← Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
Heroes & Halfbloods
01:08:06
What does it mean to be a hero in the wizarding world, and does being half-blood change the calculus? In this episode, Professor Julian Wamble examines the Battle of Hogwarts through the lens of half-blood identity, asking not just who fought but why,...
Loading summary
Transcript22 lines
- [00:01]
Professor Julian Womble
I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [00:09]
Grainger Advertiser
So what's the problem?
- [00:11]
Professor Julian Womble
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [00:18]
Grainger Advertiser
Wow. You need to relax.
- [00:20]
Professor Julian Womble
I need a knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [00:22]
Grainger Advertiser
I think it's laminate.
- [00:23]
Professor Julian Womble
Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
- [00:25]
Grainger Advertiser
Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana.
- [00:29]
Professor Julian Womble
Pick up.
- [00:29]
Grainger Advertiser
Fees may apply.
- [00:31]
Grainger knows. When you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:01]
When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:33]
Professor Julian Womble
Welcome to Critical Magic Theory, where we deconstruct the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Because loving something doesn't mean we can't be critical of it. I'm Professor Julian Womble and today we're doing something a little bit different. A little stopgap before we get into our Harry Potter moment. We are going to be talking about heroism, particularly amongst our half bloods. So this is kind of in advance of our superlatives Best of Half Bloods episode, which will come after Harry Potter. But it's a question and a commentary that we've had for since we started the podcast about what? Who is a hero? What does it mean to be one? How do we understand it? And as I was thinking through this episode, I realized that the metric that we created for Pure Bloods is in many ways specific to Pure Bloods. And yet we've tried to extend it past them into a space of Half Bloods, and that there are some meaningful differences. And so I have pulled the records and looked at what we talked about for Pure Bloods. I have surveyed you all on Patreon about what you think it means to be a hero. I have pulled the records for the Half Bloods that we've talked about. Save Harry. We are getting into all of it because I think that there is something for us to truly unpack about what does it mean to be a hero? What are the circumstances? In academia, particularly thinking theoretically about things, we often talk about the scope conditions, like what does it look like, how do we know it when we see it? You know, what qualifies a thing as a thing? And what are the qualities and qualifications that mean it's not the thing. Right. And we've spent a lot of time talking a lot about the scope conditions of heroism, but not directly. And many of us are operating with very different definitions. And then we get mad when other people say this person isn't a hero and this person is. And so this is an episode to kind of help us, even if it is retroactive, to think through our own understandings of heroism and then apply that to the people that we claim were the most heroic, both the Purebloods and the Half Bloods, and really think through what it looks like when we apply some of these logics to our existing characterizations of these characters. Characterizations of these characters. Wow. What a time. And so I'm excited for this episode because I think it really does set us up because obviously Harry is the hero of the series. And I'm really interested to see what we come up with in our conversation both here and in the post episode chat and in the Prof. Response episode as we think about Harry. So he's not gonna be the person that we talk about a lot because he's gonna have his own episodes, but we will have a very, well, I won't say very solid and firm definition. Cause it's very unlikely that we will have that. But we will have a better working definition of heroism based on the couple of episodes coming up to help us think through a lot of who he is. Have you ever wondered what the difference is between doing something heroic and actually being a hero? Or why we're so certain about character's heroism and so unsure about others, even when they're standing in the same battle, fighting the same fight? Or what do Lily Potter and Dean Thomas have in common, Y'? All. We are getting into all of it. Every single bit of it. Because that's what we do here at Critical Magic Theory. But you know what we do. I don't know why I'm singing so much. Forget it. But you also know that we have to bop. We have to bop. Because once you bop, the fun don't stop. And so we have to bop. And the bop is coming to you. In three. In two, we're going slow. In one, let's bop. We need to talk about harry potter. Sa. I hope you danced. Welcome back. Welcome back to those of you who are joining us for the first time, those of you who have been with us since day one, those of you who are catching up, welcome back. As many of you know that this episode was supposed to be dropping earlier this month. I guess when I'm recording this, it won't be this month anymore. It'll be last month earlier last month for the Battle of Hogwarts Day, also known as Diva Down Day Part two. But one life happened and I just couldn't bring it to fruition. And also as I was thinking through what I wanted the episode to be, I thought we need a little bit more time, we need a little bit more exploration. And I think I really felt not I think I really felt like I wanted to have all of the characters except for Harry as part of this discussion and I wanted to have the data for them. And now we do. And I'm very excited about that because it means that we get the opportunity to really explore and, and compare and contrast and I can't wait to see what you all bring to bear in the post episode chat. Speaking of the post episode chat that Happens on Patreon patreon.com criticalmagictheory where you can join for free and you get access to the post episode chat. If you want to join as a paid subscriber, you can be a chronic overthinker, a deep diver, an outstanding owl. There are a ton of perks that are outlined online. If you are a chronic overthinker or a deep diver, you can join our discord where all the things happen and it's so much fun. This is a vocal episode. I think I promised you one last time and didn't give it. So now I'm delivering on that promise and you are welcome. Also, important merch exists and I'm going to