Prof Responds: Seamus Finnigan- The Boy Who trusted his Mom

Normalista löytyy lähes kaikkea ja kaikki myydään pois. Viksi saatu web-sotenhammasta hän rain hintaan 250. Normaalisti 250. Eikä siinä vielä kaikki! Voit myös ostaa 5 omapakkaussa ja viédä kotiin 5. Tai josta v7-pouteri hintaan 4-70. Säästä jopa nolla euroa. Voimassa niin kaun kuin varastua riittää. Ja sen ja kentilan melisää. Normal! Pysyvästi edulliset hinnat. Olen Shannon Maldonado. Käsintehtyjä artesaanitua teitä myyvän jaujiin lahjakaupan perusta. Valitisin Shopify, koska alustoja testa testani totesin sen ehdottomasti yhdeksi helpokäyttöisimmistä alustoista. Minulla oli tärkeää pohtia kehittymistä me tulevaisuudessa. Kaikki myyntiin tarvittavat työkalut, kuten varaston suunnittelu ovat kätävästi dashboardissa. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu Shopify piste komsi vustolla. Viksi saatu webso-denhammasta hän lain hintaan 250. Normalisti 250. Voit myös ostaa viisi omapakkaussa ja viédä kotiin viisi. Tai josta v-70-vuotari hintaan 4-70. Normal! 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There's a couple of housekeeping things before we dive in. One, we've begun, we have begun the Harry Potter survey. I posted it on Patreon. It is in all the links and all the bios and all the spaces and places I have been posting on social media. I will post it again. I will be sending it out to the list of this weekend so you all will also get it. So just know that that's coming. I have also put it in this, um, the episode summary. So you should see it wherever you are streaming it from. You should be able to see it. We are doing this. We already have over 300 responses. And I've only put it out like a couple days ago. So this is going to be one for the books. Okay. I don't know that we're going to break our record of Ron Weasley's 1,000 two responses. We might get close. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I did a lot of work to get those numbers for Ron. And I'm in a different place in my life. So who's to say what I do know though is that some of the takes are scorching hot. And some of the questions I asked are chaotic. And I did it on purpose and I have no regrets. And I have no regrets. Because I think that this is our titular character. There's a lot for us to dive into. There are a lot of things for us to explore and to have a conversation about. And I for one and very excited about it. We have so much time. Because we have this episode. And then we have at least one more episode where we're going to be talking about the battle of Hogwarts and heroism for the halfbloods. I think there will be enough of a conversation for us to unpack that in a profference episode, which means we have two more weeks. And then we are doing Harry. So you have time to gather your thoughts. There are listeners whose parents also listen and are about to and are writing essays and writing responses. Someone wrote and listen. This take this as you will. But someone wrote sex is great. But have you ever been quoted on critical magic theory? And I thought to myself, you know, I mean, I do the quoting. So it's different. But if that's the thing that you're interested in, you can't get quoted if you don't give me a quote. If you want to find out whether or not the words that were written in the Spotify comment are true, you've got to write it. Now some of us may say that's a stretch. That's your business. Who am I to judge? Not me. What I will say though is that you should think about it. And you have plenty of time to gather your thoughts, the questions that we're asking. You can even look at the survey before you answer it. Again, it's everywhere. It's on my Instagram link. Instagram is a prof. JW TikTok prof.w. You critical magic theory.com. patreon.com/criticalmagictheory. It's there. It's all there. So don't say I didn't warn you. Don't say I didn't tell you. I don't want to hear any excuses. is when the time comes and you're like, I didn't get it, I made it available to everyone in every place for every time, in every space. So just do it friends. Make it easier on yourself. I know you have thoughts on Harry Potter. How could you not have thoughts on Harry Potter? Like everyone has thoughts on Harry Potter. And we all deserve to hear your thoughts on Harry Potter. And maybe if you don't share your thoughts on Harry Potter this time, how many times are gonna say thoughts on Harry Potter? Maybe you'll have thoughts for some of the profferspond's episodes. And that's cool to friends. But before we dive into that, let's get into shameless. - Mad Dan Eccles writes, "I struggled with the survey to find anything to say about shameless because he boils down to a series of Irish stereotypes executed with not much care. The Irish representation we get in the World Cup is pretty sickening given a moment's thought, outright cringe in the film. And very telling in the film particularly, they weren't playing a Bulgarian or Eastern European team." Lira wrote, "The Brits were actively jerrymandering in the North of Ireland in the 1970s. It was justified using a lot of stereotypes that shameless embodies, the Irish are drunk, stupid and violent. They can't make good decisions for themselves. That's the culture Joanne grew up in, perpetuating that was not something that she did