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reenkaer. so i wrote this rant-type-thing after the slightly fiasco-like draco panel. only slightly-fiasco-like, and that's all personal discomfort related. but mostly it's that my roommate asked me how can i like both harry and draco at the same time, soooo.
draco is the patron character of the lovers of disenfranchised "misunderstood" nasty boys (or girls?), rah-rah sadism & fuck those stupid suicidal do-gooders, right. at least, you'd think so judging from the attitudes of the people with the slytherin get-up. heh. or is that the fringe element? hee. i remember at the snape panel this girl saying, well, i identify with snape because there were people just like james & sirius who used to beat up on me in high school, and yah, now i want revenge (read: to kill them all). ahahahah. um. she wasn't exactly "normal", even at nimbus, even at the snape panel, but still.
people who like hermione like "brains" and rationality (maybe not everyone, but way too many intellectual-type grad-student fans seem to like hermione-but-not-harry-or-ron for it to be a coincidence-- same with people who like draco-but-not-harry). also assertiveness and masculine femininity, no-nonsense tough smart chicks who know what they want.
people who like snape. . . .
etc. it seems that because the characters in hp are so polarized, because they sort of stand for different modes of behavior & different ideals, there is a conflict of interest in a way, in playing for different teams, so to speak.
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kitsune13 would know that even i got caught up in the separatism & said that we're all hypocrites.
how else to explain it, in a way?
so many people who fangirl slytherins are like that because they feel anti-gryffindor. it's like, half of the attraction of it is proclaiming everything you're not (as a slytherin supporter). not into "nice" or "kind" or "brave" or what have you. it's like being popularly goth, really. slytherin = goth. come on, you all know it.
how can i support `goth' ideals (supposedly by loving draco or snape, you must approve of them-- a common mistake because most people do feel like that). i love harry & draco & a number of others who i don't approve of. is that so weird?
i don't approve, admire, or identify with slytherins. i don't identify with gryffindors or approve of them, either (same with the other houses). call me the rebel's rebel.
based on observation, i know for most fans it's not like that. when i said at the panel that i particularly like draco and i won't apologize for it, i meant i won't apologize for him. it's so bloody easy to like people we identify with, that make sense to us, that we approve of (hello, luna lovegood). it's much more challenging to care about characters that make no easy sense to us intuitively, that are annoying and abrasive and feel foreign to us. i think most people are draco-lovers because they either think they're like him or think he's got snark or the sexy or the sexy snark. amoral yumminess is wide-spread in its appeal.
that's where the hypocrisy comes in-- these people superficially dig on draco or lucius or snape or tom riddle without really empathizing or understanding-- identification isn't true understanding because it glosses over so much, molds the character in your own image, and you start saying "but they wouldn't do X" because you wouldn't do X. i've heard a professor say, "snape, as a professor, has X character trait because -i-, as a professor, have X character trait". the temptation is hard to resist. that's why i'm so wary of writing luna, and formerly have been of hermione (though i want to write luna anyway)-- she's not like me, but it's easy to imagine she is. and of course one can find parts of oneself in any character, but believing it too fully would be deceiving oneself.
i empathize with harry and draco especially because i've thought so much about them, not because i identify with them. i still don't know if i "get" draco -or- harry. i'm happy with that, though, because it keeps me thinking rather than allowing me to settle. when i settle, i begin the process of being wrong, i think.
upon further reflection, i realized that the impetus for my draco-love initially came from the stubborn, clinging way he hates, actually, and not much of anything to do with who he -is-. he feels the hatred so strongly, so hopelessly, against all sense of self-preservation. i didn't really -care- who he is, and in a way i still don't. cunning or pathetic, intelligent or limited-- who cares; as long as the story preserves that base emotional center in him, it works for me. what i respond to the most in him is passion.
he doesn't hide it. he tries and tries to bite, to lash out, get revenge, even if he's laughable and ineffectual and has no leg to stand on-- he is bitter and angry, but not like snape who's able to actually channel it and dominate people-- draco's life just kind of sucks. his personality kind of sucks. he thinks he's got everything going for him but he's got nothing but -rage-, really. god, i dig that. there may not be hope for him, but i -want- there to be hope, not because he deserves it but because he needs it. he is fierce and hungry for attention and power and he's so needy, really. the feral need i sense in him is what calls to me.
