And The Moral of That Is...
'How fond she is of finding morals in things!' Alice thought to herself.
I have been watching with a great deal of interest the various responses -- and responses to the responses, and responses to the responses to the responses -- to J.K. Rowling's rant in which she stated that she hopes her daughters grow up to not "give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do." Any approving and concurring commentary that Rowling might have received for this admirable sentiment was immediately drowned out (or perhaps this was only my perception) by a rising tide of indignant outrage saying "how dare she?"
How dare she...
Naturally, Rowling defenders (you know how rabid, mindless, and sycophantic we can be) have responded with a barrage of counter-arguments, like so:
It's true that there may be trends in HP that are troubling for feminists, and I always enjoy reading a thoughtful analysis of Rowling's themes (both the intentional and the unintentional) but you, if I understand you correctly, are talking about the virulent anger we so often see, directly focused on this or that character. "Ginny is a whore!" "Merope's a perverted rapist!" "Tonks is a #(^%(&&%** BEARD!"- that kind of thing? The sort of harsh judgment that takes no extenuating circumstance into account and closes off all possibility of further discussion and willfully fails to recognize extremely common human behavior? And, incidentally, further fails to take into account that the author herself does not necessarily approve or agree with every single bit of the behavior she depicts?
...Such harsh, didactic judgments, and over such small transgressions, at least to me, given my previous fandom. But I think, in a manner of speaking, JKR writes her characters much the way Thomas Harris does. All of them are flawed, but only some of them are trying to do their best. I think we are meant to apply the Golden Rule in our evaluation of her characters and her own motives - we should judge as we would wish to be judged ourselves, and to agree with your point, we'll probably have more fun with Rowling's story and her people if we have some tolerance for human frailty. And maybe we need to be a little less on the look-out for Rowling's message and a little more on the lookout for her great gift for filling her universe with a parade of fascinating, resonant characters. After all, they'd all be boring as hell if they didn't include paradoxes and conflicting drives.
...All of this behavior is recognizable to most humans at once, and these conflicting moral imperatives are a function of the human condition: the good and the terrible, side by side (or even the pretty-good and the not-too-terrible, with a lot of these characters). Anyway, for me, a sincere attempt at a faithful rendering of the human condition is a bit of authorial intent that goes a long way toward excusing Rowling if sometimes her feminist thought is a bit shaky or her reputed Gryffindor bias seems glaring.
Yes, yes, and yes, and again, YES. That's what I've been wanting and trying to say. What she said!
I think I would be happier in the fandom if I never heard the word "message" again. Tonks is not a message. She is either a bright, forthright young woman pursuing love, honor, victory, and happiness in a world torn apart by war or she is a fairly minor secondary character in a children's fantasy series. When I see something like this...
I really like the idea of some sort of website set up for constructive criticism for her. Because you're right, it seems like no one really has the guts to tell her something like the Tonks-HBP situation is not something that girls should look up to or even think of as acceptable. Because...ack...there is so much wrong there.
...I feel as if I've stepped into a world of moral didacticism gone mad. Apparently, if I'm interpreting this correctly, Tonks is such a bad person, or a bad character, or a bad example for girls, or badly-written, or something, that her very existence is harmful, her story is something that NO ONE should "even think of as acceptable," something that J.K. Rowling should not have written.
Leaving aside the fact that I can't even fathom what poor Tonks (or poor JKR) did that is so wrong or makes such a horrible lesson for girls, let's pretend she did do something wrong, something that even my apparently stunted and insensitive feminist principles would have found morally unacceptable. Perhaps, oh, let's take the one in canon... let's say she used Love Potion on poor Remus, conceived a child, and tried to get him to stay with her out of guilt and responsibility (probably would have worked on him, too, unlike Tom Riddle, Sr.). I still say so the frigging heck what? How is it in any way harmful to girls to read about a person doing wrong, immoral things? Isn't that what most books contain? Wouldn't fiction be heinously boring if all the characters went around constantly setting examples and being good role models?
