Evil, little Draco and the woman who wrote him
Well, Ms. Rowling is obviously reading the CoSforums. I am too lazy to link to JKR.com's site news and the CoSforum thread in which someone revealed how he hacked into the site code to get beyond the Do not disturb sign, but yeah that's the logical conclusion you can make.
Anyway while we are talking about Rowling, let's talk about Draco.
Draco is not Tom Felton. We know that. And I guess we expect Rowling to know that we know, too. That she can dismiss a character's popularity, a ship's very definite Romeo and Juliet element, the idea of redemption and forgiveness with the way, way too simple "he is not Tom Felton" is pretty insulting. It's so seriously underestimating HP's readers and their intelligence... it's pretty darn indescribable.
The problem is that Rowling take on Draco (as it appears now) reeks of hypocrisy. Draco is not only the racist bully, but that he is also a mirror image of a character, Rowling expects us to sympathise with.
Draco is Sirius.
The parallels between the two are quite astonishing. Both come from old, racist, dark, pureblood families. Both are bullies. Both are nasty bullies. Both appear to be highly intelligent. (Sirius breezes through the OWLs, in CoS Draco is obviously only bested by Hermione.) Both have minions - Peter, Crabbe and Goyle. Both play quite some means pranks on people they don't like. (Although Sirius' pranks are a lot more morally questionable than Draco's dementor stunts or even his stint as Inquisitorial Squad member.) Both picked very early on someone to harass all the time. Both are strangely obsessed with messy-haired Potters, but that's not really here nor there. Of course there are differences - Draco idolises his parents and seems to be fairly doted on by them, which Sirius neither did nor was. Sirius is sorted against type - into Gryffindor, while Draco is sorted into the most evil of all houses (note the sarcasm). Sirius doesn't seem to believe in the whole pureblood crap, which Draco clearly does.
The funny thing is that Draco shares these differences to Sirius with Regulus Black. He is the Black son that was doted on. Who (probably) idolised his parents. He was probably sorted in Slytherin and shared his parents' pureblood prejudices. The message I am getting here is quite messed up, because what Regulus and Draco have in common, what Sirius is lacking, is parental love. Which of course is wonderful, but in Draco's and Regulus' case turns them both into racists.
Sirius seems to escape the trap of the Black family, because he rebels against his parents. He escapes being a racist, because his parents never "loved" him. (A tragic turn of events that has Voldemort committing patricide at a very young age.)
But anyway forgetting the whole being a racist issue (Which is a murky reason for condemning a character in HP anyway, because of Snape and Pettigrew.) I have problems understanding what makes Draco and Sirius so different that one of them is "dead sexy" and the other one can only appeal because of a rather average looking guy playing him in two badly directed movies.
Both are gits as kids, but you know... we are supposed to overlook Sirius' attempted murder and hate, hate, hate Draco because he is a nasty little wanker, whose worst offense yet is being part of the Umbridge Youth and calling Hermione a mudblood. Does anyone else see a really, really, really large dichotomy between canon and Rowling telling us what we are supposed to read?
That Rowling expects us to see this fifteen-year-old child and see doom and gloom and death eater-dom, expects us not to see Sirius and James and not to think that Draco is harmless compared to them, expects us to believe Snape's redemption - turn to the light side - is complete and yet expects us to consider Draco's redemption unlikely, is giving Draco a special treatment that has nothing to do with logic. If all this is truly what Rowling expects from us, then Draco has no hope of redemption, not because he doesn't deserve redemption. He just doesn't deserve redemption, because he is Draco.
In a fictional world where it's not too late for Dudley, where an ex-death eater is allowed to teach muggleborns and children of old enemies, where attempted murder is allowed to be described as "stupid, little trick"; it's too late for Draco and it always has been too late for Draco.
If I take Rowling's distaste at Draco's popularity at face value and see it as judgement of his character and his fate in the series, then I am really not sure what Rowling is trying to tell us. It seems that Rowling has condemned Draco to death and doom long before he ever did anything to justify that. I guess this whole thing is puzzling, because while Draco is a bully up to this point he is essentially harmless. When people are writing redemption scenarios for him, then I guess the first thing, they realise, is how simple it is. Daddy was wrong, Voldemort is an idiot and muggleborns can be really cool. Done.
That Rowling doesn't see how easy it is to imagine Draco's redemption, how easy Draco's redemption is, means that she knows something about Draco that renders her incapable of seeing it. I wonder....
Let me ask you a question: Are you still able to see Saint James Potter after knowing about Snape's Worst Memory or has he become irreversibly human?
