blamebrampton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blamebrampton) wrote2011-01-08 04:37 pm
blamebrampton) wrote2011-01-08 04:37 pm
A case in point ...
So, there we were, having a chat on a friend's LJ about the differences between the US and the UK for purposes of a self-Britpicking list, with participants from both sides of the pond and beyond and frequent diversions into baiting and comedy from all sides, and apparently it has become a source of Flocked Drama.
Consider the argument very carefully: At least one American is very upset that British people prefer to be depicted in accurate ways.
And if you can't see why that's a bit dodgy, replace the word British with any other nationality.
I don't want to overstate the case, because really, it doesn't culturally oppress us the way that some other cultures have been oppressed by this sort of thing, since we don't deeply care and we had an Empire first. And while the original source of the complaint is a preference, it's certainly not a sine qua non, and we read heaps of stuff that gets us wrong, and some of it is good and some is crap, and really, at the end of the day we still pronounce and spell aluminium in ways that are scientifically logical, which in itself is enough. But, honestly ...
Interestingly, one of my points of difference was a tendency to soap-opera-like over-reactions in fiction. Clearly I drew the line too narrowly.
AND I left off the fact that it the entire United States has been the subject of mass-brainwashing to accept caffeinated flavoured beverages as coffee. Though I see Starbucks has dropped the word from their logo, truth in advertising at last!
Consider the argument very carefully: At least one American is very upset that British people prefer to be depicted in accurate ways.
And if you can't see why that's a bit dodgy, replace the word British with any other nationality.
I don't want to overstate the case, because really, it doesn't culturally oppress us the way that some other cultures have been oppressed by this sort of thing, since we don't deeply care and we had an Empire first. And while the original source of the complaint is a preference, it's certainly not a sine qua non, and we read heaps of stuff that gets us wrong, and some of it is good and some is crap, and really, at the end of the day we still pronounce and spell aluminium in ways that are scientifically logical, which in itself is enough. But, honestly ...
Interestingly, one of my points of difference was a tendency to soap-opera-like over-reactions in fiction. Clearly I drew the line too narrowly.
AND I left off the fact that it the entire United States has been the subject of mass-brainwashing to accept caffeinated flavoured beverages as coffee. Though I see Starbucks has dropped the word from their logo, truth in advertising at last!
no subject
Ultimately it's not a realism issue for me but one of personal taste. People pick their noses. Don't want to read about It. People get divorced or are unhappy or are impotent or smell or .... still unlikely to read.
My take on the cultural divide encompasses several strands. There's linguistic markers like Lucius saying gotten, and then there's a point about whole strands of missing ideas for fic like abortion that I'm not necessarily interested in reading but notice the absence of.
And then there's my perrsonal preference not to read smoking fic. It kills my lungs and I hate it. I specifically didn't conflate the two.
On your last point.... if a muggleborn is talking about their upbringing I should think modern British culture is in point. Purebloods must be aware of it though get the details wrong and dislike it. Pureblood culture is located as a divergent strand of British culture but for instance I'd argue it's wrong to assume old fashioned views on witches. Because they have wands and because the Victorians weren't that Victorian really. I see people argue that wearing robes means they are old fashioned but it doesn't follow - I used to go to work in a costume that mourned the passing of queen Anne. One day we might get over it. It doesn't make the legal system old fashioned though. Shrugs.
Discussing cultural differences doesn't imply people should take notice of them when writing but neither should anyone be surprised if Brits find some elements wrong or backbutton issues.
no subject
Ultimately it's not a realism issue for me but one of personal taste. People pick their noses. Don't want to read about It. People get divorced or are unhappy or are impotent or smell or .... still unlikely to read.
These are exactly the sort of stories I do want to read about, because if I don't have a touchstone to them as real people, then as a reader there is a veil. And real people smoke, swear, get divorced, have affairs, and, oh, have sex. While I have no personal problem with PWPs as a rule (other than finding them boring at this point), now I look for fics where the characters DO smell and do pick their noses. In short, they are like me except they can do cool things with wands.
I'm also curious about your take on Draco not being sophisticated. He's brought up in luxury, his parents are sophisticated (the scene at the World Cup is evidence of that). Lucius is beyond powerful; nowhere is he portrayed as slightly ridiculous (as is Fudge). Indeed, he's the opposite. JKR writes him as physically overwhelming--the sort of man who walks into a room and takes it over--and I would think that sophistication would naturally be a strong component of that power. It seems to me that it would be impossible for Draco NOT to be sophisticated given his parents. Is he immature, spoiled, and arrogant? Yes. I happen to know people who are sophisticated beyond belief, and yet they are also immature, spoiled, and arrogant.