accidentally. There are also several references to Irish mythology used by Joanne in pretty offensive ways, a quick example. The idea of losing a hand in service of others and a silver quote unquote living prosthetic being awarded as a replacement comes directly from Irish myth. Kind of new order, I don't know if I said that right. Lost his hand fighting for his people. The creation of the silver hand was an act of communal respect and inclusion and a symbol of defiance against powers that would have you other members of your own community. Compare that to what Joanne turns it into. In her book, "The Powerful Irish symbol is now a mark of subjugation, loss of autonomy and punishment." Mia wrote, "I am not here to defend J.K.R. and her idea of representation, but for the record, I'm pretty sure that shameless blows everything up." Quote unquote is movies only. Please feel free to correct me with a book quote if I'm wrong, I might have forgotten. And Lori and wrote, "I'm still unsure how much of the Irish day or type for a shameless is film as opposed to book. I never found time to go back and check. There's some elements, most notably the affinity for alcohol and the hot tempered, also general good humor. But I do wonder if this is something we retrospectively read into the book to some extent because of the film portrayal. But then J.K.R. was involved with both and signed off on the film portrayal. So perhaps it was our attention all along and she chose to double down with the film. It's my turn and I have some things to say." I think that this dialogue is really interesting because it highlights the reality that we were talking about in the last episode about the inability to escape kind of structural mindsets, particularly when you benefit from those mindsets. And I think that what we are invited to really consider when we think about portrayals of shameless both in the books and in the films is what are the things that the author of the text cannot get away from if they're not being intentional about this, right? If J.K.R. is not being intentional about trying to subvert stereotypes, then what you fall prey to is the presumptions and the pre-existing notions that you have about the community that you're writing about. And in that regard, I think that there is a world where shamelesses characterization is leaning in on stereotypes. And I think it is true and there was a conversation that was had in the discord that spoke to this in much more certain terms about the fact that the books themselves don't necessarily lean in as hard, but they don't shy away either, right? Like there are moments where we do see some of these things crop up in no uncertain terms, but that the movies really kind of amp up the idea of, you know, the blowing things up. And I think that the danger of that is not only the fact that J.K.R. did obviously sign off on all of these things and there are questions and we could quibble about how much control she did or did not have. But the reality of it is that for many of us, we watch the movies much more than we read the books. Now some of us, I know, said not me, I don't do that. Some of us do not like the movies and that's totally great, that's totally fine. I'm sure you've seen them though. I'm sure you have. And I think that there is a world where sometimes, like the movies do creep in and having the platform that they do have and the kind of ubiquity that they have also lends itself to our very particular understandings of who these characters are. And again, for many of us particularly, and I'll speak as a person who lives in the United States, right? Like I don't know all of the stereotypes that exist in a British Irish context. And so I'm consuming all of these things without thinking too much about what any of it actually means or what is or isn't stereotypical. Because all I know is that I hear a person with what I discern as an Irish accent. And I'm like, okay, well, he is Irish. And I don't have any sense of what that meaning is. And I've learned a lot from you all who have shared. And so I'm so appreciative of you for that. Because I do think that it is very difficult sometimes for those of us who are not in the context of a thing and don't have the history and the background to be able to truly grapple with what it is that we are consuming. At the end of the day though, what we are grappling with as well is the fact that there are lots of people who then understand Irishness this way. And that while the books may operate with some level of I took all the nuance, it feels too generous. But that like you would have to have some pre-existing knowledge of the stereotypes to truly be able to appreciate what it is that is being portrayed. I do think that the movies lend itself in very specific ways to make it easier for us to draw the connections between who shameless is and what we're meant to understand and believe about Irish individuals. And not only is that completely and utterly unfair, it's reductive. And it is not lost on the right that when characters are being written through the lens of a dominant mindset, then we tend to see those portrayals lean heavily on stereotypes. And that might then lend itself to the why in terms of why people were willing to use the word Irish as a descriptor. Because to many of us, it