Out of curiosity – because I loathe Draco too – what makes you like Hux but not him? Is it just the different ways they’re presented/that people react to them?
yeah, pretty much. like– the best comparison to make here is how i feel about malfoy vs. how i feel about bellatrix lestrange, i.e., i love bellatrix lestrange. love seeing her in the text, love her dialogue, she’s just a joy to read about. and the way she’s presented in the text is– if you’ll excuse the slur– she’s a bitch; the text knows it, the text revels in it. she tortures one of my favorite characters and the one i most identify with (hermione), she uses horrifying language and does horrifying things, she’s a domestic terrorist who wholeheartedly follows an ideology explicitly based on naziism.
and draco malfoy is also a domestic terrorist who follows an ideology based on naziism. the kid is hitler youth, there’s not really any way of getting around this. like, okay, he has a really difficult sixth year because his family has put him in a situation where he has to do a terrible murder that he doesn’t actually want to do. that sucks, you know. having to be hitler youth sucks. but that doesn’t, like… make it okay to be hitler youth.
but fans react more or less as if the opposite is true, as if the fact that malfoy feels unhappy makes it okay that he does evil things. as if, even though bellatrix and malfoy both call hermione a mudblood and curse her/her friends because they’re muggleborns and do their damnedest to get voldemort into power, malfoy feels sad about it– as if that puts him on a completely different moral plane than bellatrix. and, y’know, i disagree with that.
and bellatrix dies, and i cheer when bellatrix dies! every time! it’s one of the best moments in the series, it’s a crowning moment of awesome for molly weasley, bellatrix is so unbelievably horrible and deserves it so much, it’s absolutely beautiful.
but i keep feeling like there’s something i don’t get? people who say that malfoy is better, morally, than severus snape? people who think the canon cuts him a raw deal? and i’ve never seen anything in draco malfoy other than being a rich middle school bully who becomes hitler youth. (probably because, like. there’s so much pain and trauma in this series. me, i like that moment when hermione spins to harry and ron and says no, call me a mudblood, i am a mudblood, that’s what i am– i mean christ, she’s carrying so much, she’s so heartbroken and tired and she’s got the whole world on her shoulders, and i love hermione so much because of that moment of pain.
i love harry so much for smashing dumbledore’s office after the only person who ever promised to remove him from an abusive household dies. i love neville for that moment when he doesn’t want to tell harry & co. that his parents were tortured to death and he has to stand there and listen to his gran tell the whole story, and i love dean and george and cho chang– and i think their pain is more sympathetic and more worthy of attention than malfoy’s, because the kid’s pain generates from having to be hitler youth, and– forgive me– i’m a jew. i don’t find that pain sympathetic at all.
and i don’t find bellatrix sympathetic because of her pain. i don’t find bellatrix sympathetic at all, really. i don’t think you have to sympathize with a character to like them.
but people do sympathize with draco malfoy– that’s that reaction, it’s sympathy. and i think it’s kind of telling that fandom looks at, say, cho chang crying because her boyfriend is dead at the hand of magic nazis, and says “ew, gross, whiny,” and looks at draco malfoy crying because he’s magic hitler youth and says “wow, sad, beautiful.” like. i think there’s a couple things going on there and i think it’s pretty easy to see what they are.)
There’s just so much to unpick, I think, when it comes to Draco And Fandom. There was a discussion on my blog not too long ago about Draco Malfoy vs Kylo Ren, and it basically came down to:
- Draco is a Kylo whom everyone treats like a Finn, which is bizarre
- Well, okay, Draco is at least not a mass murderer
- He’s still a racist though, and he chose to be, and he chose to spend seven-ish books hurling bile and violence at people
- Alright maybe you could see him as like an (eventual) defector from a bigoted cult, like, someone who left the Westboro Baptist Church?
- Except that when that happened in real life, the defectors apologised for their actions and spent ages trying to make up for it
- And Draco never did that, never even apologised. He never did ANY real work, but everyone acts as if he did!
It just baffles me no end. Also it still weirds me out spectacularly how people will condemn other problematic ships (Reylo, Snape/Lily) with one breath and ship Draco/Indian or Black Harry or Hermione in the next. How are you doing that? That’s genuine curiosity: how? He’s a racist! He’s an actual anti-black racist: he laughs along with Pansy when she makes that crack about Angelica’s braids ‘looking like worms’. Why’s everyone got such a blind spot with him? Is it just because Tom Felton’s a nice bloke? What’s going on?!
(And don’t get me started on how horribly Cho Chang was treated by pretty much everyone. Yuck. I’m still surprised Katie Leung actually bothers to give Harry Potter fandom the time of day.)
About the Hitler Youth thing – yeah, that’s what gets me. Like, not too long ago, when my family was together and discussing their various histories, I mention my mum’s ancestor’s flight from Russia during my mum casually drops in ‘Ah yes, people hate us Jews!’. Like, I don’t even know if I really ‘get’ to be considered Jewish – I would assume some belief in God is required at some point and I don’t really have that – but my mother was, she went to a Jewish school and learned Hebrew and everything – and I keep wondering, does she say things like that as a joke or because she actually did grow up thinking people hated her for being Jewish? I’ve never dared ask. But if she did, was it because of people like Draco Malfoy?