so where does discussion of his being shallow and petty and cruel and boring enter into it, then? what does it matter? the shallowness lends purity and constancy to his rage, i think. it is likely draco can never forgive harry, not even in that falsely tame sublimated way snape reins himself in.
i notice this is what attracts me because my fanfic was always about an angry draco, if i wasn't just being snarky or silly. i can channel his rage rather easily, actually (this comes close to the identification i am so wary of, but it's more me tapping into something than recalling it directly). i love harry because he's woobie and darling (and i'm biased for no good reason at all) and a disgruntled nice guy and he needs love. awww. but so does draco. he may not deserve it (as i've said), but he needs it.
harry has hidden rage too, i think, wedged in and brutal if unleashed. mmmmm... oh-- um-- yes. so. i don't like the idea of sadism, dominance, power-games, so not so much with snape. but their formative underpinnings-- frustrated rage and need-- yeah. that's my bag, baby.
and everyone has these emotions, of course-- ron, percy, ginny, even hermione i'm sure. it's just that added thing of draco being harry's shadow, maybe, of seeing this emotional interaction between them, this potential creation of something else out of all this pain and frustrated energy. i'm all about reflections and narrative signs of complementary need. ron and draco, say, mirror each other because they're coming from the same place, kind of. harry & snape aren't really equals at all, on the other hand, so they're not on the same emotional wavelength-- and neither are harry and draco, at first glance-- but this creates conflict in h/d because draco doesn't realize it and he can still drag harry down. whereas harry drags snape down the same old well-worn tunnel just by existing, really.
i dunno.
i seem to like intensity most of all, positively or negatively charged, i guess.
~~
i did squee when lucius or tom riddle appeared on screen, partly because the others did and i was feeling responsive. but i don't think i can really appreciate the sexy mojo of a character i didn't sincerely love or like. maybe that's just me. if they suck, they're not sexy. call me crazy (er-- well-- not for the first time, i'm sure).
it's just-- i know i'm indulging in a fair bit of solipsism, too, of course. but i guess i think of it as shallow which may explain why i mistakenly thought of the promiscuous screams during the movies as hypocritical. to most of those people, their relationships with the characters are not something they think about on a logical meta level (which makes perfect sense, i know i'm a freak), they're just gut reactions really-- moods. and maybe it's just that i have a narrower and more persistent range of gut-level responses to people and that's all. how i feel tends to be a stable thing, even though i can get more or less excited or angry or intense about it.
not to mention i can't really muster too much insight into a character or subject i don't love, just like most other people i think. so i figured if they don't seem to show insight they don't really have "true love". of course, people's level of insight is generally questionable, too.
what was my point again?
anyway, i don't have a hard time feeling sympathetic towards pretty much -any- character (or person), and i feel that hating and feeling prejudiced against a charcter is more a reflection on -you- than on them. i don't mean to say i'm saintly and "they" are beastly here, far from it, it's just that the trick is to think of how they would see their life and motivations rather than it being your judgement based on your own set of values.
no character in hp really conforms to my personal values anyway. hermione & luna & lupin all have aspects but not so much that i feel validated by them somehow.
the anti-draco people (on the panel and elsewhere) say he's a shallow, narrow, mean and ugly-hearted character with no attractive qualities to speak of-- he's a twit, basically-- like it's a valid literary analysis that took serious thought, one that any draco sympathizers like myself must be incapable of. (and as soon as i call myself a "sympathizer", i cringe, because it's got that inherent element of approval or admiration in there. but then, i'd easily argue that only luna, neville and lupin and maybe the twins are -remotely- "admirable" people in the books. hermione is kind of getting there. maybe. mostly, i'd vote for lupin. <333333 lupin, hee-- though he was rather soft on his friends and harsh on his enemies, and i wouldn't call his behavior towards snape really -admirable-. yes, the meek shall inherit the admiration of the rest of the meek. hee. but this is only if you mean `admire' as in, someone you'd make into a role-model. and who the hell would make draco into a role-model? are you people INSANE? or just really traumatized?)
