As Recklesley and the rest of humanity celebrates the transition of Daniel Radcliffe (and his alter ego Harry Potter) from boyhood to stud muffin, a select group of honest and brave academics are taking up the story that the mainstream media chooses not to cover, and JK Rowling’s naive readers do not wish to hear. Much like the brave Xenophilius Lovegood, Tison Pugh and David L. Wallace are breaking the story which may well save our lives in their article, “Heteronormative Heroism and Queering the School Story in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.” Although Pugh and Wallace find many admirable things to say about the Harry Potter series, such as the post-feminist landscape the book conjures for young children, they also worry about Harry’s tendency to fall back on heteronormative ideals of heroism. In case you didn’t attend a crazy liberal undergraduate institution, this basically means every time Harry wants to be strong and ditch Hermione and Ron to pursue Voldemort, he is breaking with the thematic structure of the book that celebrates difference and aberration to return to his caveman roots. This has severe implications:
“The danger of heteronormative heroism in the Harry Potter books is that it potentially reinscribes the problematic heterosexual/homosexual binary that critics such as Michel Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Jonathan Ned Katz identify as both policing desires and the identities constructed around those desires. This binary serves not only to stigmatize homosexuality and other expressions of sexual queerness; it also contributes to a concept of masculinity that marginalizes women and narrows the range of socially acceptable behaviors for men in ways that work to the detriment of all humanity.”
For those still in the dark about what this actually means, and what tangible impact it can have on your life, Eve Sedgwick makes the argument simpler, “Finally, this attempt to write a pure space where sexual deviancy does not exist will always result in a universal omnicide.”
Your scar going to get us out of this, Harry?
Jerk.
Speaking of jerks, the free market isn’t helping things either.
“The elevation of the family to ideological preeminence guarantees that a capitalist society will reproduce not just children, but heterosexism and homophobia.”
- John D’Emilio
I think I love you.
While I condemn homophobia in all of its various manifestations, it is not a result of elevating the family to its rightful position of dominance; rather, it is the result of ignorance. Bigoted ideas originate with bigots, and bigots, as we know, are ignorant and marginalized people. Their ignorance, however, in no way emanates from the conceptual family but rather from their own stupidity. In the natural order, however, those of us have the ability to reproduce, i.e., heterosexuals, will naturally exist at the top of the food chain. Without us, there is not species to continue; and, without a human species, there would be no silly academic with even sillier radical ideas.
In other words, the family is the first and basic expression of man’s social nature, the smallest and most perfect human community. It is therefore the first human society; upon which, society at large evolved. The “traditional” human family will therefore always, by necessity, occupy the preeminent place in the order of human affairs. Without it, society crumbles, much like the bizarre theories of French academics under close scrutiny.
By the way, you’re reading way too much into the works of the Harry Potter author. Wasn’t she on state assistance prior to writing these “books?” I’ll never understand the post-modern phenomena of attributing serious ideas to mass-produced junk. From the academy and not the family, then, begins the collapse of Western Civilization.
BK NeoCon
although i applaud your investigative nature, i feel that you may be stretching it a little.
the only bad thing i can ever say about those books is the use of the word “midget” instead of little people.
Sigh. I suppose I’ll have to be Harry Potter and you’ll have to be Voldemort minus his horocruxes at the end of Book 7.
Voldemort:
1. Homophobia is due to ignorance
2. Homophobia is not due to the natural family being rightfully dominant.
3. Bigots are ignorant and marginalized.
4. Love is worthless, Harry.
Harry:
1. Your wand has failed you.
2. Placing the heterosexist family as the only one with legal recognition mandates homophobia, as there is certainly no actual argument for excluding gay marriage and families from being primary other than to protect the “natural and rightful” order. Support of the “natural and rightful” order is instead done with ad-homs and hatred.
3. Bigots are not marginalized, they are mainstream. Check out Fox News or CNN for that matter.
Voldemort:
But of course there is an argument for why heterosexist families are superior, they reproduce and carry on the race. The pure-bred wizarding kind that is.
Harry:
Novel argument, Riddle. It is unfortunate for what you liberally call a position, however, that not every one has to reproduce for the survival of the species. In fact one may say, as Malthus argued 400 years ago, that constant breeding is unsustainable and will lead to the extinction of our species and all others on earth. Woot, I think I have identified a third scenario for nuclear omnicide. Thank god (oops) for gays for allowing at least the tiny hope of a sustainable future.
Voldemort:
You knave! Without protecting the pure-blood wizarding family and ensuring the reproduction of their values, we will be led far astray from the nature of man.
Harry:
I may have not read the History of Magic at Hogwarts, but I do know a thing or two about my bible, and the first social activity between a man and a woman was some naked frolicking and then lunch. I think that perfect community where the one brother killed the other came later. Also look at Rosie O’Donnell’s family. They are doing just fine on the beach with all the other wonderful gay families enjoying their vacation in the NE.
Quite witty, profoundly misguided and ill-conceived, but quite witty, indeed! It simply doesn’t warrant further attention. I will say this, however. The theories of Thomas Malthus influenced the theories of Charles Darwin who, in turn, provided the intellectual underpinnings of the eugenics movement and of those nasty little race theories announced by the National Socialists in pre-War Germany. Surely, you must have some compunction about citing to a Nazi enabler.
PS – Rosie O’Donnell is a disgusting fat body who embodies all that is wrong with American social permissiveness.
This guy’s not gonna start commenting on the Mets updates, is he? I bet you a million bucks he’s a Yankees fan.
Yanks keep up this winning streak we’ll make the play offs. The Bronx is always burning, baby.
oy vey.
you know what? harry potter isn’t as bad as you make it out to be. there are so many worse things in the economy now adays that harry potter is probably one of the best things that could have happened, ok? at least harry potter teaches children. do you know how many books i have read from the children’s novels that are just about mindless violence and swearing? and also, harry potter books also helps children get into reading. and if you are going to comment on something like harry potter, why don’t you rag on twilight? or the lord of the rings? you know what? you shouldn’t blame all those problems on harry potter. maybe rowling was just writing the harry potter world as the world is right now. so don’t badmouth harry potter.