If Rowling plans to have Draco doing something unredeemably evil, something the readers cannot witness and forgive, then I guess she would be incapable of imagining redemption for him, however easy it is for everyone else.
And as she seems to be, that just might be the case.
Anyway while we are talking about Rowling, let's talk about Draco.
Draco is not Tom Felton. We know that. And I guess we expect Rowling to know that we know, too. That she can dismiss a character's popularity, a ship's very definite Romeo and Juliet element, the idea of redemption and forgiveness with the way, way too simple "he is not Tom Felton" is pretty insulting. It's so seriously underestimating HP's readers and their intelligence... it's pretty darn indescribable.
The problem is that Rowling take on Draco (as it appears now) reeks of hypocrisy. Draco is not only the racist bully, but that he is also a mirror image of a character, Rowling expects us to sympathise with.
Draco is Sirius.
The parallels between the two are quite astonishing. Both come from old, racist, dark, pureblood families. Both are bullies. Both are nasty bullies. Both appear to be highly intelligent. (Sirius breezes through the OWLs, in CoS Draco is obviously only bested by Hermione.) Both have minions - Peter, Crabbe and Goyle. Both play quite some means pranks on people they don't like. (Although Sirius' pranks are a lot more morally questionable than Draco's dementor stunts or even his stint as Inquisitorial Squad member.) Both picked very early on someone to harass all the time. Both are strangely obsessed with messy-haired Potters, but that's not really here nor there. Of course there are differences - Draco idolises his parents and seems to be fairly doted on by them, which Sirius neither did nor was. Sirius is sorted against type - into Gryffindor, while Draco is sorted into the most evil of all houses (note the sarcasm). Sirius doesn't seem to believe in the whole pureblood crap, which Draco clearly does.
The funny thing is that Draco shares these differences to Sirius with Regulus Black. He is the Black son that was doted on. Who (probably) idolised his parents. He was probably sorted in Slytherin and shared his parents' pureblood prejudices. The message I am getting here is quite messed up, because what Regulus and Draco have in common, what Sirius is lacking, is parental love. Which of course is wonderful, but in Draco's and Regulus' case turns them both into racists.
Sirius seems to escape the trap of the Black family, because he rebels against his parents. He escapes being a racist, because his parents never "loved" him. (A tragic turn of events that has Voldemort committing patricide at a very young age.)
But anyway forgetting the whole being a racist issue (Which is a murky reason for condemning a character in HP anyway, because of Snape and Pettigrew.) I have problems understanding what makes Draco and Sirius so different that one of them is "dead sexy" and the other one can only appeal because of a rather average looking guy playing him in two badly directed movies.
Both are gits as kids, but you know... we are supposed to overlook Sirius' attempted murder and hate, hate, hate Draco because he is a nasty little wanker, whose worst offense yet is being part of the Umbridge Youth and calling Hermione a mudblood. Does anyone else see a really, really, really large dichotomy between canon and Rowling telling us what we are supposed to read?
That Rowling expects us to see this fifteen-year-old child and see doom and gloom and death eater-dom, expects us not to see Sirius and James and not to think that Draco is harmless compared to them, expects us to believe Snape's redemption - turn to the light side - is complete and yet expects us to consider Draco's redemption unlikely, is giving Draco a special treatment that has nothing to do with logic. If all this is truly what Rowling expects from us, then Draco has no hope of redemption, not because he doesn't deserve redemption. He just doesn't deserve redemption, because he is Draco.
In a fictional world where it's not too late for Dudley, where an ex-death eater is allowed to teach muggleborns and children of old enemies, where attempted murder is allowed to be described as "stupid, little trick"; it's too late for Draco and it always has been too late for Draco.
If I take Rowling's distaste at Draco's popularity at face value and see it as judgement of his character and his fate in the series, then I am really not sure what Rowling is trying to tell us. It seems that Rowling has condemned Draco to death and doom long before he ever did anything to justify that. I guess this whole thing is puzzling, because while Draco is a bully up to this point he is essentially harmless. When people are writing redemption scenarios for him, then I guess the first thing, they realise, is how simple it is. Daddy was wrong, Voldemort is an idiot and muggleborns can be really cool. Done.
That Rowling doesn't see how easy it is to imagine Draco's redemption, how easy Draco's redemption is, means that she knows something about Draco that renders her incapable of seeing it. I wonder....
Let me ask you a question: Are you still able to see Saint James Potter after knowing about Snape's Worst Memory or has he become irreversibly human?
If Rowling plans to have Draco doing something unredeemably evil, something the readers cannot witness and forgive, then I guess she would be incapable of imagining redemption for him, however easy it is for everyone else.
And as she seems to be, that just might be the case.