holds a certain kind of meaning in a way that might not have been true for other characters, whose characterizations weren't contingent on certain aspects of their identity. And I said that in the last episode, but I think it bears repeating, right? Because I do think that when we're talking about social constructs and things that are human-made and the meanings that are made by us as a socially connected group of people, what we tend to do is that we create a meaning and then we leverage that meaning in order to help us seemingly understand this group of people better or understand ourselves better in relation to that group. And in so doing, we reduce any sort of voice that those people in this other group may have in terms of allowing for their truth to be told. And I think that what Shamus offers us is the ability to think more deeply about what assumptions we may or may not be making. and I think that this is one of the ills of, of, of, like, purporting diversity without actually having diversity, like having an Irish person there, but not actually, and all we know is that, okay, your Irish thus you care about, you know, the Ireland Quidditch team. But like, what does that actually mean? Who are you outside of that? We don't know. And again, I know that every character can't have an arc, but I think that there's a world where like, we lose so many things and are actually invited to kind of lean into our own worst angels and our own kind of pre-existing notions about what it means to be a part of a nationality like Irish without thinking about necessarily where those beliefs come from. And, you know, I thought about this for Cho Chang as well because there are a lot of people who are very, very, very confused as to why in the movies, Cho had a Scottish accent because they didn't in their minds think that a character named Cho Chang would have that kind of accent. And I think without correcting us and because Cho doesn't have a story, it's like, well, we have a very particular expectation of what all of this is going to look like and we filled in the gaps. And we did the same thing with Chamus Finnegan and what we're given to fill in the gaps are stereotypes. And that is dangerous and problematic. The next thing that we're going to be talking about is one that looks at Hogwarts as an institution of British colonialism. As Sarah writes, the fact that JK couldn't fathom a place like Ireland having its own magic school, her colonial mindset is showing, Ireland has more roots in magic and paganism, etc. than the UK. And so true about the fact that she had an Irish lad overly disciplined by British people than the British students. They used to beat Irish kids for speaking Irish in school and wanted to and wanting to practice Catholicism. So we had to go to hedge schools to learn from our own people. So yeah, not surprised by JK regarding Chamus' characterization. Easter wrote, as I was listening, I realized for the first time that Hogwarts is as far as we know the only school available to the students in the entire UK. So Irish families have to send their kids to a school run by the British. And Cecilia wrote, there are just so many things to unpack with this one. Admittedly, I didn't learn about the troubles or the good Friday agreement until five or six years ago. And that's when it clicked to me that Ireland is an actively occupied country. That is also when I learned about the continued oppression of Irish people to this day. Looking at this material now through that lens makes the defensiveness of Chamus' portrayal very clear to me. It's even more offensive overall when you realize that despite being an independent country, Ireland doesn't have its own ministry of magic because the British ministry of magic is the governing body for the UK and Ireland. All I have to add is listen to Irish voices on this thread, which was on Patreon. And if you don't know about the history of imperialism and colonialism in Ireland, go read about it. It's my turn. I want to focus our energies on the fact that Hogwarts, I want us to focus our energy on the role that Hogwarts plays in this, right? Because again, this maps on very nicely to the conversation that we've been having about the author of the text bringing to this world, not only what she knows, but in some ways what she believes is okay. I won't say good, I won't say bad, I can't place any sort of moral aspect to what she's doing. But I can say that because she wrote it, it's clear that she, her editors, the publishers, all the people believed that this particular choice was right. And we know in post canonical lower that there are other schools, right? Like we know about UgoDoo, we know about Dermstrand, we know about Bobat's Hawn, we know about the Ilvermourney, we know about the school in South America. And then the one that's meant to just, I don't know, like all of Asia. And so it's clear to us right that there was an expansion, but it's basically just continent specific, which I find to be, although Europe is a continent, it has three different schools. So then, well, that kind of busts that argument wide open, doesn't it? But it also is interesting when we think about the fact that a country that seemingly operates outside the realms of the UK has to, at least the magical population are confined to