Okay, I know HP fandom hates the way Slytherin was treated in the books, with all its implications. I know JKR’s belief that all blood supremacists go to Slytherin sounds implausible and dodgy. I know there are kids who have been mocked/side-eyed for being Pottermore-sorted into Slytherin. Hell I know that I’m pretty ehhhh on JKR’s Pottermore reveal that Peter Pettigrew was actually probably a Slytherin. There’s a lot of worthy criticism to be made there & an understandable instinct to want to redeem the house from its less than savoury reputation.
Wizarding culture is fucked up and we shouldn’t shy away from admitting that. There’s a difference between being a Slytherin in our world and being a Slytherin in their world. You are not part of wizarding culture and not subject to the problems that comes with that.
Which is a position really worth keeping in mind in any fandom discussion, especially one concerning Slytherin and its position in HPverse.
2) There have been a couple of posts floating around, defending Salazar Slytherin that I’ve seen lately (x, x), claiming that canon + history are somehow ‘evidence’ that Salazar Slytherin had the ‘right’ idea – and that therefore, canonically, Slytherin was a nice guy and not a bigot. And that is complete and utterbullshit. The rest of this essay is a copy of a response to the original post that I’ve made before, but I’m posting it again because apparently this idea refuses to die a permanent death.
There’s a distinction to be made between headcanon and canon here. You’re free to headcanon Salazar Slytherin however you want, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that there is ‘canonical proof’ for a headcanon when the bulk of canon, well, contradicts it. However, it also pays to be critical about how you’re headcanoning something and to ask yourself why you’re headcanoning Salazar Slytherin’s racism/bigotry away & what you achieve by it – and even more importantly, what real world issues does it feed into/reflect?
3) JKR wrote the persecution of muggleborns as a really really clear parallel for anti-semitic persecution through the ages. It’s really hard to ignore that when you have things like the Muggleborn Commission (and Mary Cattermole’s trial in Deathly Hallows), propaganda titled with things like “Muggleborns and the Threat they Pose to Wizarding Society”, or hell, even the twisted version of muggle studies the Carrows teach the kids in DH – muggles are wild animals etc. Now, suggesting Salazar Slytherin’s views made ‘sense’ because witches were being persecuted c. the 10th century is
a) historically inaccurate, therefore, completely baseless,
b) is canonically inaccurate because wix in canon have used a variety of spells to save themselves from death, notably, Wendelin the Weird who used Flame-Freezing charms to save herself from burning & the Duc de Trefle-Picques who escaped beheading (and faked his death) using a Disillusionment charm on his head and
c) it suggests that his assertion that muggleborns were a ‘real’ threat were right and by extension, that that language of justification is all right, as long as a ‘case’ can be made for a ‘threat’ – which has all kinds of really messed up implications re. the real world where the language of ‘threat’ is used repeatedly to justify violence against immigrants, racial minorities, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities and yes, was used to justify the Holocaust (this is basically the thesis of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that the Jews were behind some big ‘conspiracy’ to take over the world, which is one of the texts Hitler built his campaign on).
d) the real world implications are important here because HP has a huge social element to it and if HP fans are going to pat themselves on the back for being more socially aware & tolerant than other fans, then its worth being aware about what kind of views in our society Salazar Slytherin’s declaration that muggleborns were a threat to wizard society (despite them being a relatively powerless minority) is meant to reflect.
e) in doing so, you’ve actually fallen hook, line and sinker for Salazar Slytherin’s own propaganda.
Cool?
Cool.
And now, the really long essay in which I cover all the arguments I’ve seen in favour of Salazar Slytherin in depth using canon, Pottermore & historical & academic sources to talk about why Salazar Slytherin has no foot to stand on. A summary of the arguments I make:
A bigot is always a bigot, no matter how much they talk about ‘threat’ and ‘risk’. This language has been used in the past to exclude minorities, Salazar Slytherin uses it to exclude muggleborns – there’s a really clear principle here.
Salazar Slytherin lived in the 10th century, the witch hunts did not start until the late fourteenth century and really only intensified during the 16th and 17th centuries. Incidentally, the worst of the hunts took place in Germany and not in Britain, though the Scottish witch hunts of the 17th century were pretty bad.
The people of the middle ages held a lot of contradictory views on magic and religion, so even though a bunch of texts concerning folk religious and magic practices were destroyed (though there are lots of exceptions to this) they weren’t only a) studying the Bible and nothing else and b) folk magic really was a thing even during the medieval period.
Witch burnings were mostly to do with getting rid of unwanted people/people who were felt to be ‘burdens’ or ‘undesirable’ but had no real ‘crimes’ that they could be put away for. Socially marginalized groups usually bore the brunt of this persecution. A lot of money-making was involved as well. Actual magic was not always the point of contention.
JKR has independently confirmed that a) Salazar Slytherin’s views were statistical outliers for his time and b) that the belief that muggles were dangerous really only gained traction after the establishment of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692.
JKR has also independently deconstructed the idea that witches and wizards had anything to fear by the way persecution in the 14th century, using the character of Wendelin the Weird to do so.
Cuthbert Binns is an unreliable narrator, the wizarding world is highly corrupt and prejudiced – JKR literally spent seven books telling us this was so.
