| |
|
Great, you go to sleep for a few hours and there's a whole page of new things to read about. Hyper-fast thread, let's go!
I want to come back a bit to the Harry Potter argument
That one of the few roles available to "successful" women/feminists is this Hermione Granger role of being a nay-sayer, a boundary placer, a "you can't do that! it's against the rules!" (Other than "bitch," "crazy bitch" or "SF, in dstress, ISO NS SKnight, pref. shng armr."). And that kinda sucks.
I'm not sure this is an accurate description of the character-typing in Rawlings books. As a writer, I have to say characters are NOT like real people: they have to fit a stereotype - or archetype - so that than can play a determinate role in the plot (and be thus easily indentified by readers). I HP, Hermione plays the "intelligent, but annoying" type, the "nerd", while Rony plays the somewhat dumb, but loyal friend", the comic-relief "sidekick". Those roles are extremely common in children's books, but they have little to do with gender. They could just as easily be inverted, with Rony being the "nerd" and Hermione the "sidekick" (although it's more usual for the sidekick to be of the same gender of the protagonist - Harry, in this case). But, if Hermione was "stupid, but loyal", wouldn't it be even more "offensive"? And there are other female characters that fit other achetypes: the Luna something (can't remember the name now) plays the "crazy one", which is a asexual archetype, and there's Rony younger sister, Gina, who dates Harry in book 6 and is quite the "tomboy", assertive without loosing feminility (the archetype name is quite revealing, since the girl is taking a role in yester times would be exclusively male, the "confrontationist". So, the role in itself is not exactly sexist, although the name given ti it is). She is succesful and feminist, and she's no "nay-sayer", she's a "boundary breaker", actually. Harry's decision to get away from her after he decides to go after you-know-who, "for her own protection", could be construed as a sexist attitude, but that would be wrong: Harry's decided to do that to everyone he knew, not just the girls...
In fact, since archetyping is kinda inevitable in adventure/fantasy books, which archetypes could a female character assume, without being diminished by it? I'd personally say "none", since archetyping is restrictive by definition. The same happens to male characters as well.
[oh, and as an aside, I don't think Dumbledore is simple the "benign authority", he's more like a "father figure" for Harry, who, being an orphan, lack one of his own. Hence, his protective, teaching, and yet somewhat distant and mysterious attitude. And events at the end of Book 6 is the happening which has forced HArry into adulthood. Very achetypical] |
|
|
