Text, transformations, characterisation, the personal, and the political: 1.
It’s been - as I may have observed once or twice - an interesting few days in fandom (as, indeed, when is it not?); and fandom can be a baffling place. It appears also to be my fate forever to be finding things about which to bang on, in a fashion that is displeasingly referred to by that really quite dysphonious term, ‘meta’.
My remarks today are, I should think, of general application; but I shall earth them, as one does, in the fandom I know best (ah, HP, for all thy faults, I love thee still).
For today’s purposes, let us consider these elements in canon. The books effectively begin with the celebrations of Voldemort’s defeat (a consequence of which is, of course, Harry’s being orphaned and placed with the ghastly Dursleys); indeed, with the open celebration of what was presumed to have been Voldemort’s death. Of course, the snake is only scotched, not killed; and a second war ensues, in which victory is total as the war is, this time, total war, with no hands stayed. Afterward, Our Intrepid Hero carries on at the sharp end, eventually rising to command the Aurors: the youngest chief in the history of that Service.
We also most of us know that Oor Jo is a celebrated supporter of Labour: and a Brownite at that.
There are, I find, fen who believe that - with the centenary of the 1914 War and the 75th anniversary of the Hitler War upon us - we must not, my dear Noel, Be Beastly to the Germans by celebrating the victory; that we ought rather simply all to join together in all nations and mourn the dead on both sides. That is an argument for another time and place (and is already going on, as above); but what in the world do those holding those views do when confronted with Diggle and Crockford and fireworks and all sorts, on the first V-V Day?
It is a common belief that The Author Is Dead: wherefore JKR’s own politics are, it is argued by the believer, of no relevance to the text. Certainly any lecturer worth her salt might easily, without even wanting to think it through, make the argument - however mischievously - that the Rowling Canon is in fact best read as an analogy of the first and second wars against … Germany? No, no: Iraq. Didn’t finish the job the first time; fell to the son of a man who failed to finish the job to go back and finish it, avenging his father; sanctions and denial in the interim served only to allow the enemy to rebuild his forces for a new and severer attack…. Of course that is not my reading of the texts, which I have long argued to be quite deliberately evocative of the period from 1918 to 1945 (although I also note that those were the years in which, whilst the Tories were riddled with appeasement, Labour was utterly pacifist and was demanding that Britain disarm unilaterally, so La Rowling gets nil points for Labour on that one). I merely note that it might quite plausibly be advanced.
And of course, transformative works - and my strictures regarding the same - are, ultimately, engaged with plausibility.
Amongst the things of which I am not infrequently accused, in fandom (and there are not a few things of which I am accused, almost all of them false, all of the false ones being defamatory, and these being false accusations which, were they published, should be actionable as libels), is - gasp - Being Prescriptive. (It is of course taken as read by this lot that prescriptivism is not only itself inherently and inarguably evil, but proceeds from and signifies deep moral evil and depravity in the prescriptivist, whose sole aim is to use prescription as a Tool of Oppression.) Oddly enough, or not so oddly, those most passionate in denouncing me as Prescriptionist are themselves utterly prescriptivist. My alleged Evil Prescriptionism amounts to my saying - in, I admit, increasingly aggrieved and impatient tones (though it is always odd to see fen with certain predilections, in genre and in life, become suddenly prim, and tut at my really quite mild sweariness) - that authors who are expecting readers to read their work are morally obliged to do it as well as they can do, and that authors of transformative works are obliged to do at least enough research to make things plausible, and not wantonly to cut, or leave off, the cables that suspend disbelief. The prescriptivism of my contemnors tends to amount to their saying that anyone with a variant concept of post-canon to theirs is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong - however plausible that concept be.
After much consideration, I am forced to conclude that the root of this evil is political.
My remarks today are, I should think, of general application; but I shall earth them, as one does, in the fandom I know best (ah, HP, for all thy faults, I love thee still).
For today’s purposes, let us consider these elements in canon. The books effectively begin with the celebrations of Voldemort’s defeat (a consequence of which is, of course, Harry’s being orphaned and placed with the ghastly Dursleys); indeed, with the open celebration of what was presumed to have been Voldemort’s death. Of course, the snake is only scotched, not killed; and a second war ensues, in which victory is total as the war is, this time, total war, with no hands stayed. Afterward, Our Intrepid Hero carries on at the sharp end, eventually rising to command the Aurors: the youngest chief in the history of that Service.
We also most of us know that Oor Jo is a celebrated supporter of Labour: and a Brownite at that.
There are, I find, fen who believe that - with the centenary of the 1914 War and the 75th anniversary of the Hitler War upon us - we must not, my dear Noel, Be Beastly to the Germans by celebrating the victory; that we ought rather simply all to join together in all nations and mourn the dead on both sides. That is an argument for another time and place (and is already going on, as above); but what in the world do those holding those views do when confronted with Diggle and Crockford and fireworks and all sorts, on the first V-V Day?
It is a common belief that The Author Is Dead: wherefore JKR’s own politics are, it is argued by the believer, of no relevance to the text. Certainly any lecturer worth her salt might easily, without even wanting to think it through, make the argument - however mischievously - that the Rowling Canon is in fact best read as an analogy of the first and second wars against … Germany? No, no: Iraq. Didn’t finish the job the first time; fell to the son of a man who failed to finish the job to go back and finish it, avenging his father; sanctions and denial in the interim served only to allow the enemy to rebuild his forces for a new and severer attack…. Of course that is not my reading of the texts, which I have long argued to be quite deliberately evocative of the period from 1918 to 1945 (although I also note that those were the years in which, whilst the Tories were riddled with appeasement, Labour was utterly pacifist and was demanding that Britain disarm unilaterally, so La Rowling gets nil points for Labour on that one). I merely note that it might quite plausibly be advanced.
And of course, transformative works - and my strictures regarding the same - are, ultimately, engaged with plausibility.
Amongst the things of which I am not infrequently accused, in fandom (and there are not a few things of which I am accused, almost all of them false, all of the false ones being defamatory, and these being false accusations which, were they published, should be actionable as libels), is - gasp - Being Prescriptive. (It is of course taken as read by this lot that prescriptivism is not only itself inherently and inarguably evil, but proceeds from and signifies deep moral evil and depravity in the prescriptivist, whose sole aim is to use prescription as a Tool of Oppression.) Oddly enough, or not so oddly, those most passionate in denouncing me as Prescriptionist are themselves utterly prescriptivist. My alleged Evil Prescriptionism amounts to my saying - in, I admit, increasingly aggrieved and impatient tones (though it is always odd to see fen with certain predilections, in genre and in life, become suddenly prim, and tut at my really quite mild sweariness) - that authors who are expecting readers to read their work are morally obliged to do it as well as they can do, and that authors of transformative works are obliged to do at least enough research to make things plausible, and not wantonly to cut, or leave off, the cables that suspend disbelief. The prescriptivism of my contemnors tends to amount to their saying that anyone with a variant concept of post-canon to theirs is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong - however plausible that concept be.
After much consideration, I am forced to conclude that the root of this evil is political.