what it is that the magical community in the UK want, those are the laws, right? And it is interesting to me because it's like, when given the opportunity to create a separate space, it wasn't created. But then also thinking about what it is that Hogwarts has been teaching, like, is Irish lore and Irish magical communities? Are they included in this? Right? Like if we are including individuals from this particular space, are we then including their stories? Are we or are we only using things from the kind of UK as the basis for our understanding of say, like history of magic? We know that other spaces and places that magic doesn't always look exactly the same, that the spells aren't going to be the same. How people do magic isn't going to be the same. And we don't get any sense of the inclusion of any of these other things in the kind of UK system that we operate in within the Harry Potter universe. So then the question becomes, you know, is shame is learning about this at home with his mother? Another person who was socialized and educated at Hogwarts, who has a very specific understanding of of these things, like how much of the kind of magical heritage of Ireland is being forgotten, wiped away, obscured for the sake of the belief that there is a better version. And this resonates, right? Because I think particularly for those of us who are living in the United States, right? We're living in a time where stories and histories and narratives are being completely banned, whitewashed, completely just deleted for the purposes of creating a very specific kind of narrative. And what we know right is that, you know, if you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it again. But also if you don't know your history, there are aspects of your existence, your heritage that you will never be able to tap into again because once they're lost, they're lost. And I think that when we think about shame is in this space, in this place, in the late 90s, when so much is happening historically in the relationship between the UK and Ireland, here he is, this student existing in this space and having to navigate it while also, like, ostensibly navigating like a new magical space. And I think this is the thing about the magical world. So interesting in the way that it's constructed, right? Is that we as readers are meant to believe that all of that other quote unquote stuff, all of the, you know, xenophobia, all of the, you know, superiority complexes, all of those things stop the moment you cross over into Diagon Alley or the moment that you get on the Hogwarts Express or the moment that you enter into the Great Hall, that all of that, that the magical space is in some ways devoid of that. And that by removing non-magical people, you've removed all the biases prejudices and issues that the non-magical world has. Now how that can be the case is beyond me. But I do believe that we are invited to see it that way, that the magical world itself is this kind of racial ethnic utopia. Simultaneously concurrently and what we're seeing is that the stereotypes of the author still permeate this seemingly utopian space. And not just for Shamist, right? That the narratives and the stories and the way in which his story is being told are viewed through the lens of a very specific thing because she can't escape it. She being JKR. There's no escaping how you understand the world when you write. And I think that this is one of the things and this is a bit of a divergence, but come with me on this journey. This is I think one of the things about separating the art from the artist. In this case, it seems almost impossible to be able to do that. I think the only way to navigate this world if it is indeed your desire to do so. is to tackle it head on and to acknowledge, you know, what biases she's undoubtedly bringing to bear. And I'm grateful to those of you who were willing to share not only your own narrative, but the history for those of us who don't know it. Because again, when you don't know the history, what you're invited to do is then think about things in very specific ways without the full context. And in so doing, you look at a character like Shamus and you don't actually realize that he's navigating so much that we have no idea because none of it is on the page and Harry would not be aware of it in the same way that the author of the text is ostensibly not writing it. And Shamus is navigating a world at a time that is very, very, very divisive for people in his national community. And what could that have been like for a child? And you know, it's, it is fascinating to think about, you know, and again, this is, this is, this is head canon, but I, in thinking about this, I think about his relationship with Dean, a black boy in the 90s, navigating all kinds of racial things, right? Because as the internet people made so clear to me, right, the UK at the time was very, very, very white, which means that if you were not, there is no way that you were not experiencing some sort of racial discrimination. And Dean also enters into a space that is seemingly devoid of all of that, while also having to return back home for breaks and holidays and living in this space and having to navigate what it means to live in both of these spaces and places. I wonder, I wonder if this is