Sex scenes impied in Harry Potter??

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Posted: 14 years ago
#1
I found a very interesting article that takes a somewhat humorous, but surprisingly valid re-look at some of the events described in the Harry Potter series.




The 5 Most Depraved Sex Scenes Implied by 'Harry Potter'

By: Jacopo della Quercia September 01, 2011 2,007,362 views
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The Harry Potter series has sold billions of dollars worth of books, movie tickets and DVDs because it's one of those rare series that children can enjoy but won't make adults want to gouge out their eyes.

Author J.K. Rowling had a way of throwing a bone to the grown-ups here and there by slipping in sly little adult references along the way. It's usually done in subtext (like the elderly wizard Dumbledore's homosexual relationship with the male wizard Grindelwald), but sometimes it's right there in the open for anyone perceptive enough to get it.

And sometimes, that shit gets nasty.

#5. Dolores Umbridge Gets Gang Raped by Centaurs

Via Wikimedia Commons

Dolores Umbridge is perhaps the one person in the whole Harry Potter universe who is virtually impossible to like, no matter what angle you choose to piss on her from.

Via Hp-lexicon.org
She's like Mussolini and your nosy old neighbor, all rolled into one.

The short-lived headmistress of Hogwarts gets off on torturing children, has an unflinching holier-than-thou attitude and, unless David Yates has something stashed for an extended edition of the films, *SPOILER* she gets away with it. *END SPOILER*

Well, unless you count the part where she is abducted and gang raped by centaurs in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And if you think we're just filling in the rape stuff with our filthy imaginations, hang on.

Near the climax of the book/film, Umbridge is hauled screaming into the Forbidden Forest by a group of centaurs. No one sees what happens next.

What you have to realize is that there's a reason Rowling made sure it was centaurs who snatched Umbridge, rather than any of the countless other dangerous creatures in the forest (like the giant spiders). If you're familiar with the mythology of centaurs, seeing a screaming woman get hauled away by a bunch of them gives you the same feeling you get in Deliverance when Ned Beatty falls into the hands of the hillbillies, or when Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames wind up imprisoned by the same in Pulp Fiction. Centaurs rape human women -- that's what they do, that's a central part of their mythology.

In one legend, centaurs were invited to a wedding feast and attempted to rape the bride. In another, the famous centaur Nessus was killed while trying to rape a woman. That's the point of centaurs as characters -- they have the heads of men and the animal urges of horses.

Via Wikimedia Commons
And unfortunately, the ... um ... "equipment" to go with it.

People on the Internet familiar with the mythology were quick to notice this, as were feminist blogs. After all, showing Umbridge getting dragged away by centaurs would be like having Draco Malfoy getting his comeuppance by having him get hauled into the back of a windowless van by a creepy guy with a wispy mustache. We don't need to see what happens next if we know the context.

Getty
The thousand-yard stare of a woman who knows her centaurs.

Now, if that had been the last time we saw Umbridge in the series, then you could say, OK, maybe these centaurs are different, maybe they just trampled her to death or stabbed her or tied her to a tree and strapped a bag full of oats to her face. But Umbridge comes back, and comes back suffering from some kind of major trauma that didn't involve any damage to the visible parts of her body. Here's Rowling's depiction of her in the aftermath:

Professor Umbridge was lying in a bed opposite them, gazing up at the ceiling ... Since she had returned to the castle she had not, as far as any of them knew, uttered a single word. Nobody really knew what was wrong with her, either. Her usually neat mousy hair was very untidy and there were still bits of twigs and leaves in it, but otherwise she seemed to be quite unscathed.

'Madam Pomfrey says she's just in shock,' whispered Hermione.

'Sulking, more like,' said Ginny.

'Yeah, she shows signs of life if you do this,' said Ron, and with his tongue he made soft clip-clopping noises. Umbridge sat bolt upright, looking around wildly.

'Anything wrong, Professor?' called Madam Pomfrey, poking her head around her office door.

'No ... no ...' said Umbridge, sinking back into her pillows. 'No, I must have been dreaming ...'

Hermione and Ginny muffled their laughter in the bedclothes.

To Make It Even Weirder ...

Two characters watch Umbridge getting dragged away -- Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. At least one of those two knows that centaurs are rape machines. (Hint: It's Hermione, the character whose main purpose in the plot is to know absolutely everything.)

Via Scamp.ie
"So this is why you spend so much time in that library."

Neither of them make an effort to save Umbridge. Potter gets in a witty, James Bond-esque quip as she's being dragged away, and Hermione seems satisfied that mass horse rape is a fitting punishment. We like to think that on the way back to school, Harry asked "So what do you suppose those centaurs are going to do to the professor?" and that Hermione casually described to him how Umbridge would almost certainly be brutally violated by equinely endowed inter-species rapists. And that was the day Harry learned that you do not mess with Hermione Granger.


"No, you go ahead back. I'm going to just enjoy this for a bit."

#4. Magical Date-Rape Drugs Are Legal and Sold in the Open

When you have repeated murders, werewolf sightings and evidence of students getting tortured being wholly ignored by the grown-ups in the wizarding community, it only makes sense that something as profound as a date-rape crisis plaguing students at Hogwarts would be placed in the same "do not care" file.

