The Reviewer’s Wall Of Shame

[ladymirth]

Considering the kind of “I-hate-Deathly-Hallows” tripe that’s being posted in the HP discussion forums, there comes a time when you feel like you’ve heard it all.

 

And then you find something like this:  

The Problem With Deathly Hallows is Lack of Sex.

 

 

The Problem with the final Harry Potter book is lack of sex. In books 5-6 the students at Hogwarts slowly start to come to terms with their maturing attitudes to the opposite sex. Rowling deftly negotiates the concerns and fears of adolescence as they begin to date, and finally "snog". Throughout book 6 Rowling has various students, including Ron, Harry, and Ginny snogging constantly as they realize their emerging desires.

In book 7 Rowling starts with a great scene showing Harry's awkward attitude towards himself, his body, and his friends. "He felt like asking them to show a little more respect for his privacy as they all began stripping off with impunity, clearly much more at ease with his body then they would have been with their own." This one line gives much insight into the mindset of a 17 year old and allows Harry and his friends to seem believable.

When you contrast that with the 3 teens spending months living together in a forest, with no one supervising, and no one else to disturb them and yet there's no real awkwardness or tension ever described, you begin wonder why Rowling took her characters and replaced them with figurines. By the time Rowling has the plot moving she's turned each of them into an extreme example of their singular character traits. Never is it more apparent then when each wishes for their favorite Deathly Hallow.

Had she bothered making her characters continuously feel real, she could have actually written an interesting finale to the book...rather than a plot-driven bore upheld by at least half a dozen deux ex machina moments.

 

--Joschenker

 

At least that one had good entertainment value, instead of being a ton of semi-comprehensive vitriol about how JKR had staged a massive cop-out. However, a shocking number of people actually gave this very serious consideration – and agreed! Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered to dignify this with a reply, but I was too tickled to pass it up. Nobody I know has ever left themselves this wide open since the girl at my cafeteria, when asked to join the guys at a game of pool, said “Sorry, I totally suck at balls.” 

My reply:

“Good grief! The Harry Potter books were "unrealistic" because there was not enough SEX?!

This. Is. A. PG. Book. It was NEVER supposed to focus on romance - it's an adventure series! It's SUPPOSED to be plot driven! The fact that it also does include the element of romance occasionally, is due to Rowling's philosophy that "everyone needs someone". Rowling does not DO romance. She dabbles in it, and hastily withdraws before she mires herself in it too deeply. The most enjoyable facet of Rowling's romantic sub-plots are their cheeky subtlety and rarity. Just because we weren't explicitly told about it, it doesn't mean there wasn't any. Rowling frequently leaves things like that to her readers' imaginations.People are already griping about the decreased pace in the action - if there HAD been more UST in this book, people would be saying that one-third of the book was devoted to a bunch of kids and their raging adolescent hormones.

It's like saying that Frodo was a one-dimensional character because he presumably never got it on with anybody - even Sam. It must seriously detract from Tolkien's writing that the only main character who got himself a girlfriend during the course of the series was Aragorn. And all that time closeted in Elrond's house at Rivendell, where was the UST? Damn, how unrealistic!

Of all the "Deathly-Hallows-sucks" arguments I've heard so far, this one is by far the most outlandish and hilarious.

If you want realism in the HP books, why don't you discuss Rowling's subtler allusions - how Ginny was about to offer Harry her virginity for his 17th birthday, how it's hinted that Lupin and Tonks had a shotgun wedding, how Rita hints that Dumbledore was a pedophile who sodomized Harry and Harry killed him in revenge and how there's a strong likelihood that Ariana Dumbledore was raped as a child by those Muggle boys? That enough "realism" for you? Or should Rowling have gone into more details?”

Next up –

Rowling Fails to Inject Feminist Critique by Giving Hermione Short Shrift.

 

The continued short shrift that Harry gives Hermione is incredibly frustrating in this book, more than in any other. Perhaps Rowling's one effort to comment on this is when she complains about having to do all the cooking - which is not only immediately dismissed, but also like, come on! The one thing Hermione is going to complain about is something so easily dismissed by the unsympathetic reader as an 'age old' feminist complaint. How about the fact that Hermione does everything and never gets a shred of the credit, other than some astonished expressions and the occasional "Mione that's amazing!"

She is consistently the character who saves Harry's ass and I continue to be frustrated that in the last book Rowling does nothing to really acknowledge or challenge this within her book - it is not just enough to assume that readers who like Hermione are going to get it, especially when Harry remains on such a pedestal, or that the lack of thoroughgoing challenge to Harry and Ron's behavior will be picked up on by readers with feminist sympathies, especially when most readers do not share such sympathies! It is especially important to be challenging this, I think, in a children's book.

It is not really believable that Hermione wouldn't challenge Harry more when she so relentlessly stands up for those who are denied rights, equality, and dignity. Maybe it's that other tendency on her part (or Rowling's?) to view her guy(s) as the only ones who are not sexist - they're my best friends, how can they be sexist? etc

Does Rowling's overall failure to inject a feminist critique into Harry Potter reflect her desire to prevent the boys from having to engage in some serious self-critique, a caving in to popular dislike of feminism, or her own discomfort with feminism?

 - heypop            

 

 

When I give this one an answer, it is going to be something very special. Because it is because of WOWSERs like this that people can no longer stomach the word “feminist”. Actually, that entire thread is hilarious – people are take these kinds of issues Very Seriously. The only one I felt was half-way sane was the one who said, pardon my French, “what if Rowling doesn’t give a rat’s ass about feminism”? Which is not true, btw, as this is the woman who named her first-born after Jessica Mitford. 

Feel free to lend me your thoughts, people, as all of mine haven’t finished choking and sputtering from that last review, yet. They feel all the more insulting when they have good grammar.

 

Comments

[davinator.livejournal.com]

I suppose maybe we should get the author's notebook side of the story before criticizing her for not enough sex. Per Lori's post about what Ginny was going to give Harry in that bedroom, perhaps there should be a poll?

I figure (aside from the obvious that she's writing to young adults) that maybe she thinks she's as good at writing sex as George Lucas is at writing believable dialogue, so she skips it! :-)

Besides, that's what fanfic is for!

[annabtg.livejournal.com]

The Problem with the final Harry Potter book is lack of sex.

WHAT?

Crazy people like them give fandoms a bad name.

See ya,
Anna.

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

The sad truth, Anna dear, is that 75% of fandom consists of crazy people like them. That is why sane people like ourselves must band together for safety. =)