No, no, I can almost hear the critics saying, it's not that. It's that Tonks is portrayed as cool, a positive character, one of the good guys -- someone Harry likes and that children are likely to identify with. I still say "so what?" So are Sirius, and Fred and George, and Hagrid, and Hermione, and Mad-Eye Moody, and they do lots worse things in canon than whatever it is Tonks is supposed to have done wrong (felt sad and lost the ability to turn her hair pink???). And if Tonks had actually done something as nasty and manipulative as what Merope did, ummm... wouldn't that affect the way we feel about her? Didn't it work that way with James and Sirius, when we found out about their teenaged obnoxiousness? Aren't we able to feel affection for the "good" characters without approving and emulating them in their worst actions? Does everyone who loves Harry somehow think it's perfectly all right to send owls to peck at their friends, snoop in people's private memories without invitation, and stomp around destroying furnishings in their headmasters' or principals' offices?
But again I'm hearing voices in my head telling me I'm missing the point. The problem, the voices say, is that Rowling shows a pattern of unacceptable romantic behavior in females. Tonks pines, Ginny crushes on Harry for five years, Hermione sics canaries and hexes Quidditch rivals, Merope and Romilda use potions, Lavender sends horrible jewelry, and Lily weakly falls for the prat she had rightly told off for arrogance. Again I have to admit that I must be a bad feminist, because I honestly can't see why most of this behavior is bad, and where I do see that it is bad, I don't see that it has anything to do with being female, or that Rowling shows females as being worse in any way than males when it comes to romantic love. I mean, sometimes when I'm reading these diatribes about how females are shown in these books as weak and clingy, I almost seem to think they have a point, but then I look at the books again and it just... all goes away. Nobody complains that these books send a bad message to boys -- not when we see Stan Shunpike, Ron, and company making idiots of themselves over Veelas, not when we see McLaggan sexually harrassing Hermione, not when we see Tom Riddle vamping Hepzibah Smith, or James showing off for Lily in the most counterproductive ways, or Dean still pining for Ginny after she's dumped him, or Ron having a hissy fit because Hermione kissed someone two years earlier, or Hagrid dousing himself with horrible scent in an effort to attract Madame Maxime.
So why is it that these books are so widely thought to contain a "message" about romantic behavior for girls, but not necessarily one for boys? Why is it that we're all concerned about whether or not Rowling shows a bias against fat people, and nobody gives a good goddamn that she's way insulting toward the greasy-haired, or the bandy-legged, or those who quite like plates with kittens painted on them? We all know why. It's because prejudice against women and against overweight people are issues. Because these are prejudices that prominently exist in our world, sometimes in very virulent form, and we're rightly concerned about that prejudice and its pernicious effects. And also -- I can't get around this, because it's too obviously true -- because sometimes this prejudice exists in the reader and causes him or her to see things in the books that it's not clear the author ever intended to put there.
Let me use Horace Slughorn to illustrate this last point. In all the rhetoric I've seen about how J.K. Rowling's books promote and/or use prejudice against fat people, the two examples most commonly pointed to are Dudley Dursley and Horace Slughorn. I will readily concede Dudley Dursley -- the text is savage about his weight, both narratively and in Harry's thoughts and words, and his size is closely tied to his character flaws of selfishness, gluttony, and bullying, and to his status as a favored, over-indulged child. But Horace Slughorn? The things I'm reading about Slughorn seem to me to be more projection than anything. For instance:
"every seriously fat person who's ever appeared in the books has been shown to be either outright evil (the Dursleys, Umbridge) or morally bankrupt (Humbert Slugbert much?)"
and
JKR comments on Dudley's or Slughorn's weight almost every time we encounter them, "fat" being one of their many repulsive Qualities.