Cancun tomorrow and I'm going to be wearing and beta testing the crop tops. I got a hoodie crop top. I got a black crop top and then I gave my sister A white crop top. Because a white crop top was a little bit too much of a crop top for me. So I gave it to my sister. I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe I'll run into someone who knows the podcast at this resort. Unlikely. But in the event that I do, all publicity is good publicity, friends. If you want to find the Merch, go to criticalmagictheory.com and then hit the merch button and you will be apparated to that place. What else is there? The Harry Potter survey is up and running and it will be linked in the summary for this episode. You can also find it on my social media links Instagram, Prof. J.W. tikTok, Prof. W. It's all going to be there for you. The things are rolling in, the takes are being taken and I will be. I was supposed to send it to the listserv and I really dropped the ball. But you know what? You know what? We're not even going to. We're not going to name it as dropping the ball. We're going to say, I'm just giving you more time. I'm giving you more time to collect your thoughts listserv because I really want you all to be prepared and I don't want you to spend that much time having to think, to ruminate and think through while you're looking at the survey. So I'm giving you all the time. It is also available@criticalmagictheory.com if you hit survey, it will pop up. It's there for us. And so I'm excited for that. I think this episode will help us really contextualize our thoughts on Harry, particularly as it pertains to heroism. But before we even get to that, we've got to get to the heroes of it all. And so I'm gonna play a little music and you all are gonna get your thoughts together and you're gonna get your minds and your spirits prepared because there are gonna be some things in this episode that I don't think you're gonna love from me. And to that I say, what else is new? But also, that's okay. You can't have it all.
- [11:16]
Grainger Advertiser
Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [11:46]
When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [12:16]
Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Granger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [12:53]
Professor Julian Womble
Since the podcast began, one of the bigger questions that we've always had to grapple with is who? Who is a hero and whether X character is a hero. And many of us have lots of thoughts about the who's the what's the whens, the where's, the whys, the hows. And it's always been so fascinating to me because when we first started on our journey together and we were talking about pure bloods, we had such a clear definition, right? I think I was the one who kind of promoted the idea that the Battle of Hogwarts and the participation therein was really the solid delineator of whether a person was a hero or not. And I think that there was a world where it made sense to me at the time because so many of these purebloods didn't need to be fighting in this battle because there was so little seemingly at stake for them. And we kind of brought that with us into our half blood conversation. But now things get a little bit different. Did I see her? Because when we think about, you know, whether someone needs to be fighting in the at the Battle of Hogwarts, questions arise and to what extent does their blood status play a part in the necessity? And I've also had a bit of a change of heart. We've been at this for a couple years now, and you all have brought Some new things to my mind. And so I think that it's high time for us to kind of revisit the definitions that we've been leveraging, right? And some of us have been using very different ones. Some of us have been very generous in our naming a person as a hero. Some of us have been very stringent in our defining what it means to be a hero. And I think this episode will really help us think through that. And then at the end, we will look at the Battle of Hogwarts and, and apply some of this to that moment and see what we find. And so I want to begin with using the definitions that came from you all as a means by which to kind of ground our conversation and also complicate some of what it is that we are thinking about, because that's what we do here, we complicate it. And so I asked the question on Patreon and you all, as you do, as you do, delivered. So I'm going to read a couple of the definitions provided and then there is a really interesting, not division, but kind of wrench in some of these definitions that one of us brought to bear. And then I'm gonna wrench it even more. So to begin, Nadia wrote for me. To call someone a hero, they need to show integrity and intentionality in their heroic acts, not just an impact on the final outcome. Snape, for example, is a bully who lacks integrity. So whilst he acts heroically and risks his life repeatedly, I can't call him a hero. To stand up to the Karrows and refuse to inflict the Cruciatus curse on children is brave. Those remaining at Hogwarts potentially risk the death of their family members for staying true to their beliefs. This type of integrity is rare and heroic. To be prepared to fight to the death without military training or a backup wand, again is rare and heroic. Lorianne wrote, I have had to reassess my definition of hero. It used to be that someone had to be putting themselves in real danger in an entirely altruistic way. They personally did not stand to gain. But that bar is way too high and it's thanks to the discussion on the podcast I have realized that I think right now I have come down to someone showing significant bravery and putting themselves in significant danger and and doing so for a just cause. Having read through comments, I think I'm seeing that there are maybe three things that people think about the definition of hero. The act, the intent or motivation, and the outcome. For some of us, one of those alone is enough. For others they need a combination. Jazz wrote, in general, doing, standing up, fighting for what is right was and good. I flipped those words. Even when there is extreme personal risk or cost, displaying exceptional courage in a selfless way that prioritizes helping or saving others over themselves. Plant Friend wrote, any act that attempts to subvert fascism is a heroic act. Whether it's trying to make allies of giants, battling Snatchers, not admitting you recognize Harry Potter's puffy face, or just making it rain in Yaxley's office. All of these involve serious risk. I think a hero then is someone who can be counted on to act