something that connects them the way that it does. If that embrace in Deathly Hollows was not only the byproduct of a person being so happy to see his best friends still alive because no one knew where he was, but also something that says, "I'm not alone in this anymore." Because of course you can make friends with people who, but there's a very specific thing about being othered and feeling othered and being in community with people who are able to connect with you on those grounds. And when I look at the relationship between Dean and Shamus, I'm very struck by the idea that the silent battles that these two are probably having to navigate is one of the things that really, really, really brings them together in no uncertain terms. And I don't know how intentional that would be for J.K.R. to have done, but I find it very interesting that their friendship, their relationship is the thing that we know exists so strongly within these books. It's a solid throughline, and these are both individuals who are coming from spaces and places where their world outside of the magical, like Hogwarts space is fraught. And so they made their own community. I know that that wasn't exactly where this theme was meant to go, but it's where I took it. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of shook. The last theme that we're gonna be talking about is one that looks at Shamus as a hero and invites us to think more deeply about how we arrive at what our definition of heroism is, which feels like a perfect segue into what we're gonna be talking about for next week's episode. Kylie wrote, "I feel our barometer for who a hero is gets dictated by how much we or Harry likes the character." Shamus' character shows growth throughout the series, and we see that evidenced the most between his fifth and seventh years. He is supportive of the anti-voldy cause, and doesn't shy away from confronting the caros. Do I wish he had learned more and leaned more into his muggle side? Yes, of course, but let's be honest, the magical world doesn't make that necessary, desired, or easy. The expectation once a student goes to Hogwarts is the magical world is the only one you need. Maybe that's why they don't teach math or other common muggle subjects. Not everyone can be dean. Nadia wrote, "Why is it so controversial to say someone is a hero who stood up to tyrants every day for the best part of a year before the Battle of Hogwarts?" Shamus was so battered and bruised his classmates didn't recognize him when they first turned up at Hogwarts. He stood up to torture, did not run away, and was ready to face death to bring it all to an end. Heroic. Put this on a backdrop of Diva Down 2, taking place on May 1998, and we know that the Good Friday Agreement had only just been signed but the referendum not yet held. There was hope that Muggle Ireland was about to become a much safer place than it had been. The troubles were on the brink of ending. If ever there was a time for Shamus to feel he could make a run for it, this was the moment. We never hear self-pity from him, concerned for his country, just a need to do what is right. That is what heroes do. Justice for Shamus. This boy is a hero in my eyes and deserves better than dehumanizing stereotypes the author chooses to try to distract us with. It's my turn. I realized I didn't, I don't think, did I do it for the last thing? Listen y'all, it's been a long birthday weekend. I don't remember things as much as I used to. This is old age at work. But if I didn't, I apologize. I think that this is really important for us to think about. And I think this is what Shamus really invites us to consider in ways that we tend to not consider for characters in this world because they are characterized as if they exist outside of the context in which they come from. Right? That utopian idea of the magical world that I discussed in the second theme is brought to bear here, right? There is so much happening in these people's internal lives that we simply do not get. And there's no reason why Shamus wouldn't be aware of this. While he is here, navigating this, and what's more is I refuse to believe that somehow pure blood supremacists and Voldemort extremists are not holding the same prejudices that we see in the non-magical world. It's like, why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they? They live in and around these spaces and places. There's no way that they are untouched by these things. So then when we bring that to bear, it also allows for us to understand at least in some part the potential that the caros were taking out something more on Shamus than they would have been on other people. If the backdrop is this kind of potential solution or at least kind of stopgap in the relationship between Ireland and the UK. And Shamus is carrying all of that while also defending the space that he is called home for the past seven years and his friends. And so that when we think about heroism, when we think about skin in the game, when we think about what is at risk, I think that Shamus brings a lot of things to bear that we are not invited to consider because so much of what happens in the magical world feels like it is completely separate from what happens in the non-magical world. And that may be true in part, but we also talk a lot about