If "we are going around in circles", it may be because you are changing your argument. To take one example, we cannot assert "Voldemort is a monster" (the one thing I think all of us would agree on) if we are not to make moral judgements about the characters. Given the story we were told, we cannot even agree that "he made himself a monster", sinc free will does not seem to exist in the Potterverse.
In HBP, it did seem as though the "sectumsempra" scene was set up to "get us to look at the characters". That is the way I was reading it at the time.(Of course, what struck me most strongly when *I* looked at them was how just Snape was in his anger, in spite of his dislike for Harry. I saw, and see, absolutely no "wallowing in issues". I don't really see how he, or any teacher coming across such an assault, could have handled it better.) Now that DH is over, I can no longer think so. Harry is the golden boy; all is well, and you can be the hero of the Wizarding World without ever having a thought in your own head or apologizing for anything.
As for most humor being based in cruelty, here again, I don't agree. But then, I never really found people slipping on banana peels funny. Even if you do think humor is essentially cruel, can you not agree that there is something *very* disturbing about the way Rowling asks us to become complicit in cruelty and bullying? I do not see any need to accept this kind of humor.
I gather what you are now trying to say is that Rowling subverted the fantasy genre by setting up a story of a battle between good and evil, and then showing us that "good" and "evil", in this universe, are meaningless concepts. Except I'm not at all sure that she did this at all. Voldemort is certainly meant to be evil, as I said above, and I get the strong impression that Harry and co are meant to be good, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. This is also not what you were initially arguing. You have been saying "this story is all about Harry. It's not about fixing the Wizarding World." Yes, but what many of us are now asking, after DH, is: who the heck is Harry? And why should we care? Honestly, he strikes me as a thoughtless, arrogant, self-satisfied and ungrateful jerk. But that, of course, is just my pov.
But I'm not going to argue with you. Really, I'm not. All I'm pointing out here is that you seem to be saying two different things that seem to contradict each other.
no subject
In HBP, it did seem as though the "sectumsempra" scene was set up to "get us to look at the characters". That is the way I was reading it at the time.(Of course, what struck me most strongly when *I* looked at them was how just Snape was in his anger, in spite of his dislike for Harry. I saw, and see, absolutely no "wallowing in issues". I don't really see how he, or any teacher coming across such an assault, could have handled it better.) Now that DH is over, I can no longer think so. Harry is the golden boy; all is well, and you can be the hero of the Wizarding World without ever having a thought in your own head or apologizing for anything.
As for most humor being based in cruelty, here again, I don't agree. But then, I never really found people slipping on banana peels funny. Even if you do think humor is essentially cruel, can you not agree that there is something *very* disturbing about the way Rowling asks us to become complicit in cruelty and bullying? I do not see any need to accept this kind of humor.
I gather what you are now trying to say is that Rowling subverted the fantasy genre by setting up a story of a battle between good and evil, and then showing us that "good" and "evil", in this universe, are meaningless concepts. Except I'm not at all sure that she did this at all. Voldemort is certainly meant to be evil, as I said above, and I get the strong impression that Harry and co are meant to be good, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. This is also not what you were initially arguing. You have been saying "this story is all about Harry. It's not about fixing the Wizarding World." Yes, but what many of us are now asking, after DH, is: who the heck is Harry? And why should we care? Honestly, he strikes me as a thoughtless, arrogant, self-satisfied and ungrateful jerk. But that, of course, is just my pov.
But I'm not going to argue with you. Really, I'm not. All I'm pointing out here is that you seem to be saying two different things that seem to contradict each other.