A post about Harry Potter, the Warner Brothers, and Slash...

[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...)

Comments

[conuly]

And yes, I do think we have to accept the authors declaration on what the stories are about, without question. She knows, she wrote them. Case in point, this entire discussion. I said you sai done thing, or meant one thing, and you insist you didn't. Who knows...you, or me?

The difference is that we're having a nonfictional discussion. I said one thing, you read something different, we fought, I clarified.

When it comes to fiction, we're not talking about that anymore. If I wrote a story about... oh, anything, and you read this story and interpreted two of the characters as being something other than what I'd written, and wrote a fanfic about it, or just told me about it, I'd do one of three things:

1. I'd say "gee, I hadn't considered that", and think about how cool it was that my story had prompted this thought.

2. I'd say "That's not what I meant, but it certainly looks like that."

3. I'd say "Wow, I have no idea what the hell you just read! Hah!" to myself, and make some non-commital statement to you while continuing to wonder what the hell you're smoking.

Even in the last one, I wouldn't say you're wrong to see something in the story that I didn't see. Books aren't worth anything if nobody is reading them, but once people read them, the words move into your head, where you can mess with them.

In this case, something different happened.

I said "I think this".
You read those words, but maybe I wasn't clear, or I don't know, and read "I think this other thing".

The only way to settle that is to go back and say "No, this is what I think". We're not discussing the motivations of fictional characters. We're not talking about what went on in the minds of people the narrator can't read. We're just talking about what one real person really thought, when the real person can correct you.

Different issue. Similar, sure, but different.

The issue is the insistence (not necessarily yours) that the author really meant things in a way she has so stated she did not.

Robert Frost, Robert Frost. Interpreting his work is a classic exercise in high schools around the country, completely contrary to his express statements regarding such work. But that doesn't mean that these interpretations are invalid. Sure, he said he was only talking about taking a walk in the woods - but does that make it wrong for us to say that when we read it, we hear a talk about the importance of choices? Sure, Rowling says that Ron and Hermione are deeply in love (and that does seem obvious). But you say that you think Hermione was better with Vicky. Whatever Rowling intended, you're not wrong to read the text and hear it in your thoughts.

From what I've gleaned, the discussions that weren't discussed over at Accio weren't saying "This is definitely what JKR meant, uh-huh!". Instead, they were "This is one way to read the books, this is one way to see how the characters might be motivated, this is one way to interpret this character's actions". And if this is what people hear when they read the books, that's good. Books don't stand by themselves. Authors know what they meant, but once you've written the words, they're not yours anymore. They belong to the people reading them, who can't hear the thoughts behind the words. They only can hear their own thoughts.

[ladydiana.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but you still wrote it.

Example: If you take <http://www.brownplasticpackagingtapemonster.com/story.shtml">The Brown Plastic Packaging Tape Monster Story and turn it into some insistence that I REALLY meant to give some psychological evalutaion of myself and my cat, I may have to hurt you. >:P Because, really, the situation was just *really godsdamned funny*, and I wanted to post it somewhere.

In that same vein, if Frost says he was "just talking about the woods", and that he wants people to quit psychoanalyzing what his buried meaning was, then they should quit fucking psychoanalyzing it already.

Authors know what they meant. If you misinterpret it, they are within their rights to correct you. Insistence that that's what they really meant does NOT make it "what they really meant".

[conuly]

I'm not saying that this or that is what "Frost really meant". I'm saying that we can find meaning that the author didn't intend.

This is humanity. We can find god, satan, and duckies in clouds, all within half an hour. We're perfectly justified in finding meaning for ourselves in books and poems, even if the author didn't intend to put that there.

I said it. Yeah, I did. But I wasn't telling a story, and I certainly wasn't telling a fictional story. Having a discussion isn't the same as telling a story.

Now, if in future years somebody should take this whole post apart, and form the basis of a religious group on my LiveJournal, using my posts as examples of "deeper meaning"... well, I'll laugh, but that's an acceptable use of... *giggles* God, that'd be funny.

I wouldn't stop them, anyway, even though I'm not writing any of this *giggles* for culties.

