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Snuffles wrote (of Moaning Myrtle):
Actually, I never really thought of how much her character bothers me until your post.
We have discussed a lot of stereotyping in the books in these discussions, and perhaps I am biased as I despise seeing mentally ill people portrayed constantly in degrading stereotypes.. but I think I might be on to something here...
ideas?
What an interesting question, Snuffles!
You know, I think that characters who display behaviors that suggest symptoms of RL mental illness actually get a pretty good shake in JKR, compared with most other writers?
I mean, true, adolescent depressive Moaning Myrtle is played for laughs, and schizoid Barty Jr. isn't precisely portrayed as a paragon of human virtue, and charming sociopath Tom Riddle is not someone we're supposed to admire. All true.
But then, when you look at the series' designated good guys, I think that you see a lot of traits that similarly resemble or hint at such RL problems -- and the author expects us to love them anyway. She allows them to be more than the sum of their symptoms.
Remus Lupin seems to have some serious non-compliance issues when it comes to his Wolfsbane Potion, and I think that you can make a very strong case (as the Pip!Squeak has, in the past) that his lycanthropy is actually far more kin to medicable psychosis than it is to either chronic illness or HIV (the other diseases most often cited as the RL analogues). And yet JKR loves him, and his portrayal is overwhelmingly sympathetic.
And then there's Sirius Black. PTSD? Maybe, maybe not, but whatever's wrong with him, I'm almost certain that he would be certifiable by our standards. Certainly in PoA, he is a danger to himself and others. Even by GoF, he doesn't seem precisely stable. But again, he's very sympathetically portrayed, and I think that the reader is supposed to care quite deeply for him.
Hagrid bursts into tears at the slightest provocation, has problems controlling his temper, and has a drinking problem. Percy shows signs of incipient obsessive compulsive disorder. The Twins are oppositional defiants with a marked lack of compassion; and if they were growing up in the contemporary Muggle US, I suspect that they would have been put on Ritalin sometime around when they started Hogwarts. ;-)
As readers, we don't always all like those characters equally -- or even at all. But I think that JKR likes them, and I don't think that their mental quirks (not even Percy's) are portrayed as at all contemptible. They are portrayed as problems for the characters, but not as the sum of their personalities, which cannot always be said for such depictions in other works of fiction.
And then there's Severus Snape, who I would say has some rather serious difficulties and possibly always has had. What sort of person knows all of those curses at the tender age of eleven? Snape not only doesn't look to his personal hygiene now; it seems from Sirius' comments about him that he never did, not even as a schoolboy. In the real world, that's often a sign of mental illness. Snape is not in full control of his emotions, and he shows strong obsessive tendencies. But (while I know that some here would contest this) I do think that his portrayal is in its own way quite sympathetic. In fact, I think that it is generally when he is at his least "sane" (end of PoA, Egg and the Eye) that the narrative voice invites the most sympathy for him.
Lucius Malfoy, on the other hand, doesn't seem to me to show any particular symptoms of RL mental illness. He's just plain venal. Quirrell was only pretending to be suffering from emotional trauma. Lockhart at his most "normal" is also Lockhart revealed to be chillingly capable of murder. Brain-blasted!Lockhart, on the other hand, is harmless.
Really, I think that JKR's a lot less down on the mentally ill than many writers are.
Although we schizoids might want to have a little word with her about the defamatory aspects of her portrayal of Barty Junior. ;-)
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on February 1, 2003 11:01 PM
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