heroically when given the opportunity. Everyone in the Order was a hero because you know they will always choose to fight fascism. Everybody who fought in the battle of Hogwarts proved that they can be counted on, even in the face of likely death and defeat. Cassie wrote my controversial take that plagues the discord. In a book full of heroic acts, I felt it necessary to set a high bar for the title of hero. Similarly, as I would not award the title villain to everyone doing villainous things, I did not feel I should reward the title of hero to everyone doing some heroic things. So my criteria for a yes is someone who makes a conscious decision to do something, a direct action that may put their life in danger or but will ultimately turn the tide of the war to the favor of the good side. It narrows it down to like five to six people overall for me. And then a distinction that was pointed to in some of the definitions provided but that was named explicitly here is one that came from Charlie who wrote for me, heroic and hero are two complete separate things. Lots of people can be heroic without being a hero. I think your point of turning the tides, this is in response to Cassie, would fit the definition of hero, but not the definition of heroic. So I guess the real question is whether we are looking to call these people heroes or simply heroic. It's here that I want us to spend our time really thinking through the characters that we have called heroes and whether or not they are simply people who have done heroic acts. And I should preface this by saying we are not. None of these definitions are the invitation to kind of make you change yours. However you arrive at hero is how you arrive at it when you take the survey. And there is nothing wrong with that. We're just pushing on it because, you know, we do have so many people who we would consider to be heroic. And the question becomes, obviously everyone can be a hero, but we also have had many meaningful and lively. Let's call it lively conversations about heroism. And I think that there's a world where some delineation is not bad in terms of trying to think through. Even if we can say that, you know, lots of people are heroes, like, who's the most heroic? How do we understand what that means? Because I think. I think of wicked at the very beginning when Glinda says, are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? And I was thinking about that as I was reading through the comments on Patreon. It's like, are people inherently heroic or do they have heroism thrust upon them? And as we prepare to have a conversation about Harry, I think that that question is one that really I have to wrestle with a lot because I think that there are meaningful moments where it feels like heroism is thrust upon not just him, but a lot of these characters, especially when we're thinking about children who don't necessarily have the agency to say no. And so questions then arrive about how we understand their positionality as not necessarily disempowered people, but people with certainly less agency and more dependency on the very individuals who are molding them into the soldiers that they become. Which doesn't take away from the heroic acts. But when we think about heroism as a concept, we are we thinking about it through the lens of the outcome, right as. As Laurian pointed to. And to what extent do externalities matter here? Right. When we think about, you know, the behavior of some of these individuals, some of them seemingly don't have a choice. Some of them could say no, but don't. Some of them feel like this is their job because they have been conditioned to see this as the thing that they have to do. I always think about, you know, Harry, and this is not a Harry Potter episode, but I think about Harry in the first book when he. After he's encountered Quirrell with Voldiva on his back. Not on his back, on the back of his head. But, you know, he's kind of like very frazzled. And he is like, I'm never going to the dark side. That's how I always hear it in my head. And it's one of those moments where it's like, yeah, babe. And you don't have to, but you also don't have to be the one that goes on the trapdoor. Like, you could just not do that as well. But there's this feeling of being compelled. And I talked about it a little bit in the last episode on Seamus, thinking about the not trusting of adults and the feeling that, like, everything that you do, it just falls on you to be the one to have to make things happen. And it's like, if you feel that pressure, then are you doing this of your own volition or are you engaging in behavior that feels required of you? And does that make a difference? You know, how do we reconcile the fact that these are child soldiers, many of whom didn't actually. I mean, some of them showed up, but some of them were just at school and the Death Eaters took over. And how do we reconcile that? And does that change the way that we think about this? And. And what's more is then how do we account for what I think is a really important part of heroism which is selflessness, right? The idea that there is no personal stake. But the reality is that everyone has a personal stake in this war one way or the other. So that's something that we're gonna have to unpack. But when we think about the actions of Lily, for example she has everything to lose and gains nothing more than the protection of her child which obviously is not nothing, but, like, for herself, right? Like she still dies. The act itself is very much for Harry, which is then what offers him the protection that keeps him alive for a considerable amount of time. Selfless, right? Harry walking into the forest believing he's going to die preparing himself to die and not to come back but to cast the spell of protection over everyone else and also kill the Horcrux inside of him so that Neville has a chance to be the one to end Nagini and then be able to ultimately kill Voldemort. Selfless. Like, there's no version in Harry's mind at the moment where he is walking into the Forbidden Forest to meet his end that he believes that he is going to be the one that he gets to. That he gains anything from this. And then we look at other people like Snape and we spend a lot of time talking about whether he was a hero in his episodes. And obviously we arrived at the idea that he is. But I think if we add in selflessness this complicates the narrative for him, right? Because his acts are real. But the reason why he does what he does is not out of selflessness, it's out of remorse, it's out of guilt, it's out of a desire to find some level of absolution with whomever. It's