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Amy:
I don't believe I ever said that Eileen did nothing but flatten the nuances of Ron and Harry. But I did think she flattened them, and that was the bit I was interested in. If it isn't the bit Eileen is interested in, or you are interested in, or anyone else is interested in, please skip my post. I won't be offended.
Yes, okay. Fair enough, and I'm sorry if I misunderstood your intent. I hadn't understood that you were attempting to pick up on one aspect of the discussion and focus solely on that aspect. From where I was sitting, I guess that it looked more like a "shaddup" then like a "let's talk about this other thing for a while," probably because last August's Twins thread has left me unduly sensitive to "shaddups." I'm sorry that I mischaracterized your intent.
But as to the actual topic that you wanted to discuss:
Why then is cannibalism on the rise, if indeed it is?
If it is on the rise, then my guess is that it is because the purpose of a strongly-stated polemic attack on a character or position is to provoke the reader into questioning long-cherished assumptions about specific aspects of the text.
"Long-cherished" is the relevant term here. It takes a while for the "common wisdom" about characters within a fandom to be established in the first place. Absent that sort of consensus, there is little incentive for anyone to write a polemic, because there is no weight of "common wisdom" against which one is aware of having to push.
Pippin, for example, writes about Remus Lupin in such harsh terms in part, I imagine, because she is aware that there is already a long-standing consensus within the fandom about this character, one which stands in opposition to her own reading. What the HELL: Hey, Everybody Loves Lupin. Right? Well, Pippin doesn't. But she knows full well that just about everyone else does, and so she recognizes that if she wants people to grant a hearing to her argument, then she is going to have to make a really strong case for it. Otherwise, nobody will pay her any attention at all.
Similarly, back in August, I was asked why I was being so unfair as to point out the Twins' bullying characteristics, while "letting Draco off the hook." Well, how interesting would it be to talk about Draco's bullying characteristics? We all know about them already, don't we? It is established common wisdom within the community that Draco Is A Bully. The Twins' bullying characteristics, on the other hand, are not widely discussed in the fandom. Any post which aims to point them out must therefore take a strong tone, while the fact that Draco is a bully can safely be referred to in passing.
Are we likely to see less polemic in the immediate wake of OoP's release? Yes, possibly, because it will take a while for the consensus over the "accepted reading" of newly introduced characters and plotlines to be established, and absent that consensus, there is far less social need for polemic. On the other hand, possibly not. After all, how did the fandom's "common wisdoms" get formed in the first place? Well, from what I've seen in the archives of this list, many of them came about because people finished GoF and immediately began to state their feelings about the book's characters and events -- and to state them in no uncertain terms.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on January 23, 2003 7:03 PM
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