The Slytherin Problem

Yay! I’m writing about Harry Potter! That means my view-count's going to shoot up this week…

Every couple of years I’m suddenly gripped with a compulsion to re-read the whole Harry Potter series. I don’t even think that Harry Potter is that amazing, as The Hunger Games has since come along which manages to condense a really good escapist read into just three books (in fact, The Hunger Games is basically The Goblet of Fire). Since most of the die-hard Harry Potter fans started reading the series when the first film came out, they probably didn’t notice how padded the series is. It’s hilarious how Voldemort conveniently only makes his move towards the end of term, leaving plenty of time for plot and character to develop and making his move just as everyone’s character-arcs begin to complete. If he’d decided to attack Hogwarts or The Ministry of Magic in November then the books would each be thinner than Heart of Darkness.

But that’s for another time. No, I want to talk about Slytherin.

For a book series that’s praised for teaching kids about prejudice and bullying, I actually really don’t like this. You see: Slytherin is a cult of absolutely, unquestionably evil students. You get put in Slytherin then you’re a bastard for life. You have no choice but to wear Slytherin like an armband and shun all other houses. 

And it’s not like being a Chudley Cannon’s fan. You don’t choose to be in Slytherin, you’re placed there by a sentient hat that quickly scans your brain before deciding what you’re going to be for the rest of your life. It’s like if on your first day at school you filled out a questionnaire that determined every single one of your future life-choices - and if you chose wrong than that's it. What if you went through puberty and realised you were more of a Hufflepuff guy. When I was a kid, everyone said I'd be a Griffindoor, but ever since my grades shot up suddenly everyone decided I was a Ravenclaw. Harry freaks out in the second book when he realises the Sorting Hat might've made a mistake - which is a pitiful lesson in tolerance. You're all equal and unique...unless you're in Slytherin in which case you should just go kill yourself. Hogwarts has about a thousand things that can kill you within it, so suicide won't be a problem....

The children in Slytherin aren’t evil: they’re tragic. They’re doomed to be placed in a house with a reputation for producing the scum of the earth, and rather than redeem themselves they’re supposed to fill this stereotype. You stave the dog then the dog becomes feral and you have no-one to blame but yourself when he bites your arm off. Dumbledore needs to stop acting so surprised when Slytherin children They're given no salvation and no second chance. This isn’t a metaphor for the Hitler Youth – this is a metaphor for racial segregation. The real fascists are all the other houses. 

To be fair, JK tried to address this problem by introducing Professor Slughorn in The Half-Blood Prince. He wasn’t an awful person, but…OK, he was a bit. Unless you’re trying to conquer the forces of darkness, you shouldn’t really know anything about horcruxes. It’s like the only people who know how to bludgeon someone over the head with an overfilled biscuit tin are murderers or writers. And I don't trust either.

There's all the whole Snape debacle, but even though it turns out he's exceptionally brave and modest....he's still an asshole. I mean, he could've for one second tried to not pick on Harry from day one. If I taught the son of a person who bullied me at school, I wouldn't exactly welcome him with open arms, but I would probably just ignore him. I understand that Snape is bitter, but not "five points from Griffindoor because I say so" bitter. 

I suppose there were already too many new characters in The Order Of The Phoenix, but are you telling me you couldn’t have had even one person from Slytherin in the DA? One Slytherin student fighting in the battle for Hogwarts? This could’ve been a really good character. A student placed in Slytherin who believes in muggle-born rights and thinks everyone else in Slytherin should stop being bastards. She/He could be intelligent and prefer to skillfully evade a fight, but isn’t down with the whole xenophobia thing. Everyone could be distrustful of this student, thinking she/he will betray them – but actually she/he doesn’t. The student becomes a good friend and proof that we don’t live in a world where every person has ‘good’ or ‘evil’ written on their foreheads at birth. 

But nope. Good guys wear scruffy everyday clothes and are all educated in the same place. Bad guys wear smart black clothing and are all educated in the same place – like the Conservative party.