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Ere the Sun rises
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User ID: 853
Nah, I do think "aristocratic-racist hot girl" plays well for a reason. Would not have worked for a Hufflepuff girl with mainstream anti-racist politics.
The dynamics of the genetic inheritance of magic are acknowledged by Rowling but not actually fleshed out anywhere. It's a catch-22 for the story. If ancestry doesn't matter in determining the likelihood of a child inheriting magic, that would go farthest in discrediting the Slytherin ethos: it actually doesn't matter what your ancestry is, and those people are obsessed with their ancestry for no reason. Classic late twentieth century take on the Race Question.
On the other hand, if it does matter then it lends justification to Slytherin's class structure and arguably adds more ambiguity to the story.
Or maybe they are like us, and they ignore all the Ministry studies saying it matters and instead the conventional wisdom is that ancestry does not matter when it actually does. And Slytherins are the only ones who (rightfully) believe it does. And if you believe it matters then you must be a follower of you-know-who.
So there we get Malfoid, the high-class racist girl, a much different interpretation than Voldemort.
The Malfoid phenomenon is the consequence of aging Millennials re-interpreting the Slytherin ethos. There's no question that Harry Potter is an anti-fascist series, and as such it takes the concerns that an authoritarian-leaning Wizard might have in that world and associates them with wonton atrocities, physical ugliness, dysfunction, and ultimate defeat and humiliation.
But let's consider the Mudblood Question. Imagine a pure-blood Witch reproduces with a male muggle. I do not know the in-universe specific of magical inheritance, but my understanding is that it is then a roll of the dice if the children will have magic. So maybe some do, and some do not. Or none of them inherit magic. Can you fathom the incredible recklessness that it would take for a woman who has literal magical genes to choose a mate that means her offspring may not inherit magic? Or at best some do and other kids do not, meaning your own children will never relate to each other or even belong in the same world. Even in Rowling's work sibling rivalry caused by disparate inheritance is a persistent cause of familial dysfunction. It's actual despicable, anti-social behavior. It should be shunned by magical society. You can call it "love" but from a different perspective it is an unforgivable neglect of your genetic inheritance and your own children.
Yes HP is ultimately a "love trumps hate" story but minimizes the fact that Slytherin social standards are molded by their love for their own genetic inheritance- their ancestors, their descendants, the protection of their genetic quality that makes them superior to muggles. Slytherin, for whatever faults ham-fisted by Rowling, ultimately represents an incredibly important cultural pressure- is it really only that house that has a problem with Witches and Wizards disinheriting their own children of magic?
Malfoid is introducing the concept of love within the Slytherin ethos, which has always been there intrinsically, only omitted from Rowling's portrayal to maintain the black-and-white dialectic required for a children's story.
Classic subversion from the goblin-controlled Daily Prophet.
Seriously though, the rules of inheritance are not actually fleshed out anywhere as far as I can tell. You could contrive a system that makes ancestry irrelevant. That would be a cop-out. But there are enough clues in the book to suggest it does matter although the rules are not concrete. But what's interesting is that the particularities of the system, in particular if they approximated real-world ethnogenesis, would mean Slytherin is right.
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