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conuly
I'm describing it that way because I'm about to go off on a tangent.
A while back, I made a passing comment about potential gay relationships in Harry Potter, and received the reply that it would never happen because JKR is writing a fun book, she's not trying to "make a point about homosexuality".
I didn't reply. I know this may come as a surprise, given my propensity for charging in wherever I think somebody is wrong, but... I couldn't find the words. What could I possibly say to this person?
I remember the Kel books, by Tamora Pierce. In one of them - the first one, I think - one of the characters (a good guy, as it happens), got back at the Sexist Pig Jerk character for an insult by turning it around and making it a gay innuendo. Which eventually prompted a short discussion on how homosexuality isn't accepted in Tortall, but it is elsewhere, something our main character, as far as I remember, doesn't find completely rational (the first part, not the second). Gay people are at least acknowledged to exist in Tammy's books, even if in them no person is explicitly identified as gay. This didn't detract in any way from my enjoyment of the books, nor did I feel I'd been preached at. Later, I read transcripts of several conversations with her in which different characters are identified as gay. (Pretty sure they were reliable transcripts, but I could be wrong here. I wouldn't mention them, though, if I doubted their veracity.) Does that make these books political?
Harry Potter already had one openly-disabled character, Moody. Nobody thinks that having a guy missing a leg and an eye is some sort of statement on disability, do they? They don't complain that by having him turn his missing eye into an advantage that she's somehow bowing to political correctness, not that I've seen.
Racism is a persistant theme in the Harry Potter books. Various groups of people are discriminated against because of what they are, instead of who they are. This would seem to go against the idea that JKR is just trying to write a fun book. But, interestingly, all conversation about race is limited to fictional groups of people - giants, werewolves, goblins, elves. There's at least two clearly defined black people in this English school. There's the Patil twins, obviously Indian. Does this mean that JKR is trying to make some sort of point about race and multiculturalism in England? Or is she just writing the magical world as a logical subset of the nonmagical world, with the human races represented in the same proportions as they are here? Certainly, if she is going for that level of realism, it would be fair to assume that the same percentage of wizards and witches are gay/bi as in the real world, right?
When we find out that Blaize is black, nobody in the books seems to go around shouting OMG! BLACK PEOPLE IN OUR SCHOOL! (The real world is a separate issue, and it will cease to be so as soon as I self-define "real world" to exclude those sillies.) So why should it be an issue to find out that a minor character (or, gasp, a major character, should she be so daring) isn't straight? All it has to be is one line about how so-and-so kissed so-and-so else, and they both are the same sex. They've had interracial couples, and nobody thought that was some sort of political point.
I mean, this is Harry Potter! Action, adventure, and derring-do! It's not like she's devoting chapters and chapters to... um... well, if she'd had more gay, maybe she would've avoided it so as to not upset the fundies. (Not like she should care, they hate her already for magic, but...)
A while back, I made a passing comment about potential gay relationships in Harry Potter, and received the reply that it would never happen because JKR is writing a fun book, she's not trying to "make a point about homosexuality".
I didn't reply. I know this may come as a surprise, given my propensity for charging in wherever I think somebody is wrong, but... I couldn't find the words. What could I possibly say to this person?
I remember the Kel books, by Tamora Pierce. In one of them - the first one, I think - one of the characters (a good guy, as it happens), got back at the Sexist Pig Jerk character for an insult by turning it around and making it a gay innuendo. Which eventually prompted a short discussion on how homosexuality isn't accepted in Tortall, but it is elsewhere, something our main character, as far as I remember, doesn't find completely rational (the first part, not the second). Gay people are at least acknowledged to exist in Tammy's books, even if in them no person is explicitly identified as gay. This didn't detract in any way from my enjoyment of the books, nor did I feel I'd been preached at. Later, I read transcripts of several conversations with her in which different characters are identified as gay. (Pretty sure they were reliable transcripts, but I could be wrong here. I wouldn't mention them, though, if I doubted their veracity.) Does that make these books political?