i guess i must have missed that whole "he's a prejudiced junior-evil bastard" thing in my perusal of my mental image of him wearing leather pants, right. so i need to snap out of it by being reminded of reality. obviously. admittedly, a lot of draco fans, like i said, do think he's hot and apparently admire the very things people that hate him detest. perhaps even -because- these other people detest those things. school bullies have their fans too, of course. just because i'm not one of them doesn't mean i think they are in the minority. so maybe the "he's a twit" argument wasn't designed for me but it fits the run-of-the-mill fan of draco who had deluded themselves into thinking he's cool like han solo. or something.
overall, snape fans seem to all be aware of snape's sadism and pettiness (even if you can't always tell in fanfic), and no one that i've heard goes around reminding them of it. it's the assumption that just because someone's a bastard, it means they can't have worthwhile aspects that plays with draco but doesn't play with snape or even lucius that bothers me. it's a double standard. what they're really wanting to say isn't that draco's a mean or narrow-minded twit but that he's not interesting enough.
and i get that, i do. i happen to not be very interested in the weasleys, though i guess i see why others are. i'm not too interested in lucius or tom riddle or hagrid much either, and until the combination of `drawing down the moon' and book 5, sirius was dull to me. so what? i'm not about to go on an anti-sirius rant on a "is sirius a hopeless jerk?" panel, because i just don't -care- what people think about characters that merely annoy me. but that's neither here nor there.
dullness and simplicity aren't what you'd call a good basis for discounting a character from intellectual consideration. saying something's boring isn't an argument, exactly.
so anyway. obviously, some things people do are going to frustrate me, that's inevitable. but of course i can like harry & draco at the same time. affection for someone doesn't mean loyalty to their beliefs or forgiveness for all their faults, as i've said. it just means i see potential and hope and the need for the fulfillment of both. love is just a way to see beyond, not blindness. at least, that is my hope.
draco is the patron character of the lovers of disenfranchised "misunderstood" nasty boys (or girls?), rah-rah sadism & fuck those stupid suicidal do-gooders, right. at least, you'd think so judging from the attitudes of the people with the slytherin get-up. heh. or is that the fringe element? hee. i remember at the snape panel this girl saying, well, i identify with snape because there were people just like james & sirius who used to beat up on me in high school, and yah, now i want revenge (read: to kill them all). ahahahah. um. she wasn't exactly "normal", even at nimbus, even at the snape panel, but still.
people who like hermione like "brains" and rationality (maybe not everyone, but way too many intellectual-type grad-student fans seem to like hermione-but-not-harry-or-ron for it to be a coincidence-- same with people who like draco-but-not-harry). also assertiveness and masculine femininity, no-nonsense tough smart chicks who know what they want.
people who like snape. . . .
etc. it seems that because the characters in hp are so polarized, because they sort of stand for different modes of behavior & different ideals, there is a conflict of interest in a way, in playing for different teams, so to speak.
kitsune13 would know that even i got caught up in the separatism & said that we're all hypocrites.how else to explain it, in a way?
so many people who fangirl slytherins are like that because they feel anti-gryffindor. it's like, half of the attraction of it is proclaiming everything you're not (as a slytherin supporter). not into "nice" or "kind" or "brave" or what have you. it's like being popularly goth, really. slytherin = goth. come on, you all know it.
how can i support `goth' ideals (supposedly by loving draco or snape, you must approve of them-- a common mistake because most people do feel like that). i love harry & draco & a number of others who i don't approve of. is that so weird?
i don't approve, admire, or identify with slytherins. i don't identify with gryffindors or approve of them, either (same with the other houses). call me the rebel's rebel.
