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So to have these iconic characters who embodied morals to be instilled in others raising brats is pretty jarring.
Exactly! If I had seen Prince Charming/Cinderella, Aurora/Prince Philip, and Fa Mulan/Li Shang in the movie as haughty, irresponsible, privileged parents then it would make total sense. But as it stands, it’s a major disconnect because saw none of those pairing and thus did not see them act in such a manner, and the pairing we did see was Beast and Beauty who were still loving, kind, considerate (if slightly prejudiced against the villains) and raising a son who was the best of the good kids.
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Announcement!
Ok, conversation has been had. We are going to shoot for biweekly analysis so two per week, hopefully on Sundays and then Wednesday or Thursdays. That will speed up the entire series a bit. Again, if anyone wants to jump in, please do so! And if you want to jump and do a chapter analysis yourself (or two or three..biiiiiig series guys) drop me a line and I can work you in.
🙂
*this message has been delivered to you by an Owl*
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Back to the present day of the story, it’s just heartbreaking how strong Petunia’s prejudices are. Yes, we get more of Vernon’s viewpoint on it more than her, but Petunia is quietly in the background, the linchpin in this absurd family. It’s her family, her blood, she prejudices, too. It’s just unfathomable.
Vernon is the guy you hate on sight and from the very first. He’s loud, gruff, in your face and wears his prejudices on his sleeve. But it’s Petunia who is the one who is quietly…evil (ugh, not sure I want to use that word but going for it). Vernon is very verbally abusive and “man of the house” but Petunia has the quiet rage and anger and utter resentment toward Harry that I think cuts deeper. He is literally her blood and her rule is not to ask questions, to humiliate him, to lock him in a dank cupboard with spiders, to sneer at him, to be quietly hateful of his very existence.
It’s like what if Harry died. Just picture that for a second. Vernon would be glad that his life went back to normal and there was no longer any fear about anyone finding out about Harry’s “otherness.” But I don’t know that Vernon would delight in Harry’s death. But Petunia would be glad for all of that as well, but I can’t help but wonder if she’d be glad that he was just dead. The final reminder of her sister finally gone.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I’m thinking of joining you guys
YES PLEASE DO! (if you want to do an analysis shoot me a message and I’ll figure out where)
though there is a point I’d like to make. If we were to stick to the schedule of only one chapter per week, it would roughly take 4 years to get through all 7 books
Lol yeah I thought about that and have been meaning to talk to Jo and Macy…we’ll, uh, work on that.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"As for who the other side of parents are….it’s explained in the novel Isle of the Lost.
Okay, but I shouldn’t have to read a novel in order to get a basic genealogy chart. I mean, cut a song and give some exposition if you have to. The job as a writer is to explain your characters; not knowing who their parents is bothersome, especially since the relationship with the parents is at the heart of the entire movie.
And as for how Chad and Audrey came out the way they did, despite who they parents were….simplest explanation. Spoiled rotten, and I mean spoiled rotten!!! Proof of that was shown when Chad said in a bragging manner”My dad’ll just buy me another one.”
Which makes ZERO sense since we know who their parents are–Aurora (lived in the woods), Cinderella (abused by family and forced to sleep by a fire) and Mulan (peasant girl in a patriarchal society that dictated that she was only good for one thing as a girl). So for the children to be so spoiled by parents who literally grew up the exact opposite makes no sense until the movie explain how the parents came to dote on (but NOT provide good moral examples) their children. I can see the heroes doting on their children. What I cannot see is the heroes allowing their children to become like they did. Example: Beast and Belle obviously loved Ben and doted on him but he didn’t turn into a Chad or a Audrey. He had Belle’s compassion and Beast’s passion with a mix of humility and grace. In short, exactly what you’d expect when you’re raised by Disney heroes.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Audrey was a spoiled little rich girl…before she became evil, Regina was a really nice, humble, rich good girl…so I’m confused.
Darling read my entire post. Regina from Mean Girls. Not your Regina.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Exactly Jo! The example I used was just one real life example but there are many. As RG pointed out, homosexuality, now racism, religion could be one, gender, class, and so on.