Discussing cultural differences doesn't imply people should take notice of them when writing but neither should anyone be surprised if Brits find some elements wrong or backbutton issues.
Of course we shouldn't. Although both westerners, we are writing about a culture that is foreign. As an aside I will say that we are struggling to write within a vacuum as the majority of us have U.S. editions of the books with American usage and peculiar cultural references edited out. So, we're hamstrung a bit, but it doesn't give us a pass.
I am taking this beyond that issue. First of all (and I think this is a flaw in the book but I know why she did it), JKR keeps the wizarding world completely isolated from the Muggle world. Hermione, the standard Muggle bearer, is co-opted entirely into the wizarding world. She even writes with a quill. Why not just pullout a frigging pen? Why not just hand in sheets of binder paper? There is absolutely no reason for wizards not to drive cars. It's stupid and bizarre and yet JKR keeps them in a time warp (roughly 18th century?) for her world-building purposes. So I would disagree with you. They ARE old-fashioned. In fact, with the exception of clothing, they are living a life that is, maybe, two-three hundred years from the present. Diagon Alley looks like something out of a Shakespeare play. In fact, Arthur's whole schtick is his constant yearing to be part of the present day. I don't know how you can leap from people writing with quills to assuming a modern day legal system. Indeed, I would say the ONLY modern thing about this culture is their clothing.
On the whole, I find that JKR's world-building gaps (it seems to be a society composed of a huge government, sports teams, a few pubs, one radio station, and some shopkeepers) make it extremely problematic to make any generalizations about what aspects of modern British culture to appropriate for our characters. Linguistic markers? That's a no-brainer. But beyond that I question whether we can assume that wizarding Britain is merely modern Britain-light. Because she maroons these characters in a fuzzy no-man's land in time, I think an argument could be made that the culture that is most appropriate is 17th-century Britain, which I don't agree with but I can see how you get there.
My point is that this world is profoundly isolated (world-building in neon) culturally, socially, and economically from present-day Britain. I find myself taking cues from the series itself and not making any grand extrapolations to modern British culture. Because this series isn't set in the present, even though it is resolutely English.
no subject
Sophistication = / = luxury or wealth. White peacocks.... tacky.
Er, the thing is that lots of places look like something out of Shakespeare. I live in flats that are over a hundred years old, I worked in a building that was five hundred years old and which was considered a bit modern for barrister's standards, I used to wear an outfit that was based on the style of someone from 400-500 years ago. I used to wear a horsehair wig, falling bands, robes, have a pocket on the back of my robes to receive my honorarium even though I got paid by bank deposit the same as everyone else. I used to eat my lunch in a Hall that's been in use since the Middle Ages and featured in Bleak House. Lots and lots and lots of bits of England are old. It doesn't mean it's old fashioned, or that members of the Wizarding World are living in the past in the sense you mean.
Why would you bother to learn to drive a car when you can Apparate and Floo? I don't drive a car because I can use the Tube. That doesn't make me old fashioned.
I don't think that the Wizarding World is modern britain lite. What I aver is that it's Different. And that difference is not necessarily Olde Worlde Britain, simply on the basis of quills and parchment, because there are lots of things that I do and see on a daily basis in RL are Olde.
And there are plenty of other things that show progressive attitudes - women work, own property, carry wands, have rank, are on the Wizengamot. That's not congruent with C17th England at all. And I don't know what view you take on the role of women in C17th Century, but if that's proxy for no sex before marriage 25% of women were pregnant before marriage. You would also have to consider the difference between town and country, and different classes of people.
In short, I doubt Wizarding culture stopped developing at the time that it split from the Muggle world, not least because of the influx of Muggleborns. And that past is rarely as people suppose anyway when they say that the Wizarding World is old fashioned.
no subject
Which is utter nonsense. I read, write, and enjoy both.
Sophistication = / = luxury or wealth.
You're winning my argument for me. We are told repeatedly* told throughout the series that the Malfoys are wealthy. I find it interesting that you're focusing on a single image in *seven* books as your barometer for how sophisticated the Malfoys are or aren't. Nothing in the series up until this point portrays Lucius as tacky: quite the reverse. Cursory research on peacocks reveals a varied and rich imagery throughout history. None of the sites that I read referred to them as a symbol of arrogance (my interpretation) or yours (tackiness). Indeed, they were once a symbol to ward off serpents, begging the question as to what exactly what JKR meant by choosing the peacock as the Malfoy patronus.