And we mean that the magical drugs that make it possible aren't even illegal -- they're sold in the open, at the magical joke shop run by Ron's brothers Fred and George Weasley.


There's nothing magic about roofies, kids.

The love potions in the Weasleys' WonderWitch line alone include such adorable names as Beguiling Bubbles, Heartbreak Teardrops, Kissing Concoction, Twilight Moonbeams and, no joke, Cupid Crystals. Seriously, crystals, and each one of the products can be disguised "as perfumes and cough potions" to hoodwink Hogwarts' already AWOL authorities.

Oh, and do they work? According to the Weasley twins themselves, "for up to twenty-four hours at a time depending on the weight of the boy in question--"

"-- and the attractiveness of the girl."


In case you think this is just a scam by the jokers to hoodwink horny teenage wizards out of their money, we actually see a love potion in action later. At one point a female wizard named Romilda Vane (who according to Hermione "looked like she meant business") gives Harry a box of chocolates spiked with love potion. Harry doesn't eat them, but his friend Ron does, at which point he becomes a slack-jawed lust-obsessed zombie who has to be cured by a teacher just so he can function again.





I'd love to hear what you all think on this. Post away to glory!😆
Edited by sayali_babes - 14 years ago

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Posted: 14 years ago
#2
I didn't find the implied rape on D. Umbridge to be humorous. Somehow, I thought that was a very barbaric way of punishing her - as much evil and hateful as she can be, that's no way of 'punishing' someone. I guess more than the rape, it's the attitude that people deserves a punishment like that, and that it's no matter that it happened, which bothers me more. That's, of course, assuming she was, indeed, raped. I will freely confess that I never got the subtext before I came across this rather enlightening discussion from the IMDb board. I initially refused to believe that someone like J. K. Rowling would use such a barbaric mean of punishment, but after a bit of research on my part, I will have to say that this theory does hold water.

I don't know how valid this article is, but it does provide some interesting thoughts:

[quote] I should probably preface this by explaining the background of this project. When I was a Women's Studies student, I wrote a topic for an advanced upper division core course doing a feminist analysis of Harry Potter. While only 6 books were out at the time (and I only had a quarter - 10 weeks - to work on the project), I pursued it with full force. I'm actually in the process of applying to graduate school in the hopes of turning this small (it was 25 pages, so not that small) paper into a thesis or dissertation. With that said, please know that this project involved mass amounts of research and is still an unfinished work.

When I began this investigation/obsession, the last things I thought I would find were rape and gay bashing (among others) ... but I did. Because this project was (is!) so intense, I have broken this up into several articles. This week? The rape of Dolores Umbridge.

It has been fairly well document in various interviews that J.K. Rowling heavily researches almost everything - from names to creatures - that go into the series. Nicolas Flamel, from Sorcerer's Stone, is a real person and the story she used draws greatly from his legend. Many of Rowling's mythical creatures, names, and spells have a root in some legend, fairy tale, or story that she has borrowed from (something her critics are quick to point out). Knowing this about Rowling, the way she utilized the mythical half-man half-horse centaurs in Order of the Phoenix came as quite a shock.

According to centaur legend, they are not the docile, kind, and all-knowing creatures that Rowling chose to portray them as. The first centaur was a production of rape, and this beginning defines the remainder of centaur legend (1, p59). When invited to a wedding, the centaurs "attempted to rape and abduct the bride and other women" (1, p63). Centaurs were considered dangerous because they had "exaggerated masculinity" due to their "human male element being combined with the sexual potency of stallions, and thus they were characterized by violent lust" (1, p63). There were very few female/women centaurs to use as companions, and this was also blamed for their voracious sexual appetite.

In Order of the Phoenix, Rowling creates Dolores Umbridge: the amazingly unlikable Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who works for the Minister of Magic. Umbridge searches unwaveringly for ways to discredit Dumbledore and expel Harry. When she threatens to perform an illegal curse on one of Harry's friends in order to get information about Dumbledore's whereabouts, Hermione comes up with a plan to save them all: she'll lead Umbridge into the forest and let the centaurs take care of her. It is worth noting that Hermione, a female character who is extremely intelligent and known for her book-ish tendencies, is most likely sending Umbridge to this punishment knowingly. Rowling has made a point of using Hermione to provide the readers with information because she is considered to be very knowledgeable. It is worth arguing, then, that Hermione would know the violent history of centaurs and took Umbrdige into the forest knowing that she would suffer rape at the hands of a very violent group of half-men half-horses.

It is surprising that Rowling, known for the intense research of things she puts into her books, would use centaurs to "punish" Umbridge. Some evidence provided by Rowling helps to point us in the direction of discovering Umbridge's true punishment. Umbridge's usually neat appearance is changed in her hospital bed: her "mousy hair was very untidy and there were bits of twig and leaf in it, but otherwise she seemed to be quite unscathed" (2, p849). Despite lack of physical evidence, the students know something terrible has happened to her because of her physical and apparent mental states. When Ron jokingly makes the sound of hoof beats, Umbridge frantically sits up in her bed and looks for the source of the noise. Her reaction to this sound and her shock like state are symptoms commonly experienced by rape victims (RAINN). Why Rowling chose to punish Umbridge this way when she could have used many other means is unknown. The rape of Professor Umbridge is perhaps one of the most horrifying instances of violence against women in the entire series.