for his own penance. And I wonder, does that matter for us? It matters to me, right? Like why people do a thing matters to me. I know the outcome for some of Us, we only care about the outcome. If Voldiva drops, then who cares how we arrived there? But I'm a destination, girly. I wanna know how we got there. I wanna know how we arrived in that place. That matters to me. And so it's never lost on me that yes, Severus Snape made many, many, many a sacrifice. But I'm always asking the why? And I think that as we think about, you know, the difference between being a hero and doing heroic things, and even if the outcome looks the same, the destination, the journey looks different. And I'm, and I'm wondering how we can then take this, these definitions that have been offered to us, right? The idea of this distinction between heroic and hero, the idea of having something that has to turn the tide for the war, right, that makes a massive difference versus simply being a part of the subversion of fascism. Risking one's own personal, like personal well being, right. I think that there's a way that, you know, we get all of this. And then also again, and I think Nadia touches on some of what I'm touching on too, which is the, the question of intentionality, like why are you doing this? And Nadia points to a lacking of integrity and being a bully, right, to kind of undercut Snape. And I think that there's something to that. But I also think the question is, I think the why is the question for me, like why are you doing what you're doing? And that to me is a really important part of our thinking about what it means to be a hero. And I'm intentionally not giving us answers because as you all know, my job, my self purported job is never to tell you what to think. That's not my goal. This is not a dictatorship. Not in this domain at least in other domains for sure, but in this domain not so much, but rather to complicate the way that we think about things in hopes that you get pissed and you will yell and scream in the post episode chat, but also to invite us to think about our willingness to bestow the title of hero on people who may or may not fit our metrics. And also because I often like you, find myself being very malleable in my own understandings of what it means to be a hero based on characters, whether I like them or not. You remember how reticent I was to give the title of hero to Snape, and now I found a way to explain why. And so part of what we're doing here is not necessarily answering the question, but thinking more deeply about the Answers we've given in the past.
- [29:49]
Grainger Advertiser
When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because they there's no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [30:19]
Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, Filters ready to clog. H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [30:54]
Professor Julian Womble
So what we're going to do next is think through what we did in the past. Take a time Turner with me friends. We're going back to our Pure Blood days. It's my new hit single, Pure Blood Days. It's coming out soon, so just be on the lookout for that. But in the meantime, between time, we need to just think about what we did before. And so thanks to Cassie, shout out to Cassie, who has compiled all the data from all the surveys and has fortunately made it very readily available to me so that I can be able to do something like this. So when we looked at Heroes for Purebloods, our top three, which is technically four, but you'll see what I mean in a second. Neville with 97% of people saying that Neville was a hero. Fred and George with 80% saying that they were heroes, and Ginny with 75% saying that she was a hero. Now when we think about these individuals, I think it is clear to me why Neville. And part of me is like, it's because his arc is so good, right? I think we see Neville engage in heroic behavior left and right even before the Horcrux hunt of it all. We see him stand up to Ron and Hermione and Harry. We see him stand up to Malfoy multiple times in book one. We see him grow and blossom. We see him at the Department of Mysteries. We see him, you know, really just become an incredible person who becomes less and less afraid of life as time Goes on. And so it makes sense to me why we would think about him this way. And when we think about Neville and we think about the definitions that we have, yes, so much of his existence operates from the space of, you know, doing heroic things, right? But when we think about his intentionality, Neville is a pureblood. Neville knew that his pure bloodedness would keep him safe when he was standing up against the Karrows. He knew that it would keep him safe when he goes and looks Voldemort straight in the face and is like, girl, even with Harry dead, we're not checking for you. Like, he knows the privileges that his blood status offers him. And so everything he then does, right, comes from a space of selflessness, right? Like there is a world in which he knows that at the end of the day he could lose his mind, right? Allah, his parents, but won't lose his life, huh? And that makes a difference because I think he recognizes the privileges of it. And we know that Ginny does as well, right? Because it is the two of them who basically lead their rebellion against the Keros and the Severus Snape regime at Hogwarts during the seventh year and or his seventh year, Ginny's sixth year. And so there's a way that we can understand that and we can understand this for both of them, right? That when we look at the different definitions of what they do, the stakes, the personal risks, the justification for the why, the intentionality, the selflessness, it's there. And the same thing for Fred and George, right? Fred loses his life. Both Fred and George are willing to ride with Harry at the beginning to get him to the burrow, right? Like there is an understanding of the risk and they're kind of excited by it. And I think, like, we can see why they fit the definition of hero so well because so many of them make these choices that offer us such a clear indication of just how willing they are. But part of me wonders, and I'm interested to hear what you all think about this. Is it easier for purebloods to be heroes than everybody else? Is it simpler for them? Because while there are stakes, they are ostensibly lower, right? Like they don't necessarily have the same concerns, right? Like their concerns are more ideological than they are physical, right? You know, what happened to Neville's parents obviously is not something that could not happen to other