Okay, I know that Every Interpretation Is Equally Valid and mine is only special to me because I'm me, but what the hell is so bad about Horace Slughorn? So he's comfort-loving and manipulative and rather in the back of the line when it comes to stepping bravely forward and has to be gotten drunk before he'll reveal a humiliating memory... SO WHAT? That does NOT make him "morally bankrupt." How is he any worse, taken all in all, than Hagrid or Trelawney or Moody or Fudge or any other of the fallible adult characters in Harry's world? He's smart, competent, cheerful, pleasant, friendly, sensible, and has an awful lot of people who are fond of him. Dumbledore likes him, Harry seems to like him just fine, and when you get him really really drunk, he's... sentimental, affectionate, and generous. In vino veritas.
And he's fat. Yes, his love of comfort and good food and wines and crystallized pineapple and soft chairs and warm fires has had the natural result -- he's built on the lines of the Prince Regent, with several chins, an awe-inspiring belly, and small, neat feet. Does that make him ugly or "repulsive"? Ummmm... only if you think that excess flesh is intrinsically repulsive. I read Slughorn as a sleek, pleasant-looking fellow -- impeccably clean and neatly-groomed, his enormous walrus-like mustache curling impressively, clad in gorgeous raiment of fine materials and rich colors, bouncing enthusiastically on his small, expensively-shod feet. And I believe, within the limits of my ability to perceive authorial intention, that Rowling intends him to present a humorous but rather attractive picture. Umbridge is "repulsive." Filch is "repulsive." Slughorn is not, and if you think that he is, I can't help suspecting that you're projecting a "fat is ugly" message that's not actually in the text.
I'd say the same about the Fat Lady, the Fat Friar, Molly Weasley, Madam Rosmerta, Ludo Bagman, Cornelius Fudge, Ernie McMillan, Alice Longbottom, and Professor Sprout -- these people are not ugly or immoral or unintelligent because they're well-upholstered or fond of good food. They're pleasant-looking, attractive, well-liked people who vary widely in their moral characters and abilities. If you think they're ugly, or weak, or stupid, or meant as comic relief because of their physical appearance -- well that's you. I certainly don't see them that way, and I don't believe Rowling does either.
I don't want to let my fervour for defending a favorite author lead me too far here. If some members of the reading audience are reading more prejudice and stereotyping into Rowling's work than actually exists, that's perfectly natural, because they live in a world where such stereotypes are widespread and hurtful. If Rowling is writing those stereotypes and prejudices in -- and she probably is to a certain extent, though not nearly to the point those fuming at her "hypocrisy" claim -- that is perfectly understandable and natural as well. Personally, I sometimes flinch at the colorful descriptions of Dudley's avoirdupois or wish that either Goyle or Crabbe or Bulstrode would turn out to be sensitive and misunderstood. Sometimes I flinch at a lot of stuff she writes.
But, you know what? Paraphrasing Peter to Harriet, what does that matter, if it makes a good book? Someone pointed out what a shame it is that Rowling tried to spread her message of body-acceptance by ranting about it on her website, when it would be far more influential and effective within the pages of her book. Maybe it would, but... no. Not only no, but HELL NO. Books are not about messages. Books are not the place for messages. Books are for stories. A well-written, funny, and effective rant on her website, picked up by all the newspapers, is exactly the right place for a message. Public-service commercials are a good place for a message. So are political speeches, and sermons, and letters to the editor, and conversations between parents and children.
But please, I beg of you... Keep your damn "messages" away from my books.
I have been watching with a great deal of interest the various responses -- and responses to the responses, and responses to the responses to the responses -- to J.K. Rowling's rant in which she stated that she hopes her daughters grow up to not "give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do." Any approving and concurring commentary that Rowling might have received for this admirable sentiment was immediately drowned out (or perhaps this was only my perception) by a rising tide of indignant outrage saying "how dare she?"
How dare she...
- ...say "how strange and sick the 'fat' insult is" when she herself makes fun of Dudley for being fat in her books.
- ...complain about weight-prejudice at all when her books are reeking with it -- "all the characters she describes as overweight are evil, stupid, or comic relief."