JKR independently confirmed, on Pottermore, that Salazar S. placed the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. Also, really, there’s a big difference between a safety room (e.g. a nuclear fallout bunker) and a room that has stone pillars made of snakes, snakes with emeralds for eyes and one giant statue of Salazar Slytherin whose mouth opens when you say “Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.” in Parseltongue. Sounds more like a shrine to myself, made by Salazar Slytherin to me tbqh.
David Cameron, Donald Trump & Tony Abbott use this same language of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’ to society to explain why immigrants shouldn’t be allowed into their countries; that’s ba s i c a l l y what Salazar Slytherin’s views boil down to in the end.
Hit read more because it’s really long. Feel free to reblog this.
Most composers spend just 10-12ish weeks working on a film’s music. John Williams spent around 14 weeks on each Star Wars movie, 40ish weeks total for the whole OT……but composing the LOTR trilogy’s soundtrack took four years
The vocals you hear in the soundtrack are usually in one of Tolkien’s languages (esp. Elvish). The English translations of the lyrics are all poems, or quotes from the book, or occasionally even quotes from other parts of the films that are relevant to the scene
When there were no finished scenes for him to score, Howard Shore would develop musical themes inspired by the scripts or passages from the book. That’s how he got all Middle-Earth locations have their own unique sound: he was able to compose drafts of “what Gondor would sound like” and “what Lorien would sound like” long before any scenes in those places were filmed
Shore has said his favorite parts to score were always the little heartfelt moments between Frodo and Sam
Shore wrote over 100 unique leitmotifs/musical themes to represent specific people, places, and things in Middle Earth (over 160 if you count The Hobbit)
The ones we all talk about are the Fellowship theme, the main Shire Theme, and the themes for places like Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, and Rivendell…but a lot of the more subtle ones get overlooked and underappreciated
Like Aragorn’s theme. It’s a lot less “obvious” than the others because, like Aragorn himself, it adapts to take on the color of whatever place Aragorn is in: it’s played on dramatic broody stringed instruments in Bree, on horns in battle scenes, softly on the flute with Arwen in Rivendell….
Eowyn has not just one but three different leitmotifs to represent her
Gollum and Smeagol both have their own leitmotifs! Whose theme music is playing in the scene can often tell you whether the Gollum or Smeagol side is “winning” at the moment
The melody for Gollum’s Song in the end credits of the The Two Towers is the Smeagol and Gollum themes smushed together (it’s Symbolic)
And then there’s the really obscure ones. Like there’s a melody that plays at Boromir’s death that shows up again in ROTK in scenes that foreshadow a major death or loss
Shore wanted the theme music to grow alongside the characters– so that as the characters changed, their theme music would change with them.
You can hear that most clearly in the Shire theme. Like the hobbits, it goes through A Lot
Like compare the childish lil penny whistle theme you hear in Concerning Hobbits/the beginning of FOTR with (throws a dart at random Beautiful Tragic Hobbit Character Development scene because there WAY TOO MANY to choose from) the scene when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, where you hear a kind of shattered and broken but more mature version of that same theme in the background
I could write you a book on how much I love the way the Shire theme grows across the course of these films
Unlike the hero’s themes, which constantly change and grow, the villain’s themes (The One Ring theme, the Isengard theme, etc) remain basically the same from the very beginning of FOTR to the end of ROTK. Shore said this was an intentional choice: to emphasize that evil is static, while good is capable of change
Shore has said that between all the music that made into the movies and the music that didn’t, he composed enough for “a month of continuous listening”……..where can I sign up
A leaked set of disclosures made by Equifax to the US Senate have
revealed that the breach of 145.5 million Americans’ sensitive financial
data was even worse than suspected to date: in addition to data like
full legal names, dates of birth, Social Security Numbers, and home
addresses, it appears that Equifax also breached drivers’ license
numbers and issue-dates.
Equifax seems to acknowledge that drivers’ licenses were included in the
breach, but claims that its failure to mention this up until now does
not present any kind of problem, as its disclosures to date were “not
exhaustive” – a self-evident statement, in retrospect.
Good news! At least one law enforcement agency is working with
members of the community they’re sworn to protect. Just one problem. The
local folks these police worked with were Nazis.
According to The Guardian, California Highway Patrol officers worked with Neo Nazis in Sacramento during the lead up to a ‘white nationalist’ event.
The goal: to identify activists with anti-racist beliefs who might attempt to interrupt the bigoted snowflakes’ special day.
Snip:
“It
is shocking and really angering to see the level of collusion and the
amount to which the police covered up for the Nazis,” said Yvette
Felarca, a Berkeley teacher and anti-fascist organizer charged with assault and rioting
after participating in the June 2016 Sacramento rally, where she said
she was stabbed and bludgeoned in the head. “The people who were
victimized by the Nazis were then victimized by the police and the
district attorneys.”
In an email sent to The
Guardian, The Chief Deputy Attorney responsible for prosecuting against
the anti-fascist activists arrested during the Sacramento rally, states
that there was no bias on the part of the police. But what’s this? Ho
ho! The Chief Deputy Attorney’s statement is contradicted, by documents
obtained by Felarca’s attorney: the documents illustrate numerous
examples of CHP officers cozying up to members of a bunch of racists,
working directly with members of the Traditionalist Workers Party–the
group that planned the rally back in 2016.
The Guardian’s coverage
of this case makes for ugly, compelling reading, laying out, as the
article mentions, in closing, “…patterns of acknowledged and
unacknowledged overlaps between the interest of ultra-right nationalist
organizations and the police and prosecutors’ offices.”
