Wow have we been lazy. All of us sitting around and waiting for Apep to do book recommendations is fun, and he’s certainly got great taste and all, but frankly I feel as if we’ve been making him pick up the slack of our idleness and that’s just not fair. Although if we’re being honest here I’ve been pretty busy with graduate school, and I don’t have that much free time.
Voice in the Background: Then how is it that you’ve managed to read the entire run of Godslave?
SHUDDUP
There are tons of articles I’ve considered for ImpishIdea; a sporking of Iron Druid Chronicles for one. But because this one was on my mind with the recent Beauty and the Beast film, I decided to jump on it. I don’t know if this should be a “Sue Spotlight” article or its own thing, so for now I’ll just categorize it as a separate piece.
I have some beef with Hermione Granger.
Alright before I get lynched by the Internet I want to clarify: Hermione Granger as a character in the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling is a fantastic character. She’s memorable, interesting, well-rounded and identifiable, all the while being a genuinely flawed human being. Her place as one of the most celebrated fictional female characters of all time is certainly well-deserved, even if she isn’t the star of the stories that contain her. It’s no wonder that her popularity has skyrocketed.
All of that being said, pop cultural depictions of Hermione Granger tend to be anything but interesting or balanced.
Part of the blame can be aimed squarely at her depiction in the film series. Obviously in the interest of saving time and in the process of adaptation, parts and lines will be shifted around or deleted when changing a story from book to film. But for the sake of Hermione’s (and by extension Emma Watson’s) popularity, many lines or parts are taken from other characters (mostly Ron) and given to her, and she’s presented much more sympathetically and courageously in scenes in which she really shouldn’t be.
We don’t have to go far to find examples. In the original novel Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone Hermione is panicking about how defeat the Devil’s Snare, realizing that while it hates light and heat, she has no matches. Ron quickly reminds her that “WE HAVE MAGIC DUH” because despite her being able to recall things from memory, Hermione is never portrayed as an on-the-fly thinker. The first story spells out for us that Ron’s better at that sort of thing by having him win the deadly game of chess. But this ability to think critically under stress is completely dispensed with in the films—the first film has Hermione racing to think of the correct spell while Ron is wailing and helplessly screaming his head off in the trap.
Or let’s take the ending from Prisoner of Azkaban. When it seems Sirius Black has our Golden Trio cornered in a small room in the Shrieking Shack, Ron, despite having a broken leg, valiantly and loyally says he’ll get between Sirius and Harry if he has to, sacrificing his own safety for Harry’s. At least, that’s what he does in the book. In the film this line is given to Hermione, who steps forward while Ron doesn’t do much in the scene but lay on a mattress and whimper pathetically.
Or maybe the ending of Half-Blood Prince in which Ron and Hermione decided to go with Harry on his dangerous quest to track down Voldemort’s Horcruxes, both of them saying they wouldn’t dare leave him for a quest so important. Except in the film, this final scene has Hermione saying all of this to Harry, while Ron sits a ways behind them saying absolutely nothing while someone is volunteering him to go on a deadly quest to slay the Dark Lord.
The films paint her not just as the most book-smart character in the cast, but also as a straightforward action heroine. She’s the one who fearlessly decides to jump on the dragon in Gringotts; she punches Malfoy in the face instead of slapping him. It wasn’t enough to have her be clever, she had to also be the action star.
Aside from making Ron sound useless to make Hermione more badass, the films also made Hermione much more overtly emotional. In Chamber of Secrets she begins bawling when Draco calls her ‘Mudblood’; in the novel she doesn’t have a clue what the word means, as all of her reading didn’t cover any Wizarding slurs. The scene in Goblet of Fire in which “Moody” is performing Unforgivable Curses in front of the class (to the disturbance of Neville) actually has her crying at her classmate’s pain, and Neville being silent about it. Whereas in the book, she does shout but doesn’t cry. She certainly doesn’t call out a professor being insensitive, and Neville himself tries to pass it off as not a big deal despite being visibly shaken.
Part of Hermione’s characterization in the novels was that she really didn’t care what other people thought—and while that’s often touted as a virtue these days, the stories showed how often that got her into trouble, being blatantly insensitive to other people’s feelings and shoving her own opinion down other people’s throats at the worst time. She picked up on people’s feelings, sure—she explains how teenage girls’ minds work for Harry and Ron several times. But sometimes she just didn’t care how others felt if it didn’t suit her purposes. For instance, when Lavender Brown receives word that her pet rabbit Binky had died, she connects to Trelawney’s vague prophecy and is bawling her eyes out. Hermione emphatically asserts that it has to be a coincidence, and tries to enforce her point despite, y’know, the fact that Lavender’s not precisely in a stable emotional state after her beloved pet died.