- ...speak out against cruel "mean girls" who make fun of other people when one of them -- Ginny -- is her precious "heroine."
- ...worry about pressure on girls to be thin while sending bad messages to girls in her own books -- that they should be (or are) weak and obsessed with boys.
- ...tell girls not to worry about their weight when she herself is thin, dies her hair blonde, wears low-cut frocks that show off her cleavage, and obviously cares about her appearance.
- ...claim it doesn't matter what weight you are while slyly managing to remind us that she is thin.
Naturally, Rowling defenders (you know how rabid, mindless, and sycophantic we can be) have responded with a barrage of counter-arguments, like so:
- All body types are actually fairly-distributed through the books in terms of virtue, intelligence, and comic-relief status.
- You're not taking into account the effect of Harry's prejudices in the narrative, literary conventions, humorous exaggeration, and other extenuating circumstances.
- Bashing the female characters is more a sign of sexism in the fandom than sexism in the text.
- Ginny is NOT a shallow "mean girl" and Tonks is NOT weak! *glare*
- What the bloody hell does Rowling's personal appearance have to do with anything? Exactly how overweight, careless of dress, and unsexy does she need to be before she's allowed to express an opinion?
- U R JUS JELLUS! [bitter about shipping, an author-basher, always wanting something to whine about, etc.]
It's true that there may be trends in HP that are troubling for feminists, and I always enjoy reading a thoughtful analysis of Rowling's themes (both the intentional and the unintentional) but you, if I understand you correctly, are talking about the virulent anger we so often see, directly focused on this or that character. "Ginny is a whore!" "Merope's a perverted rapist!" "Tonks is a #(^%(&&%** BEARD!"- that kind of thing? The sort of harsh judgment that takes no extenuating circumstance into account and closes off all possibility of further discussion and willfully fails to recognize extremely common human behavior? And, incidentally, further fails to take into account that the author herself does not necessarily approve or agree with every single bit of the behavior she depicts?
...Such harsh, didactic judgments, and over such small transgressions, at least to me, given my previous fandom. But I think, in a manner of speaking, JKR writes her characters much the way Thomas Harris does. All of them are flawed, but only some of them are trying to do their best. I think we are meant to apply the Golden Rule in our evaluation of her characters and her own motives - we should judge as we would wish to be judged ourselves, and to agree with your point, we'll probably have more fun with Rowling's story and her people if we have some tolerance for human frailty. And maybe we need to be a little less on the look-out for Rowling's message and a little more on the lookout for her great gift for filling her universe with a parade of fascinating, resonant characters. After all, they'd all be boring as hell if they didn't include paradoxes and conflicting drives.
...All of this behavior is recognizable to most humans at once, and these conflicting moral imperatives are a function of the human condition: the good and the terrible, side by side (or even the pretty-good and the not-too-terrible, with a lot of these characters). Anyway, for me, a sincere attempt at a faithful rendering of the human condition is a bit of authorial intent that goes a long way toward excusing Rowling if sometimes her feminist thought is a bit shaky or her reputed Gryffindor bias seems glaring.
Yes, yes, and yes, and again, YES. That's what I've been wanting and trying to say. What she said!
I think I would be happier in the fandom if I never heard the word "message" again. Tonks is not a message. She is either a bright, forthright young woman pursuing love, honor, victory, and happiness in a world torn apart by war or she is a fairly minor secondary character in a children's fantasy series. When I see something like this...
I really like the idea of some sort of website set up for constructive criticism for her. Because you're right, it seems like no one really has the guts to tell her something like the Tonks-HBP situation is not something that girls should look up to or even think of as acceptable. Because...ack...there is so much wrong there.
...I feel as if I've stepped into a world of moral didacticism gone mad. Apparently, if I'm interpreting this correctly, Tonks is such a bad person, or a bad character, or a bad example for girls, or badly-written, or something, that her very existence is harmful, her story is something that NO ONE should "even think of as acceptable," something that J.K. Rowling should not have written.