based on observation, i know for most fans it's not like that. when i said at the panel that i particularly like draco and i won't apologize for it, i meant i won't apologize for him. it's so bloody easy to like people we identify with, that make sense to us, that we approve of (hello, luna lovegood). it's much more challenging to care about characters that make no easy sense to us intuitively, that are annoying and abrasive and feel foreign to us. i think most people are draco-lovers because they either think they're like him or think he's got snark or the sexy or the sexy snark. amoral yumminess is wide-spread in its appeal.
that's where the hypocrisy comes in-- these people superficially dig on draco or lucius or snape or tom riddle without really empathizing or understanding-- identification isn't true understanding because it glosses over so much, molds the character in your own image, and you start saying "but they wouldn't do X" because you wouldn't do X. i've heard a professor say, "snape, as a professor, has X character trait because -i-, as a professor, have X character trait". the temptation is hard to resist. that's why i'm so wary of writing luna, and formerly have been of hermione (though i want to write luna anyway)-- she's not like me, but it's easy to imagine she is. and of course one can find parts of oneself in any character, but believing it too fully would be deceiving oneself.
i empathize with harry and draco especially because i've thought so much about them, not because i identify with them. i still don't know if i "get" draco -or- harry. i'm happy with that, though, because it keeps me thinking rather than allowing me to settle. when i settle, i begin the process of being wrong, i think.
upon further reflection, i realized that the impetus for my draco-love initially came from the stubborn, clinging way he hates, actually, and not much of anything to do with who he -is-. he feels the hatred so strongly, so hopelessly, against all sense of self-preservation. i didn't really -care- who he is, and in a way i still don't. cunning or pathetic, intelligent or limited-- who cares; as long as the story preserves that base emotional center in him, it works for me. what i respond to the most in him is passion.
he doesn't hide it. he tries and tries to bite, to lash out, get revenge, even if he's laughable and ineffectual and has no leg to stand on-- he is bitter and angry, but not like snape who's able to actually channel it and dominate people-- draco's life just kind of sucks. his personality kind of sucks. he thinks he's got everything going for him but he's got nothing but -rage-, really. god, i dig that. there may not be hope for him, but i -want- there to be hope, not because he deserves it but because he needs it. he is fierce and hungry for attention and power and he's so needy, really. the feral need i sense in him is what calls to me.
so where does discussion of his being shallow and petty and cruel and boring enter into it, then? what does it matter? the shallowness lends purity and constancy to his rage, i think. it is likely draco can never forgive harry, not even in that falsely tame sublimated way snape reins himself in.
i notice this is what attracts me because my fanfic was always about an angry draco, if i wasn't just being snarky or silly. i can channel his rage rather easily, actually (this comes close to the identification i am so wary of, but it's more me tapping into something than recalling it directly). i love harry because he's woobie and darling (and i'm biased for no good reason at all) and a disgruntled nice guy and he needs love. awww. but so does draco. he may not deserve it (as i've said), but he needs it.
harry has hidden rage too, i think, wedged in and brutal if unleashed. mmmmm... oh-- um-- yes. so. i don't like the idea of sadism, dominance, power-games, so not so much with snape. but their formative underpinnings-- frustrated rage and need-- yeah. that's my bag, baby.
and everyone has these emotions, of course-- ron, percy, ginny, even hermione i'm sure. it's just that added thing of draco being harry's shadow, maybe, of seeing this emotional interaction between them, this potential creation of something else out of all this pain and frustrated energy. i'm all about reflections and narrative signs of complementary need. ron and draco, say, mirror each other because they're coming from the same place, kind of. harry & snape aren't really equals at all, on the other hand, so they're not on the same emotional wavelength-- and neither are harry and draco, at first glance-- but this creates conflict in h/d because draco doesn't realize it and he can still drag harry down. whereas harry drags snape down the same old well-worn tunnel just by existing, really.
i dunno.
i seem to like intensity most of all, positively or negatively charged, i guess.