While women play a role in government, it's secondary, as is is true of all the women in this series. It's the love of one mother (Lily) and the abdication of another (Merope) that moves this story forward. There isn't a single woman figure in this series who isn't in a secondary role (even Hermione and McGonagall). If they aren't number two, they are a mother (e.g., Molly). Tonks is nothing more than a joke figure until she becomes a mother. Then she's killed off. I think one could make an excellent argument that this book is largely about mothering and what happens when mothers are absent, so way to go Jo vis a vis Teddy. All of the major conflicts in these books are between men/boys (Harry versus Voldemort, Dumbledore versus Grindelwald, Harry versus Draco, Snape versus Harry). Not exactly modern.
Regarding cars. Flooing with seven children? Arthur DOES use a car to ferry all the children to the train station, yes? JKR uses modern devices (a car) when it suits her and then abandons them when it doesn't. The series is a total mishmash of modern British culture and HP culture, IMO, and it starts getting dicey when we try to extrapolate aspects of modern British culture into our fics. If HP culture is Different, then how Different is it? Where do we draw the line between our own imagination and standard cultural mores? Case in point: I can't imagine modern wizards not using cell phones. I have incorporated cell phones in my fic and people have dinged me on it. I think they have a valid point, and yet it doesn't make sense. I want to have it both ways, and in a way I think you do. Writing on parchment with quills? This doesn't make sense but it's a lovely visual, and, as we know, JKR is nothing if not a visual writer.
As an outsider, I ask what is fair, what is foul? I want to write a fic on getting into Hogwarts. Being due deligent, do I use Eton or Harrow as a model or do I try to glean the process from the books and wing it? Is there a middle ground? As an outsider there seems to be no firm rules about what IS fair, what IS foul, which is why we have silly discussions about vernacular and where exactly to put the "fuck." Or is that period OUTSIDE of the quotation marks?
I'm not whining here, just curious. Some stories I have Brit picked, others not. It's certainly anyone's right to click away if a story doesn't suit or is wildly inaccurate (and I have a leg up--my mother is Irish, my father was Scots, and my stepfather is English). Having said that, from this side of the pond, it feels like there's something of a glass ceiling where you have Brits arguing about certain cultural aspects of an imaginary world that has one foot *firmly* in fantasy and another foot in modern British culture. So where does the fantasy world end and the real world begin? Personally, I think it's impossible to answer; it's entirely dependent on who is reading the fic. But I put this out there to convey the frustration that I feel when I read the back and forth about the pitfalls of Americans writing HP. Putting the "u" in color is easy, removing the "gots" a piece of cake. Deciding exactly how much modern British culture to incorporate into a fantasy world? I have no idea where that line is, and I don't think anyone else does either. Which is why it feels safer to me to take a majority of my cultural cues from the series as inconsistent at that world may be.
no subject
Not to mention, from book canon, that the Manor is called Malfoy Manor. Manors aren't traditionally named after their owner, the owner is named after it - Lord X of Y. It suggests a change of hands and a renaming happened at some point in the recent past.
I like writing Lucius as sophisticated, but really, I don't think it's justified by canon, and more generally the most an English person can legitimately aspire to is eccentricity.
Women may have secondary roles, though I don't agree. But even a secondary role is more than would be explained by an bringing in the C17th where women couldn't hold public office at all unless it was waiting lady to the Queen. And it's clear from the backstory / world building that witches have been able to hold such positions for a very very long time.
All things are possible if you can justify it as deriving from canon or some parallel with history. The difficulty is that the historical lens through which people view canon is so often derived from regency romances (and the least accurate ones at that). Theme park England. You can get the situation where the cues are wrong for both modern English culture and Historical English culture.
It still comes back to the point that I wear a horsehair wig.
Judges wear full bottomed wigs, and open the court sessions by carrying a posy to ward off the plague.
The Lord Mayor of London goes to see the Queen every year at the Royal Courts of Justice and tenders his fealty, picking up a blessing from the Dean of Westminster on the way, accompanied by representatives of the Twelve Great Livery companies. And he's done that since 1535. And then he goes home to oversee one of the great financial centres of the world with clever bastards selling derivatives and futures over computer screens to the rest of the world. The past and present coexist.
You may feel frustrated by people talking about the pitfalls of Americans writing HPfic... The original discussion was never intended to be prescriptive though, just illustrate some differences in approach and ideas. It could also free people from worrying about the arcana of English culture, because no one outside the UK is ever going to get the nuances of the class system, and nor should they be expected to. That would be ridiculous.
But imagine how frustrated I feel when someone tells me that an artefact of the Modern British World inexorably means that a society is backwards in some way.
If you want mobile phones for wizards, why not? You can sell it as a byproduct of an enthusiasm for all things muggleborn after the war, part of pretending that people didn't believe all that nonsense about stealing magic, honestly they didn't, why look at how fashionable this pretty fellytone is don't look too closely at what I did in the war children.
I don't see it as working with magic, but conversely I don't see it being ruled out if you have the right backstory and worldbuilding to justify it.