halloween and mechanical fudge

SPOILER ALERT:  The first part of this post contains spoilers about HP7.

-------------

Despite the fact that today is Tuesday (80's music day), I still find myself thinking and ranting about HP7.  This morning, however, I came across Slate's Book Club on HP7, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that other people out there also thought the idea that Harry was a Horcrux was silly, and that JKR would have to come up with some lame way of explaining it if she went that route.

I particularly enjoyed Polly Shulman's reading of the prophecy, which shows just how incoherent it really is, once we get to the end of the series.  Those of you who have been emailing me complaining about the incoherence of the final section of the book might do well to read her post.

She also hits on precisely the worry that's been nagging at me (see yesterday's post):  if Harry really is a Horcrux, then why is he so darned good?  Surely as a 1 1/2 year old kid, he didn't have powers to resist Voldemort's soul.  I can understand that at 17 he might be able to master himself, but at 3? 4? 6?  Come on!  Here's what she says:

I continue to feel that if Harry is a Horcrux, a creature containing a piece of the Dark Lord's soul, he should show a little moral ugliness or at least temptation. Yes, he gets grouchy and preoccupied for a few pages while he considers hunting for the Deathly Hallows—three magical objects that together can defeat death—before winding up his Horcrux quest, but that's pretty much it for his dark side.

I don't mean to suggest that Rowling needed to give Harry a dark side. It would have made him more interesting to me, but I'm sure lots of readers prefer him this way, and it's her choice, not mine. Since she chose not to, though, the Horcrux Harry thing felt like a mechanical fudge rather than a deep solution to the mystery of how good struggles with evil.

This is what worried me from the beginning:  making Harry a Horcrux is only possible through some sloppy move.  Friends:  please persuade me otherwise!

----------------

Ok - enough HP7.  On to our more important business, which is continuing a survey of anti-conformity ballads from the 80's.  Today we dip into industrial music to treat ourselves to a goth anthem.  (Does anyone else out there find it sad that goth kids today look like they are "rebelling" by dressing like goth kids did in the 80s?)

Our song is called Everyday is Halloween.  It's all about some poor, misunderstood punk who doesn't conform to society's dress standards (perhaps he, too, is dressed like a pirate?).  Consequently, he gets accosted by nosy bourgeois on the street:

All the people seem to stop and stare.
They say, "Why are you dressed like it's Halloween?
You look so absurd,
You look so obscene!"

These are hurtful questions, and they provoke an angry response:

Why can't I live a life for me?
Why should I take the abuse that's served?
Why can't they see they're just like me?
It's the same, it's the same in the whole wide world.

Darn it!  Yet again, we are faced with the paradox of non-conformity:  our singer wants to be himself, but he wants to be himself by insisting on how he is like the very people who criticize him ("Why can't they see they're just like me?").  The non-conformist is at once morally superior to the bourgeois, and the same as the bourgeois.

The constant criticism of his costume-y appearance provokes our narrator to go on the offensive.  (But notice how, as he goes on the offensive, he again insists on how different he is from the people he wants to treat him as if he is no different from them.)

Well I let their teeny minds think that they're
Dealing with someone who is over the brink and
I dress this way just to keep them at bay
'Cause halloween is everyday it's everyday

Ok, so these people who are "just like me" have "teeny minds"?  Does he realize what he's saying about himself?  He's arguing for freedom of expression for everyone, but he can't seem to do so without himself acting like the very people who criticize his freedom:  lashing out, insulting, and so on.

So what's the message of this song?  Well, the superficial message is to dress however you want to, regardless of what people say.  But there's a deeper message here:  rebels think they are all high and mighty, but in fact in their rebellion they commit the very moral errors they claim to transcend.

Comments

[radmama]

He was rather sulky in HP5.. But more usual teenage sulky than evil.

[margene]

Your last paragraph really struck a cord with me today. I tell myself that all the time as I rail against the 'predominate culture' in Utah.

[Heather Joins The Round]

I think the Horcrux thing echoes feelings we all have as teenagers, that something is wrong with us, maybe we have some Greek tragic flaw and we're not like other people, but that if we're going to take up adult responsibilities, we have to suck it up and get past our flaws.

What yarn are you using for the market bags again? Am going to have to make some, they look so chic and useful. After the Stag Bag, of course...