OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

Amy:

Let's take a really, really obvious example instead of a subtle one like whether Ron and Harry are on balance inconsiderate idiots. Let's say someone is trying to explain ( not persuade anyone else) that Snape strikes her as a particularly kind person.

Amy, I think that you are still misunderstanding the nuances and subtleties of the conversation that had actually been taking place, before it became diverted into a defensive exchange over whether people's readings are a by-product of the long wait for OoP, whether people were or were not "trashing" characters, and so forth.

This really frustrates me, not least of which because I feel that the arguments of the posters were themselves rather badly mischaracterized—dare I even say "flattened?"—by this digression.

As I read it, the exchange between Ebony and Eileen up to the point at which the conversation became diverted by the bone-picking and trashing objections, could have been paraphrased like so:

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Ebony:

I don't see how Hermione could ever countenance a romantic relationship with Ron, because he has said such very horrible things to her, things that are just so mean and inconsiderate that I believe they must have hurt her feelings terribly. If I were Hermione, the things Ron has said would disqualify him from my consideration, because I would have been so hurt by Ron's statements before the Yule Ball that I would never be able after that to think of him as a romantic partner. That's why I just can't see R/H.

Eileen:

Yeah, I agree with you that the things Ron said there were horrible, and they would have upset me a great deal too, if I had been Hermione. But you know, Harry also strikes me as a really mean and inconsiderate person? Just look at how he treats Neville, to take only one example. Really, when I read the books, I am always struck by how unkind both of these boys are. If I knew Ron and Harry in real life, I would consider both of them to be such mean and inconsiderate people that I wouldn't even want to be friends with them, far less to date them. I'd be more interested in Neville. Yet Hermione herself obviously doesn't feel the same way. She is friends with them. She really does like their company, in spite of the fact that they act like such jerks.

This leads me to the conclusion that Hermione isn't bothered by the same sort of behavior that would bother me. It also leads me to believe that Ron's comments probably don't upset her all that much. You see, just as I know that other readers' emotional reactions to these characters are not the same as mine—most readers do not consider Ron and Harry to be inconsiderate jerks, nor would I wish to try to convince them to share my reading—so I can realize that Hermione's emotional reactions to Ron and Harry are likely not the same as mine.

I therefore don't find it at all difficult to believe that Hermione could consider Ron a potential romantic partner in spite of all of those inconsiderate statements. I would feel differently, sure. But then, by the same token, I wouldn't want to date Harry either. And besides, I am not Hermione.

Amy:

I think that the fact that we've been waiting so long for OoP has had an unfortunate effect on the nature of our discourse. It makes me sad when people trash the characters. When you cite Ron and Harry's inconsiderate behavior without offering up examples of their kind and generous actions, you flatten out the characters. Furthermore, it is not a persuasive argument. If you want to convince me that Ron and Harry are inconsiderate, then you need to do better than that. It makes me sad when people treat fully realized and three dimensional characters as shallow renditions of good or evil.

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Do you see the problem here?

For one thing, I don't think that the argument you were addressing was the argument that either poster was trying to make. In fact, one of the posters in the original exchange went out of her way to specify that her intent was not to persuade others to share her emotional response to Ron and Harry. Indeed, the fact that different individuals differ in their emotional responses was part and parcel of her argument: "The things that bother me about Ron and Harry's behavior don't even bother other readers, so why on earth should I assume that they bother Hermione?"

Now, admittedly, Eileen's rhetorical methods are sometimes a little bit sly, so perhaps people simply didn't take her meaning. Ebony's post, on the other hand, I thought was very straightforward. Yet I felt that people's responses flattened out both of their arguments by responding to them as if they were just "Ron Is Ever So Evil" posts, or somesuch.

It is frustrating to me. There were nuances and subtleties to that exchange that went well beyond the question of whether or not Ron (or Harry) are inconsiderate twerps. To address these posts as if they were simple hortatory pieces on the nature of Ron and Harry's character therefore struck me as not only somewhat disingenuous, but also as a rather serious mischaracterization. An over-simplification. A "flattening," if you will.

