This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I love the books and I agree with you that there's nothing wrong with Harry Potter's worldbuilding being vibes-based — it works well for the story Rowling is telling. Since the plots are functionally mystery novels, the spells and mechanics introduced in each book are mostly there as devices to further the book's plot and add whimsy and wonder. That said, it makes Harry Potter as a franchise rather poor ground for extended media like Fantastic Beasts, since the barebones worldbuilding comes back to bite it when trying to tell a different type of story. The world is built around Harry and his journey through school and can't support much else built on that edifice (besides fanfic writers reimagining rules to make more sense).
Kind of. There is some real criticism in that, romantically, Harry is essentially written as a woman. Things that JK Rowling would find desirable in a man are things he likes, and things that give her the ick give Harry the ick. When Cho Chang cries in the tea shop, Harry is disgusted in the same way a woman would be to see a man she likes bawling in front of her. With Ginny, Harry doesn't notice her as a romantic prospect until she starts dating around and demonstrates her romantic viability, which then makes him interested. He is overall extremely passive when it comes to romance, and shows zero interest in using his status as Quidditch star and Chosen One to get attention from women. At risk of generalizing the sexes, these are all extremely female-coded characteristics. Everyone on the internet now having (to put it lightly) a greater awareness of how men and women differ romantically meant it was only a matter of time before this part of Harry Potter got some serious examination under a new cultural lens.
I don't disagree that Rowling gave him something but it never sat right with me how he and the Slytherins were written throughout the series in general. For a series that makes so much importance of love and understanding, having 1/4 of the student body be cartoonishly evil cartoon bullies feels incongruous. Hell, most Slytherins aren't even allowed to be good-looking — the majority are described as ugly chuds with the appearance of gorillas, even the girls. The artistocrats among them are invariably shown to be sniveling bullies who hide behind their wealth and have no shred of character. There was so much room to do more with these characters. Slughorn is a much-needed counterexample (I always liked Phineas Nigellus too) but he feels like the only good one in a sea of evil cartoon racists. So yes, while Draco does get to show he isn't irredeemably evil, that's pretty much all he gets, and that is very disappointing to me. He and the Slytherins are one of the aspects of the story most ripe for reimagining.
Bringing it back to Malfoid, these elements combine to have a lot of people feeling that yeah, maybe it would have been really cool if Malfoy was a tsundere with an anime enemies to lovers plot (Malfoy is also very female coded to begin with!). Is it a male fantasy to convert the evil girl to your side by being that virtuous and irresistible? Yes, definitely! I'd say there's nothing wrong with that, let's push to see even more of it in our media. Rowling has said herself that Ron-Hermione was done as her own wish fulfillment, so there's already precedent here.
Women get to have their most insane fever dream billionaire vampire hockey player fantasies available for $15 dollars on a shelf in every airport general store, in the featured display in every Barnes and Noble, and in a dedicated aisle in every Target. There is a genuine demand for the male side that is unserved by media that doesn't come from East Asia (because many women find it to be gross and, as you said, everything is edited and audited by women now). Malfoid is a fun trend, but has some real merit to it, and I hope it shifts the media landscape at least a tiny bit.
It makes some sense that Slytherin is structurally chuddish (though most of them just don't seem to give much of a shit beyond general teenage tribalism up until they're put to a choice by Voldemort's takeover of Hogwarts).
If you want character, there are already two houses dedicated to that, and one catch-all house in Hufflepuff for people who are mostly just chill about things.
There's a constant influx of Muggleborns yearly (and we have no evidence they perform worse than wizards), and it's quite clear that there are a lot of talented aristos and purebloods who simply don't care to hate on them and are just fine climbing the shared status hierarchy. We see two generations of purebloods - James and Sirius have the bluest of blood - weeding themselves out of the Slytherin gene pool because they simply don't have a problem benefiting from Muggleborns.
Slytherins are the equivalent of Roman patricians who never made their peace with plebians becoming Senators, and so lost out on a bunch of talent and marginalized themselves.
Somewhat fucked up given JKR's other points on stereotyping, but makes some sense.
I agree, from a Watsonian perspective, it does make sense. Slytherin is written as rotten to the core with no redeeming qualities. Blood purity is shown to have no impact on a wizard's power since it's a heavy-handed metaphor for class in Britain, so their focus on it makes them look stupid. It's not even the case that they fell from grace or lost their way over time, as their founder was demonstrably just as evil if not more. They would attract only dumb brutes and the few elite sociopaths who use them for power.
Out of universe... making Slytherin all of those things was a deliberate choice. The story would have really benefited from the gang making a Slytherin friend down the line, possibly in Dumbledore's Army. Even in the later books, when Rowling seems to have misgivings about casting an entire fourth of the people in her world as irredeemably evil, none of the Slytherin students choose to stand with Hogwarts when push comes to shove.
Interesting to think about the counterfactual, but at the end of the day these started out as children's books, and struggling single mother Rowling probably didn't have much room for empathy for British aristocrats when she wrote them.
More options
Context Copy link
Despite in-story protestations otherwise, the Houses are basically Good, Evil, Nerds, and Plodders. With a few exceptions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I just read this scene last week to my 8 year old, and you are wrong. In this scene Harry feels confused, not disgusted. He is confused the same way that countless men have been confused when their woman starts crying for reasons they can't understand. And Rowling is not subtle about this confusion. There is a full 5 page dialogue between Harry and Hermione where Rowling clearly spells out how Harry and Cho are misunderstanding each other and this leads to confusion. Ron at the end even says: "Hermione, you should write a book" because women are confusing.
He is confused in this scene, yes, but there are plenty of other lines that support Harry feeling disdainful about Cho crying, or explicitly thinking of Ginny favorably because she does not cry, which brings to mind the obvious comparison.
From Order of the Phoenix:
And in Deathly Hallows:
To be fair to Harry and to Rowling, the scene in the tea shop was a complete minefield and I'm not saying it's unrealistic for him to have had no idea what to do.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Isn’t the Harry Potter worldbuilding issue something that’s pretty easy to retcon with ‘the viewpoint character is a teenager’?
"Pokémon descriptions make no sense." -> "Yes, pokedex entries are made by a 10 or 11 year old child. This is how they perceive the world."
More options
Context Copy link
For the most part yes, but it falls apart when the heroes start fighting for their lives against death eaters. Once it is life-and death with the fate of the world on the line, and with the protagonists having finished their education and being native to the wizarding world, they should be expected to use any tool at their disposal. As should their opponents. The tension and the stakes invite people to think about what opportunities are available. But the worldbuilding can't handle this. There is simply no good reason for why the trio, and Hermione especially considering her genius, continue to use the same tiny selection of spells.
Overall the deadly hallows still works though. Where the world really starts falling apart is in the cursed child.
More options
Context Copy link
Not especially. The narration is third-person limited, sometimes omniscient, which lends more objectivity to the events in question. Oftentimes the world is explained to us by an adult, usually a teacher, or is something we just see as a direct part of the narrative. The latter is impossible to dismiss as being from an unreliable narrator without dismissing the actual events of the story as being unreliable, which most people would prefer to not do. Plus, there there is a whole slew of infamous Rowling tweets from the mid-late 2010s where she gives baffling explanations that 'resolve' worldbuilding snags, which makes it harder to dismiss the book depictions as a teenager's inaccurate understanding.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link