[ SECRET POST #2262 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2262 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #323.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[aubry]

The books themselves are not epic on this front either. I can see how young readers could come away from that confused. Rowling raises the issue with Dobby and SPEW, complicates things when Hermione learns that zeal alone won't address the intricacies of how their oppression works, and then... brushes the entire thing under the carpet and never resolves it at all.

Have you ever noticed what the very last sentiment of the HP books is (before the epilogue)?

[morieris]

Have you ever noticed what the very last sentiment of the HP books is (before the epilogue)?

"And frankly...I've had enough trouble for a lifetime." If I'm remembering correctly. I've got the PDF, let me check....

EDIT:
"“That wand’s more trouble than it’s worth,” said Harry. “And quite honestly,”
he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the fourposter
bead lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower and wondering whether
Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, “I’ve had enough trouble for a
lifetime.”"

I get it

[feotakahari]

Rowling really didn't consider how fucked-up her world was, did she? If you actually take the setting seriously (rather than approaching it as a fun magical romp), it's offensive from more directions than Twilight.

[morieris]

It definitely doesn't seem like an ideal world to live besides....magic.

[deadtree]

well, some people have suggested that she intended it to be a dystopia... honestly, I think that it didn't *start out* that way for her, but as she went on and got more engrossed in the politics of her creation, it became that way.

[insanenoodlyguy]

I honestly believe this. Hagrid said at the beginning that if they knew, muggles would want all their problems solved. The end of it all is that while fantastic, the magic world has no real solutions for the real problems of muggles. Because they are also the problems of wizards.

[(Anonymous)]

I do also think that JKR meant the world to be an escapist fantasy in the beginning, and changed that later. But I think it's problematic to bring Hagrid into it, since he's like totally unreliable for most of his comments about wizard society as a whole. Maybe the wizard/muggle conflict was explained that way to him, but it doesn't really encompass the whole of the issue, which really includes very real physical danger to every single muggle alive on the planet, and only one or two of them even knowing that danger exists at all and going along with the wizard world's authoritarian use of magic to cover up every huge disaster that comes along that might catch their attention. Because their lives and safety and free choice are not quite as important as wizards staying secret so they don't have to deal with the mild annoyance of people asking them for shit (since it seems unlikely muggles could actually force them to comply to that, and they also have the ability to ward people away from the regions they actively occupy, like Hogwarts)

I mean everything else aside, Hagrid was the one who told Harry that all dark wizards come from Slytherin, and even though he didn't know that gryffindor Pettigrew was the real culprit in the death of Harry's own parents, he would have thought it was Sirius that did it. So in the most relevant dark wizard activity to Harry's life, Hagrid was already distorting the truth of the society...

[insanenoodlyguy]

You are over-thinking this. Or I am. But even if Hagrid didn't mean it that way, I feel his words proved very true.

[(Anonymous)]

I think they're true in the sense that a TV psychic can say things that are true. You can't argue that muggles WOULDN'T try to get wizards to solve their problems, obviously. Many people probably would. But that doesn't hold up as a real reason to keep wizardry hidden as a whole, especially once muggle lives are actively in danger. And the reason it doesn't hold up is because wizards could easily run off and keep muggles out, even if muggles knew they existed. Hogwarts itself is the evidence to that, since it sends off any curious minds that can't use magic, and they don't even realize what's happening. Like, it's possible someone could randomly, because of their specific physical or mental chemistry, resist the effects of the spell. But it appears that would be a really exceptional person, the assumption is that no muggle could do that. Like a magical roofie.

Wizards have the ability to magically ensure that no muggle can EVER find them. So their excuses for the lifestyle prejudices ("they'll want us to do things!") is not very strong, since they have actual methods to prevent ANY muggle from EVER harassing them for ANY reason.

(as far as over-thinking, I mean. Come on. This is fandomsecrets.)

[(Anonymous)]

Imho, Hagrid's explanation is just a reasonable excuse to explain away the mild to intense discrimination nearly all witches and wizards practice against Muggles. Wizards just don't want to mix their world with Muggles. They think they're superior to Muggles, so why bother intermixing?

You're looking at this from a non-wizard POV where the benefit to Muggles of knowing about magic is overwhelming. Really, there's nothing the Muggles can do to save themselves from Voldemort or other dark wizards because there is no dark magic protection and any would come from wizards who have already convinced themselves that hiding magic is mainly to keep Muggles from pestering them.

