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I've deprefixed this thread, since it's really more about sexuality and homoerotic overtones in the HP books in general than it is about any particular relationship or romantic speculation.
However. This post does contain discussion of both homoeroticism and sexual sadism. We don't have a prefix for that. So consider this a warning: if that sort of thing bothers you, then you'd be well advised to skip now.
No. Really. I mean it.
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Rochelle wrote:
But when you examine them closely, are the HP books REALLY that innocent?
Er, no. They're not, very.
Their less innocent aspects are, however, often very cleverly glossed. Take the harrassment of Mrs. Roberts at the QWC World Cup, for example. To adult readers, the scene cannot help but suggest that Muggle rape was a regular part of the modus operandi of the Death Eaters. To a child, however, it is far more likely to be associated with the common playground game of trying to see other people's underwear.
Of course, the reason that allowing others to catch a glimpse of ones underwear on the playground is so humiliating in the first place is due to precisely the same cultural dynamic that makes rape such a devestatingly effective terror technique. This scene therefore serves both to suggest some very adult nastiness to the series' more mature readers and to inspire precisely the right flavor of discomfort in its younger readers -- all while remaining perfectly suitable for children.
Here are a few things to think about, mostly subject to interpretation, and some harder to ignore than others.
1) From the "easily ignored" category, we have the thing that Harry would "sorely miss" [p.463] which, of course, turned out to be Ron [p.498] Granted, this is innocent enough; Harry IS Ron's closest friend. But especially when given the fact that two of the other three competitors had to rescue their girlfriends/dance dates (Krum had to save Hermione; Cedric had to save Cho), the homoerotic subtext here isn't that hard to find.
Hmmm. Well, Harry's still practically pre-pubescent in his thinking in GoF, isn't he? I don't know if I find Ron's role as the thing he would "sorely miss" quite so much homoerotic as I do simply homosocial.
Where I see a lot more homoerotic subtext, actually, is in the particular tenor of Harry's envy of "pretty boy" Cedric Diggory. (I also seem to remember that the last person who brought up this aspect of the Harry-Cedric dynamic got flamed. Before my time, that was, or I would have felt compelled to defend her. I see it there too.)
But as you say, this sort of thing is always highly open to interpretation.
Far less so, I think, is the unrelenting homoerotic insinuation to which Percy is subjected by both Ron and the Twins throughout _GoF._ JKR can't come right out and let Percy's brothers call him a...um, a derogatory term for a gay male, of course, but the precise tenor of their needling about the depths of his attachment to his employer—he loves Crouch, he wants to marry him, and so forth—makes it pretty clear that this is exactly the nature of their teasing.
[Moaning Myrtle's infamous voyeurism]
Humorous, yes, but a little perverted no matter HOW you interpret it.
Heh. Yeah. But again, voyeurism is really very popular among children, isn't it? We're back to "I see London, I see France" here. Or "playing doctor," for that matter.
It may be a little bit perverted, but it's perverted in a specific way that, for whatever reason, our culture has declared to be particularly suitable and appropriate for children.
Tom Riddle's "hungry eyes" in CoS [p.309, 311]. Okay, so maybe looking at someone "hungrily" means something completely different in England than it usually does in the States (though I doubt it). And yes, if you try, you can just brush it off. But nonetheless, we've got some pretty blatant homoerotic subtext going on.
Mmmmm. Yes. Well. We get back to dear Riddle and his little...uh, quirks in that graveyard sequence, don't we?
But JKR's depiction of Riddle in CoS really is pretty interesting. The language that she uses to describe him is both sexualized and somewhat feminizing. He does indeed have that "hungry" gaze, as you mentioned. He speaks "quietly," "softly." In the Chamber sequence, JKR pays particularly close attention to his hands, to his "long fingers" (a trait upon which she will positively obsess by the time we get to his reappearance as the reincorporated Voldemort at the end of Gof). When Harry first notices Riddle in the Chamber, he is leaning languidly against a pillar. He twirls Harry's wand "idly" while speaking to him. This is sensual language, and the behavior that it depicts is flirtatious. If Riddle were a woman, you might be tempted to call his demeanor "vampish." It is both a sexualized and a highly seductive depiction of character.