And that’s just one example. She’s often openly dismissive of Harry and Ron’s obsession with Quidditch, spitefully makes little birds attack Ron out of envy, and loudly proclaims her Divination professor a hack because it’s the one subject she doesn’t excel at. She’s very abrasive at times, and the text wasn’t afraid to show it. But because her negative traits might make her less popular, they’re erased or glossed-over in the movies. It’s no wonder that Hermione Granger has become a by-word for female empowerment when her character’s film version is practically a made-to-order feminist role model.
Emma Watson went so far as to call Hermione “the glue that keeps them together” and “the one in control, the one with a plan” and that Ron was just “along for the ride.”
Yes, Ronald Weasley, Harry’s best friend, the one who is basically his brother and has been willing to lay down his life for his friends at least ten times over? He’s just “along for the ride.” And saying Hermione is “the one in control” makes it sound like she’s Harry’s boss, which she most definitely is not. The point I’m making isn’t that Emma Watson sucx and we should all hate her or whatever. But I do think that despite playing the Hermione on screen, or perhaps because of it, she doesn’t understand the dynamics of the characters as they were originally written in canon.
Steve Kloves, who wrote the screenplays for most of the films, admitted that Hermione was his favorite character} and I think that explains why her role is expanded as much as it is in the films. But even then you get weird interpretations of the story wherein people begin wondering why the plot isn’t about Hermione instead of the title character. This song from Hermione’s point of view (titled “I Won’t Do Your F***ing Homework”) made rounds on the Internet, and it’s quite amusing, but canonically doesn’t make sense. It has Hermione calling out Harry on his own arrogance and self-righteousness while she’s the one who gets things done…which doesn’t describe the relationship between Harry and Hermione or the plot of the stories in any incarnation of Harry Potter.
My problem isn’t with Hermione Granger as she’s written in the source material. It’s with how she’s represented in adaptation and in popular culture. Hermione Granger is not an omniscient gore-splattered warrior heroine surrounded by clueless useless men. She’s kick-ass, and clever, and smarter than almost everyone else in the room, but she’s also abrasive, insensitive, tightly-wound and skeptical of things that aren’t logical. Despite, y’know, living in a world filled with magic. Attempts to portray her as the ultimate woman who can do anything and has no limitations isn’t honest to the source text and it certainly isn’t empowering to women. Because if we’re saying that women have to be flawless intellectually and emotionally to be worthy of praise, isn’t that just as bad as the flipside?
Voice in the Background: How do you feel about her depiction in Cursed Child?
SHUDDUP WE DON’T TALK ABOUT THAT ATROCITY
Epke on 17 April 2017, 03:44 said:
Pretty much. For all of us that, on occasion, and when bored at work because the damn hydraulic bender has decided to stop working, browse tumblr for the laughs, will notice that a lot – a lot – of Harry Potter fans take things from the movies (looks, gazes, lines, actions, depictions like aforementioned) and retroactively apply them to the characters in the books: the comment, in some shape or form, “I had no idea Hermione/character X was this amazing” is thrown around with such commonness that it’s disturbing.
And this is even perpetuated by people not on message bords like tumblr: having seen the movies, they also apply mannerisms and character traits to the book characters when it’s not there. (I will myself admit to this partially: I always picture Dumbledore as the character model in the first Harry Potter PC game – but all others as Alvaro Tapia’s depictions).
And the friend that abandoned him twice, let’s not forget that. Ron, for all his touted loyalty and friendship, has abandoned Harry when he needed him the most twice. I think some people are quite bitter about that – somewhat understandbale in both cases (jealousy in one, Dark Arts object influencing him in the other), but still.
Because the screenwriters don’t understand the characters, quite honestly. It’s probably due to Alfonso Cuaron, the director of the third movie: he made the rule, which all subsequent directors followed, that if it doesn’t relate directly to Harry, it is skipped/rewritten so it does/diminished. It’s easier to have the protagonist to interact and be spurred on my one character (and it’s a female action star to boot, so two birds with one stone) than two people.
shudders I’ll tackle that… thing… at some point.