Your explanation to me is kind of like a celebrity's address getting leaked but he has enough security to keep any fans from actually reaching him. Doesn't mean they're not still annoying as shit.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh God. No wonder fans get so defensive about house elves being slaves. I guess it's not "Slavery is not OK" that JK Rowling was trying to say. She was saying, "Slavery is OK if you're nice to your slaves; if you're an asshole to your slaves, you don't deserve them."

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think she had any message about slavery. If she had wanted to make a message about slavery, she wouldn't have created a race that likes being enslaved, because that makes the situation fundamentally different from anything we see in real life.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't get the impression there was a message about slavery either. To me, the parts about the House-elves read a lot more like a comment on class, and on the British relationship to class, especially the working class including (duh) servants. (I'm not British, so I'd really love to hear the opinions on this of someone who is, in case I'm way off the mark here.)

[(Anonymous)]

What class in British society are like House Elves?

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

You mean in reality? None that I know of.

In fiction, though, I keep coming across servants who take pride in ... (1) serving Good Families from the upper classes, and being very loyal to them; (2) never making any demands for themselves; (3) "belonging" to a house (such as in Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost", for example) or coming from a family that has served another family for generations, basically being born into the job (well, they could refuse, but that would mean outright rebellion) - I seem to recall this showing up in Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, but it's a long time since I read it. The House Elves seem like an extreme version of these things.

[(Anonymous)]

Not British, but from everything I've gathered British society is very class conscious, has been for a long time.

Anyways, there was a point when [again, from what I've been able to gather] the servants were sort of like the house elves. They weren't slaves by any means, but there was a definite difference that struck me as being very similar to how the house elves [aside from Dobby] were portrayed in the books.

[(Anonymous)]

That's exactly what she's (probably unintentionally) saying. It's a fantasy where there's a race whose natural state is to be enslaved and they're happier that way and that's the rightful order of things. And good people like the hero of the book make the best masters. Nothing ethically weird about owning another person at all, if they're happy. That doesn't map on to human history at all.

The whole story's also weirdly conflicted, with the one anti-slavery person first not being able to make a case for why slavery is wrong, and then changing her whole position without admitting it.

[insanenoodlyguy]

They aren't oppressed on a whole. They chose this for themselves.

[aubry]

Thing is, we don't know if that's true. There's no history of house-elves offered, so we only see the status quo. Hermione trying to save them despite themselves is clearly the wrong approach, but 'they must like it because it's their culture' has just blazingly wrong resonances.

[(Anonymous)]

Given no other information, we have to take them at their word. The problem is that it has such terrible resonances at our world but what can you do? JKR made a race that likes being enslaved, and such a thing is not impossible to imagine, as gross and bizarre as it seems to our sensibilities.

[aubry]

It's been awhile since I've read HP, so I might be forgetting some stuff here. Do we ever actually have a house-elf articulate that they enjoy being enslaved? My memory is more that there was a visceral reaction against the idea of being suddenly made free (which would make sense if they've been instituionalised) + wizards on the other side also talking on their behalf.

And Dobby - for all his exceptionalism - is proof that at least some of them are enslaved against their will.

[(Anonymous)]

They categorically reject the notion of being paid, tend to treat being freed as a threat, and are very gung-ho about serving humans.

Certainly there's always exceptions but Winky seems closer to the house-elf norm than Dobby.

[(Anonymous)]

Even if they reject the notion of being paid, the vast, VAST majority of society never gives them the option. And it appears that Dumbledore didn't even provide that option until AFTER Harry freed Dobby, so they are probably unsure whether their current master actually wants them to opt for that. I think that probably makes a difference in their decision making. Harry will be out of Hogwarts in 6 years but the elves will all still be there, so who knows what they think might happen after he's gone? Once he's gone and has lost all interest in the happenings at Hogwarts (which he only had minor interest for in the first place), who knows what the headmaster might think about their defection to hired staff, or whether they'll be punished for it.

[(Anonymous)]

there's no evidence whatsoever of houselves being anything less than sincere in the opinions they express, though

[(Anonymous)]

Sure there is, there's Dobby. He never actually says anything against the institution that enslaves him, he just starts punching himself when he says anything against Malfoy specifically. It is also portrayed like it's something he can't help, like he HAS to hurt himself if he says anything about Malfoy. The reading of that makes it seem like there is some kinda binding magical contract that forces the elves to self-injure if they express an emotion against their owner. The very existence of such a magical contract would imply that elves weren't necessarily willing participants in the slavery, but the fact that there is this abusive instinct/contract even when it's just their personal agency expressing negative emotions outside of the awareness of their owners... I mean, that's magical, physical censorship. So they would be physically unable to express anything apart from approval of their situation. That makes everything positive they say questionable in its sincerity.