Some comments I've seen about JKR's writing have led me to the thought that possibly, one reason why certain characters in the story have to keep insisting on their manliness and not doing anything "girly" like crying, etc. might have to do with the fact that Rowling just isn't good with writing men, and so resorts to stereotypes to do the job,
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Comments 17
I think the best thing you can do is think about writing a person first and everything else afterwards. Don't think about how someone would react to something primarily according to their gender, race, age, sexual orientation, or anything else. Just think about the character as a person with a diverse subset of traits that all influence their behavior. Rowling's problem, I think, is that she's a gender essentialist who thinks of behavior along gender binaries, with a worrying inclination to treat "female coded" behaviors negatively.
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::wipes away tears of laughter::
I know lots of americans have a tin ear and/or a weird fetish-thing when it comes to British accents, but I cannot understand how you can get feminine from Alan Rickman's portrayal of Snape, and even less from the books. I find myself fascinated by your thought processes. Can you explain, please?
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Besides seconding the general advice to focus on character personality first and everything else second, I think this particular issue is an extension of Rowling's general over-identification with her lead characters. Rowling relies heavily on stereotypes for all her characters, and in particular on the 'beauty-equals-goodness' trope. So, to a mindset like that, having the most vile person in the world be also one of the most attractive would be incredibly disturbing, if not outright uncanny. When she goes on in detail about how wicked Riddle was even as a child, while also stressing how handsome he was, I really think she's trying to impart her sense of uncanniness about the juxtaposition to her readers. She just doesn't understand that not everyone makes a connection between looks and morals, and that having a teenage boy (whose other main plotline is focused on his hormones) constantly underline that discrepancy isn't a neutral description, but intrinsic to the boy's
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Incidentally, I've seen an anime in which the villain is this ridiculously-gorgeous, golden-haired man, who is also the evilest person in the world. And no, that's not hyperbole; he is literally supposed to be the evilest person in the world (whether or not he wants to be is more complicated, however)! That actually works because it symbolizes how seductive evil can be, but Rowling squanders it as she does every other opportunity to make Voldemort anything other than a pathetic stereotype!
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And the narrative voice is from Harry's POV but not necessarily his opinion, so it can be confusing when we hear how attractive Cedric/Tom Riddle are - is this Harry's view?
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Fixed that for you. :-)
(Well, I guess that is being too harsh. When she's mired in the straight 'childrens books' genre, wherein which she isn't held to account for things like actual plot or logic or stories making sense, I guess she's okay.)
Like zellieh I don't have a clue how one can discern Snape as 'feminine'. Certainly that wasn't my impression/interpretation on reading the books ( ... )
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Still, I see now how readers could hang the 'feminine' thing on various hooks that are in HP, so thanks for helping me out!
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While early on it isn't immediately obvious how much Rowling *intended* wands to be phallic symbols and cauldrons as womb symbols we have the very Freudian 'Weighing of the Wands' in GOF, the Celestina Warbeck song about how she wants her cauldron of hot love stirred in HBP and the endless wand jokes in DH (with Hermione's commentary about wizards boasting about having bigger wands).
You may be 'new fashioned' but Rowling's world is somewhere between Dickens and Agatha Christie.
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