[random] Quick reading rec: In praise of Joanne Rowling's Hermione Granger series

[unjapanologist]

Went to see DH2 with starlady and busaikko, was very pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was. If Gimp hadn't died on me and I wasn't still in the middle of jumping through the fifty-and-eleven hoops that Adobe wants me to clear before I'm allowed to buy an academic copy of Photoshop Elements, I'd be making a million different icons of McGonagall saying "Boom". (Adobe, seriously, I am trying to give you money.)

Shakesville just linked to this awesome piece of feminist commentary on HP: In praise of Joanne Rowling's Hermione Granger series. Yes, yes, and yes to every word of this. I like the HP books well enough as they are, although the fic is better. But this is the kind of story I would truly, genuinely love.

Comments

[starlady]

I…actually had to close that tab, I can't read it right now. It strikes a little too close to a series of very bitter thoughts I've been having lately.

Should I bring anything tomorrow?

[unjapanologist]

Your poison of choice so we can gripe about your bitter thoughts? I have umeshu, as usual, and some yuzu liquor thing (no yuzu chuhai in the store, sorry).

[starlady]

LOL, okay! I hope you have enough food to soak up the booze. :)

[unjapanologist]

I have food. If it's not enough, Family Mart and Lawson are two minutes away :)

[facetofcathy]

I read Sady's Hermione Granger bit with much appreciation, even though I've never read the books.

But the comments! The number of people who could not comprehend in any way what she was saying, either because satire is alien to them, or feminism is. I mean, I can see not agreeing with it, but to not even be able to parse it?

[unjapanologist]

I actually hadn't read the comments -not looking at the comments on any vaguely feminist piece of writing is sort of a reflex by now. At least most seem to be supportive. But yeah, the "you are interrogating these books from the wrong perspective" thing always comes back again and again. Funny how those people always seem to know what went on in some writer's head :)

[hl]

Despite having lots of critiques to HP (i.e. despite being a fan that often has to read against the text to be comfortable with the ideas presented), I find it hard to swallow how much Rowling blaming there is for misogyny -- about her using initials, about her 'taking the easy way out' (wtf, seriously). I would've liked much better if the piece put the emphasis on the system more than the writer, and that's not because I think the writer's god or anything. I just think it's lazy analysis.

JKR said that she thought the story for a boy protagonist. Why doubt that? Why not take on the reality that many many women writers find easier to write male characters and why that could be?

(Also, the slagging off the other female characters I thought particularly significant. Feminism Can Only Take One Kind of Woman for some people. All those things she presents as satire are, in my opinion, not. I thought Ron's treatment of Lavender was suitably presented as immature (though her clinging was, too), and Hermione's jealousy, too. I think Ginny had a lovely personality. etc etc etc)

I think Hermione is lovely in her attempt at saving the downtrodden, but she's also oppressive and misguided in her methods, too, and I thought that was insightfully presented. And I think it's very telling that someone doing anti-oppression work won't recognise that dynamic for what it is.

It's just... a weird article. It's... idk. It's like every misreading ever about the series that the movie people made when making the movies, compounded by someone Who Must Prove Her Point, even when reality doesn't support it.

[starlady]

It's certainly true that she's not published as J.K. Rowling everywhere. It was Joanne K. Rowling in Germany, and some other European countries too I think. I don't have my international HP books handy, so I can't say for China, Korea, or Japan.

[hl]

I didn't know that, actually! I started reading the books when I was 13 (so, uhm, 12 years ago. wow). The books in Spanish I've say 'J K Rowling' but I don't remember ever thinking she was a guy. I just knew she was a woman. I think my aunt who recced it or the librarian at my sister's school may have told us?

[starlady]

I read an article in Time while I was reading the first book, in 1998, so I knew fairly quickly. But I don't know whether I knew when I first bought the first book.

[facetofcathy]

I think seeing it as Rowling blaming is a fair reading. I didn't take it that way, and as soon as I saw Sady's name on it, I knew it was going to be over the top exaggeration, as that's her schtick.

I read it as a total AU RPF, and I don't read it as making any claims about the actual JK Rowling or her actual writing or naming choices at all, but then that's how I always read RPF.

For me, the piece is saying not that Harry Potter is a bad book and Rowling should feel bad for writing it, but that if she'd tried something different she would have been stopped because the system does actively and passively prevent variety. Which I'm not willing to say she wouldn't have been published with this version of the story, but she wouldn't be quite so wealthy right now. That's a hard nuance to write into satire--using an example but not holding the example used accountable--and obviously she failed for many readers. Sort of how complaining about white guy slash isn't actually holding individual fans or stories accountable for misogyny in fandom.

I can't speak about her characterizations of other women in the books. Luna is one of my favourite people in the film, though. What you say about feminism only wanting one kind of woman--that's something NK Jemisin is talking about here, and frankly, I just expect that everywhere now--just not always in the same flavour of one that's allowed. My reading list here on Dreamwidth never hesitates to tell me that the bare crumbs of butch-performing women I get in media are hurting their souls and should be obliterated. I guess I just don't even notice it anymore.