Next week? The stereotypes Rowling uses, and how they can be blamed for the gay bashing of several not-so-masculine characters.

Please note that this is a feminist reading of a text. It does not mean that I believe Rowling intended for these things to happen. When a work is published, it becomes something that is up for interpretation by many different disciplines. A feminist reading of a text finds hidden meanings and reads against the grain - it does not say anything about the author's intentions.
[/quote]

Source

Oh just as a side note, you should have posted this on the other HP thread running, or else, get prepared for WW3.
Edited by Beyond_the_Veil - 14 years ago
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Posted: 14 years ago
#3
That gives rise to another debate then--------Is "rape" considered a "fitting punishment" to a character that's nauseatingly evil and inhumane?

That is, one who is---a child torturer and a psychotic?
Edited by sayali_babes - 14 years ago
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Posted: 14 years ago
#4
Btw, POH, you didn't share light on the second part of this Article.

PS: I love popcorn stuff. 😛
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Posted: 14 years ago
#5
Cracked.com is a humor website. They are known for putting bizarre twists on everyday stuff. So I would not take them that seriously.

That being said I don't think JKR exactly meant things to be interpreted with a sexual context. However, there are many aspects of Harry Potter which can be interpreted in darker ways.
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Posted: 14 years ago
#6
^^ However, its true that Centaurs are imagined to possess Equine sex drives, and its similiarly true that JKR did research thoroughly on ALL the mythical creatures inserted in the series.

And I wouldn't be too quick to claim that JKR did not "intend it that way". She did drop hints about Dumbledore's homosexuality throughout the series, without any specific mention, and later openly admitted it at a conference.

Go figure.
Edited by sayali_babes - 14 years ago
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Posted: 14 years ago
#7

Originally posted by: return_to_hades

That being said I don't think JKR exactly meant things to be interpreted with a sexual context. However, there are many aspects of Harry Potter which can be interpreted in darker ways.


If you haven't, read the article I posted. It's a valid piece of opinion I'd say. When Umbridge was lying in the hospital wing, it was stated that though she wasn't physically injured, it was apparent that something terrible had happened to her. Going by the centaur myth, I don't think it would be impossible if she was (were?) raped. Though there ought to be scratches and bruises if she was (were?) raped. But I can't think of anything else that could possibly silence a woman like her, which doesn't involve physical violence.
Edited by Beyond_the_Veil - 14 years ago
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Posted: 14 years ago
#8
^^Who thinks she deserved it? 😊
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Posted: 14 years ago
#9

Originally posted by: sayali_babes

^^Who thinks she deserved it? 😊


Dunno. Why do your posts and writing style sound so vaguely familiar though?
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19th Anniversary Thumbnail Stunner Thumbnail + 6
Posted: 14 years ago
#10

Originally posted by: sayali_babes

^^ However, its true that Centaurs are imagined to possess Equine sex drives, and its similiarly true that JKR did research thoroughly on ALL the mythical creatures inserted in the series.



The equine sex drive is merely one of the many centaur myths.

There are several myths that represent centaurs as wise and just creatures. Chiron the father of centaurs is deemed to be a revered teachers whose disciples were Achilles, Ajax, Perseus etc. In fact one thing that Chiron is known for is his sense of justice and training his disciples to hear both sides before making judgments.

Centaurs have been portrayed as noble in television series Xena, Hercules as well as other fantasy fiction like Chronicles of Narnia and Percy Jackson. Considering how Firenze is portrayed, it is quite plausible that the wisdom and nobility of centaurs inspired J.K Rowling.

Even fauns (Mr. Tumnus from Chronicles of Narnia) are associated with satyrs and Pan. Creatures known for their high sex drive. Yet they also have associations with frolic, spring, music etc and like Mr. Tumnus are represented in children's literature differently.

Other than that Nargles, Blast Ended Skrewts, Wrackspurts, Crumple horned snorcacks, did not exist before Harry Potter.


Originally posted by: sayali_babes

And I wouldn't be too quick to claim that JKR did not "intend it that way". She did drop hints about Dumbledore's homosexuality throughout the series, without any specific mention, and later openly admitted it at a conference.

Go figure.



My exact sentence was "That being said I don't think JKR exactly meant things to be interpreted with a sexual context".

I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. And it is a legitimate thought, for maybe the centaurs were inserted for nobility and wisdom rather than their sex drive.

Secondly, it is one thing to have homosexuality and a whole different thing to have rape. You simply cannot compare the two on the same page.

Although at least to me Dumbledore being gay was a bombshell that was unexpected. I could not see any hints in the series indicative as such. There were other characters would have been less surprising coming out as homosexual. The movies though began making quirky additions to Dumbledore after Rowlings announcement.

That being said, what happened to Umbridge is an interesting question and from many perspectives it does seem to imply rape, which is a disturbing prospect.

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