people. But there's a very particular reason for the why there, right? They were looking for Voldemort and believed that they knew where they were. We know that Voldemort is not really anxious to spill pure blood. Blood and Neville all but names that in Half Blood and not Half Blood, Prince in Deathly Hallows. And. And I just wonder, right, like when we think about the risks and the selflessness that we contend at least, are part of the kind of conglomeration of definitions that we brought to bear for what it means to be a hero. Is that easier to come by when you're privileged, when the stakes feel lower, when you don't have to necessarily think as hard about the implications of your actions because there's such an awareness of, and maybe a lack of awareness of who you are in the grand scheme of things. And so it offers you the ability to be more cavalier, which doesn't take away any of what you have done. But it invites us to think about when we bestow the title, is it easier for us to do that for people who are pure blood because they can actually act in more heroic ways, because they recognize that they stand to lose less than people like Dean Thomas or Seamus or Harry? Right. Does the privilege of pure bloodedness permeate the work that these individuals do to subvert evil and fight fascism in such a way that they are more inclined to engage in heroic acts and also better positioned to turn the tide because they have the positionality to do that given their blood status? I just made that up, y'. All. But it's, I think, a really interesting question for us to think about because I think obviously Neville is, I think of all the characters, he's the highest rated hero. And we also know more about Neville, right? Like how much of narrative plays a part in the way that we're able to define pure bloods, not purebloods, divine heroes rather. And I think, right, like Sirius doesn't even make this list. But Sirius dies as well in the battle. He dies in a battle. In the battle of the Department of Mysteries, he dies. I wonder why it is that he wasn't here, right? Like he was a person who was being blamed for everything and yet still showed up to protect Harry. He didn't stand to gain much of anything. I mean, I guess ostensibly maybe his. His freedom, but who knows? It's interesting too because we also see that Seamus is a half blood who is also very much part of the rebellion, who is also bloodied. And yet, as we'll talk about a little bit later, he does not experience the same level of belief that he's a hero, even though ostensibly his half bloodedness puts him in a higher position to be killed than Neville. And Ginny. So when we think about Purebloods and the purebloods that we've named as heroes, what makes it so easy for us to name them? And how do we reconcile their position within society and the ease with which they're able to do some of the things that they can do because they know that their position in society protects them and insulates them from some of the worst things that can happen. Not always, right? We know that this is true. We know this is true because we look at Neville's parents, we look at Sirius, we look at what happened to Fred. But on the whole, on average, they're fairly insulated. And that insulation does one of two things, right? It means that it makes it even more heroic that they fought in the first place. But it also seems to me that there's a bit of a shield there for them in this particular context, with this particular ideological lean playing a big part in what's happening in the battle of Hogwarts and indeed everything leading up to it. So how do we reconcile that friendship? How do we reconcile pure bloodedness and heroism? Meet me in the post episode chat. We're moving forward, y'. All. We can't stand the past. We gotta move forward. And so we had our conversation about Pure Bloods and I think it really helped. And I was actually excited because I'm like, well, this is the first time we're able to do this because we finally have two groups of people that we've talked about and can compare and that is meaningful. And so now that we've done that comparison, and I think it offers us a really solid baseline for thinking about our own understanding and past conceptualizations of heroism. And I think that part of the question of, you know, is it easier for Pure Bloods to be heroes Also then informs are the ease with which we arrived at who is a hero and who is not. That was then complicated upon moving into our conversations about Half Bloods. Because half Bloods, as I said at the very beginning of this unit section, season whatever, is that it doesn't have the same kind of social connotation and understanding because it's such a varied catch all of an identity, right? Everyone is a half blood because you got two half blood parents, one Muggle born parent, one pure blood parent, one half blood parent. With a Muggle born parent, one, a Muggle parent and a Pure Blood Muggle parent and a half blood. It just. The combinations are endless. They keep going and going and going. And so in some ways, and this spoiler alert is in chapter One of my forthcoming book, which I found out. I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you this, I. Keep it. I feel like I said that every time. It's coming out December 1st. Anyways, get ready, all right? Get your minds and body ready for that. But what I say in the book is that being Half Blood is less about your heritage and more about your kind of nature versus nurture experience, right? Because we have so many different Half Bloods who experience so many different things and their orientation in the magical world matters, right? Seamus and Harry are both Half Blood, but live completely different lives and have completely different experiences within the context of the magical world. And so we also, because of that, we also don't necessarily have as clear of an understanding of what Voldadi's regime and its relationship is with Half Bloods. We know that when Harry called Tommy Riddz a Half Blood to Bellatrix, she said, you shut your mouth. I don't like the way that you're talking about my man. Huh? I don't like that she called him a filthy Half blood, right? Which is interesting because normally we don't hear that many slurs cast in the direction of Half Bloods, but in that moment we do. Which suggests to us that there is kind of a very. There's variation, right, depending on who you are and what your subscription to Pure Blood Supremacy is. And so the experiences of Half Bloods tell us a very particular kind of story about the stakes that these individuals bring to bear when it comes to their