About Ebony's original argument:

I don't think it's a sneaky rhetorical ploy; I think it's unconvincing. As I read arguments about why Ron and Hermione wouldn't be a good couple, I'm thinking about each of their good qualities and the interactions between them that suggest possible good couplehood.

Well, in that case, then surely the reason you find Ebony's argument unconvincing has nothing to do with "trashing" characters, does it? What you're saying, if I've got you right here, is that you aren't the sort of person in whose mind being hurt by someone's statements might automatically disqualify that person for consideration as a romantic partner. You would be willing to overlook having been hurt, if there were many positive experiences outweighing those incidents in which you'd been hurt. And you believe that Hermione is far more like you than she is like Ebony.

Or is it perhaps that you just don't accept the premise that Hermione was really all that badly hurt by Ron's statements to begin with?

You see, I'm not even sure what your actual objection to Ebony's argument is. But whichever of the possibilities it is, why not say that, rather than complaining about the fact that Ebony had such a strong negative reader response to Ron's pre-Yule Ball comments? Since we all seem to agree that ones emotional responses to the text and its characters are highly subjective and ultimately personal, then why not address the canon argument that derives from that reader response, rather than taking issue with the reader response itself?

No one is going to convince me that Snape is kind without dealing with the evidence to the contrary; no one is going to convince me that Harry is on balance inconsiderate without doing the same.

That's perfectly reasonable. However, there are plenty of things people sometimes want to discuss other than the rather basic questions of "Is Character X brave/unkind/inconsiderate/etc."

Not every discussion of these books comes down to an argument over character. I think that it really cripples our ability to discuss the canon when someone's negative reader response to a character can not even be cited on route to making a wider point without the conversation immediately becoming diverted. It's frustrating, that, because it reduces every single conversation into "How DARE you say such a thing about Character X?"

We see this all the time on the list, IMO. Someone suggests that Lupin exhibits classic non-compliance behavior in regard to his Wolfsbane Potion, and the response is "How DARE you say that Lupin is bad?" Someone suggests that if Moody is the 'Good Auror,' then just imagine what those Bad Aurors must have been like, and the response is "How DARE you insult Moody?" Someone says that she doesn't care for the Twins because they behave like bullies, and it's "How DARE you say that the Twins are pure unadulterated evil?"

Someone makes a rather sophisticated argument about the dangers of the affective fallacy in shipping arguments, and the response is: "Why must everyone always be trashing the characters?"

I just find this so disheartening. It constrains the debate. It makes it virtually impossible to make any argument that involves an even tangential reference to a popular character's bad qualities. It enforces a (to my mind very strange) expectation that fictional characters themselves are entitled to some sort of due process, as if literary discussion itself were a court of law in which the characters are standing trial for their crimes.

I wrote:

What I guess I'm finding upsetting here is the vague feeling that I get from this thread...that so long as a reader's response is sufficiently idiosyncratic. . . . it is therefore held to be in some way invalid, or even unfair.

Amy asked:

What did I write that makes you think I was saying so?

I was perhaps unfairly conflating your comments with Petra's comments about rhetorical ploys. If you did not mean to make that argument, then I apologize.

I believe that where I saw it in your post was as the subtext to the claim that certain types of discussions or arguments are in some way a by-product of a lack of new canon:

We're like the Donner Party at this point. After two and a half years without fresh meat, we're reduced to cannibalism--not eating each other but munching on the characters we've got stashed in the hold.

There really is a very insulting implication lurking around the edges, IMO: namely, that you believe that others' arguments are based in an artificial, unnatural, or in some other way over-ratiocinated reading of the text. The subtext that I always read into statements of this sort (which I do realize may not have been your intent) is: "The reading you are proposing is not instinctive or natural. It only came about due to the long wait between volumes, rather than deriving naturally from your engagement with the text. It is therefore in some sense dishonest."

It did not surprise me that both Ebony and Eileen responded rather defensively to that statement. I would have done so as well. In fact, I did respond defensively to it, even though it was not even one of my own arguments being so attacked.

Well. Not this time, at any rate.

—Elkins