inducing and awesome Robert Cormier.)

As is typical, I agree with Wrongshore. Redtailfoxshrub rules with the recipes. I'm going to try to find some sorrel this weekend.

Yay! Thanks. The main reason I don't just put the link in my "posted by" info anymore is that it all hooks up with my actual public scholarly self, with my real name and everything, and I didn't want it to be too easy to connect the dots from real name --> domain name --> unfogged. I don't mind a bit if all of you know who I really am, obviously.

Sleator and Cormier are both excellent for providing the feeling that your heart is being slowly filled with lead shot.

744: This is silly Since when did that stop someone? The B'ham PD once tried a "no race/color/eth" policy for descriptions of suspects over the police radio net. I think it lasted just a few weeks at most.

753 meet 622. That is, if by "I don't think" you mean "I don't think anyone's mentioned".

Glad someone else has read it!

I love The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. Great storytelling in futuristic Zimbabwe, and the main characters are more or less ordinary sheltered rich kids, who get kidnapped, escape, and end up in a reservation full of people who live according to the ways of the ancestors (much heroic myth puncturing and learning, but really fun.) And there's three crazy detectives.

Good moment: they refer to the pasty, blond Mellower (basically a person hired to flatter the family) as "from the English tribe."

Seriously, just how "dark" can a Harry Potter book get and still stay within the confines of massively successful genre fiction?

Now, probably arbitrarily. People are going to buy the next one pretty much no matter what, right? There's dark fiction of nondominant genre.

734: The protagonist of the book in 227 is Asian, but it's probably a bit dark too scary for a young child.

I was going to stay out of this thread but rfts lured me in with deliciousness. Forthwith, one of my favorite HP slashfics -- in fact, the only one I've ever enjoyed: Pansy Parkinson and the Perfectly Prudish Prefect, submitted for the Almighty Alliteration Fanfic Foray.

This is probably the right thread to mention again that I really hope this movie doesn't suck.

Ian McShane as Merriman!