[rho]

Let me try to analogise somewhat. If I were to say "I don't really like Ron" and Rowling were to say "Ron is intended as a character that the reader will like" then we are both correct. If Rowling were to tell me that I'm wrong and I actually do like Ron then she would be just as wrong as if I were to tell her that she deliberately wrote him to be unlikable.

While Rowling (like other author) can say what her intention was when she wrote her books, she cannot tell me what my thoughts or feelings upon reading them should be. For me, the whole point of fandom is to explore those thoughts and feelings with other like-minded folks. Pretty much the whole point of fandom is to discuss things that aren't in the books. That can be trying to find a deeper meaning to some passage, or it can be predicting what happens next, or it can be alternate universe and what ifs, or it can be slash.

I have absolutely no time for people who say "no, this is what the author really meant", especially when the author has quite explicitly said otherwise. These people generally tend to be complete idiots. But there's a big difference between saying "this is what the author intended" and saying "this is what I see when I read".

For instance, when I read, I see a fairly strong Ginny/Luna romantic undercurrent. I'm almost positive that Rowling didn't intend this in what she wrote, but that doesn't mean that I don't see it. I can't help seeing that any more than I can help disliking Ron. For me to say that that's what I see is nothing more than a basic statement of fact.

Actual fanfiction is something more of a grey area, because there are copyright issues involved, but morally, I don't think that picking out slash is morally justified. Of course, slash is not what Rowling intended when she wrote her books, but then, nor is any other sort of fanfiction. If it was what she'd intended, then she would have written it herself. To single out slash as bad is something thsat I view as dangerous, because it seems to be giving the impression of "there is something in this piece of fiction that we especially don't approve of; homosexuality is bad".

Now, I'm not saying that that's how you're coming across to me. You seem to be equally as opposed to anything you see as going against Rowlings original intent, which would include Neville/Pansy just as much as it would include Neville/Draco. But there are people who would be happy to allow the former but not the latter, purely because the relationship is same sex, and I find that sort of position to be disturbing.

I don't read a whole lot of slash myself because I find most of it supremely uninteresting, badly written, and unsupported by cannon. But then, I have exactly the same reactions to most het and most gen. But if that's what other people are seeing then I wouldn't want totake away their ability to further explore their thoughts.

[conuly]

Rho, you're brilliant. Most of that is what I would've said if it had occured to me to say it. Much love.

(Incidentally, Rowling *does* tell us what to think a lot. If you like Draco as a character, and feel sorry for him, you "need to learn not to chase the bad boy", and if you like Dudley you're "reading the books for all the wrong reasons", and if you see Harry/Hermione (I don't, but let's move on from that) you're "delusional", which isn't a good thing for an author to go along with when talking about her own fans.)

[ladydiana.livejournal.com]

Ok, now wait, she did NOT say that the readers were delusional. Someone else said that, and she said "I wouldn't say 'delusional'".

And some of those people she was correcting had viciously attacked her for "not knowing anything about the story or the characters" because they had shipped or slashed something against what *she states is Canon*, so they went after her.

You know...there's a problem with that.

Although, everyone here seems to be in agreement with just about every single one of my peeves.

[conuly]

JKR: [points to herself and whispers] So do I!

ES: What was that?

JKR: [More loudly] Well so do I! So do I!

[All laugh; Melissa doubles over, hysterical, and may have died.]

ES: Harry/Hermione shippers - they're delusional!

JKR: Well no, I'm not going to - Emerson, I am not going to say they're delusional! They are still valued members of my readership! I am not going to use the word delusional. I am however, going to say — now I am trusting both of you to do the spoiler thing when you write this up —

The end of this may never be known. Saying "I'm not going to say they're delusional, I'm not going to use the word delusional" is a far cry from saying "They're not delusional" or "that's not a good thing to say". If the interview is to be trusted, they all continued laughing.

While some of them are psychotic freaks (hey, I'm not the author, I feel free to calls 'em as I sees 'em), she's tarring a whole group of people with the same brush. A sin of omission, perhaps?