~~
i did squee when lucius or tom riddle appeared on screen, partly because the others did and i was feeling responsive. but i don't think i can really appreciate the sexy mojo of a character i didn't sincerely love or like. maybe that's just me. if they suck, they're not sexy. call me crazy (er-- well-- not for the first time, i'm sure).
it's just-- i know i'm indulging in a fair bit of solipsism, too, of course. but i guess i think of it as shallow which may explain why i mistakenly thought of the promiscuous screams during the movies as hypocritical. to most of those people, their relationships with the characters are not something they think about on a logical meta level (which makes perfect sense, i know i'm a freak), they're just gut reactions really-- moods. and maybe it's just that i have a narrower and more persistent range of gut-level responses to people and that's all. how i feel tends to be a stable thing, even though i can get more or less excited or angry or intense about it.
not to mention i can't really muster too much insight into a character or subject i don't love, just like most other people i think. so i figured if they don't seem to show insight they don't really have "true love". of course, people's level of insight is generally questionable, too.
what was my point again?
anyway, i don't have a hard time feeling sympathetic towards pretty much -any- character (or person), and i feel that hating and feeling prejudiced against a charcter is more a reflection on -you- than on them. i don't mean to say i'm saintly and "they" are beastly here, far from it, it's just that the trick is to think of how they would see their life and motivations rather than it being your judgement based on your own set of values.
no character in hp really conforms to my personal values anyway. hermione & luna & lupin all have aspects but not so much that i feel validated by them somehow.
the anti-draco people (on the panel and elsewhere) say he's a shallow, narrow, mean and ugly-hearted character with no attractive qualities to speak of-- he's a twit, basically-- like it's a valid literary analysis that took serious thought, one that any draco sympathizers like myself must be incapable of. (and as soon as i call myself a "sympathizer", i cringe, because it's got that inherent element of approval or admiration in there. but then, i'd easily argue that only luna, neville and lupin and maybe the twins are -remotely- "admirable" people in the books. hermione is kind of getting there. maybe. mostly, i'd vote for lupin. <333333 lupin, hee-- though he was rather soft on his friends and harsh on his enemies, and i wouldn't call his behavior towards snape really -admirable-. yes, the meek shall inherit the admiration of the rest of the meek. hee. but this is only if you mean `admire' as in, someone you'd make into a role-model. and who the hell would make draco into a role-model? are you people INSANE? or just really traumatized?)
i guess i must have missed that whole "he's a prejudiced junior-evil bastard" thing in my perusal of my mental image of him wearing leather pants, right. so i need to snap out of it by being reminded of reality. obviously. admittedly, a lot of draco fans, like i said, do think he's hot and apparently admire the very things people that hate him detest. perhaps even -because- these other people detest those things. school bullies have their fans too, of course. just because i'm not one of them doesn't mean i think they are in the minority. so maybe the "he's a twit" argument wasn't designed for me but it fits the run-of-the-mill fan of draco who had deluded themselves into thinking he's cool like han solo. or something.
overall, snape fans seem to all be aware of snape's sadism and pettiness (even if you can't always tell in fanfic), and no one that i've heard goes around reminding them of it. it's the assumption that just because someone's a bastard, it means they can't have worthwhile aspects that plays with draco but doesn't play with snape or even lucius that bothers me. it's a double standard. what they're really wanting to say isn't that draco's a mean or narrow-minded twit but that he's not interesting enough.
and i get that, i do. i happen to not be very interested in the weasleys, though i guess i see why others are. i'm not too interested in lucius or tom riddle or hagrid much either, and until the combination of `drawing down the moon' and book 5, sirius was dull to me. so what? i'm not about to go on an anti-sirius rant on a "is sirius a hopeless jerk?" panel, because i just don't -care- what people think about characters that merely annoy me. but that's neither here nor there.
dullness and simplicity aren't what you'd call a good basis for discounting a character from intellectual consideration. saying something's boring isn't an argument, exactly.
so anyway. obviously, some things people do are going to frustrate me, that's inevitable. but of course i can like harry & draco at the same time. affection for someone doesn't mean loyalty to their beliefs or forgiveness for all their faults, as i've said. it just means i see potential and hope and the need for the fulfillment of both. love is just a way to see beyond, not blindness. at least, that is my hope.