Leaving aside the fact that I can't even fathom what poor Tonks (or poor JKR) did that is so wrong or makes such a horrible lesson for girls, let's pretend she did do something wrong, something that even my apparently stunted and insensitive feminist principles would have found morally unacceptable. Perhaps, oh, let's take the one in canon... let's say she used Love Potion on poor Remus, conceived a child, and tried to get him to stay with her out of guilt and responsibility (probably would have worked on him, too, unlike Tom Riddle, Sr.). I still say so the frigging heck what? How is it in any way harmful to girls to read about a person doing wrong, immoral things? Isn't that what most books contain? Wouldn't fiction be heinously boring if all the characters went around constantly setting examples and being good role models?
No, no, I can almost hear the critics saying, it's not that. It's that Tonks is portrayed as cool, a positive character, one of the good guys -- someone Harry likes and that children are likely to identify with. I still say "so what?" So are Sirius, and Fred and George, and Hagrid, and Hermione, and Mad-Eye Moody, and they do lots worse things in canon than whatever it is Tonks is supposed to have done wrong (felt sad and lost the ability to turn her hair pink???). And if Tonks had actually done something as nasty and manipulative as what Merope did, ummm... wouldn't that affect the way we feel about her? Didn't it work that way with James and Sirius, when we found out about their teenaged obnoxiousness? Aren't we able to feel affection for the "good" characters without approving and emulating them in their worst actions? Does everyone who loves Harry somehow think it's perfectly all right to send owls to peck at their friends, snoop in people's private memories without invitation, and stomp around destroying furnishings in their headmasters' or principals' offices?
But again I'm hearing voices in my head telling me I'm missing the point. The problem, the voices say, is that Rowling shows a pattern of unacceptable romantic behavior in females. Tonks pines, Ginny crushes on Harry for five years, Hermione sics canaries and hexes Quidditch rivals, Merope and Romilda use potions, Lavender sends horrible jewelry, and Lily weakly falls for the prat she had rightly told off for arrogance. Again I have to admit that I must be a bad feminist, because I honestly can't see why most of this behavior is bad, and where I do see that it is bad, I don't see that it has anything to do with being female, or that Rowling shows females as being worse in any way than males when it comes to romantic love. I mean, sometimes when I'm reading these diatribes about how females are shown in these books as weak and clingy, I almost seem to think they have a point, but then I look at the books again and it just... all goes away. Nobody complains that these books send a bad message to boys -- not when we see Stan Shunpike, Ron, and company making idiots of themselves over Veelas, not when we see McLaggan sexually harrassing Hermione, not when we see Tom Riddle vamping Hepzibah Smith, or James showing off for Lily in the most counterproductive ways, or Dean still pining for Ginny after she's dumped him, or Ron having a hissy fit because Hermione kissed someone two years earlier, or Hagrid dousing himself with horrible scent in an effort to attract Madame Maxime.
So why is it that these books are so widely thought to contain a "message" about romantic behavior for girls, but not necessarily one for boys? Why is it that we're all concerned about whether or not Rowling shows a bias against fat people, and nobody gives a good goddamn that she's way insulting toward the greasy-haired, or the bandy-legged, or those who quite like plates with kittens painted on them? We all know why. It's because prejudice against women and against overweight people are issues. Because these are prejudices that prominently exist in our world, sometimes in very virulent form, and we're rightly concerned about that prejudice and its pernicious effects. And also -- I can't get around this, because it's too obviously true -- because sometimes this prejudice exists in the reader and causes him or her to see things in the books that it's not clear the author ever intended to put there.