Harry Potter already had one openly-disabled character, Moody. Nobody thinks that having a guy missing a leg and an eye is some sort of statement on disability, do they? They don't complain that by having him turn his missing eye into an advantage that she's somehow bowing to political correctness, not that I've seen.
Racism is a persistant theme in the Harry Potter books. Various groups of people are discriminated against because of what they are, instead of who they are. This would seem to go against the idea that JKR is just trying to write a fun book. But, interestingly, all conversation about race is limited to fictional groups of people - giants, werewolves, goblins, elves. There's at least two clearly defined black people in this English school. There's the Patil twins, obviously Indian. Does this mean that JKR is trying to make some sort of point about race and multiculturalism in England? Or is she just writing the magical world as a logical subset of the nonmagical world, with the human races represented in the same proportions as they are here? Certainly, if she is going for that level of realism, it would be fair to assume that the same percentage of wizards and witches are gay/bi as in the real world, right?
When we find out that Blaize is black, nobody in the books seems to go around shouting OMG! BLACK PEOPLE IN OUR SCHOOL! (The real world is a separate issue, and it will cease to be so as soon as I self-define "real world" to exclude those sillies.) So why should it be an issue to find out that a minor character (or, gasp, a major character, should she be so daring) isn't straight? All it has to be is one line about how so-and-so kissed so-and-so else, and they both are the same sex. They've had interracial couples, and nobody thought that was some sort of political point.
I mean, this is Harry Potter! Action, adventure, and derring-do! It's not like she's devoting chapters and chapters to... um... well, if she'd had more gay, maybe she would've avoided it so as to not upset the fundies. (Not like she should care, they hate her already for magic, but...)
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Re: I mean this in all sincerity, although it probably won't come out like that...
Date: 2005-08-07 11:25 pm (UTC)Re: I mean this in all sincerity, although it probably won't come out like that...
Date: 2005-08-07 11:27 pm (UTC)Re: I mean this in all sincerity, although it probably won't come out like that...
Date: 2005-08-08 12:26 am (UTC)Some really good HP fan fic.
That series has SUCH POTENTIAl for awesome story lines. If someone were to write "Hogwarts - A History", and it was actually about HOGWARTS? I'd so read that. Same if they wrote about the Beaubatons students, or the Durmstrang students. Someone could write a whole book on Krum, that, if done write, could be utterly fascinating. A whole book on Charlie's adventures with the dragons in Romania! A whole book on Voldemort's adventures in Albania!
But no, we're stuck with people insisting that Harry and Snape and Malfoy are really in a love triangle. Poorly written.
*SIGH*
Re: I mean this in all sincerity, although it probably won't come out like that...
Date: 2005-08-08 02:23 am (UTC)I agree that there's too much shippiness in HP-fic - but that goes for "canon" relationships as well. I don't really want to read about Ron and Hermione that much.
And then, when people write fic about Harry, Snape, and Malfoy (which I don't see that much, though I have seen pairs of those, the triad is a bit much), they're not usually saying "this is what really happens". Indeed, most of that comes from people who don't do slash at all - Harry/Hermione, anybody?
And, again, there's a lot of gen fic out there. Not as much as there should be, but it's not hard to find it if you look. Hell, there's whole LiveJournal communities devoted to the stuff.
Re: I mean this in all sincerity, although it probably won't come out like that...
Date: 2005-08-08 05:31 am (UTC)You know, honestly, the people who are all put out that Harry and Hermione didn't end up together...I have to wonder what the hell they were reading. Because it seemed pretty freaking obvious to me since about book, oh, one? That that wasn't going to happen. I'm actually surprised she ended up with Ron; I can't, for the life of me, figure out what she sees in him; Viktor Krum seemed to be FAR more her type. But the interest was obvious.
Re: I mean this in all sincerity, although it probably won't come out like that...
Date: 2005-08-08 05:34 am (UTC)Or I could search for gen fic - with the term "gen fic".
Re: I mean this in all sincerity, although it probably won't come out like that...
Date: 2005-08-08 03:27 am (UTC)