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Date: 2003-07-24 05:08 pm (UTC)There's almost nothing to add (I shall now add a million things)--I feel so much the same as you do on this. In fact I was recently arguing with somebody on an LOTR board who identified with Gollum but (imo...no, not in imo. I was right this time with evidence from canon!) she was really projecting her own self onto Gollum. And this involved approving of actions when she shouldn't have, and blaming them on others. I don't particularly identify with Draco or approve of him, and that's why I definitely get frustrated when people tell me I do, or that I just don't see these obviously bad qualities (dude, what else is there to see in canon??) or that I have a crush on him or whatever.
What I am able to do with both Draco and Snape is often see things the way they do and understand the emotions that seem to be driving them in a scene, even if their way of dealing with those emotions is totally foreign to me. But sometimes you explain where they're coming from and immediately get back the response of, "I don't buy it. He's a jerk" or "That doesn't excuse his actions," when of course it doesn't. It's not supposed to. I just don't get that kind of thinking because, as you said, that says NOTHING at all about the character. What's interesting to me is how this character is driven a certain way and how that drives him up against other characters. It's not just about identifying who the bad guy is.
I guess I forget sometimes how many "rebel" types are drawn to Slytherin because they do approve of them because I'm so not that type! I see much of the Slytherin way as just being self-destructive and inefficient so of course I don't support it. In this universe I honestly can't think of too many characters I consider that admirable. There are isolated incidents where people do something good, but no ethical role models I can think of. Lupin often seems to me the most admirable, but most of the others seem like "don't let this happen to you" types who are getting worse. Sometimes it makes sense to compare the Gryffs to Slyths to illustrate how the Slyths aren't really that much better or how the "other way" isn't necessarily worse, but again that gets frustrating because when you do that people always think you're saying that the Slytherin way is better when it's just different.
So of course I can like Harry and Draco at the same time. They're both screwed up boys that, to me, have great qualities and not-so-great ones. There were a lot of times in OotP when I felt the need to point out times when Harry was showing bad traits, not because I hated him for it or wanted others to, but because that's part of what was interesting about him. His anger was driving him to act in such-and-such a way, same as Draco. I don't feel much need to announce that he or Snape is bad because I know that. I don't need to point out that I am "better" than them in these particular ways. That's what bothers me about the way the whole book is set up, like as long as you're better than the Slytherins you don't have to worry about you're still good even if you're not. I see real signs in both Harry and Draco that they could be not only good but exceptional people so I worry about them when they go down the wrong road and become less than I think they could be, I guess.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-25 11:22 pm (UTC)i find i tend to agree with or at least see people's takes on things as long as they're well thought-out and at least somewhat compassionate. it bothers me that straight-out rejection of characters or ideas passes for thought for some people, but i think it's more emotion masquerading as thought. when one's dominant force is curiosity and a desire to understand, rather than a desire to defend oneself, one feels less of a need to draw these barriers between "us" and "them".
it's always seemed interesting to me that people are acting out the roles in jkr's books-- people who self-identify with gryffindor hate slytherins just like the gryffindors in the books. that's really scary, isn't it? i mean, it's just fiction, and people are so easily caught up in it, one can only imagine the lack of compassion they show in real life. or maybe i'm jumping the gun, i don't know.
but it does disturb me, that people are so predictable, that the whole surface-level prejudice that the books are against actually is -brought about- by identification with the societal systems and characters described within the books. there's no sense of analysis and objectivity in the characters -or- the readers. it's like as soon as the common reader assigns emotional value to something, it works just like it does during their normal lives, where they pigeon-hole and condemn people all the time.
but then, i'm bitter ^^;
no subject
Date: 2003-07-26 08:02 am (UTC)There's also the power of perspective which I think a lot of people don't appreciate. Putting a book in a character's pov automatically guarantees sympathy on the part of the reader. Harry could easily be portrayed as unlikeable if written from another character's pov even without his doing the things Draco has done. And Draco, as bigotted and petty as he is, could be a perfectly compelling and sympathetic character if we were in his head. This seems like a scary idea for some people to deal with, though. They like to think they're just able to identify good and bad, perhaps.