heroism and the acts and the heroic acts that they engage in. Right, because some of them do not have much of a stake in the magical world at all, which means that the, you know, indoctrination project didn't work the way that the Ministry wanted it to. Some of them are very much inculcated in the magical world and it's all they've ever known and they don't build a bridge. And one of the things that we're gonna talk about when we do our Superlatives episode, right, is the kind of definitions that we brought to bear at the very beginning of our conversation around Half Bloods was about this idea of bridging the gap between non magical and the magical worlds and, you know, and whether or not you subscribe to Pure Blood Supremacy, right? And we really have a lot of people who run the gamut on this in very, very fascinating and interesting ways, right? So then when we think about what those individuals then bring to the war, the stakes, the experiences, their understanding of the Magical world. I think that does something to kind of the prerequisite of having skin in the game, because I think everyone's skin in the game looks different based on your experiences and understanding of self within this broader context. Right. And I think, like, when we think this through, right, when we think about different kinds of Half Blood characters and thinking about their heroism, I think it invites us to think about things in a very particular way. And so I want to spend time thinking through who our biggest Half Blood heroes are so that we can kind of get a sense of how we arrived at those individuals. So when we look at the aggregated data, Minerva McGonagall had 86% of people say, yes, she was a hero. Nymphador Tonks had 80% say, yes, she was a hero. And I was gonna say Teddy Lupin, Good Lord. Remus lupin had 73% of us say he was a hero. Now, when we think about these individuals and we unpack their stories, right, every single one of them existed in a way not exactly the same, but similarly inculcated in magical society, a la are Pure Bloods. We know that McGonagall was raised by a mother who was magical, who basically had forsaken magic for the sake of staying with her Muggle husband and was miserable and lived a life that was not anything that was enviable. We know that Minerva McGonagall saw that and said, it won't be me, and said no to the Muggle boy that she was in love with and said, gotta go, and came to Hogwarts, became a teacher, lived her life. We know that McGonagall is rock steady when it comes to her morals, what she believes, and her willingness to fight for those things. We know that she is probably the most dependable faculty member on staff at Hogwarts, and she certainly is the one who is going to be the most likely to hold students accountable and treat them like students. I know that many of us have our reservations about that particular assertion because she gave Harriet a broom, but we've already adjudicated that and we're not going back so that when we think about her as a hero, right, the stakes that she has, again, this feels very similar to purebloods. And I'm. And this might be a take that people don't like, but it feels very similar to purebloods because it feels ideological. Like, what is it that she herself stands to lose? Obviously, her students, people that she has raised, for all intents and purposes, right? Like that is not an inconsequential reality. And I don't want to take it away as if it is, but I also do. It is not lost on me that like, when it comes to personal things, right, like so much of what Voldemort stands for is what she is against, like the personal stakes which she has lost as a result of the regime is not as intense and. And she's another person who, you know, was able to stay on at Hogwarts to protect the children as best she could from the Severus Snape of it all. And so her heroism, it's interesting to me because of course she fights in the battle of Hogwarts. Hogwarts is actually her home. Of course, she is someone who navigates the world in a very different way because she lives at Hogwarts, she's raising all these kids, she's charged with taking care of them. But you know, when we think about heroic acts versus being a hero, I'm intrigued as to how we arrive at her heroism, especially when we bring to bear all of these other things, right? Like obviously she has the intentionality, obviously she has the integrity. Obviously there's a level of selflessness insofar that like, you know, what does she personally gain? But also though stakes, like, what are the stakes here for her? What does she stand to lose? And relative to other people, what does that look like? And then when we look at Tonks, many of us were very critical of her and Lupin for leaving Teddy to go and fight. Many of us also noted the fact that she is an Auror and that this was her job and that that does not negate her being a hero. But again, one has to ask, is this someone who's done heroic acts, heroic things, or is this a hero and is her job as an Auror to do heroic things? And then when we think about, you know, the turning of the tide for the defeat of Voldiva, does she do that? Does Lupin do that? Many of us were very critical of Lupin in the conversation surrounding heroism. We are very critical of Lupin and that when we. And then. And so I wonder the extent to which, like, when we think about both Tonks and Lupin, I think that there is a way for us to really have to grapple with some meaningful things, right? Like both of them are half bloods, magically embedded, but in many ways, right, Like Lupin's status as a werewolf is less stigmatized under a Voldemort regime for not great reasons, but still true. But what's interesting about Tonks and Lupin Is. Is that, you know, am I walking back a little, Walking this back a little bit? Maybe there's a world where they also have a child and so much of what they're doing. And I think Lupin gives voice to this when he says, you know, Teddy will grow up knowing that his father and mother fought for a better what a better world. And they pay the ultimate price. And they don't really gain a lot personally, and they are members of the Order and do lots of things. But I think it's a question of, you know, whether or not we would consider their actions to be a collection of heroic things or if because they were fighting against the broader structure that makes them heroes. And then how do we compare that to other. If Neville is, and he currently is, the benchmark for heroism, if we are comparing all individuals who are heroic or doing heroic things versus being called heroes like Neville, if we're comparing them