Miss_Morgan on 18 April 2017, 10:50 said:
Thank you for putting this nebulous but persistent frustration I’ve felt into words. And it’s not just the film depictions of Hermione Granger that have induced that feeling—I’ve felt the same toward Brian Michael Bendis’ characterization of Riri Williams. Bendis takes great pains to call attention to her intelligence, her skill with engineering and fighting, her ability to think on her feet, while glossing over anything that might be construed as a meaningful flaw. And while I understand that he’s trying to give audiences a positive depiction of an African-American woman taking up Iron Man’s mantle, it’s so devoid of any human flaws and foibles that Riri never feels like a fully realized character. She feels like a textbook Positive Female Role Model TM.
It’s your standard fanfic portrayal, simplifying a complex character to make them easier to write. Thorne did the same thing with Draco, giving him the exact same jerkass tendencies he had as a young teen so he wouldn’t have to believably portray twenty years’ worth of character development.
Juracan on 18 April 2017, 11:37 said:
Uh…everything ok there, Epke?
Huh. I actually had forgotten that, but you’re right. I do think though that those are both serious moments of his character that need to be remembered though. They were decisions built on years of resentment and feeling left out. I think considering Ron’s own traits and the reasons behind him leaving indicate that he’s not just “along for the ride” as Emma Watson indicates.
Probably because the movies are the most accessible form of the stories, I think. Interestingly, author Rick Riordan said he refused to see the movies based on his works because he was worried that the film depictions of his characters would make him forget his original ideas of how they looked and acted.
YES! I found a video review for Prisoner of Azkaban recently that argued it was the best movie because of how it was shot (despite narratively not making much sense), and while I agree, the camerawork is great, they argued that so many shot indicate Harry being alone, and that Harry being alone and having to face everything alone was the direction of the story. Which was odd, because it seems a woeful misreading of Harry Potter to think that it’s entirely about Harry being alone. After all, what separates Harry from Voldemort according to Dumbledore is his capacity to love, something that is brought up constantly.
DO IT!
Interestingly, after Marvel made that statement about diversity, the Internet has been scrambling to work out why they’re WRONG and I think this statement gets at part of the problem. It’s not about making an interesting character as much as a role model for diversity’s sake. And Marvel, which has often been about making supherheroes you identify with, is now sometimes just making characters who are too role model-y and that is less interesting to their readership.
The full complexities of that whole debacle, with Marvel though, are probably much deeper than that though. I’m not enough into Marvel comics to fully analyze it.
Ha. Not only that, but Draco’s wife was killed by the plot so that we wouldn’t see that side of him.
That whole play wasted so much potential. But as I said I try not to talk to much about that…thing.
Miss_Morgan on 18 April 2017, 11:54 said:
As a woman, I identify more readily with an interesting character of either gender than with a role model character of my own gender. Don’t get me wrong, I think positive portrayals of empowered female characters is desperately needed in fiction, because it’s been absent for so long. But I think that when authors set out to create an empowered female character, they focus on the empowered and female aspects and let the character fall by the wayside. Having film!Hermione’s portrayal hew more closely to book!Hermione would’ve done a better job of filling that gap. Putting more focus on Hermione’s flaws would have shown female Potterfans that you don’t have to be perfect to be a hero. Instead, we keep getting the same near-perfect heroines kicking ass and taking names alongside their more realistically flawed male counterparts, which unintentionally sends the message that to be a hero, you have to hide and gloss over your flaws, rather than dealing with them or—as in book!Hermione’s case—befriending people whose strengths lie where your weaknesses are, and whose weaknesses lie where your strengths are.
If that enormous zit on the face of the Potter fandom had any positive outcome at all, it’s that it made me realize why I despise the Lost Lenore trope so much: Had we actually gotten to meet Astoria, we would have learned so much more about not only Draco, but about this woman he married and why she chose him, how she influenced both her husband and son and how they influenced her in return. Instead, all we got was a lot of angsting about this incredible woman now lost to the ages. Maybe Thorne was trying to humanize Draco through his grief (which was unnecessary in my opinion—a character who is unable to kill someone he despises even under extreme duress is already incredibly human) but instead it just teases us with a wonderful female character we’ll never get to meet.
Not to mention that killing Astoria offstage comes across as a lazy excuse to not have to develop one more character.
Juracan on 18 April 2017, 20:08 said:
This is covered a bit in Limyaeel’s essay on characters’ gender and I think it pretty much backs up what you said:
It also reminds me of Kate Beaton’s “SEXISM IS OVER” comic, where a bunch of women come in shooting off guns and declaring that sexism is over because there are now strong female characters who shoot people.
