one gripe and then I'm done
So I have been reading Mark Reads Harry Potter and it is the BEST THING on the internet. Really. It has been so, so long since the first time I read Harry Potter, and while each subsequent rereading has been a different and equally enlightening experience, I can never have a first time again. Except that through Mark's blog, I get to see all that amazing mind-exploding plot-twisting life-changing stuff happen to someone else, and it makes me want to cry with happiness.
And where I'm going with this is that I love Mark, the blogger, almost as much as his blog. He seems to be on exactly the same page as me as far as his ideology and, though we had experiences in very different contexts, we do share a certain exposure to privilege and bullying, classism and prejudice. (I'm sure he has this is common with a LOT of people and that is part of why his blog is so popular.) While we are in no way the same, and my life has been remarkably good to me so far considering all the things that COULD have gone wrong, I am not oblivious or immune to the general problems that afflict "outcasts" of all ilks. Being white and having money does mean that I have to tread carefully when I speak about being an outcast, but it is amazing how vilified intelligence, and intelligent women, still is/are in modern American society, and that's where I come from.
Anyway. Mark's inspired me to point out and explain one little HP-related burr that has been under my saddle for many years, which I more often than not don't mention to anyone because they think I'm just being asinine, the way many fans are about changes between books and their film adaptations. I'm talking about Hermione's Yule Ball dress. And I know there is a lot of fanwankery on the internet about it, but I have rarely seen the reason I hate it so much addressed. Mostly people just think that the color in the movie was ugly, or hate change for change's sake, both of which I partially agree with as well. But.
I love books. I am a Hermione (know-it-all, bookworm, overachiever) in school environments, though more of a Lupin (self-deprecating, too desperate to be liked to be confrontational even when it's to my detriment) in my interpersonal relationships and outside of school. I was shot so many looks of distrust and disgust in my early school years, was spoken to condescendingly or even just ignored so many times, that I eventually stopped raising my hand, talking in class, showing anyone my test scores, asking for help or volunteering help to others, or being able to take pride in my good grades. I've never had anything other than a perfect 4.0 for my entire school career and for the most part, that 4.0 felt nothing but dreary and pathetic, something that made me a pariah and set me apart from everyone else, not like an achievement I should be proud of. Yet I could never, ever bring myself to do badly on purpose. Thank god for that.
And I love blue. Blue is my favorite color. My first teddy bear was blue, its name was Boo Bear, and I picked it out myself in a toy store before I could even speak. And I live in a society, both America in general and especially the South, where blue=boys. Period. Blue and cars and dogs and monsters and sports and gross things and violence. And bless my parents forever for letting me do and like whatever the hell I wanted, because I LOVE blue and monsters and occasionally gross things and violence as well, though I could not give less of a shit about cars and sports and am generally a cat person. But the overwhelming "pinkification" and insistence on a "princess" childhood for girls makes me so ill. Outside the wonderful cocooning environment of expressive freedom that my family provided, I was absolutely bombarded by pink. Pink and pastels. Princesses. Insistence that I would look cute if I wore a dress, or pink, or best of all, a pink dress! Pressure to get my ears pierced and wear jewelry and a bra and makeup and shave my legs and above all, never, ever let on that I was smarter than everyone else in the class.
I did not do those things. (Except the bra, and don't get me started on societal representation/objectification vs. the reality of having big boobs, and how women who don't treat them as "assets" are vilified in the same vein as fatphobia, just as much as women who flaunt their breasts and/or enhance them are vilified as whores, yay double standards, and basically just don't get me started on female body issues. Blargh. Back to HP and the point of this post.) I managed to get away with it because my parents are amazing. I was miserable through high school, and then I went to college (to a school whose colors are blue and white, no less) at a historically women's university, and there I met a million kinds of girls who had either fallen into the pit of pink or had avoided it like the plague, or who came down somewhere in between. But because the school's main color was blue, I was surrounded by a soothing tide of blue t-shirts and blue posters and it was easy to feel free at last. There, blue=girl. Blue=education without reprisal. Blue=me.