the massive amounts of overlap that happen, right? When serious black is released or of when he's released, good lord, that would mean that there was justice when serious black breaks out of the ban. He is on the non-magical news, right? Like he's on the muggle news, right? There is a way in which so much of what happens in these spaces and places overlaps. And so then why wouldn't we expect a lot of the social and political unrest that is existing in the late 90s to have blood over into the hearts and minds and ideologies and prejudices of the people who are now governing Hogwarts or Shamus? Like why would that not be the case? And I think that there's a way that sometimes because of the way that this is written, we are really invited to see these things as not as if the characters are somehow unaffected by all of this. And part of that I think is because we are getting Harry's perspective and Harry himself is unaffected by it and things very little of it, at least not to the point where it comes to the forefront of his mind where he would then highlight this particular reality. And to be fair, Harry is also on the run from Voldiva and there's a lot of things going on in his world and his orbit at this time. And so and he's also not really allowed to engage in any meaningful discourse with the durses about anything. So his sequestering and his ignorance of this is not unwarranted or unsurprising. That said, I think that the kind of utopian space that the author is trying to pretend exists in the magical world completely erasing is the realities of these individuals who are still showing up, who are still going, right? We talked about this for Dean, right? When Dean showed up without his wand, and it's like, you could have gone back into the non-magical world and been fine. Right, like you could have disappeared with your family and no one would have been any the wiser, but you didn't do that. Shamist could have left and gone home and tried to help his mom navigate whatever was happening. Right, clearly magical people live in Ireland and they are undoubtedly navigating this space. Shamist's father was also non-magical. He has such strong roots in this no matter where he is. And he's fighting a fight whether it's in the magical world or in the non-magical world, right? Like he is navigating social unrest. And perhaps we can argue that that may be what motivates him to fight even harder. But one thing's with certain two things up for sure, he is there and he is enduring unspeakable things and does not have the same promise or privilege that Neville and Ginny have, like they could kill him and wouldn't even think anything of it because he is half blood. And then if we add in the likelihood that there was prejudice and I know that we're adding this to the text, but I would actually love if in the post-episode chat, you all could make a case for why we should assume that prejudices that exist out in the non-magical world don't exist in the magical world. Like it just, I'm just intrigued. If you have a case, I would honestly love to hear it and not like I would love to hear it 'cause I think you're wrong. Like I would genuinely love to hear it because I simply just don't know how it's possible that everyone in the magical world is immune to prejudice, it just seems unlikely, especially when you're already predisposed to prejudice on the grounds of being a death eater. It just seems like you are much more likely to hold this on a number of dimensions because part of the pure blood purity that exists is kind of a historical narrative of being connected to the British aristocracy. And so with all of this in mind, there's no way that you're escaping the realities of a colonial mindset. And yet in still, shameless comes and shameless fights, shameless is battered and brews beyond recognition and he still is there. Fighting not only for a school, but a school that exists in a country that has completely removed so much autonomy from people in his country. How then can we even begin to reconcile the work that he would have to do and the reconciliation that he would have to make in order to be able to do that effectively? And to be able to do that in this space, I think we have to consider that particular context when we reconcile what it means to be a hero. And shameless is one of the few characters that we have to do that for. It's now time for me to do a reflection. And as I was thinking through what I wanted this reflection to be about, I thought a lot about what lesson can we learn from shameless. A character that we don't spend a lot of time with, but one who kind of leaves a bit of a lasting impact. And I do think some of that is definitely informed by the movies, but the more I have spent time with your own comments, the more I've come to realize just how much he has stuck with us for a number of various reasons. And one of the things that obviously many of us brought up in the last episode and in the shameless survey is the fact that he didn't believe Harry and Dumbledore in the order of the Phoenix and that that was a big moment of turning around and having to go against his mother and what she had taught him. And many of us were very dubious of the fact that he didn't believe them from the very beginning. And some of us came back and said, well, obviously