to him, how do these individuals compare? Like, how does Magana go? How does Lupin, how does Tonks. How do they compare to Neville? Right. Like, they don't have the same identity to leverage in a way that privileges them the same way that he and Ginny did, but they also don't have the same stakes as, say, a Dean Thomas or a Seamus or a Harry Potter. Right. And so there's a question about how we understand them relative to our benchmark Neville, and how their own experiences as Half Bloods who have been socialized in the magical world and understand that world in a very particular way, how that informs how we understand heroism. Right. Like, obviously, I was going to ask the question, can privileged people be heroes? And the answer is yes. But is it easier for them to be heroes? Right. And then in the grand scheme of Half Bloodedness, because it is so varied and because McGonagall, Tonks and Lupin all have experiences, except. Except maybe Lupin, right. Because of his lycanthropy. But, like, they all live in spaces and places in terms of their proximity to pure bloodedness and the experiences they're in within the magical space. Again, Lupin is kind of outside of that, at least upon being bitten, so the majority of his life. But it's interesting because we don't credit Lupin's overcoming of that particular stigma to the extent that he is willing to engage in particular kinds of behavior, like fighting in the battle and exposing himself, like, as, you know, being a werewolf and being out in the world, we don't ever really give him credit for that. As a mark of his heroism, many of Us are very upset with the fact that he is, has left his child. And maybe it's not the second time, right? It's the first time. His willingness to leave his child. And it's interesting because his willingness to leave Teddy was under the auspices of fear, obviously, but also he was trying to help the trio, which would have turned the tide because undoubtedly they would have figured some things out much sooner. But they didn't. He didn't, they didn't let him. Harry said, get, get back home, take care of your kid immediately. And so there's a way in which this invitation is for us to think about within the varied spectrum, right? Like some of the lowest people who we consider to be the good guys are people who are further away from the magical existence, right? You're Dean Thomases. Like, obviously Seamus is closer, but like, Dean has a Muggle family, a mother, a stepfather, siblings, and the regime actively threatens the people he loves. And he could have disappeared into the magical world as we talked about, and he doesn't. He comes back and fights for this place, for a world that basically had him on the run for the better part of a year. And he doesn't have any personal stake in it insofar that, like, he fundamentally believes that they're after him, but he does feel compelled to come back and protect the space. And a lot of us have said that, you know, their initial assessment of Dean, and maybe even Seamus, is the byproduct of the lack of time that we spend with them. So then this also offers us the ability to think more about how much of our understandings of heroism in the series is the byproduct of time spent, right? Like we spend a lot of time with Neville. We grew up with Neville, with Ginny, with Fred and George, with McGonagall. We love Tonks as our cool aunt, our like, sad emo uncle, who we want better for, right? Like Harry has meaningful relationships with all six, seven of these people because Fred and George, but not with these other individuals. And so is our perception of heroism the byproduct then of a. Of just proximity to Harry, his own understanding of heroism? Because 69% of us said that Dean was a hero, which is not inconsequential. But 20% of us said, I don't know, which reflects that there may be a bit of a legibility problem here, that we don't know him well enough to trust him. And for Seamus, 51% of us said, yes, he was a hero.
- [58:43]
Grainger Advertiser
And.
- [58:43]
Professor Julian Womble
And 25% of us said, I don't know, and we then, as we kind of unpacked a lot of these things many of us kind of changed our tune a little bit on Seamus and Dean when we paid closer attention to the sacrifices that they were making. Showing up wandless on Dean's part being beaten and battered and tortured and abused beyond recognition on Seamus part by the Karos. And so then is it simply that we, that heroism requires externally legible things that we can recognize right when and, and, and, and we have to have full information about who these people are in order to appreciate what they've done? Is that what it means? Is that what it requires of us? And so now I want us to think about the Battle of Hogwarts because so much happens in the battle and so many things occur. Lives are lost, people are maimed, people's lives are destroyed. It is an outrageously visceral and vulnerable moment in these books. I don't know about you, but when I first read it I was so stressed because it just felt like everything was being torn asunder. I remember reading the moment where Harry walks past Lupin and Tongs and thinking I had they're not dead, they're sleeping, they're so tired. And I had to go back and read it over and over and over again because I, I couldn't believe it and I couldn't process Fred or Colin. I found myself in a moment of just being so overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the loss of all of these people. Some of whom I appreciated and some of whom I didn't. And when we think about the Battle of Hogwarts it in many ways is the culmination of so much of what we have been seeing. Right. Of the various, you know, heroic acts. In some ways this has been the heroic act that we have been using as the metric for our understanding of who is a hero and who isn't. But the thing that, and one of the things that people have really brought to bear many times, and I've said it multiple times throughout the episode is this notion of skin in the game. But the more I thought about skin in the game, the more I realized that everyone has skin in the game. But the kind of skin is different, right? Like everyone has a stake in the game, some of it is ideological. The idea that we simply just don't want a Voldemort led regime. We don't want Death Eaters running the world. We don't want people who believe in the subjugation and violence against Muggle born and Muggle people to be our leaders. We simply don't believe in that. And so the battle is a violent manifestation of our dissent against that particular ideology. Some of the skin of the game are people who have family