Which is a great message to send to viewers. And I realize that when you’re turning a book series into a film series, not every bit of complexity is going to be conveyed as well. Especially with a series as complex as Harry Potter, which has an obvious plot but a bajillion things going on with characters in the background, the notion that a film will be able to translate that all onto screen is just unrealistic.
But Hermione’s characterization in the film isn’t just lacking in that complexity, it’s just plain lazy. “Want to be like Hermione? Then just be PERFECT!” She’s not a character as much as a manequin.
I think part of what really bugged me about the play is that it hardly introduces anything or anyone new. The plot is tied entirely to Harry’s past, rather than anything new from Albus, we don’t meet any of Albus or Scorpius’s classmates in any real detail, and all of the professors we see are just the same ones we already know. And Astoria is a symptom of that too. She’s a character we don’t really know, so she’s discarded early on so that we get on with everyone we already do know.
It’s playing on nostalgia (or at least familiarity) instead of doing anything new.
Epke on 22 April 2017, 06:45 said:
Yeah :/ You know that feeling when you promise your boss that this project will be done by the end of the day, and then the machine needed to do it just… stops? Anyway, digressions aside.
I am both in the yes and no camp here for on this question… on the one hand, Ron’s friendship and presence has been instrumental to the success of the party (playing chess for the Philosopher’s Stone, getting into the Chamber of Secrets for the basilisk fangs to destroy a horcrux… although, if mere imitation of Parseltongue can open the door, then it seems like a very shoddy security system), at the same time, he’s only been the third wheel multiple times (Chamber of Secrets: Hermione’s brains and Harry’s bravery more or less solved that, Hermione’s Timeturner and Harry’s Patronus saved Sirius, Dumbledore and Harry was the main plot in book six). So there’s probably some truth to what Emma Watson says, but it’s not the whole truth.
I wish Rowling would’ve done the same, tbh. But nope, she’s always gushing about how the movies depict things exactly as she always wanted, which is mind-boggling.
????????
That…. that is like the opposite of the moral of the story, no? Time and time again, not just in Prisoner, but throughout the seven books, it’s shown that working together achieves greater results than working alone. If Harry’d been alone, he would never have made it to year seven. The only time one could argue he was alone was during the confrontation with Voldemort in the Black Forest, but then he had the echoes of his parents, Sirius and Remus with him for emotional support. And even in Prisoner, we’re shown that acting alone doesn’t work: Sirius tries and fails, and so turns to Crookshanks and bam, teamwork works!
Having the cookie and eating it too, so to speak. People likes jerkass Draco, because he always got a comeuppence later on. But try and add twenty years of maturity to a character known for this, and people wouldn’t recognise him… it is, as you say, lazy writing.
Agreed. It’s Katara vs Korra, essentially. One is a fully fleshed out character with depth that just happens to be empowered and female. The other is Korra.
Juracan on 22 April 2017, 13:05 said:
Hang in there, Epke. I’m sure it’ll turn out alright.
Maybe, but the way it’s phrased made it sound like the reason Ron was even in the story was because he was some sort of thrill-seeker, rather than any inherent goodness in him, and that rubbed me the wrong way.
Here’s the video in question, from Nerdwriter1. He also argues that Harry being alone is the reason for the last scene in which Harry flies away from everyone on the Firebolt, which seems to me like it’s just a awkward ending instead of anything thematically relevant.
Then again, he also made a video where he argues that the Millennium Falcon being in Force Awakens is a great example of intertextuality, despite it being an important part of the movies that the film in question is a sequel to.
I think Prisoner of Azkaban has the strongest argument for being about Harry getting more alone, but like you said, there are plenty of examples of teamwork saving the day and love conquering. Harry and Hermione rescuing Buckbeak and then Sirius, for instance. Sirius not damning himself in killing Peter because of the memory of James. And of course, at the end Sirius becomes an important part of the cast—Harry can’t live with him like he wanted, but he’s still a part of the family in a way. He’s another bond he makes along the way.
Like I said, if you took the entire thing and said it’s about Harry being alone, then that’s a woeful misreading of the source material.
I think what’s frustrating about the Korra example is that they give her development, and then regress it for the needs of the plot. Oh good, she’s learned to be less headstrong and full of herself—oh wait, we need her to do that again for Book 2. Nevermind then. Back to her being willful and not listening to people.
In the case of movie!Hermione, she doesn’t really learn anything at all. Again, as she’s not the main character her development isn’t as important in adaptation. But I can’t really recall any point in the films where she’s ever shown to be wrong in a significant way. She makes mistakes, but never in a way that the narrative calls her out on. Except maybe taking McLaggen to the Christmas party?