So when I say that it bothers me that Hermione's Yule Ball dress is pink in the movie, it is a hurt that runs a lot deeper than just being annoyed at a superficial change. The pinkification of Hermione is prevalent in all of the movies, from her pink hoodie in PoA to her red, rather than purple, dress at Bill and Fleur's wedding in DH Part 1. But never has it ruined a story as entirely for me as when her Yule Ball gown, so specifically stated to be blue in the book, came down the stairs in the movie as a ghastly pink/fuschia gradient, and I just knew that it was the ugly old stereotype raising its head again in the one place where I had previously felt respected and safe: the world of Harry Potter. Where the Hermiones and the Lupins and the Lunas and the McGonagalls and the Ravenclaws are safe to be smart, to be heroes, to not be pretty all the time, and to like and wear whatever goddamn color they want to no matter what gender they are.
It seems like a small complaint, but I don't raise the subject lightly. GoF is one of my least favorite books because while it and OotP share an overwhelming trauma conga line of teen angst, GoF is mostly the kind of unjustified raging assholery brought on by puberty, whereas OotP is full of painful depression and stress (even PTSD for Harry) rolled into a ball and stepped on, hard, by Umbridge's pink stiletto of oppression. It's hard not to understand assholery that emerges under these conditions, even if it still can't be excused. But GoF is a reminder of a time I'm sure everyone has experienced and no one wants to remember, when we were absolute shits to the people we loved most, and we had no excuse at all.
But a shining beacon in the middle of that book, to me, was always the bit where Hermione appeared at the Ball - pretty in blue. At 14, when I read it, of course I wished I was beautiful. But the whole world was busy telling me that I was too fat, too smart, and too gender-confused (just because I liked blue) to be beautiful. And there was Hermione, giving them all a huge Fuck You.
So I don't like the GoF movie. And while there are a million other complaints I have about it (and while there are a few scenes I do like, like the graveyard), none of them are as personal or as embittering or as frustrating or make me feel as impotent on a vast, societal scale as Hermione's godforsaken pink dress.
The end.
-rave
And where I'm going with this is that I love Mark, the blogger, almost as much as his blog. He seems to be on exactly the same page as me as far as his ideology and, though we had experiences in very different contexts, we do share a certain exposure to privilege and bullying, classism and prejudice. (I'm sure he has this is common with a LOT of people and that is part of why his blog is so popular.) While we are in no way the same, and my life has been remarkably good to me so far considering all the things that COULD have gone wrong, I am not oblivious or immune to the general problems that afflict "outcasts" of all ilks. Being white and having money does mean that I have to tread carefully when I speak about being an outcast, but it is amazing how vilified intelligence, and intelligent women, still is/are in modern American society, and that's where I come from.
Anyway. Mark's inspired me to point out and explain one little HP-related burr that has been under my saddle for many years, which I more often than not don't mention to anyone because they think I'm just being asinine, the way many fans are about changes between books and their film adaptations. I'm talking about Hermione's Yule Ball dress. And I know there is a lot of fanwankery on the internet about it, but I have rarely seen the reason I hate it so much addressed. Mostly people just think that the color in the movie was ugly, or hate change for change's sake, both of which I partially agree with as well. But.
I love books. I am a Hermione (know-it-all, bookworm, overachiever) in school environments, though more of a Lupin (self-deprecating, too desperate to be liked to be confrontational even when it's to my detriment) in my interpersonal relationships and outside of school. I was shot so many looks of distrust and disgust in my early school years, was spoken to condescendingly or even just ignored so many times, that I eventually stopped raising my hand, talking in class, showing anyone my test scores, asking for help or volunteering help to others, or being able to take pride in my good grades. I've never had anything other than a perfect 4.0 for my entire school career and for the most part, that 4.0 felt nothing but dreary and pathetic, something that made me a pariah and set me apart from everyone else, not like an achievement I should be proud of. Yet I could never, ever bring myself to do badly on purpose. Thank god for that.