I don't know all that much about Hermione, champion of the house elves, but that was the part where I think Sady's piece is totally wrong. I think, as one commenter said, she's mistaking character reactions (which sounded pretty realistic to me) with authorial voice. I would expect Sady in particular to not see the "white knighting" Hermione is doing. She can never see it in herself.

But still, I found it amusing as a dystopian AU critique of publishing.

[hl]

The critique of publishing is good, yeah. It's the only bit that I can rescue.

(Luna, btw, is awesome in the books, just awesome. The girl who acts the part is a fan, and she totally nailed the character.)

I kinda like the variety in HP, in general. There are many many many different women to choose from, and they're all awesome in their way (there's also not-awesome female characters, like male characters), and what surprises me is that the OP of the piece is ignoring this variety to belittle it -- i.e. why not have 'girly' girls who are into shopping and clothes and then also fight when they have to fight? They're not even central characters. It takes the fight against the stereotype a bit... too far, specially since, the OP may be sorry to know, but there are girls like that! (My niece, without going farther than that. She's also the first girl I personally meet that dreams of her wedding and stuff like that. My brother and his partner are a bit at a loss. I've spent literally entire mornings playing princess games with her. *has overdosed in pink*)

I think the series does pretty well in the misogyny department for something with a male protagonist, and it certainly doesn't fail as it fails at other isms (from class to race, passing through queerness and ethnicity), and more generalised things, like the construction of evil as innate and the metaphors for race and culture.

The article is just... weirdly obtuse.

[unjapanologist]

Yeah, the distinction between what Rowling might have decided to do and how her decisions could have been influenced by the system could have been made a lot clearer in the satire. I read the piece mostly as a what-could-have-been AU, but there is indeed some writer-blaming in there that isn't nearly as nuanced as it should have been.

But I do agree with the satire's author on most of the points she makes about the content of the books. There is a variety of female characters in the books, but to me personally, they feel more like a variety of stereotypes most of the time. Whatever Rowling herself thinks about her female characters, she did decide to write the books from the perspective of a teenage boy, and Harry's perspective on the female characters is very derisive sometimes. The 'girly' girls would have been a lot more palatable if they hadn't been presented as silly airheads who never do anything useful. They didn't feel real to me. Ginny does feel like a tacked on love interest, and a huge missed opportunity; when we do glimpse a bit of her personality, she seems very interesting, but people are literally keeping her back all the time because they want to 'protect' her. Luna... I really like her, but Harry's perspective makes her seem totally out there and insightful only by accident. (Um, as you can probably tell, I'm not fond of Harry's perspective at all.)

And there are other stereotypical/unpleasant aspects about the female characters that can't be chalked up to Harry's perspective. Everybody who is actually in charge is a man, and the female deputies they have are presented as extremely strict(and childless) adults who, in the case of the 'bad' people (Bellatrix and Umbridge), have no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. The only 'bad' woman to get some character nuance is Narcissa, and she gets that nuance by virtue of being a mother. I find I agree with the critiques that have been made about HP's over-sanctifying motherhood.

The satire has a couple of serious flaws, as you and some of the Shakesville readers point out, but I thought it was a pretty powerful what-if overall.

[hl]

But shouldn't you look at the bad male characters as well? There's not a lot of nuance in the book about evilness in general. That is not a misogynist failing, but more like a general absolutist outlook. (First evidence, Voldemort, who is the most evil wizard who ever evil-ed, so much so that he's already evil as a child, and kills his (raped, and comparatively powerless) bio father by the time he's 16.)

I don't feel the female characters are more of stereotypes than the male ones, to be truthful. And I do resent the implications against most of the female characters. I truly liked them and didn't feel Ginny or Harry's interest in her was tacked on.

I must confess I do feel slightly attacked, because I've always projected on Harry himself. I guess I'm easy -- a (perhaps) slightly above average kid wizard but no genius for whom all of magic was new, did not particularly liked to study though he liked learning new things, etc, was the person most similar to myself at 13, and I've never quite wavered from that perspective. I like Harry (probably more than I like myself, even!), and I enjoyed reading all through his perspective, flawed as it was in many aspects.

I'm not sure I would've liked the alternative, really. I mean, I perhaps would? I like Hermione. But people who know everything do not make good narrative povs, in my experience, and I read the books for the trio.

[unjapanologist]

There's not a lot of nuance in the book about evilness in general.

That's true. I should have qualified that what I don't like about the way the 'evil' women are represented is the way that their general 'failing' as characters (they're the bad guys in this particular story) seems tied to particular 'female' failings -particularly not having children, but also things like unquestioning/hopeless/destructive fawning over their male bosses and being a 'bitch' in general. The way both end only underscores those things. Bellatrix is killed by great mother figure Molly Weasley, and while we don't find out what happened with Umbridge after DH, the implications that hang around her being carried off by centaurs still make me shiver a little. It felt like a particularly 'female' punishment.

