1 Gender representations of dark fictional characters: A hermeneutic analysis of Harry Potter fan discussions on Reddit Student: Jason Maurer Course: Media and Communication Studies: Master's (One-Year) Thesis-VT20 Advisor: Asko Kauppinen Date: June 7, 2020 Word count: 17,297 2 Abstract The aim of this thesis was to deepen our understanding of how audiences represent male and female dark fictional characters (DFCs) by exploring how Harry Potter fans discuss four of these characters on Reddit. Drawing on affective disposition theory as a guiding framework as well as previous investigations of gender representation and online fan cultures, I collected and analyzed 117 posts (containing 9,693 comments) about four DFCs from the Harry Potter franchise. I chose two male DFCs (Lord Voldemort and Severus Snape) and two female ones (Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge) for my investigation. The data were analyzed using a productive hermeneutics approach. Fans’ representation of these characters intersected with the extent which the characters’ fictionality was salient, how they were visualized, the online culture of Reddit, and fans’ presumed identification with these characters. Bellatrix was defined by her portrayal by Helena Bonham Carter in the films and her combination of valuable masculine and feminine traits. Moreover, she was a figure of pure fantasy, which allowed fans to love her depravity. Umbridge and Snape, by contrast, were hated for intruding into the fantasy that Harry Potter offered, reminding fans of bullying and overly controlling teachers. Snape, however, was redeemed by his complexity and embodiment of geek masculinity. Voldemort was valued for his intellect and power but also criticized as a peer failing to rise to his intellectual potential; fans at turns identified with and undercut him through humor. Taken together, the results indicate a need to qualitatively explore how DFCs are received by audiences, as it can add further nuance to our understanding of how morality and gender influence media consumption. Keywords: fictional characters, villains, media fans, Harry Potter, Reddit, gender representation, morality 3 Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures ...................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................. 6 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 7 2. Background ......................................................................................................................... 8 2.1. Dark Fictional Characters, Gender Representation, and Audiences ........................... 8 2.2. Online Fandom and Harry Potter............................................................................... 10 3. Literature Review ............................................................................................................. 11 3.1. Overview ................................................................................................................... 11 3.2. Gender Representation .............................................................................................. 12 3.3. Character Engagement ............................................................................................... 15 3.4. Online Fan Spaces and Harry Potter.......................................................................... 19 3.4.1. Fan Studies and Gender Representation ............................................................. 19 3.4.2 Representation in the Harry Potter fandom ......................................................... 21 3.5. Theoretical Framework.............................................................................................. 23 4. Methods ............................................................................................................................ 25 4.1. Data Source: Reddit ................................................................................................... 25 4.2. Data Collection .......................................................................................................... 27 4.3. Data Analysis ............................................................................................................. 31 4.3.1. Analytical approach ............................................................................................ 31 4.3.2. Researcher position............................................................................................. 34 4.3.3. Data analysis procedure ...................................................................................... 35 4.3.4. Trustworthiness .................................................................................................. 35 4.4. Ethical Considerations ............................................................................................... 35 5. Findings and Discussion ................................................................................................... 36 4 5.1. Description of Sampled Posts .................................................................................... 36 5.2. The Salient Fictionality of Bellatrix Lestrange ......................................................... 38 5.2.1. Contrasting Characterization .............................................................................. 38 5.2.2. Bellatrix’s Autopoetic Feedback Loop ............................................................... 41 5.3. Umbridge and Snape: Everyday Hatred .................................................................... 45 5.4. Voldemort as an Intellectual Peer .............................................................................. 49 6. Conclusions and Limitations ............................................................................................ 52 References ............................................................................................................................ 56 Appendix A: Table of Posts.................................................................................................. 67 Appendix B: Table of Codes ................................................................................................ 74 5 List of Tables and Figures Figure 1. Timeline of release of Harry Potter books and movies (Cuntz-Leng, 2015) ........ 11 Figure 2. The basic hermeneutic circle (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009) ............................... 33 Figure 3. Contrasting images of (a) a cosplay photograph of Bellatrix Lestrange from /r/harrypotter and (b) a photograph of Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange (“Bellatrix Lestrange,” 2012). .............................................................................................. 42 Figure 4. Bellatrix cosplay photograph. This post was closed for commenting because the poster received too many sexist and harassing comments ................................................... 43 Table 1. Definitions of post categories extracted from /r/harrypotter .................................. 29 Table 2. Number of posts for each category and character .................................................. 36 6 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Kauppinen, for his support and advice, and in particular for introducing me to Zotero – it has saved my life in writing this thesis. I would like to credit the original idea for this thesis – looking at how fans represent the gender of DFCs – to my friend and fellow writer, Emma. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Mia, for all her support and love throughout the last two months. It cannot have been easy to be quarantined with a thesis writer. 7 1. Introduction Popular media centering on dark fictional characters (DFCs), including villains, antiheroes, and morally ambiguous characters (Black et al., 2019), are becoming increasingly popular: Todd Philips’ 2018 film Joker, depicting an origin story of the murderous Batman villain the Joker, grossed over US$1 billion throughout its theatrical run (Joker, n.d.). Maleficent, the evil witch first depicted in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty in 1959, was the protagonist of two Hollywood films in the past decade. Their popularity suggests that audiences are resonating with something within their “darkness.” This thesis is an attempt to deepen our understanding of that resonance by exploring how fans – arguably the most actively engaged subsection of media audiences – construct DFCs in their online discussions. I pay particular attention to the construction of gender, which is not only a ubiquitous feature of daily life but also naturally aligns with themes of power, sexuality, violence, and morality, the distortion of which seems to characterize our most loved and hated DFCs. I frame my results in terms of affective disposition theory (ADT, Raney, 2004), which can help to explain how gender representation influences our engagement with DFCs. I was guided in this exploration by the following research question: How do fans represent male and female dark fictional characters from Harry Potter in their discussions on Reddit? Understanding how audiences’ connection with DFCs intersects with gender representations provides us with a deeper knowledge of how fictional men and women are treated by audiences. For the media producers creating these characters, such knowledge could help them create better, more