And I love blue. Blue is my favorite color. My first teddy bear was blue, its name was Boo Bear, and I picked it out myself in a toy store before I could even speak. And I live in a society, both America in general and especially the South, where blue=boys. Period. Blue and cars and dogs and monsters and sports and gross things and violence. And bless my parents forever for letting me do and like whatever the hell I wanted, because I LOVE blue and monsters and occasionally gross things and violence as well, though I could not give less of a shit about cars and sports and am generally a cat person. But the overwhelming "pinkification" and insistence on a "princess" childhood for girls makes me so ill. Outside the wonderful cocooning environment of expressive freedom that my family provided, I was absolutely bombarded by pink. Pink and pastels. Princesses. Insistence that I would look cute if I wore a dress, or pink, or best of all, a pink dress! Pressure to get my ears pierced and wear jewelry and a bra and makeup and shave my legs and above all, never, ever let on that I was smarter than everyone else in the class.
I did not do those things. (Except the bra, and don't get me started on societal representation/objectification vs. the reality of having big boobs, and how women who don't treat them as "assets" are vilified in the same vein as fatphobia, just as much as women who flaunt their breasts and/or enhance them are vilified as whores, yay double standards, and basically just don't get me started on female body issues. Blargh. Back to HP and the point of this post.) I managed to get away with it because my parents are amazing. I was miserable through high school, and then I went to college (to a school whose colors are blue and white, no less) at a historically women's university, and there I met a million kinds of girls who had either fallen into the pit of pink or had avoided it like the plague, or who came down somewhere in between. But because the school's main color was blue, I was surrounded by a soothing tide of blue t-shirts and blue posters and it was easy to feel free at last. There, blue=girl. Blue=education without reprisal. Blue=me.
So when I say that it bothers me that Hermione's Yule Ball dress is pink in the movie, it is a hurt that runs a lot deeper than just being annoyed at a superficial change. The pinkification of Hermione is prevalent in all of the movies, from her pink hoodie in PoA to her red, rather than purple, dress at Bill and Fleur's wedding in DH Part 1. But never has it ruined a story as entirely for me as when her Yule Ball gown, so specifically stated to be blue in the book, came down the stairs in the movie as a ghastly pink/fuschia gradient, and I just knew that it was the ugly old stereotype raising its head again in the one place where I had previously felt respected and safe: the world of Harry Potter. Where the Hermiones and the Lupins and the Lunas and the McGonagalls and the Ravenclaws are safe to be smart, to be heroes, to not be pretty all the time, and to like and wear whatever goddamn color they want to no matter what gender they are.
It seems like a small complaint, but I don't raise the subject lightly. GoF is one of my least favorite books because while it and OotP share an overwhelming trauma conga line of teen angst, GoF is mostly the kind of unjustified raging assholery brought on by puberty, whereas OotP is full of painful depression and stress (even PTSD for Harry) rolled into a ball and stepped on, hard, by Umbridge's pink stiletto of oppression. It's hard not to understand assholery that emerges under these conditions, even if it still can't be excused. But GoF is a reminder of a time I'm sure everyone has experienced and no one wants to remember, when we were absolute shits to the people we loved most, and we had no excuse at all.
But a shining beacon in the middle of that book, to me, was always the bit where Hermione appeared at the Ball - pretty in blue. At 14, when I read it, of course I wished I was beautiful. But the whole world was busy telling me that I was too fat, too smart, and too gender-confused (just because I liked blue) to be beautiful. And there was Hermione, giving them all a huge Fuck You.
So I don't like the GoF movie. And while there are a million other complaints I have about it (and while there are a few scenes I do like, like the graveyard), none of them are as personal or as embittering or as frustrating or make me feel as impotent on a vast, societal scale as Hermione's godforsaken pink dress.
The end.
-rave