Again, this is just my personal reading of the books. I didn't mean to sound like I was attacking anyone else's reading or likes, sorry! I never liked Harry much and always found it much easier to identify with Hermione. That's probably a big part of why the satire resonates with me.

[hl]

Ah! I didn't read them as particular female failings at all. I mean, no one in the books remarks on Bellatrix's childless state, and there are a lot of great (er, good) women who are childless as well, mostly Hogwarts professors (McGonagall!). Bellatrix's is certainly not the only DE who is fanatical about Voldemort.

I read Umbridge's punishment as a beating (though before we knew she survived I suspected death) so as a fairly gender-neutral punishment of an evil character, but I totally see how it's read as rape. It's much more disturbing if you read it like that.

The sanctification of motherhood thing is the most interesting bit of all. Motherhood itself is certainly a point of the books (like, the parallels between the three brothers/Voldemort-Snape-Harry and their mothers and how much they loved them or not) and the implications are as unfortunate as they can be, probably, though I find it's not different from pretty much every aspect of the books. (I.e. superficially the message can be read kinda nicely? Love in infancy probably does influence how anti-social the kid is (not) later in life and it's certainly better than to think people are bad or good naturally. But the weight of it is put in the mother particularly. And still, mommy issues are kinda of a break to me after all the daddy issues of angsty protagonists in general. And I don't wonder at there needing to be parent issues in general.)

(Re Molly Weasley, I liked that part mostly because it contradicted the housewifes can't be cool or strong-in-that-sense stereotype, but it was certainly unfortunate to choose the defence of a child for it. Though, still, very IC. All the Weasleys seem to me to be very family focussed.)

[hl]

But, er, I don't mean to imply you hurt me saying you didn't like Harry's pov. It was a rather unfortunate choice of words given the discussion.

And I'm not as invested as all that in all of it. I mean, I think the particularly critique is as off-base as it can be given the deeply flawed nature of the series, but I'm totally OK with people disagreeing and all that.

This (well, not this in particular, but regarding other points) is a discussion I often have with some of my friends who share the HP fandom, after all.

[unjapanologist]

Oh, oof! Was worried for a second ;)

Yeah, HP being what it is, picking at particular aspects of its flaws without taking the whole into account can be problematic.

[hl]

No, yeah, don't worry! I posted and then I realized. I had just (reluctantly) woken up from my nap and was rather unnecessarily snippy as a result. :P

[unjapanologist]

About for the way Hermione's house elf activism was presented... This is my personal reading, of course, but I hated it and thought the satire's author was spot on with her critique.

There really was an excellent point in the books about white-knighting and making sure that you know what the people you're trying to help actually want, and that came through very clearly. But otherwise, I felt like Hermione's efforts were represented in a needlessly negative way, not just because of (indeed realistic)character reactions but because of the way Rowling wrote the whole side story. Hermione's organization has a ridiculous acronym, her activism is presented as a distraction from the hero's own quest, and it turns out to be ultimately pointless. The other characters' derision of SPEW is made to look entirely justified. I remember thinking "Okay, but why does this have to be presented as 100 percent ridiculous and 100 percent misguided" even on my first reading, and I'm still very uncomfortable with that part of GoF.

[hl]

I actually didn't think it was pointless, nor presented as 100% misguided, at all. I'm a bit puzzled as to why you think so, but I guess it's difficult to perceive the author's intention in it. Dumbledore himself was neutral-positive about it if I'm not misremembering (though it's a general sensation rather than a particular instance I remember), and he was as representative of the author's voice as it comes (perhaps only behind Hermione herself!).

I'm uncomfortable with that part of GoF mainly because I'm embarrassed for Hermione, and I feel so because I've been there, if not actually organising things, then speaking very similar stuff when I was her age. I thought Hermione's attitude and her actions were realistic, and it's actually, I think, one of the things I have always thought the books didn't fail at, unlike the house elf situation itself.

[unjapanologist]

The situation is realistic, I agree, both Hermione's actions and other characters' reactions to them. It's also very in character for Hermione -she often seems to think she knows best. I did feel that the author was needlessly ridiculing her efforts (someone like Hermione wouldn't guess that naming an organization SPEW would make people not take it seriously?), though, and that any positive comments Dumbledore may have made didn't mitigate the situation very much. The point about white-knighting could have been made without making Hermione's actions seem quite this silly and inconsequential, IMO. This was a general impression -it's been years since I last read GoF, and I don't have the book on hand to check details. I just remember being peeved on Hermione's behalf :)

[lizbee]

Thank you! That sums up exactly why I was kind of side-eyeing the whole essay. Although I've not had much time for Doyle since she accused abuse survivors of bullying after they disagreed with her take on Sucker Punch.