it's his mom. And so I really spent some time ruminating on this idea because I thought, why are we so mad at this kid for believing his mom? And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. It's because we are conditioned from the very beginning of these books to not trust adults. We don't trust the Durgies. We don't have Lillian James. We don't trust Dumbledore. We do at the beginning but then by the end where like this guy has always been trash. We've never trusted Snape. We kind of trust Lupin, though some of us are dubious of him because we're like, why don't you come and see Harry after the events of Prison of Ask a Band. We don't trust serious because he's in arrest of development and stuck in a time loop that just won't let him go. And we recognize that many of these adults are individuals who are navigating or not navigating the trauma of the first visiting war and are not communicating with these kids. We are also navigating a space where Harry has endured unspeakable abuse. And then as a result is hyper, hyper, hyper independent and believes that he has to do everything himself. He is outrageously adultified child, right? And as a result, there's a world in which like he just, he himself doesn't trust adults to do anything. He has to be pushed to go and tell McGonagall about the source of stone in the first book. And then she's like, you don't know what you're talking about. Let it go. And he's like, I gotta go back. I have to do this. And so that what we end up learning here, right? Is that so much of what Harry does as a character is through the lens of adults not being reliable and adults not being there for him when he needs them to be and/or adults pushing him into the circumstances he's in that are dangerous to begin with. Here's looking at you, Dumbledore. He's looking at you serious, right? And we do get some adults who are trustworthy, right? Like we get the weaselies, but there is a way in which even they don't always fully understand or grapple with the realities of what it means to be Harry and by proxy Ron and Hermione. And so we learn as readers very, very early on, it's up to us. It's up to the kids, right? And we don't just get that from Harry. We also get it from Hermione. Hermione is an outrageously perintified character. She is a young girl who from the moment she becomes friends with Harry and Ron is like, we've got to get ourselves together. I'm going to create schedules for us to do studying. I'm going to quiz us. I'm going to do this. There are moments where she's getting them special journals that will kind of help them do better. She's always there. She's the one in definitely hollows who has been packed for weeks. Just in case they had to escape at a moment's notice, right? Like she very rarely actually gets to be a child. And now this is not a Hermione episode. But I do think there's something to be said about this particular characterization of her and the relationship that it has with her gender. But one thing for certain two things are for sure. There is an outsized burden placed on her by in a way that makes us think of her not as a child, but as, again, a very adultified, perintified person who has to be the reliable one because she's dealing with two boys, one of whom is very dubious of most things and believes he has to do everything by himself. And another one who's spoiled. And that's Ron. And Ron, I think, you know, is someone who has the characterization that is most closely childlike, right? It's never tested because the Weasley's care for him, they make sure he has what he needs. Obviously there are some more kind of not necessarily inconsequential, but not necessarily as big things that are that occur for him with his relationship to his parents, particularly his mom. But he gets to be a kid. He gets to be jealous and immature and cowardly. And brave and a good friend and a bad friend. And so all of this exists, right? But he is also engaging in very adult work by virtue of just being friends with Harry, right? Like he's fighting dark wizards. They're running off to the Ministry of Magic at 15 to go and try to get a prophecy and save serious because they don't believe that anyone else can do it but them, right? Like this is what we're used to. And this is what we're rooting for as readers. We fully believe and accept and want that these kids are the ones that have to do this work. And so when we think about Shamus, what he is doing, believing his mom, it runs so counter to the way that we understand the relationship between children and their parents and children and authority figures in these books. Shamus trusts his mom. He loves his mom. And I think that part of what we are dealing with and navigating and why we are so hard on him is because we're like, no one in these books trusts adults. Everyone does it themselves. What do you mean that you believe your mom who doesn't believe Dumbledore and Harry? That's crazy. Your mom, you believe her in this economy. Shamus. Get a grip. And there is a way that it runs so counter to how we fully understand what is acceptable for these children. And Shamist teaches us what is probably true for most of the students at Hogwarts, which is they believe their parents in an earlier in the post that was in the post episode chat that I didn't I