There is probably a very large conversation to be had at some point during this Re-Read project about the extent to which JKR intended her HP saga to be an allegory. Because there is so much to pull out from HP on what JKR is “trying to say”–like you said, Macy, from gender, class, religion, sexual orientation and so on and so forth–that you do wonder if JKR just put the ideas in the books and then lets her readers take their own spin on her work, organically and based on their own criteria of what is important. In other words JKR never intended us to read the story of HP as a allegory on racism but we do so because of racial tensions in the past and present. As one of all my other favorite authors likes to say BBTTR–books belong to their readers. OR is there is a moral or political reading that JKR was trying to get at but kept it carefully couched and hidden.
In short : is the author dead or not? (yeah, that’s right. I just dropped some Derrida and Barthes on y’all)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"To add to that, she’s also said that she wrote the treatment of lycanthropy as a parallel to the AIDS epidemic
I didn’t know that. Or if I did, it has been forgotten.
There is a saying in teaching that goes “We parent as we have been parented, we teach as we have been taught.” It means unless something changes, we’re going to keep going with the status quo. We need stories like Harry Potter to show how ridiculous prejudices are and just how much the media influences our beliefs and views.
Quoting this just because it deserves to be quoted.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"What do you guys think about using spoiler tags for more further discussion of things coming up? Or should we keep it purely to what is happening now in the story?
I think both are okay. The guidelines states don’t jump too far ahead unless it’s relevent and for the moment, discussing morality of DD, it is. But I think spoiler policy is best unless it suddenly becomes not but a black wall of text. For the *most* part we should stick to the chapter at hand, and what comes before. I’ll take my fair share of blame; goodness knows it’s hard.
Here in the U.S. it wasn’t legal for a white person and an AA person to get married until what, 60 some odd years ago? So I guess the question is why the Dursleys, particularly Petunia, have such a distaste for Henry’s parents?
Yeah. It’s also hard for me to comment here because as an American I’m not really sure of the culture mores of England/Britain. The only thing I’ve gathered is from watching an unholy amount of Brit TV and from THAT I think I can say that at least in the presentation of British folk in their own media, they seem to be a bit more open to things that here in America. For example, it would be quite odd to have a sitcom or drama** in which you have interracial couple without the show being exclusively about their race in America. But it seems to be far more common in British media without it being a commentary on race or any other sort of “othering.”
** I should clarify that this assessment is a little unfair to cable and Netflix original series which are leaps and bounds ahead of broadcast where “rules” are still followed, by and large.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I will add that throughout the movie it was pointed out repeatedly that I wasn’t in the target demographic.
And that’s a fine point. Going in I knew it was going to be cheesy and cliche because it’s on the Disney channel and they often go for the cheesy and cliche because their target audience is not cynical and snarky 20-40 year olds.
But there is something to be said about even the cheesy and the cliche having surprising hidden depth. Example, I love the movie Mean Girls. It’s a movie that couched in the cheesy and cliche–you have Queen Bees who rule their little universe because they are pretty, rich and thus popular and everyone falls at their feet because of it. Regina and her gang are basically the Audrey of Descendents times 3.
But what Mean Girls does is try to uncover the hidden complexity behind the popular Queen Bees. The second you met Regina’s mother you get it. You get why Regina is the way she is–her mother is just as shallow and spoiled and focused on the superficial and thus enforces that lifestyle on to her daughter.
The issue, for me, is that there is none of that hidden depth in the spoiled, selfish and vain “hero children” of Descendents. Chad Charming is just a…word I can’t say here. Audrey is just a mean girl but without anything behind that meanness. And it’s really bothersome because we know who their parents are–Cinderella (abused by family), Sleeping Beauty (lived a life of basic solitude and was lied to for the first 16 years of her life) and even Mulan’s daughter Lonnie was just as shallow as her classmates despite her mother’s very story focusing on being more than how you are viewed by society. So there is no reason that I can see why Chad, Audrey, and Lonnie turned out like they did except for PLOT (god, I can’t escape the evil word!)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