Let me use Horace Slughorn to illustrate this last point. In all the rhetoric I've seen about how J.K. Rowling's books promote and/or use prejudice against fat people, the two examples most commonly pointed to are Dudley Dursley and Horace Slughorn. I will readily concede Dudley Dursley -- the text is savage about his weight, both narratively and in Harry's thoughts and words, and his size is closely tied to his character flaws of selfishness, gluttony, and bullying, and to his status as a favored, over-indulged child. But Horace Slughorn? The things I'm reading about Slughorn seem to me to be more projection than anything. For instance:
"every seriously fat person who's ever appeared in the books has been shown to be either outright evil (the Dursleys, Umbridge) or morally bankrupt (Humbert Slugbert much?)"
and
JKR comments on Dudley's or Slughorn's weight almost every time we encounter them, "fat" being one of their many repulsive Qualities.
Okay, I know that Every Interpretation Is Equally Valid and mine is only special to me because I'm me, but what the hell is so bad about Horace Slughorn? So he's comfort-loving and manipulative and rather in the back of the line when it comes to stepping bravely forward and has to be gotten drunk before he'll reveal a humiliating memory... SO WHAT? That does NOT make him "morally bankrupt." How is he any worse, taken all in all, than Hagrid or Trelawney or Moody or Fudge or any other of the fallible adult characters in Harry's world? He's smart, competent, cheerful, pleasant, friendly, sensible, and has an awful lot of people who are fond of him. Dumbledore likes him, Harry seems to like him just fine, and when you get him really really drunk, he's... sentimental, affectionate, and generous. In vino veritas.
And he's fat. Yes, his love of comfort and good food and wines and crystallized pineapple and soft chairs and warm fires has had the natural result -- he's built on the lines of the Prince Regent, with several chins, an awe-inspiring belly, and small, neat feet. Does that make him ugly or "repulsive"? Ummmm... only if you think that excess flesh is intrinsically repulsive. I read Slughorn as a sleek, pleasant-looking fellow -- impeccably clean and neatly-groomed, his enormous walrus-like mustache curling impressively, clad in gorgeous raiment of fine materials and rich colors, bouncing enthusiastically on his small, expensively-shod feet. And I believe, within the limits of my ability to perceive authorial intention, that Rowling intends him to present a humorous but rather attractive picture. Umbridge is "repulsive." Filch is "repulsive." Slughorn is not, and if you think that he is, I can't help suspecting that you're projecting a "fat is ugly" message that's not actually in the text.
I'd say the same about the Fat Lady, the Fat Friar, Molly Weasley, Madam Rosmerta, Ludo Bagman, Cornelius Fudge, Ernie McMillan, Alice Longbottom, and Professor Sprout -- these people are not ugly or immoral or unintelligent because they're well-upholstered or fond of good food. They're pleasant-looking, attractive, well-liked people who vary widely in their moral characters and abilities. If you think they're ugly, or weak, or stupid, or meant as comic relief because of their physical appearance -- well that's you. I certainly don't see them that way, and I don't believe Rowling does either.
I don't want to let my fervour for defending a favorite author lead me too far here. If some members of the reading audience are reading more prejudice and stereotyping into Rowling's work than actually exists, that's perfectly natural, because they live in a world where such stereotypes are widespread and hurtful. If Rowling is writing those stereotypes and prejudices in -- and she probably is to a certain extent, though not nearly to the point those fuming at her "hypocrisy" claim -- that is perfectly understandable and natural as well. Personally, I sometimes flinch at the colorful descriptions of Dudley's avoirdupois or wish that either Goyle or Crabbe or Bulstrode would turn out to be sensitive and misunderstood. Sometimes I flinch at a lot of stuff she writes.
But, you know what? Paraphrasing Peter to Harriet, what does that matter, if it makes a good book? Someone pointed out what a shame it is that Rowling tried to spread her message of body-acceptance by ranting about it on her website, when it would be far more influential and effective within the pages of her book. Maybe it would, but... no. Not only no, but HELL NO. Books are not about messages. Books are not the place for messages. Books are for stories. A well-written, funny, and effective rant on her website, picked up by all the newspapers, is exactly the right place for a message. Public-service commercials are a good place for a message. So are political speeches, and sermons, and letters to the editor, and conversations between parents and children.
But please, I beg of you... Keep your damn "messages" away from my books.