didn't quote. Someone spoke about how when they were younger, they grew up in a very particular area of the United States, which has is notorious for having very strong beliefs. And I think this is true for anywhere. And it wasn't until they went to college and learned other perspectives and put themselves in spaces and places where they were invited to grow and learn that they had to kind of form their own beliefs. And that's the truth for most people. As a person who teaches college students, especially when you're teaching them as freshmen, they're all coming in with their belief structures very much intact in their own minds. And it's in some ways incumbent upon me as a professor to say, why do you think that? Where did you get that from? How do we understand that? And so I think that there is a way that sometimes we look at the characters in the Harry Potter series and we think, you all can do this by yourselves. You've always done it by yourselves. And so that when we see someone else who is a child leaning on adults, the way that we come to understand children should lean on adults, particularly those of a trust and who are trustworthy, because those things aren't always the same. It stands to reason that we've been conditioned in the same way that Harry has been, right? The moment in the end of the first book when Harry says to Ron and Hermione, I think Dumbledore has a sense of all that's going on here and he just lets us do it. And Hermione says, well, I mean to say that's pretty irresponsible. This is a loose quote. And it's like, right, that's it. Right? Like Dumbledore allows for them to engage in this very adult behavior. And so we as readers accept that as being true. They don't need adults. The truth is there and you should know it. And when we look at James, he's doing the opposite. He's doing what we understand children generally do. But what he also then does is he apologizes. He turns around. He joins the resistance and we reward him right for it because we're like, now you're behaving the way that you're supposed to. Now you're sticking it to the system. Now you're standing in the face of all of these adults. Now you're telling your mom that you don't believe what she's saying because you have a better understanding of things than she does. And that feels right to us. And that is the thing that we are so used to seeing for the other books, the four previous books before that moment. When he stands up to the curries, the curries, the caros, that's what we're used to seeing. That's how we understand. We, by virtue of the way that these books are written, believe that child soldiers are the only way to fix this. And then when that behavior is not mimicked by other people, when they're doing what we understand is traditionally understood and accepted dynamic between parent and child, which is, I believe you. I am a minor. You know the world. I do not. But over my best friend who admittedly gets up to hijinks all the time and is telling a story that one, I don't want to believe, but also feels crazy to me. And so I'm going to believe my mom, who I've known and trusted for a long time. And we're like, that's dumb. That's unacceptable because we're so conditioned to not do that. And so then leaves the question about what we're meant to learn from Shameless's arc. And by my estimation, I'm not sure that the series actually fully knows. I actually don't think we were meant to learn anything from Shameless's arc other than like he's Irish and Irish people are there at Hogwarts. But I think that what he offers us is an arc of trust, disagreement, revision, resistance, and that he becomes the thing that we recognize as being necessary. And I think what's fascinating about it and when you think hard enough, right, Shameless highlights the reality that the series is answer to adult failure is not better adults. It's children feeling the gap between what adults should be doing and what they're actually doing between the trauma that the adults are not speaking about and the trauma that the children are experiencing. And so that when we think about Shameless and the moment where we are the most dubious of him, the question becomes, was he doing anything wrong or have we just been conditioned to see child soldiers and the autonomy and the independence that these child soldiers exhibit as being correct? Did we fall prey to the very thing that we judge Dumbledore for? Which is preparing Harry and indeed most of the students at Hogwarts like pigs for slaughter for the upcoming war that he knew was going to happen. We can recognize it now, but many of us still were not pleased with Shameless in the survey. And I think that part of that comes because he's not the kind of character that we're used to seeing in these books because he's a character that trusts adults. And we are taught that that is the key to failure. And what does that actually mean for us? 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. Feel free to like, rate, subscribe, and do all the things that one does where parts are cast. Y'all, thank you so much for all that you brought to Shameless and the episodes there in. I personally learned a lot and I have to admit that the little bit about Dean and Shameless is friendship. Until then, be critical and stay magical, my friends.