whose lives are at stake, whose people whose own lives are at stake, like Colin Creevey, like Hermione. Individuals who are actively being hunted down by Voldemort and his government, who are actively on the run and feel the pressure and are fighting not only because they don't believe in the ideology, but because they are trying to protect themselves from what a Voldemort run world looks like. Some people are fighting for the future of the children that they helped raise, Allah, Maganagol, the children that they recently brought into the world, Allah, Lupin and Tonks. Everyone has skin in the game. And so when we think about the idea of selflessness and intentionality, it becomes even harder because we have to kind of make a distinction between is ideological, is a desire, or no, no. Is pushing back against an ideology the same thing as fighting for your life, for your well being, for that of your family. Are the stakes the same? Are the sacrifices the same? Is that the same thing as Dean showing up without a wand or Seamus being battered and bruised beyond recognition? Like, do those things, Are they equal? Should we even try to make them equal? Does it matter? In the end, is it okay for us to just say that all of these people, all these people are heroes? That the battle itself is a heroic act, but doesn't necessarily make people a hero? Because I think that many of us, myself included, have operated from the space of saying, if you were in the battle, you are a hero because you could have died. But now the conversation surrounding the definitions and really diving into the distinctions between the pure blood heroes that we named and the half blood ones, the variation in experience, the understanding of, of how their positionality within the world makes a difference in terms of what's at stake for them, invites me to kind of think about the taxonomy that we've created in a very specific way. It invites me to think about, you know, what is truly at stake for everyone because everyone has something at stake. But I would not, I would be so remiss to acknowledge that some people's stakes are different than others. Higher, more intense, more dangerous. We're living in a time now where none of, well, I won't say none of us, but many of us are so dissatisfied and afraid and scared of our friends and our families, navigating any number of things, whether those individuals be trans, whether those individuals be immigrants, whether those individuals be women, but everyone's stake in that is different, right? Like my stake as a cisgender black man is different than someone who is an immigrant trans woman. Those are different stakes, and we can be fighting for the same thing, but her fight is different than my fight. What she is navigating is different than what I would have to navigate. And so that when we think about heroism and who gets the name of hero, questions arise as to how context matters. And even within the context of the Battle of Hogwarts, everyone is fighting for the same outcome, but for different reasons. Everyone's understanding of things looks different. Their understanding of what their sacrifice means looks different. And I think that we have to account for that in a very intentional way. And when we think about what this means for our conversations about Harry and his heroism, I think we have to consider context. One of the questions that's on the survey, if you haven't taken it yet, spoiler alert, is, does Harry have free will? Does he get to decide? And does the answer to that question undermine the answer to the question of whether he's a hero or not? It matters to me. Is what Harry does, Is his journey just a series of heroic acts that were orchestrated by someone else? Does that matter? Did he have a choice. In his walking into the forbidden forest and dying? He had a choice whether he was going to come back. Maybe that does it. But as we think about hearing, as you all begin to, you know, think through your answers to the questions of whether or not he's a hero, again, if you haven't filled out the survey, if you have, it's locked in and you can't change it. Sorry. Not sorry, friends, but I think that there's a world where we have to consider the context. And I hope that this episode, if nothing else, invites us to really think about the difficulty of applying a uniform definition to a population of people whose privileges are so varied and thus the stakes of engaging in dissent are so different, and that there are people whose sacrifices look more egregious and in some ways are, but are also cushioned by privilege. And in my personal opinion, I'm like, those are the people who should be out here doing it, right? Those are the people who should be making those decisions because the stakes are different. The cushion of privilege offers you the ability to have some sort of buffer. Not, but buffer, but a buffer. Maybe the buffer does cover your butt, but that's not the point. A buffer. It should be the Nevilles, it should be the Ginnies, right? Because they recognize the privilege. And that's the first step, right? They recognize the privileges that they have and they do the work. But does that make them more heroic than a Dean, then a Hermione, then a Colin Creevey? Individuals whose lives could easily be upended, they don't have the same kind of protection. They're operating from a very particular space that doesn't have the same kind of privilege. And when we account for that context and the reality that we spent less time with so many of our half blooded characters, it feels like the bar for hero is higher for people who don't have the privilege of doing very, very, very intense heroic acts. And even without that privilege, so many of them do, but we don't reward them for it. And that is worth unpacking. Foreign. This has been another episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and if you like today's episode, first of all, thank you. Please feel free to like, rate, subscribe and do all the things that one does where pods are cast, y'. All. I was not sure about this episode, but I'm so glad that we did it because I think it is the perfect setup for our conversation surrounding Harry. If you have not given your thoughts on Harry, listen, you can find that survey everywhere. Social media Prof. JW on Instagram ProfW on TikTok on our website criticalmagictheory.com on Patreon patreon.com criticalmagictheory in the summary of this episode, I know that people had some takes in this episode that you didn't like and I want you to show up in the post episode chat and tell us every single thing y'. All I want to hear from you and I can't.