Riddle sure doesn't show very much interest in Ginny at all, though, does he? Both as Riddle and as Voldemort, he is consistently depicted as both distinterested in and highly dismissive of women as a general class.
4) CoS, pages 285-286 where Percy goes to great lengths to keep Ginny from telling anyone what she caught him doing. All right, so it turns out that he was kissing his new girlfriend [p.341]. But up until that gets revealed, you know very well what you THOUGHT he was doing! ;)
Hmmm? You've lost me here, Rochelle. Weren't we supposed to be thinking that Percy was messing about with Salazar's basilisk? I never went chasing after that red herring myself, but I'm pretty sure that our suspicions were supposed to lie in that direction.
I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, though. Do you figure that JKR wanted to lead her older readers to think that Percy might have been kissing a boy? Or just that he was up to something rather more sexually advanced than snogging?
5) And finally, we have the elephant that's sitting in the living room: that entire... thing... that happened near the end of GoF [p.636-658].
Oh, thank heavens!
And here all this time, I've been thinking that I was surely the only person Bent enough to have found myself staring with slack-jawed incredulity at that whomping big elephant.
<Elkins strikes boldly into the center of the drawing room and grabs the elephant by the trunk>
I can feel it! I can feel it! It's a ROPE! A rope just long enough to use to hang myself!
Heh. Yes. Well.
Yeah, the entire graveyard sequence is really pretty, er, astonishing, isn't it? It certainly did make me blink the first time I read it. I kept thinking, "Oh, lord, is she really getting away with this?"
We have Harry bound and helpless as his blood is "forcibly taken" [p.642] -- a violation of his body. To me, this looks like a fairly obvious metaphor for rape; to make it even clearer, the knife (a common phallic symbol) "penetrates" [p.642 again] Harry's flesh.
That it does. It penetrates the virginal young Harry and strips him of those protections with which his sainted mother had imbued him. Yup. JKR even goes for the straight-out word choice there. "Penetrates." Not leaving anything to chance, is she?
But then, the entire graveyard sequence is really just one great massive sado-masochistic orgyfest, don't you think? I mean, the sexualization of the language throughout those chapters really is unrelenting. The newly rebirthed Voldemort doesn't just check himself over. He actually caresses himself (yes, with those "long fingers"). "His expression rapt and exultant." Then, as if one "caress" in this context weren't disturbing enough, in the very same paragraph he caresses his wand.
"Gently caresses" it, mind. Gently.
His Death Eaters, crawling forward to pay their homage, "murmer" their obeisance. It's a peculiar word choice, that. "Murmered" has somewhat sexualized connotations. Later on in this scene, the DEs will appear simply terrified but here, in their first appearance, they come across as more...well, transported, really. Transported by a kind of submissive ecstacy.
And then there's Voldemort's thing with Harry. That single-fingered stroke on the cheek. That comment about Harry's father facing him "straight-backed and proud." (Gee. He hardly paid that much attention to how Harry's mother died, did he? Far less her posture at the time.) And what I think must be one of the most disturbing lines in the entire series:
'A little break,' said Voldemort, the slit-like nostrils dilating with excitement, 'a little pause...'
Nostrils dilating with excitment?
Um. Yeah. Look. I've just written and then erased three separate attempts at this paragraph, trying desperately to avoid getting too vulgar here, and I'm just not having very much luck with it. So, uh, can we just leave the question of who precisely might really be the one in need of a "little break" at this point in the duel as read, then, and move on?
It's some seriously disturbing language, this. Genre villains are nearly always sadistic, that's de trope, but it's really quite rare to find their sadism marked so very blatantly as sexual. To come across it in a series marketed for children borders on the downright shocking.
This list is not complete. I could add quite a bit more if I wanted, but I think that's enough for now.
Ah, yes. Restraint. That's a virtue, I'm told. Sadly, it's not one that I've ever quite mastered, myself.
Personally, I think J.K.R. is a closet slasher. ;) But that's just my opinion.
Do you think so?
I'm actually made uneasy by the conflation of homoeroticism, effeminacy and sadism in these depictions. Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. It's just standard genre convention. It's hardly restricted to the HP books. It's everywhere. It's just plain inescapable.
But it's not a genre convention that I've ever much cared for, myself. It often strikes me as uncomfortably homophobic.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on June 20, 2002 12:48 PM
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