fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2262 ]

⌈ 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I wanted to say this.

I'm not going to lie, I have never heard of someone attempting to justify house elf slavery before until this thread. I actually came here to ask the OP what the hell they were talking about only to go @_@ at the crap people are spewing about "house elves want to serve!" and "you can't apply real world ethics here!" up thread. I mean, have they missed the part where the main theme of the books is about prejudice?! The anti-Muggle(born) rhetoric and the wars are allowed to be very loose analogies for anti-Semitism and WWII, but for some reason a very loose magical analogy for slavery isn't allowed? WTF?!

If anything, I tended to assume the house-elves were meant to be about not taking the status quo at face value. Yes, it looks like the house elves are happy to serve...except Dobby that for all that Dobby punishes himself for speaking ill of the Malfoys and disobeying them he is delighted to be freed, and meanwhile Kreacher despises Sirius and all of the Order, but he is still forced to work for them and at the first opportunity he could he screwed them all over. Meanwhile in the fact of all this, people like the Weaselys are completely apathetic simply because that was how they are raised - even though they vehemently oppose almost all other types of magical bigotry, and the fact that Ron actively changed his mindset on this by the end of the books - "we can't order the elves to fight for us" - is presented as a good thing. >.<

All of this puts the "want to be enslaved" thing in a whole new light. (Personally, one of my theories is that house-elves were a race actively created/manipulated into existence by wizards long ago into be an entire servile race - that doesn't make it okay, but at least it might explain a few things...? Well, I call it "one" of my theories for a reason...)

I mean, yes, real life slavery and biological determinism and all that are very complicated issues...which is presumably why JKR didn't get too deep into it. Even if it had a "growing audience", the books are still predominantly meant for kids, and while some of the surrounding subtleties may have fallen apart for a variety of reasons, the core message remains the same - slavery is not a good thing. Service, maybe (i.e. paid and/or negotiated service), but not enslavement - and either way, being cruel to people who work for you is a Bad Thing. (Kreacher started to at least not hate Harry as much when Harry started simply being nice to him even after years of loyalty to the Dark Side.)

your made up theory isn't canon. elves are non-human creatures. slavery is unquestionably wrong in the human world, but it's a more complicated question in a fantasy setting. the wizard wars function as an analogue for real-world wars because they contain key features of those wars; they're analogies because JKR made them so. elf slavery doesn't work as an analogue for human slavery because there's a fundamental difference between the way elfs and elf slavery are depicted and real actual real-life slavery. yes, you should be nice to the elves, but being nice to them by their own lights includes keeping them as slaves or at least as unpaid servants.

Keeping someone as an unpaid servant is not the same as being a slave.

Also, house elves might be aliens (whose personalities are a bit like certain human slave personalities as described by pro-slavery racists) but Wizards are humans and humans owning a talking human-ish creature that does their bidding and punishes itself for contradicting its master is bad news no matter how much the elf says they want it. It's not that different from the slave-owner side.

I know it isn't canon. I supposed I should've added it's more of a head canon than anything else. I forget that everyone in HP fandom takes things so seriously.

there's a fundamental difference between the way elfs and elf slavery are depicted and real actual real-life slavery

And what, exactly, is that fundamental difference? And more importantly, how is that fundamental difference any different from the 'fundamental difference' between JKR's depictions of wizarding wars and our real world wars?

There's a reason why I said 'loose analogy'. WWII and the Second Wizarding War are both about the dominant group of people in the relevant society attempting to subjugate and/or exterminate a minority group and annihilate their culture. While there are some other similarities and differences, those are mostly just window dressing.

By the same token, house elves and African Americans are both entire races of sentient, self-aware beings that are systematically enslaved based on the perception by the dominant group (that has a very vested interest in maintaining the status quo) that they are better off enslaved, using examples of good treatment and situational improvement to ignore the examples of abuse an desires for freedom among the oppressed group. Now obviously there are a lot of differences and obviously it's not a perfect analogy, or even necessarily a good one - after all, this is a very minor side-issue that, from the looks of it, JKR ultimately shunted to the side in favor of the main point, which was the war and the WWII/anti-Semitic analogues. But it doesn't change the fact that the arguments being used to justify their enslavement are the same ones that were once used by white planters to justify black slavery...and look how that turned out.

There is pretty much no way to justify the wizarding status quo with house elves without invalidating and undermining the very concepts of self-determination that is inherent to pretty much any being that can think for themselves - as house elves obviously can.

If the elves actively want to work in service to others and get no pay for it (and this isn't some kind of magical brainwashing or tampering), then that's fine - but that's their decision to make, and it's their prerogative as beings capable of independent thought to negotiate their work situation. That is NOT the situation we see or that is presented in the books.

[ SECRET POST #2262 ]

People remember these books are for kids (who are not doing deep literary analysis), right?

Re: People remember these books are for kids (who are not doing deep literary analysis), right?

Re: People remember these books are for kids (who are not doing deep literary analysis), right?

Re: People remember these books are for kids (who are not doing deep literary analysis), right?